A BRIEF REVIEW.—CURSE OF GOD VISITED UPON SPAIN.—THE CHURCH A FALSE PROPHET.—WITH EXPULSION OF THE JEWS AND MOORS SPANISH PROSPERITY CEASES.—SPANIARDS EXPERIENCE SOME OF THE SUFFERINGS WHICH THE JEWS AND MOORS HAD ENDURED.—SPAIN MAKES AMENDS.—THE MOORS LOST.—THE JEWS LIVE.

A few words more and our task is ended. A few words more and we shall bid a last farewell to unfortunate Spain, once so sunny, so prosperous, so intellectual, and so fair. A few words more and our goodly vessel, staunch and strong, will furl its eager wings and speed us straight across the foaming deep, and land us once again upon Columbia's heaven blessed and freedom-kissed virgin soil. As we predicted, so it came to pass. Our journey back into the centuries of the past, and into foreign lands, and among foreign peoples, has proven a profitable one, and as memorable as profitable. Events and scenes, beautiful and loathsome, joyous and tearful, soul refreshing and execrable, followed each other in rapid succession. There was much, which, despite the most authentic historic sources, seemed fabulous, incredible, impossible. Men and women and the states of society and civilization in which they lived and played their parts, were described, which startled us for their peerless magnificence, for their marvelous intellectuality, scarce equalled even now, and led us to suppose that we were not dealing with facts, but with the imagination of some rich phantasy. And events and achievements were recounted which struck terror into our very soul, and caused the heart to rise in rebellion against the mind when it was asked to believe them as actual occurrences, and not as some distressing and revolting and blood-stained work of fiction. And yet all that was told, and all that was described, and all that was recounted was history, and true history, strange and incredible, marvelous and anomalous though it did appear.

Two races of men engaged our attention most, the Jews and the Moors. When first we met the Jews in the southwestern corner of Europe, we found them a prosperous community, large in numbers, loved and appreciated by their heathen neighbors, busily engaged in transforming Spain into a granery and into the garden spot of Europe, and contributing largely, by their high morality and intelligence, by their skill and industry to the nation's prosperity.

With the advent of the power of Christianity in Spain, in the Sixth Century, a sad change took place. It marked the beginning of the martyrology of the Jews in Europe. Thousands were massacred, thousands were dragged to the baptismal font, thousands were forced to take the staff of exile. But not for long. A deliverer arose from the Arabian peninsula and hastened to their rescue. This Arabian people, agile in the use of arms, dexterous in the training of horses, capable of sustaining great fatigue and hardship, and, true to the Semitic race, intellectual and sagacious, had lived till late in the Sixth Century a peaceful, nomadic life. Suddenly they were awakened out of their religious and political inactivity by their great leader Mohammed, the prophet. He kindled in their hearts the fire of enthusiasm, and led them forth to establish throughout the world his faith and his dominion. Asia submitted, Africa submitted. The early dawn of the Eighth Century saw them, where the African continent protrudes boldly to meet the continent of Europe, casting wistful glances across the straits of Hercules, upon Andalusia's beauteous lands. The exiled Jews and Christians, roused to rebellion by the religious and political tyranny of Spain, conspired with the Mohammedan invaders, and the portals of Spain were opened to the people of Arabia, and Europe to the creed of Mohammed. The exiled Jews returned to their country, and the baptized to their cherished faith, for the Arab-Moors tolerated both the Hebrew people and their faith. Moorish and Jewish skill and industry and intelligence united, and united they became—and they maintained that distinction for many centuries—the most prosperous and most intellectual people of Europe, at a time when the rest of Europe was numbed into a death-like torpor, mentally spell-bound, industrially entranced, politically enslaved, morally degraded and religiously fettered, by a corrupt priestcraft, to ignorance and superstition.

Eight centuries long Jew and Moor toiled side by side, and during all these centuries, the Jews, with some few exceptions, politically tolerated, and religiously free, arose to great wealth and commercial importance, clothed honorably high political offices, and occupied a social and intellectual position never equalled in Europe before or since.

But the Mohammedan power began to wane, and with its waning came the terrible change in the fortunes of the Hebrew people. With Moorish decline awakened the eagerness of the Spaniards for the provinces from which the Arabian invaders had driven them, and with it grew a most fanatical zeal for the expulsion from its territories of every belief save that of Christianity.

A desperate struggle ensued. Province after province the Moor was forced to yield to the relentless foe. At last all was lost. The Mohammedan power in Spain was crushed. The Moors and Jews were given the choice between baptism and expulsion. Hundreds of thousands of them feigned allegiance to the Church of Christ, and remained. Hundreds of thousands of them, true to their faith, parted heart-broken from the land that was dearer to them than their own life. The remaining baptized Jews and Moors were soon suspected of relapsing into their old faith, and the Inquisition was brought and burned them by the thousands, and thinned the ranks of the exile Jews. By far the greater number perished from cruelty, exposure, starvation, disease, in their search for a quiet spot where they might live or die in peace. Wherever the remainder of them was permitted to settle, thither they brought blessings[43] verifying the promise of God: "They that bless thee will be blest.[44]

And so, too, was verified the other half of that promise: "They that curse thee will be cursed." The curse of God has hung heavily upon Spain, ever since she had dared to lay violent hand upon God's anointed, ever since she cruelly massacred, burned and exiled the most thrifty, the most industrious, the most intellectual people that ever trod her soil, and made her the glory of Europe and the pride of the world. For a short time only, lingered her prosperity after the expulsion of the people that had created that prosperity. The New World, the discovery of which the Jews and Moors had made possible, poured into the mother country a prodigious wealth, which hastened the ruin of Spain. It intoxicated the Spaniards, and when the sobering came, the effect was terrible. Had they had the skillful, and industrious and intelligent Jews and Moors to turn the vast treasures, which poured into Spain with every vessel, into useful channels, Spain would have maintained her position as leader in the commercial world, and Italy, and France, and the Netherlands, the new homes of the Jews, would never have seized it from her, and Spain would not have been to-day what she is. But, instead, it flowed into the coffers of the greedy and insatiable Church, and the richer the Church became the more terrible became its tyranny, and the greater the inducement for laymen to enter it. Convents and Churches multiplied with such vast speed, that early in the Seventeenth Century the Spanish historian enumerates upwards of 9,000 monasteries, besides nunneries, 32,000 Dominican and Franciscan friars, 14,000 chaplains in the diocese of Seville, and 18,000 in the diocese of Calahorra.

The State was completely in its power. Even Charles V and Phillip II, sovereigns not to be matched in any other country for a period of equal length, submitted cheerfully to the power of the Church, and thought it a blessed privilege to do so. It was Charles V's great boast that he always preferred his creed to his country, and proved his boast by slaying in cold blood, in the Netherlands, over 50,000 peaceful, industrious, good Christian citizens for their religious opinions. The cannibal appetite of the Church had to be appeased, when the stock of Jewish and Moorish victims was exhausted, truth and knowledge-seeking Christians had to supply their places upon the quemaderos, and in the torture-dungeons of the Inquisition. Even with his last breath he commanded his son, Philip, never to show favor to heretics, to kill them all, to uphold the Inquisition as the best means for the establishment of the true belief. Philip II. proved himself worthy of his sire. He has written his services to the Church upon history's records with flames of fire and letters of blood.

With amazing swiftness Spain's once invincible power began to disappear, becoming weaker with every century, and to-day the population of more than 30,000,000 of people before the expulsion of the Jews and Moors has dwindled down to about one half of that number, while her neighboring countries have increased in numbers and prosperity. "So rapid was the fall of Spain," says Buckle in his "History of the Civilization of England," Vol. II, Chap. I, "that the most powerful monarchy existing in the world was depressed to the lowest point of debasement, was insulted with impunity by foreign nations, was reduced more than once to bankruptcy, was stripped of her fairest possessions, was held up to public opprobrium, was made a theme on which schoolboys and moralists loved to declaim, respecting the uncertainty of human affairs. Truly did she drink to the dregs the cup of her own shame. Her glory had departed from her, she was smitten down and humbled. The mistress of the world was gone; her power was gone, no more to return."

The Church had proven itself a false prophet. "Once purge blessed Spain," it preached to its credulous followers, "of the presence of the accursed Jews and Moors, and yourselves and your families will be under the immediate protection of Heaven. The earth will bear more fruit. A new era will be inaugurated, Spain will be at ease. People will live in safety, and gather in peace and in abundance the fruits of their handiwork."

Such was the prophecy: but bitter its fulfilment. With the expulsion of the Jews and Moors large bodies of industrious and expert agriculturists and skilled mechanics were suddenly withdrawn, and there was no one to fill their place. The cultivation of rice, cotton and sugar, and the manufacture of silk and paper was destroyed at a blow, and most of it was destroyed forever, for the Spanish Christians, still intoxicated with their military and financial and social greatness, considered such pursuits beneath their dignity. To fight for the king and to enter the Church was honorable, but everything else was mean and sordid. Whole districts were deserted and have never been repeopled to the present day. The brigands soon occupied the places formerly so beneficially filled by honest toilers. In less than fifty years 16,000 looms of Seville, giving employment to 130,000 persons, had dwindled away to less than 300, and its population to one quarter of its former number. The mines stood idle until foreigners took pity of some of them. The others are idle still. A little over one hundred years ago the Spanish government being determined to have a navy, found it necessary to send to England for shipwrights; and they were obliged to apply to the same quarter for persons who could make ropes and canvas, the skill of the natives being unequal to such arduous achievements; and early in the eighteenth century they were obliged to import laborers from Holland to teach the Spaniards the art of making wool, an art for which in their glorious past they were especially famous.

The consequences of this industrial and agricultural standstill could not fail. Famine set in. The grandees murmured aloud against the State for expelling the Jews and Moors. The citizens of Madrid fell down in the streets famished and perished where they fell—so had famished and died the Jewish exiles—anarchy prevailed. Peaceful citizens organized themselves into bands and going in search of bread, broke open private houses, and robbed and murdered the inhabitants in the face of day—thus had been murdered the Jewish exiles. Verily God's prophecy was fulfilled: "And I will bless them that bless thee, and curse them that curse thee, in thee shall the families of the earth be blessed."[45]

Spain's intellectual decline kept steady pace with its political and industrial decay. No more is she the center of Europe's learning. No more does her intellect shed luminous rays all over the world. The Moor and the Jew have fled her provinces, and darkness covers her lands, the shadows of night again brood stiflingly over her people. Her poverty has made her ignorant, her ignorance has made her intensely fanatic, and her fanaticism is, to this day, the enemy of all social and intellectual advance. For two centuries and more investigation likely to stimulate thought was positively prohibited. In the measure that her sister countries advanced intellectually she declined, and in proportion as they shook off the fetters of the Church, she cheerfully submitted to have them drawn tighter about her. Until the eighteenth century Madrid did not possess a single public library, and to-day the number of volumes in all the Spanish libraries cannot reach 500,000. The library of Cordova in the tenth century, before the printing press was discovered, counted over 600,000 volumes. The Government library of Paris and that of London count respectively over 1,500,000 and over 2,000,000 volumes. So late as the year 1771 the University of Salamanca, the most ancient and most famous seat of learning in Spain, publicly refused to allow the discoveries of Newton to be taught, and assigned as a reason that his system was not consonant with revealed religion. Buckle quotes from Spanish sources, an epistle which will illustrate the abysses of ignorance into which the Spanish intellect had sunk. About a century ago some bold men proposed that the streets of Madrid should be cleansed. The proposal was met with excited indignation. The question was submitted by the government to the medical profession. They reported unfavorably. They had no doubt that the dirt ought to remain. To remove it was a new experiment, and of new experiments it was impossible to foresee the issue. Their fathers having lived in it, why should they not do the same? Their fathers were wise men, and must have had good reasons for their conduct. The filth shall remain. And it did remain. And it did make Spain the, alas, too frequent victim of plague and cholera, and we now no longer wonder that a year ago, when the cholera raged in Spain, the people arose against the physicians for being asked to resort to medicines and cleanliness and not to Relics and Holy Water.

Intellectually Spain sleeps on, dreams on, receiving no impressions from the rest of the world and making none upon it. "There she lies," says the historian, "at the further extremity of the continent, a huge and torpid mass, the sole representation now remaining of the feelings and knowledge of the middle ages. And what is the worst symptom of all, she is satisfied with her own condition. Though she is the most backward country in Europe, she believes herself foremost. She is proud of everything of which she should be ashamed. She is proud of the antiquity of her opinions; proud of her orthodoxy; proud of the strength of her faith; proud of her immeasurable and childish credulity; proud of her unwillingness to amend either her creed or her customs; proud of her hatred of heretics, and proud of the undying vigilance with which she has baffled their efforts to obtain a full and legal establishment on her soil."

But since Buckle penned these forcible lines, she has made a change. She has recalled the Jews, some five years ago, after 400 years of banishment. Her eyes have been opened at last, and she now seeks to repair her wrongs to the people she afflicted most. And prosperity will follow the re-entrance of the Jews. Spain will again be blest; it may take time, church tyranny will first have to be crushed and ignorance and superstition rooted out, but crushed and rooted out they will be. Her harbors on the Atlantic and Mediterranean will again command the commerce of both hemispheres. Her cities will again teem with people. Her towns will again flourish, her manufactures will again be skillful, the produce of her exuberant soil will again gladden the heart of mankind. Her inexhaustible mines, rich in all the precious and all the useful metals, her quarries of marbles and her beds of coal will again set the wheel of industry into busy motion. She will be blest again. She must be blest again, for such is the word of God. She has held out the hand of friendship to His anointed people, and they that bless them will be blest.

The Moors, Spain no more can recall. The Arab-Moors, such as they were in Spain, exist no longer. Their descendants roam as benighted Bedouins over those regions of Africa which their ancestors once illumined by the light of learning. Gone is most of their literature. The beautiful accents of the classic Arabic tongue are heard no more. Darkness, deep darkness, rules over the Arabian peninsula now. The history that their sires in Spain have made our civilization their debtor, reads indeed, to-day, like unto a fairy tale.

But the Jews live, and fulfill the glorious mission for which they have been scattered throughout the world. The people chosen by the Eternal Jehovah to be His priest people cannot die. The people that has seen the tidal waves of Babylon, Persia, Greece, Egypt, Rome roll over it and instead of engulfing it has lived to see them engulfed; the people that live after a thousand struggles, after deeds of heroic courage that Rome, and Athens, and Sparta, and Carthage have never equaled, outliving them all; the people that still lives, after eighteen centuries of persecution, and still is united, though scattered the wide world over, and though not held together by the ties of any fatherland, was never destined to be annihilated by any Church or by any race of men. The Jew is older than both, and will outlive them both. Time and death wield no power over him. Emerson spoke truly:

Such is the Jew. He is as indestructible as his religion, and as eternal as his God.