A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (20 page)

On January 3, 1492, Ferdinand and Isabella defeated the last Muslim outpost in Grenada. Just three months later, on March 31, they issued an order addressed to the people of Spain, particularly the nation’s Jews. It claimed that the presence of Jews had “resulted in great damage and detriment of our holy Catholic faith.” Therefore, “after much deliberation,” they “resolved that all Jews and Jewesses be ordered to leave our kingdoms, and that they never be allowed to return.” Any Jew who remained in Spain after July of 1492 would “incur punishment by death and confiscation of all their belongings.”

By accusing Jews of leading Christians astray, Ferdinand and Isabella gave their expulsion order a religious justification. Many historians believe that other forces were also at work; perhaps the most powerful was their desire for a strong central government in Spain based on Christianity.

Most Europeans at the end of the fifteenth century considered religious unity a good idea, but only Spain’s rulers believed it was essential to building a strong nation. Spain’s population, which included large
Jewish and Muslim communities, was more diverse than that of other European nations. Ferdinand and Isabella set out to eliminate these non-Christian communities. Jews were the first to be given the choice of exile or conversion. Once they were gone, attention turned to Muslims, who were offered a similar choice.

Yet even after the expulsion of both groups, concerns remained. Spaniards still looked at New Christians as outsiders. The laws requiring purity of blood remained on the books. And the Spanish Inquisition continued to root out people suspected of having “Judaizing” tendencies.

Every Jew in Spain, no matter how rich or powerful, had been forced to leave the country in 1492. One of the most prominent was Isaac Abravanel, who had served as an adviser to Ferdinand and Isabella. Among other duties, he had helped them finance another kind of journey that took place in 1492—Christopher Columbus’s voyage of discovery. Although Abravanel tried to persuade the king and queen to change their minds about expelling Jews, he was unsuccessful. He ended up in the Kingdom of Naples in what is now Italy. There, he wrote of the journey that ended more than 1,500 years of Jewish life in Spain:

In the end there left, without strength, three hundred thousand people on foot, from the youngest to the oldest, all at one time, from all the provinces of the king, to wherever they were able to go…. Each pledged himself to God anew. Some went to Portugal and Navarre, which are close, but all they found were troubles and darkness, looting, starvation and pestilence. Some traveled through the perilous ocean, and here, too, God’s hand was against them, and many were seized and sold as slaves, while many others drowned in the sea. Others again, were burned alive, as the ships on which they were traveling were engulfed by flames
.

In the end, all suffered: some by the sword and some by captivity and some by disease, until but a few remained of the many…. I, too, chose the way of the sea, and I arrived in the famed Naples, a city whose kings are merciful.
⁵

The task of finding a new home was complicated by the fact that Spain was not the only country that had expelled its Jews. Jews were also forced out of regions that today make up the following countries: France in 1182, 1306, and 1394; England in 1290; Germany in 1348 and 1498; Hungary in 1349 and 1360; and Lithuania in 1445 and 1495.

In this drawing, the artist imagines that King Philip Augustus personally expelled the Jews from France in 1182.

Jews were expelled from some places more than once. After a few years, they were sometimes allowed to return to a city, a region, or even a country for a specific amount of time.

Where did Jews go? Those expelled from England, France, and the various German states headed for Eastern Europe. Some Jews from Spain, Portugal, and, in the sixteenth century, parts of Italy also settled in Poland and other parts of Eastern Europe, but most went to places closer to Spain—including many Muslim countries.

Moving from one country to another is never easy. For Jews, it was particularly difficult. Jewish families needed permission to settle in a new country and enough money to make a fresh start. Although Christians saw all Jews as rich, and some were, the vast majority barely eked out a living, and moving was even more expensive then than it is today. Of course, the more money a family had, the better its chances of finding a new home. Rulers routinely expected large cash payments before they allowed Jews to move into or out of their countries.

For example, the vast majority of the Jews who left Spain in 1492 went to Portugal. King John II made them pay for the privilege of settling in his kingdom. He charged each individual for the right to stay in the country for eight months. When that time was up, the person had to go elsewhere or convert to Christianity. Wealthier Jews paid even more money for the right to settle permanently in the country. However, just five years later, John’s successor expelled these and all other Jews from the country. Why? He wanted to marry the daughter of Isabella and Ferdinand. She and her parents would not agree to the marriage unless Portugal was free of Jews.

Only a few places allowed Jews to settle openly and in large numbers. Among them were Italy, particularly the Papal States (territories controlled by the pope), and Poland in Eastern Europe. The rulers of the Ottoman Empire, which would soon stretch from Eastern Europe across the Middle East through North Africa, also welcomed Jews. According to a popular story at the time, Sultan Bayezid II said of Ferdinand’s expulsion of the Jews, “How can you call such a king wise and intelligent? He is making his country poorer and enriching my kingdom.”

By the middle of the 1500s, the sultan had made Constantinople (now Istanbul, in Turkey), the capital of his empire. It was soon home to about 50,000 Jews. Thousands more found homes in other parts of the empire, including what is now Israel.

A particular group of
conversos
made a different journey in 1492. One of them kept a diary. His Christian name was Luis de Torres. He converted the day before his ship left shore—mainly so that he could make the journey. He wrote:

The fateful day, the day of our expulsion from Spain, was [the ninth of Av] on the Jewish calendar in the year 5252/1492. That day marked the tragedy of the destruction of both holy temples many centuries before, and now, one more tragic event was added to that mournful day. Three hundred thousand people, half the amount that were redeemed from Egyptian slavery, descended to the Mediterranean shore, searching for passage to a new land, to a land where they could openly practice Judaism. I was among them
.

However, I was not a refugee; I had been commissioned to join Christopher Columbus’s voyage of discovery. I agreed to accompany him because I hoped that if we found Jewish brethren, I would be able to live my life in peace and in freedom. Don Rodriguez, his uncle Don Gabriel Sanchez, Alonso de Loquir, Rodrigo de Triana,
Chon Kabrera, Doctor Briena and Doctor Marco, all agreed with my reasoning and joined, but except for Rodrigo, they sailed on the other ships. We were a large group of
conversos
(Morranos), living in perpetual fear of the Inquisition, hoping that we would find a way out of the precarious situation we were in…
.

Columbus thought that when he would reach China and the Far East, he would locate the exiled Jews from the Ten Lost Tribes, and he wanted me [with a knowledge of Hebrew] to be able to communicate with them.
⁶

DeTorres’s skill as a translator was never tested on the voyage—because Columbus never found the Ten Lost Tribes. However, he did unknowingly stumble upon two continents new to Europeans that would, in time, provide a refuge for many Jews.

(1500–1635)

In 1500, Christian beliefs and traditions shaped daily life throughout western Europe. Almost everywhere, church bells marked the hours and called the faithful to prayer. Conformity was the rule in a world that valued obedience and considered toleration a dangerous idea.

The word
toleration
has many meanings. It can refer to respect for and recognition of the beliefs of others. But it can also mean the act of enduring something or someone unpleasant. And sometimes it means simply allowing the presence of others without actively opposing them. Most Christians in Europe in 1500 considered toleration morally wrong. They were convinced that the very presence of nonbelievers in a community threatened that community’s welfare.

Yet within just a few decades, the religious unity of western Europe would be shattered. And as a result of that shattering, a chain of events would be set into motion that eventually led both to horrific acts of violence and to the shaky beginnings of religious coexistence and even toleration. Although much of the drama of those years centered on Christianity, the key events that marked the sixteenth century had a profound impact on Jews. According to an old Jewish saying, “When the earth shakes, we feel it.” The earth shook in the 1500s and early 1600s, for Jews as well as for Christians.

Despite outward appearances, life in western Europe in 1500 was very different from what it had been even 50 years earlier. Some of those changes were the result of voyages of discovery, like the one Christopher Columbus began in 1492. Other changes arose from a less dramatic but equally profound event. In 1440, a German goldsmith named Johannes Gutenberg invented the printing press in Europe. Before his invention, books had been handwritten; a single copy could take months, even years, to complete. By 1500, 236 cities and towns in Europe had their own print
shops. At a time when the continent’s total population was approximately 70 million, most of whom could neither read nor write, an estimated 20 million books were now in print.
¹

That explosion of knowledge encouraged the growth of a movement known as
humanism
. It is not an easy term to define. Humanism has had different meanings at different times and in different places. Still, almost everywhere in sixteenth-century Europe, humanism centered on a rediscovery of the great writers of ancient Greece and Rome—writers who reflected on human endeavors and achievements. For centuries, their works had been kept alive by Muslim scholars. Now they were rediscovered by Christians who found the ideas of these writers extremely relevant to their lives.

Hundreds of Christian scholars now studied ancient Greek and Latin so that they could read Aristotle, Virgil, and Ovid in the languages in which these great thinkers had written. The enthusiasm of such scholars changed education. Many universities no longer focused almost entirely on religious studies. Students now explored the liberal arts—including the literature, music, and art of the ancient world.

Today the word
humanist
is often used to describe those who focus on worldly concerns and reject religion and religious authority. In the 1500s, however, almost all humanists were devout Christians who saw no contradiction between their interest in humankind and their religious beliefs. Indeed, their interest in the ancient world led them to reread religious books with a new eye so that they could correct errors in translation and interpretation.

Humanism had begun in Florence, Italy, about 20 years before the invention of the printing press. Many scholars there were astonished at how freely people in ancient Greece and Rome had debated ideas and challenged popular beliefs with logic and reason. They and humanists in other parts of Europe tried to revive that spirit of inquiry. They focused on descriptions recorded by witnesses to an event, as opposed to accounts written later by those who were not present.

For centuries, Christian scholars had relied on such secondary sources for information to shape their understanding of their religion. Now a few began to critically examine primary sources, including early versions of the Bible, to deepen their insights. This new approach to reading religious texts changed the way many scholars viewed their world and altered their ideas about difference.

Many scholars now believed that they could study Jewish texts and still remain true to Christianity. Today that idea does not seem very radical. But in sixteenth-century Europe, it was revolutionary. Most Christians still believed that Hebrew books were so dangerous that they had to be destroyed. Among such Christians was a recent convert from Judaism named Johannes Pfefferkorn. In 1509, Pfefferkorn, with the help of Dominican friars at the University of Cologne in present-day Germany, persuaded Maximilian I, the Holy Roman emperor, to confiscate and burn all Jewish books, with the exception of the Hebrew Scriptures, “since by these means [Jews] grow more firmly planted in their faithlessness.”