"VINDICIA JUDÆORUM, OR A LETTER IN ANSWER ΤΟ CERTAIN QUESTIONS PROPOUNDED BY A NOBLE AND LEARNED GENTLEMAN, WHEREIN ALL OBJECTIONS ARE CANDIDLY, AND YET INTRODUCTION THE RETURN OF THE JEWS TO ENGLAND I. DAYS OF EXILE HROUDED in the fogs of the North Sea, the British Isles were, for two centuries after the Great Expulsion by Edward I., little more than a bitter memory to the Jewish people. In other lands they came and went, but England was as securely closed against them as was the Egypt of Danaus to the Greeks. With the exception of a few adventurous pilgrims who trickled into the country to enjoy the hospitality of the Domus Conversorum, they ceased gradually to think of the land which had been so signal a scene of their medieval prosperity and sufferings. The Jewish chroniclers of this period, while dealing with the politics of other European countries, have scarcely a word to say of England. Towards the beginning of the sixteenth century the fogs began to lift, and England once again appeared as a possible haven to the "tribe of the wandering foot and weary breast." The gigantic expulsions from Spain by Ferdinand and Isabella had created a new Jewish Diaspora under conditions of the most thrilling romance. The Jewish martyrs "trekked" in their thousands to all the points of the compass, fringing the coasts of the Mediterranean with a new industrious population, founding colonies all over the Levant as far as the Mesopotamian cradle of their race, penetrating even to Hindostan in the East, and throwing outposts on the track of Columbus towards the fabled west. But this was only the beginning of a more remarkable dispersion. The men and women who took up the pilgrim's staff at the bidding of Torquemada could only go where Jews were tolerated, for they refused to bear false witness to their ancient religion. They left behind them in Spain and Portugal a less scrupulous contingent of their racewealthy Jews who were disinclined to make sacrifices for the faith of their fathers, and who accepted the conditions of the Inquisition rather than abandon their rich plantations in Andalusia and their palaces in Saragossa, Toledo, and Seville. They embraced Christianity, but their conversion was only simulated, and for two centuries they preserved in secret their allegiance to Judaism. These Crypto-Jews, in their turn, gradually spread all over Europe, penetrating in their disguise into countries and towns and even guilds which the Church had jealously guarded against all heretical intrusion. It was chiefly through them that the modern Anglo-Jewish community was founded.' The Iberian Crypto-Jews, or Marranos,' as they were called, represented one of the strangest and most romantic movements in the religious history of Europe. Marranism was an attempt by the Jews to outwit the Jesuits with their own weapons. Both sides acted on the principle that the end justified the means, and each employed the most unscrupulous guile to defend itself against the other. The Inquisition was ruthless in its methods to stamp out Judaism, Wolf, "Crypto-Jews under the Commonwealth" (Trans. Jew. Hist. Soc., vol. i. pp. 55 et seq.); "The Middle Age of Anglo-Jewish History" (Papers read at the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, pp. 53-79). The origin of this name is obscure. There seems to be little doubt that it was originally a nickname, seeing that the classical name for the converts was Nuevos Cristianos, or "New Christians." Graetz believes that Marrano is derived from Maran-atha, in allusion to 1 Cor. xvi. 22, "If any man love not the Lord, let him be Anathema Maran-atha" (Geschichte der Juden, vol. viii. p. 73). the Marranos were equally unprincipled in preserving their allegiance to their proscribed religion. Abandoning their ceremonial, abandoning even the racial limitation on marriage, the Jewish tradition was maintained by secret conventicles chiefly composed of males, and thus Jewish blood and the Jewish heresy became distributed all over the peninsula, and crept into the highest ranks of the nation. The Court, the Church, the army, even the dread tribunals of the Holy Office itself were not free from the taint.' A secretary to the Spanish king, a vice-chancellor of Aragon, nearly related to the Royal House, a Lord High Treasurer, a Court Chamberlain, and an Archdeacon of Coimbra figure in the lists of discovered Marranos preserved by the Inquisition.2 At Rome the Crypto-Jews commissioned a secret agent supplied with ample funds, who bribed the Cardinals, intrigued against the Holy Office, and frequently obtained the ear of the Pontiff. Some idea of the social ramifications of the Marranos is afforded by the careers of the early members of the Amsterdam Jewish community. Many of them were men of high distinction who had escaped from Spain and Portugal in order to throw off the burden of their imposture. Such were the ex-monk Vicente de Rocamora, who had been confessor to the Empress of Germany when she was the Infanta Maria; the ex-Jesuit father, Tomas de Pinedo, one of the leading philologists of his day; Enriquez de Paz, a captain in the army, a Knight of San Miguel, and a famous dramatist; Colonel Nicolas de Oliver y Fullana, poet, strategist, and royal cartographer; Don Francesco de Silva, Marquis of Montfort, who had fought against Marshal de Créquí under the Emperor Leopold; and Balthasar Orobio de Castro, physician to the Spanish Court, professor at the University Kayserling, Juden in Portugal, p. 327. Graetz, vol. viii. pp. 309-11; Ehrentheil, Jüdisches Familien Buch, p. 326. Kayserling, p. 139. |