History of the Jews, Vol. 3 (of 6)

In consequence of the diplomatic victory over Raymund of Toulouse, and the military victory over Raymund Roger of Béziers, the intolerant Church had acquired supremacy not only in the south of France, but everywhere else. The audacity of free-thinkers, who claimed the right to form their own opinion upon religion, the Holy Scripture, or upon the position of the clergy, was punished by bloodshed. In the Church language of that epoch, the Pope had to wield the spiritual and the secular sword. Those who thought rationally were killed, and independent thinking was branded as a crime. The disciples of the philosopher, Amalarich of Bena, who maintained that Rome was licentious Babylon, and the Pope, the Antichrist; that he dwelt on the Mount of Olives, i. e., in the luxury of power, and that intelligent men, who considered that to build altars for saints, and to worship the bones of martyrs was idolatry, were burnt as blasphemers in Paris. Philosophical writings which were brought over to France from Spain, and which might have enriched or fertilized Christian theology, amongst others the works of the great Jewish philosopher, Solomon Gebirol, which had been translated by order of an archbishop, were interdicted, and forbidden to be read by the Parisian synod. The light which was just dawning on the nations of Europe was extinguished by the representatives of the Church.

The Jews of southern France and of Spain were the only apostles of higher learning. But the Church begrudged them even this glory, and worked with all its might to degrade them. The Council of Avignon (Sept. 1209), presided over by the papal legate, Milo, at which Count Raymund was again laid under the ban, and at which the severest measures were passed against heretics, resolved that all barons of free cities should take an oath that they would entrust no office whatever to Jews, nor allow Christian servants to be employed in Jewish houses. One of the ordinances of this council prohibited the Jews from working on Sunday and all Christian holidays, and also forbade them to eat meat on Christian fast-days. Everywhere the Jews felt the heavy hand of the Romish Church, which stretched forth unhindered to degrade them to the dust.

In England, the Jews had at that time three enemies: the licentious, unprincipled John Lackland, who shrank from no expedient to extort money from them; the hostile barons, who saw in them the source of the king's wealth, by depriving them of which they thought to gain the means of damaging the power of the king; and, lastly, Stephen Langton, whom the Pope had appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and who had introduced the tyrannical spirit of the Church into England. At the beginning of his reign, King John assumed the appearance of friendship towards them, for as he had usurped the crown of his nephew, and in consequence had France and a part of the English nobility against him, he naturally sought to win over to his side the moneyed classes of the people. He appointed a Talmudical scholar, Jacob of London, as chief rabbi over all the English communities (presbyteratus omnium Judæorum totius Angliæ), and all his subjects were warned against attacking either his property or his dignity. The king called this chief rabbi his "dear friend." Every outrage that was offered to the latter was looked upon by the king as a personal insult to himself. He further renewed and confirmed the privileges and liberties of the Jews which they had received from Henry I, including the remarkable provision that a Christian was bound to prefer his complaint against a Jew before a Jewish tribunal. The Jews, it is true, had to pay much money – 4000 silver marks – for these generous concessions. But it was a great boon that they received protection and freedom of movement in return for their money. When the Jews were in peril from a London mob, John wrote a threatening letter to the authorities of the capital, reproaching them with the fact that, whilst the Jews in other parts of England were unmolested, those of London were exposed to injury, and stating that he would hold them responsible for all bodily and material damage suffered by the Jews. As, however, John proceeded to quarrel more and more with his barons, and became involved in oppressive money difficulties, he gradually abandoned his mild demeanor, which had never been genuine, and adopted a totally different attitude towards the Jews. On one occasion he imprisoned all the English Jews in order to extort money from them (1210), and he demanded from one Jew of Bristol alone the sum of 10,000 marks of silver. As the latter could not, or would not pay, John had his teeth extracted one by one.

The crushing antipathy against them from all sides, and their yearning for the Holy Land, which the poet Jehuda Halevi had aroused, induced more than 300 rabbis of France and England to emigrate to Jerusalem (1211). The most renowned of them were Jonathan Cohen of Lünel, who had been in correspondence with Maimuni, and was one of his admirers, and Samson ben Abraham, an opponent of the school of Maimonides. Many of the emigrants stopped on their way at Cairo in order to make the acquaintance of Maimuni's son, who received them with great respect and joy. Only Samson ben Abraham, the exponent of a one-sided Judaism, avoided meeting the son of the man whom he considered almost a heretic.

The French and English emigrants, who were honorably received, and provided with privileges by the Sultan Aladil, Saladin's able brother, lost no time in building houses of prayer and learning in Jerusalem, and transplanted the Tossafists' method of exposition to the East. Intellectual activity, even in the field of the Talmud, did not, however, thrive in the Holy City. It seemed as if the curse of heaven had fallen upon this once glorious, and now distressed city, for since the Roman legions, under Titus and Hadrian, had struck down her noblest sons, she had become altogether barren. Not a single man of importance had sprung up in the city since the destruction of the Synhedrion. Jerusalem, like the whole of Palestine, was notable only on account of its illustrious dead. Pious men, who yearned for the home of their ancestors, searched only for their graves, for living fountains were no longer there. Jonathan Cohen and his associates conscientiously visited the spot upon which the Temple had once stood, the graves of the patriarchs, kings, prophets and doctors of the Mishna, and wept, and prayed upon the ruins of departed glory. They met the Exilarch David, of Mosul, who bore a letter of recommendation from the Caliph Alnasir Ledin Allah, which secured him free access to every place of interest. In the East the Jews were still allowed to maintain a certain show of dignity; caliphs and sultans, the wielders of the spiritual and the worldly might, granted them so much – for money. In Europe, however, the very lives of the Jews were continually in peril from a fanaticism which was ever being goaded into activity.

The Almohade Prince of the Faithful, Mahomet Alnasir, of northern Africa, had called to arms the entire male population at his disposal for a holy war against the increasing power of the Christians in Mahometan Spain, and led at least half a million warriors across the sea into Andalusia. The strong city of Salvatierra, in spite of the gallant defense of the knightly order of Calatrava, fell into the hands of the Mahometans (September, 1211). In this long siege, the Jewish community of Salvatierra was destroyed, and a remnant fled to Toledo. The Christian kings of Spain, terrified by this danger, laid aside their mutual hostilities in order to oppose the powerful enemy with united forces. But as the Christian population of Spain did not feel itself strong enough to undertake a war against the Mahometans, Alfonso the Noble, King of Castile, appealed to Innocent to decree a general crusade against the Crescent, and the Pope very readily consented. Thus it was that many European warriors crossed the Pyrenees, amongst them the bloodthirsty Cistercian monk, Arnold, with his troops, who had assured themselves of future bliss by all sorts of barbarities practised on the Albigenses and the Jews of the south of France. The wrath of the Ultramontanes, as they were called, in contradistinction to the Spanish warriors, against everything that was not Roman Catholic had risen to the point of frenzy; they took umbrage at the comparatively happy state of the Jews in the Spanish capital, at their wealth, their freedom, and their importance at court. These foreign crusaders, animated by Arnold's violent fanaticism, suddenly attacked the Jews of Toledo, and killed many of them (June, 1212), and all the Jews would have fared very badly, had not the noble Alfonso interfered in their behalf, and had not the Christian knights and citizens of Toledo, animated by a sense of honor, repelled the attacks of the fanatics. This was the first persecution of the Jews in Castile, the attack, however, being made by foreigners, and disapproved by the natives.

The Church, however, soon educated the Spanish kings and the people to become the enemies of the Jews. The extraordinary change of sentiment towards the Jews which had set in since Innocent's pontificate was shown by a resolution of the Synod of Paris of the same year. King Louis VII, and even his son Philip, had stoutly resisted the canonical institute which provided that the Jews were not to employ Christian servants. But now the French councils, under the presidency of the papal legates, and with the consent of the king, sought to extend this narrow-minded provision, so that not only was a Christian woman prohibited from nursing a Jewish child, but a Christian midwife was not even allowed to attend upon a Jewish woman in confinement, because Christians, who stayed with Jews, took a liking to Judaism. It was with reason, therefore, that the Jews, on hearing of the formation of a new council, were greatly alarmed lest they should be subjected to a new species of tyranny. When, therefore, the papal legate, Peter, of Benevento, convened a synod in Montpellier (beginning of 1214), to which he invited priests and laymen, in order completely to divest the Count of Toulouse of his dominions, and hand them over to Simon de Montfort, and to adopt the severest measures against the remnant of the Albigenses, the Jews of the south of France felt that a great danger was menacing them, and at once took steps to avert it. At the instance of the illustrious Don Isaac (Zag) Benveniste, physician in ordinary to the king of Aragon, many Jewish congregations sent each two deputies to use their influence with clergymen and laymen, that no new restrictions might be imposed upon the Jews. And it seems that they succeeded in warding off the danger; for the council of Montpellier omitted all mention of the Jews in its deliberations.

Hardly had this local danger been averted, when another and more general one appeared to be advancing. This threw all those Jews who received tidings of it into the greatest consternation. Innocent III had, through an encyclical, pastoral letter, convoked to Rome the representatives of entire Christendom for a general Œcumenical Council, at which the energetic prosecution of the crusades against the Mahometans in the Holy Land, in the Pyrenean peninsula, and against the heretics of the south of France, was to be decided upon; the deposition of the Count of Toulouse, and the transference of his estates to Simon de Montfort were to be ratified, and the reformation of the Church, i. e., the extension of her power in the states, was to be promoted. The congregations of the south of France, who had been informed that a severe blow was about to be dealt the Jews at the meeting of this council, were completely staggered. Isaac Benveniste accordingly invited Jewish deputies to the town Bourg de St. Gilles, in order to select certain influential and able men as deputies to Rome, who should endeavor to prevent the enactment of resolutions against the Jews. The names of the delegates chosen for this purpose are unknown, because their labors proved fruitless. The great Fourth Lateran Council was presided over by Pope Innocent III, and comprised over 1200 deputies from many Christian states, both churchmen and laymen. At this council, the papacy was permitted to make the greatest demands ever preferred by it. To its action is due the founding of the two orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, distinguished by their hatred of freedom and their bloodthirstiness. This council, which wrapped round Christian Europe the ignominious coil of spiritual servitude, and threw it back into the ignorance of barbarism, inflicted deep wounds on Judaism. On the feast of the Maccabees, during which the children of Jacob celebrated their deliverance from Syrian tyranny, this council, which placed the yoke of the deepest degradation on the posterity of the Maccabean heroes, brought its deliberations to a conclusion (30th November, 1215). Though in the midst of gigantic undertakings, the Pope and the Elders of the Council nevertheless did not forget the Jews. Four of the seventy canonical decrees then passed dealt with the Jews. One canon set forth that Christian princes should keep strict watch over the Jews, lest they exact too high an interest from their Christian debtors. This restriction is not altogether unjustifiable – although, indeed, the Christian clergy and laity promoted Jewish usury, and profited by it; and Christian companies, like the Lombards and the Caorsini (called also Ultramontanes), practised usury on an enormous scale. The Church did not take any notice of the financial needs of the time, and kept to the strict letter of the Bible. The council, from its point of view, was also in a measure justified in forbidding baptized Jews to retain Jewish customs, because it would have been suicidal to the Church to allow freedom of conscience. If the accusation was true that some Jews at that time mocked at the Christian processions at Easter, then the authorities of the Church were partly right in forbidding them to show themselves openly on that day; although equitable legislation would not place restrictions on a whole community on account of the transgressions of a few indecorous members. Still more unjust was the canon which not only decreed that the Jews should give tithes of their houses and property, but also that the head of every Jewish family should pay a yearly tax at the Easter festival. The Catholic clergy considered themselves lords, to whom the Jews, their subjects, were to bring tribute. But it was characteristic of the spirit of Innocent, the persecutor of the Albigenses, that the law was renewed, that "no Christian prince shall bestow any office on a Jew." The transgressor of this rule was to be punished with excommunication, and every Jewish official was to be excluded from the society of Christians until he resigned his office in disgrace. The council, however, was unable to bring forward even a show of reason for this canonical decree; neither the New Testament, nor the Fathers of the Church, however much they hated the Jews, had offered a precedent for it. The Lateran Synod was compelled to go back to the Provincial Council of Toledo, under Recared, king of the Catholic Visigoths, in order to find a precedent for this scandalous law. The depth of the degradation of the Jews, however, was reached by the decision of the council that Jews in all Christian countries and at all times should wear a dress differing from that of the Christians. The reason urged was that in many countries where Jews (and Mahometans) wore the ordinary costume, intermarriages took place between the Jews and the Christians. By a sophistical argument it was shown that this law was contained in the Bible, and that Moses had commanded the Jews to wear a peculiar dress. Therefore it was decreed that, from the twelfth year of their age, Jews were to wear a peculiar color as a badge of their race, the men, on their hats, and the women, on their veils. This stigma on the Jews was an invention of Pope Innocent and of the Fourth Council assembled at Rome. It cannot, however, be strictly called an invention, because the pope borrowed the idea of forcing the Jews to wear a peculiar badge from the fanatical Mahometans. The Almohade Prince of the Faithful of Africa and southern Spain, Abu-Yussuff Almansur, had forced those Jews who had adopted the Mahometan faith through compulsion to wear a hideous dress, heavy clothes with long sleeves, which almost reached the feet, and instead of turbans, large bonnets of the ugliest shape. Said this fanatic: "If I knew that the converted Jews had adopted the Mahometan belief with an upright heart, then I would allow them to intermarry with the Mussulmans. If, on the other hand, I were convinced that they are still sceptics, I would put the men to the sword, enslave their children, and confiscate their goods. But I am doubtful about this point; therefore they shall appear distinguished by a hateful uniform." His successor, Abu-Abdullah Mahomet Alnasir, allowed them to change this mean apparel for yellow garments and turbans. By this color the class of people who were outwardly Moslems, yet in their heart of hearts still Jews, was characterized in the first decade of the thirteenth century in the kingdom of Morocco. This barbarous treatment of the Jews, Pope Innocent III now imitated, and their greatest humiliation during six centuries of European life dates from November 30th, 1215.

Provincial councils, assemblies of estates and royal cabinets thenceforward, in addition to their deliberations on the exclusion of the Jews from all honors and offices, determined on the color, form, length and breadth of the Jew-badge, with pedantic thoroughness. The Jew-badge, square or round in form, of saffron yellow or some other color, on the hat or on the mantle, was an invitation to the gamin to insult the wearers, and to bespatter them with mud; it was a suggestion to stupid mobs to fall on them, to maltreat, and even kill them; and it afforded the higher class an opportunity to ostracize the Jews, to plunder them, or to exile them.

Worse than this outward dishonor was the influence of the badge on the Jews themselves. They became more and more accustomed to their ignominious position, and lost all feeling of self-respect. They neglected their outward appearance, because they were nothing but a despised, dishonored race, which could not have even the least claim to honor. They became more and more careless of their speech, because they were not admitted to cultured circles, and in their own midst they could make themselves understood by means of a jargon. They lost all taste and sense of beauty, and to some extent became as despicable as their enemies desired them to be. They lost their manliness and courage, and a child could place them in terror. The punishment which Isaiah had prophesied for the house of Jacob was fulfilled to the letter: "Thou shalt speak out of the ground, and thy speech shall be low out of the dust." The great misery of the Jews during the Middle Ages began with Pope Innocent III. In comparison with their subsequent sufferings, all foregoing persecutions from the beginning of the Christian domination seemed like innocent bantering. But the Jews did not readily comply with the decree which forced them to wear the mark of shame. This was especially the case with the communities in Spain and southern France, which, having held an honorable position, would not suffer themselves to be humiliated without a struggle. Besides, there were influential Jews at the courts of Toledo and Saragossa, either as ambassadors to foreign courts or as treasurers of the royal coffers, who exerted their utmost efforts to prevent the enforcement of the decree. When Pope Innocent III died (1216), and Pope Honorius III, who was of a mild temperament compared with Innocent, ascended the papal throne, the Jews hoped for a repeal of this canonical law. Isaac Benveniste seems to have been particularly active in this direction, as he had been in trying to ward off the disgrace when first contemplated. They were successful in delaying the enforcement of the canonical decree. At least, King Alfonso IX of Leon did not compel the Jews of his land to wear the badge, and Pope Honorius was compelled to exhort the bishop of Valencia and two brother bishops to see that the decree was duly enforced, and that all Jews were excluded from offices of honor. The communities of southern France viewed with joy the victorious progress of the army of the repeatedly excommunicated Raymund VII of Toulouse against the crusading army and Simon de Montfort, because their security depended on the victory of the Albigenses. The Duke of Toulouse and his barons, in spite of their oaths, continued to promote Jews to offices, for they saw that their administrative policy would lead to their advantage. It may be that it was on account of the secret and open devotion of the Jews for Raymund that Simon de Montfort's wife Alice of Montmorency, ordered all the Jews of Toulouse – of which town she had charge – to be arrested, offering them the choice between death and conversion, although her husband, as well as his brother, had sworn to the Jews that their lives would be safe, and that freedom should be allowed them for the due exercise of their religion. At the same time, Alice ordered that Jewish children under the age of six should be torn from their parents, and given over to the priests in order to be baptized and brought up as Christians. The heartless woman had no feeling for the pangs that the Jewish mothers suffered. In spite of this, the majority of the members of the Toulouse community refused to become Christians.

When, however, Simon de Montfort heard of this cruel persecution of the Jews by his wife, he ordered the prisoners to be released, and to be allowed to practise their religion in freedom. The joy of the unhappy people when they were told of this deliverance (1 Ab – 7th July, 1217) was great, but it was mixed with sadness, for the Cardinal-Legate Bertrand had decided that the children that had been baptized should not be allowed to return to their parents. The legate also insisted upon the Jews' wearing the distinctive badge. In the meantime, there came a counter-command from the Pope, that the decree should not be too strictly enforced, but the cause of this change in the papal policy is unknown. In Aragon the Jews obtained the same immunity from the indignity of the Jew-badge through the untiring efforts of Isaac Benveniste, physician in ordinary to the king, Jayme I (Jacob). This illustrious man had rendered the king such important services that the latter, with the consent of the bishops of the country, recommended him to the Pope, and strove to obtain for him recognition from the papal chair. Wonderful to relate, Honorius took up the matter, and, in recognition of his merits in eschewing usury, and zealously assisting Catholics, sent Isaac Benveniste a diploma that he should in nowise be molested. For his sake also the Jews were exempted from wearing the badge (1220).

However friendly Honorius affected to be in this matter, he was nevertheless far from being disposed to countenance the appointment of Jews to posts of dignity. In an autograph letter of the same year, he exhorted King Jayme of Aragon not to entrust any Jew with the office of ambassador to a Mahometan court, for it was not probable "that those who abhorred Christianity would prove themselves faithful to its professors." In this spirit the pope wrote to the archbishop of Tarragona, to the bishops of Barcelona and Ilerda, to prevail on the king of Aragon to employ no Jews in diplomatic legations, and to abolish a practice so perilous to Christendom. The pope also exhorted the Church dignitaries of Toledo, Valencia, Burgos, Leon, and Zamora, to use their influence with the kings of Castile, Leon, and Navarre for the same purpose. How little did the pope know the incorruptible fidelity of the Jews towards their sovereigns, and their love for the land of their birth! So far from abusing the trust reposed in them, the Jewish ambassadors applied the utmost zeal in executing their commission successfully. But since Innocent III, it had become a fixed principle of the Church to degrade and humiliate the Jews. Although Honorius had exempted the Jews of Aragon from wearing the badge of disgrace, he insisted that those of England should not be released from it.

In that country, Stephen Langton, who had been appointed archbishop by the Pope, held the reins of government, after the death of the mad tyrant John Lackland, and during the minority of his son Henry III. This prelate exercised his power as if he were the wearer of the crown. At the council of Oxford, which he summoned in 1222, several decrees with reference to the oppression of the Jews were promulgated. They were not to keep any Christian servants, and were not to build any new synagogues. They were to be held to the payment of the tithe of their produce and the Church taxes, according to the decision of the Lateran council. Above all things they were to be compelled to wear on the breast the disgraceful badge, a woolen stripe four fingers long and two broad, of a color different from the dress. They might not enter the churches, and still less, as had hitherto been their custom, might they place their treasures there for security from the attacks of the brigand nobles. These restrictions were imposed on the English Jews because they had been guilty of monstrous crimes, and had proved themselves ungrateful; but the nature of their crime is not mentioned. Was perhaps the fact that a deacon had in the same year gone over to Judaism, laid to their charge? In after years such an occurrence caused the expulsion of the Jews from England. This time the deacon was summarily burnt at the stake for his apostasy. The Church knew no more effective means of refuting a heresy than the blazing fire.