History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)
According to the communal system in the Middle Ages, every congregation was independent, and the resolutions of one congregation had no force with another. The ban accordingly had validity only in Barcelona, unless some other congregation confirmed it. Ben Adret, however, labored to have it adopted by other congregations. The sentence, signed by Ben Adret, his two sons, and more than thirty of the most influential members of the Barcelona congregation, was dispatched to the congregations of Spain, Languedoc, northern France, and Germany. But the ban was not so readily adopted as the authorities of Barcelona had flattered themselves it would be. Jacob ben Machir and his party had already received notice that a blow was being meditated against them, and accordingly made preparations for a countermove. They resolved from the first to frustrate the effect of the ecclesiastical interdict of the study of science. They drew up a resolution in Montpellier which contained three important points. A sentence of excommunication was to fall upon those who, out of religious scruples, ventured to debar or withdraw their sons, whatever their youth, from the study of any science whatsoever, regardless of the language in which it was treated; secondly, upon those who presumed to utter an irreverent or abusive word against the great Maimuni, and, lastly, also upon those who presumed to denounce a religious author on account of his philosophical system. The last point was introduced for the sake of Anatoli's memory, which his opponents had vilified. Thus there was ban against ban. Jacob Tibbon and his friends caused their resolution in favor of science and its advocates to be announced in the synagogue, and the great majority of the congregation of Montpellier took his side. Party zeal, however, impelled the Tibbonides to take an ill-advised step, which threatened to produce the same evil consequences as had ensued at the time of the first conflict in Montpellier with the obscurantists. As Jacob ben Machir Profatius and others of his party had influence with the governor of the city, they wished to secure his assistance in the event of their opponents' endeavoring violently to carry the Barcelona interdict into effect. The governor, however, explained to them that he was interested only in one point: that the Jewish youth should not be prevented from reading other than Talmudical works. He should strongly deprecate any attempt to discourage the study of extra-Talmudical literature, because, as he frankly expressed himself, he would not consent to their being deprived through fear of excommunication of the means to potential conversion to Christianity. To the other points he was indifferent.
Abba-Mari and his party were now in despair on account of the activity of their opponents. As the resolution in favor of the unrestricted study of science had been adopted by the majority of the community, according to rabbinical law it was binding on the minority as well, and therefore on their leader, and they could not legally stand by the interdict of Barcelona. Thus the zealots, the provokers of the conflict, had their hands tied, and were caught in their own net. They did what they could; they protested against the resolution of the Tibbonides, and advertised their protest far and wide. But they could not conceal that they had suffered a defeat, and were obliged to consult certain authorities as to whether the resolutions of the Tibbonides were binding on them. Ben Adret was thus placed in an embarrassing position. The party of Jacob ben Machir believed, or wished to have it believed, that the prohibition of the rabbis of Barcelona in reference to the study of scientific books, was meant to apply to Maimuni's works, too. They obtained the credit of having taken up the cudgels in behalf of Maimuni's honor, and of contending for the glory of Judaism; whilst their opponents, Ben Adret included, through their narrow-mindedness and obstinacy, were exposing their religion to the scorn of educated Christians. The vindicators of science seemed to be continually gaining in public opinion. There now appeared on their side a young poet, whose eloquent defense, written in a highly imaginative style, made a great impression. It gives a faithful picture of the feeling and excitement which agitated the souls of the champions of science, and, therefore, awakens interest even in the present day. In a modest manner, but with manly spirit, the poet tells Ben Adret truths which he never had the opportunity of hearing in his own circle. This young poet, more famous through his letter than through his verses, was Yedaya En-Bonet ben Abraham, better known under the name of Bedaresi (of Béziers) and under the poetical pseudonym of Penini (born about 1280, died about 1340). Yedaya Penini, son of the bombastic poet, Abraham Bedaresi, had more talent as a poet than his father. He possessed a lively imagination and overflowing wealth of language, and lacked only restraining tact, and a dignified, universally acceptable, uplifting aim for poetry. This deficiency gave his poems the appearance of empty grandiloquence and artificiality. He had inherited the defect of his father, inability to control the superabundance of words by the law of beauty. He was too ornate, and he moralized, instead of elevating and impressing. In his seventeenth year Yedaya Bedaresi wrote a book of morals (Pardes), and in his earliest years, whilst his father was still alive, he composed a prayer of about one hundred verses, in which all the words begin with the same letter (Bekashoth ha-Memin), and which his father, and perhaps his contemporaries, admired, but which is nevertheless very insipid. An admirer of Maimuni and Ibn Ezra, Bedaresi considered science and philosophy of equal importance with Judaism, or, like most thoughtful men of that time, he believed that the one contained the other.
Bedaresi conceived that his deepest convictions had been assailed by Ben Adret's anathema, and that it had in reality been directed against Maimuni's name, and, therefore, he could not restrain himself from addressing a sharp rebuke to the excommunicators. As he lived in Montpellier and was certainly attached to Jacob ben Machir's party, it is quite probable that he wrote the defense of Maimuni and of science, sent to Ben Adret, at their instigation (December, 1305, or January, 1306). This missive, like most of those written in this controversy, was intended not only for the individual addressed, but for the Jewish reading public in general. After Bedaresi had expressed his respect for the upright, learned rabbi of Barcelona, he remarked that he and his friends were not indignant about the ban, for science was invulnerable, and could not be injured by the fulmination of excommunicators. They were only hurt that Ben Adret should brand the Jewish congregations of southern France as heretics and renegades, and expose them to contempt in his message to many congregations and countries. Ben Adret, he continued, had allowed himself to be taken in tow by Abba-Mari, and had made a mountain of a mole-hill. From time immemorial, from Saadiah's age, science was not only tolerated in Judaism, but cherished and fostered, because its importance in religious knowledge was indisputable. Moreover, the denouncers of heresy were not consistent; they excluded the science of medicine from the ban, although this science, like every other, had a side which was in conflict with religion. How could they dare impugn the writings of Maimuni, whose dazzling personality outshone all his great predecessors? At the end, Yedaya Bedaresi observed that violent faction fights had broken out in Montpellier. Did they wish to continue to foment party strife, that the absence of unity among the Jews might occasion the Christians unholy satisfaction? "We cannot give up science; it is as the breath to our nostrils. Even if Joshua would appear and forbid it, we could not obey him, for we have a warranty, who outweighs you all, Maimuni, who has recommended it, and impressed it upon us. We are ready to set our goods, our children, and our very lives at stake for it." In conclusion, he invited Ben Adret to advise his friends in Montpellier to relinquish heresy hunting, and desist from stirring the fire of discord.
At the same time, furious disputes broke out in the church, between King Philip IV of France and Pope Boniface VIII, but here the subject of the dispute was not ideal good, not science and free research, but purely dominion, power and mammon. There was war to the knife between the chiefs of the two parties. The king accused the pope of heresy, simony, covetousness, perjury, and impurity. And the pope released the subjects from their oath to their hereditary king, and gave away his empire. The Jewish hostilities had neither the same wide range, nor yet the same bottomless wickedness.
Ben Adret and several who had signed the decree of excommunication, Moses Iskafat Meles and Solomon Gracian, were so unpleasantly affected by Bedaresi's letter, and feared its effect so much, that they hastened to offer the explanation that they had in no wise animadverted upon Maimuni's writings, whom they revered in the highest degree. They even exhorted Abba-Mari's party to make peace with their opponents, to vindicate their dignity before their common enemy. But the controversy was now at a stage when it could no longer be settled peaceably. The mutual bitterness was too violent, and had become too personal. Each party claimed to be in the right from its own standpoint; neither could consent to a compromise nor make concessions. Each adhered to its own principles; the one sought to enforce the freedom of science, the other protested that Jewish youth, before maturity, must be guarded from the deleterious poison of knowledge. Whilst the adherents of Abba-Mari were seeking legal decisions to prove the ban of their opponents unauthorized, a sad event happened, which, like a whirlwind, tore friends asunder, and dashed enemies against each other.
CHAPTER II.
THE FIRST EXPULSION OF THE JEWS FROM FRANCE, AND ITS CONSEQUENCES
Philip le Bel – The Jews of France plundered and banished – Estori Parchi; Aaron Cohen; Laments of Bedaresi – Eleazar of Chinon, the Martyr – Return of the Jews to France; their Precarious Position – Progress of the Controversy regarding the Study of Philosophy – Abba-Mari and Asheri – Death of Ben Adret – Rabbinical Revival in Spain – Isaac Israeli II – Samuel and the Queen Maria Molina – Don Juan Emanuel and Judah Ibn-Wakar – The Jews of Rome – Robert of Naples and the Jews – Peril of the Jews in Rome – Kalonymos ben Kalonymos, his Satires – Immanuel and Dante – The Poet Judah Siciliano – Leone Romano and King Robert – Shemarya Ikriti – Position of Karaism – Aaron the Elder and the Prayer-Book of the Karaites.
1306–1328 C.EPhilip IV, le Bel, at that time the king of France, one of those monarchs who made arrogant and unprincipled despotism familiar to Europe, suddenly issued a secret order (21st January, 1306), imposing the strictest silence, to the higher and lower officials throughout his kingdom, to put all the Jews of France under arrest on one and the same day, without warning of any kind. Before the Jews had fully recovered from fasting on the Day of Lamentation in remembrance of the destruction of Jerusalem, and as they were about to begin their daily business, the constables and jailors appeared, laid hands upon them, and dragged young and old, women and children, to prison (10th Ab–22d July). There they were told that they had to quit the country within the space of a month, leaving behind both their goods and the debts owing to them. Whoever was found in France after that time was liable to the penalty of death. What could have induced this prudent rather than clerical prince so suddenly to change his sentiments towards the Jews? It was certainly not clerical intolerance, nor was it yielding to the will of the people. For the French, even in the Middle Ages, were not bigoted, and it was not their wish to remove the Jews to free themselves from usurers. Avarice was the first motive of this cruel order. For Philip's feud with the pope, and his war with the rebellious Flemish, had so exhausted his treasury, and had rendered necessary so unsparing an extortion of money that, as the ballads of the time scoffingly said, "The fowl in the pot was not secure from the king's grasp." The king wanted to replenish his coffers from the property of the Jews. Another circumstance is said to have moved him to this hard-hearted resolution. The German emperor Albrecht, who at that time was not on good terms with Philip, had demanded the surrender of the kingdom of Arles; further, that he should deliver up Jesus' supposed crown of thorns, and lastly, that he should acknowledge the authority of the successor of Vespasian, Titus, and Charlemagne over the French Jews, i. e., yield to him a portion of the hard-earned property of the Jews. Philip is said to have consulted his lawyers, to decide to whom the authority over the Jews appertained, and as they adjudged it to the German emperor, the idea occurred to him to fleece the Jews of their property, and to send his "servi cameræ" naked and bare to Albrecht. Before the world the king covered his act of violence, inhuman as it was unstatesmanlike, with the excuse that incredible outrages of the Jews had rendered their expulsion imperative. That he had aimed at the possessions of the Jews was shown by his relentless plundering. The officials left the unhappy Jews nothing beyond the clothes they wore, and to everyone not more than seemed necessary for a day's living (12 gros Tournois). Wagonfuls of the property of the Jews, gold, silver and precious stones were transported to the king; and less valuable objects were sold at a ridiculously low price. At the appointed time (September, 1306), they were banished, about 100,000 souls, from the country which their ancestors had inhabited, in part at the time of the Roman republic, long before Christianity had spread into France. Some who could not separate themselves from their property and the country which they loved went over to Christianity. The whole congregation of Toulouse is said to have been guilty of this cowardice, which scarcely seems credible. The celebrated seats, at which so much intellect had been displayed, the colleges of Rashi, Tam, and the Tossafists: Troyes, Paris, Sens, Chinon, Orleans; the places in which a higher culture had had its temple: Béziers, Lünel, Montpellier, whence the combatants for and against science were plunged into common misery, – all these schools and synagogues were sold to the highest bidder or given away. A German or an English king might have destroyed the holy places of the Jews – King Philip le Bel made a present of a synagogue to his – coachman. An approximate idea can be formed of the sums which the expulsion and robbery of the Jews brought in to the king, if it is kept in mind that the sale of the Jewish goods in the house of the prefect of Orleans alone brought in 337,000 francs.
How many of the refugees, reduced to beggary, fell victims to the hardships of their journey cannot be known. The bitter plaints of those oppressed by the heavy affliction sound mournful and touching even at this distance of time. Estori Parchi, then a youth of many accomplishments and noble heart, a relative of Jacob ben Machir, whose parents had emigrated from Spain to southern France, thus describes his sorrow: "From the house of study have they torn me; naked was I forced as a young man to leave my ancestral home, and wander from land to land, from people to people, whose tongues were strange to me." Parchi at length found a resting-place in Palestine. Another fugitive, the learned Aaron Cohen of Narbonne, poured forth this elegy: "Unhappy me, I saw the misery of the banishment of the sons of Jacob, like a herd of cattle driven asunder. From a position of honor I was thrown into a land of darkness." The sudden turn of fortune which changed rich men into beggars, and exposed the delicate and those used to the comforts of life to bitter privation, filled the bombastic poet Yedaya Bedaresi with gloomy reflections. In vivid colors he painted the trouble and pain of life, and man's helplessness and nothingness. His "Trial of the World" (Bechinath Olam), suggested by personal observation and bitter experience, consequently makes a depressing and mournful impression, and reflects faithfully the melancholy feelings of the ill-starred race.
The expulsion of the Jews from France by the stony-hearted Philip le Bel did not come off without martyred victims. Those who transgressed the time of grace, yet rejected solicitations to abjure their faith, were punished by death. A martyr of this time, Eleazar ben Joseph of Chinon, is specially famous. He was a learned, noble-minded man, a correspondent of Ben Adret, master of many distinguished disciples, among them the youthful Parchi, one of the last of the Tossafist school. He was condemned to the stake, although no crime could be laid at his door except that he was a Jew. With him died two brothers. The expatriated Jews dispersed in all parts of the world; many traveled to Palestine. But the majority remained as near as possible to the French borders, in Provence proper, at that time partly under German suzerainty, in the province of Roussillon, which belonged to the Aragonian king of Majorca, and in that island. Their intention was to wait for a favorable change of fortune, which would permit them to return to the land of their birth. They had not speculated falsely. King Philip himself was induced by avarice to unbend from his severity.
The vehement struggle in Montpellier about permitting Jewish youth to engage in the study of the sciences, remarkable to relate, continued after the banishment from France (September, 1306), and the mutual hatred of the two parties was in no way abated by suffering. A portion of the Tibbonide party had settled in Perpignan, which belonged to the king of Majorca, who was no favorer of the Jews. At his command copies of the Talmud were once more delivered up to the auto-da-fé; but as he hoped to gain some advantage by the settlement of intelligent, industrious Jews, he suffered them. Abba-Mari and another portion of the congregation of Montpellier at first took up their abode in the town of Arles, but as he could not stay there, he, too, emigrated to Perpignan (January, 1307). But the opposing party, which had influence with the king or governor, endeavored to hinder his settlement in that place. Abba-Mari's partisans, by making representations to the king, succeeded in obtaining permission for him to live in Perpignan. Here the controversy raged anew. Solomon ben Adret and Asheri, particularly the latter, whose decision of character had acquired for him the chief authority, again interfered. Asheri declared that he had given his signature in a half-hearted manner to the decree prohibiting young men from occupying themselves with profane studies; for, according to his opinion, it was too great a concession to permit it at the age of twenty-five. Science ought to be prohibited altogether, for it inevitably lures on to unbelief. The defenders of science were to be condemned without mercy, since the afflictions of exile had made no impression on them, suffering had not broken their spirit of defiance, and had not chastened their hardness of heart.
This view, that qualities prejudicial to Judaism were inherent in science, gained supremacy after Ben Adret's death (1310), when Asheri was acknowledged in Spain and in the neighboring countries as the only authority in religious matters. Asheri, his sons and companions who had migrated with him from Germany, transplanted from the Rhine to vivacious Toledo that spirit of honest, but tormenting, narrow-minded and intolerant piety; that gloomy disposition which regards even harmless joy as a sin; that feeling of abjectness, which characterized the German Jews of the Middle Ages, and they inoculated the Spanish Jews with it. The free activity of the mind was checked. Asheri concentrated all his mental power on the Talmud and its exposition. His chief work was a compilation of the Talmud for practical use (1307–1314). On all occasions he endeavored to enforce a difficult, painful, and severe discipline. If any one desired to express his thoughts on any department of knowledge whatsoever, he had to array his subject in the garments of contrite orthodoxy. When the erudite Isaac ben Joseph Israeli II, of Toledo, published an astronomical work (1310), he had to adjust it to Talmudical standards, and introduce it by a confession of faith, for only in this manner could he find grace in Asheri's eyes.
At about this time, during Asheri's rabbinate in Toledo, prominent Jews once more obtained influence at court. King Ferdinand IV (1295–1312) had a Jewish treasurer named Samuel, whose counsels he followed in political matters too. The dowager queen, Maria de Molina, who had held the reins of government during her son's minority, with feminine passionateness hated the favorite Samuel, who is said to have nourished the enmity between mother and son. One day, when Samuel was in Badajos, and was preparing to accompany the king to Seville, he was attacked by an assassin, and so severely wounded that he was left for dead. It is not known who instigated the deed. The king had such care and attention devoted to Samuel, that he recovered from his wounds.
Don Ferdinand's death brought in its train a time of unquiet, of civil war, and social anarchy for Spain. As the Infante Alfonso was still a child in the cradle, several persons, the clever Maria de Molina, the young queen-mother Constantia, and the uncles of the young king contended for the guardianship and the regency, and provoked faction feuds in the country (1312–1326). Donna Maria de Molina, who conducted the government, did not extend her hate against her son's Jewish counselor to the community to which he belonged. As in the lifetime of her husband she had had a Jewish favorite, Todros Abulafia, so during her regency she had a Jewish treasurer, Don Moses. When the council of Zamora (1313) renewed canonical laws hostile to the Jews, the cortes of Burgos demanded the exclusion of Jews from all honors and offices, and the pope issued a bull that Christians were to be absolved from their debts to Jews on account of usury, the wise regent submitted only in part. She ordered that Jews should not bear high-sounding Christian names, nor enter into close intercourse with Christians; but she most emphatically declared herself against the unjust abolition of debts, and published a law that no debtor could make himself free of his obligation to professors of the Jewish faith by appealing to a papal bull.
The regency of Don Juan Emanuel inaugurated an improvement in the condition of the Castilian Jews (1319–1325). The regent was a friend of learning, himself an author and poet, and was consequently held in esteem by educated Jews. A Jew of Cordova, Jehuda ben Isaac Ibn-Wakar, found high favor in his eyes, and probably acted as his treasurer. At his solicitation Juan Emanuel once more invested the rabbinate with penal jurisdiction, which the Jews had partly lost during the regency of Maria de Molina, and had practiced only privately.
Jehuda Ibn-Wakar, however, was an admirer of Asheri, and, like the latter, of excessive piety, desiring to have every religious transgression punished with the utmost severity. When a Cordovan uttered a blasphemy in Arabic, Ibn-Wakar asked Asheri what was to be done with him, and the latter replied that his tongue should be cut out. A beautiful Jewess having had intercourse with a Christian, Don Juan Manuel resigned her to the punishment of the Jewish court, and Jehuda Ibn-Wakar condemned her to have her face disfigured by the removal of her nose, and Asheri confirmed the sentence.
The southern Spanish and Castilian congregations still lived in peace, and in the undisturbed possession of their goods; on the other hand, the northern Spanish, and still more the southern French congregations were exposed to bloody attacks by fanatical hordes, which the church had unfettered, and then could not restrain. Jews once more lived in France. Louis X had recalled them nine years after their banishment (1315). This king, himself seized by a desire to abrogate the ordinances of his father and indict his counselors, had been solicited by the people and the nobility, who could not do without the Jews, to re-admit them into France. He accordingly entered into negotiations with them in reference to their return. But the Jews did not accept his proposal without deliberation, for they well knew the inconstancy of the French kings, and the fanatical hatred of the clergy against them. They hesitated at first, and then submitted their conditions. These were, that they be allowed to reside in the same places as before; that they should not be indictable for former transgressions; that their synagogues, churchyards, and books be restored to them, or sites be granted for new places of worship. They were to have the right of collecting the money owing to them, of which two-thirds should belong to the king. Their former privileges, as far as they were still in force, were to be again extended to them, or new ones conceded. King Louis accepted all these conditions, and granted them also the right of emigration under certain restrictions. In order to conciliate the clergy, he, on his side, imposed the conditions that they wear a badge of a certain size and color, and hold neither public nor private disputations on religion. Two high officials (prud'hommes, auditeurs des Juifs) were appointed to superintend the re-settlement of the Jews. Their residence in France was fixed for twelve years; if the king should resolve to expel them again after the expiration of that period, he put himself under the obligation to give them a year's warning that they might have time to make their preparations. The king published this decree, declaring that his father had been ill-advised to banish the Jews. As the voice of the people solicited their return, as the church desired a tolerant policy, and as the sainted Louis had set him the precedent of first banishing and then readmitting them, he had, after due consultation with the prelates, the barons, and his high council, permitted the return of the Jews. The French Jews streamed back in masses to their former dwelling-places, regarding this event as a miraculous redemption. When Louis X died a year after, and his brother Philip V, the Long, ascended the throne, he extended their privileges, and protected them especially from the enmity of the clergy; so that they and their books could be seized only by royal officers. But they were not free from vexation by the degenerate clergy, who insisted that the Jews of Montpellier, who thought they could venture on certain liberties, should re-affix the Jew-badge on their dress. At one time they accused the Jews of Lünel with having publicly outraged the image of Christ on the Purim festival; at another time they ordered that two wagonfuls of copies of the Talmud be publicly burned in Toulouse. Such occurrences, however, were mere child's play compared with what they had to endure from the bigoted multitude.