Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

Bajazet, seeing assassination as his fate, raised an army to challenge

Selim; civil war raged; Bajazet, defeated, fled to Persia (1559); Shah

Tamasp, for 300,000 ducats from Suleiman and 100,000 from Selim,

surrendered the contender; Bajazet was strangled (1561), and his

five sons were put to death for social security. The ailing Sultan, we

are told, thanked Allah that all these troublesome offspring were

departed, and that he could now live in peace. `063153

But he found peace boring. He brooded over the news that the Knights

whom he had ousted from Rhodes were strong in Malta, and were rivaling

the Algerian pirates with their own rapacious sorties. If Malta

could be made Moslem, mused the seventy-one-year-old Sultan, the

Mediterranean would be safe for Islam. In April 1564, he sent a

fleet of 150 ships, with 20,000 men, to seize the strategic isle.

The Knights, skillfully led by the resourceful Jean de la Valette,

fought with their wonted bravery; the Turks captured the fort of St.

Elmo by sacrificing 6,000 men, but they took nothing else; and the

arrival of a Spanish army compelled them to raise the siege.

The old Magnificent could not end his life on so sour a note.

Maximilian II, who had succeeded Ferdinand as emperor, held back the

tribute promised by his father, and attacked Turkish outposts in

Hungary. Suleiman decided on just one more campaign, and resolved to

lead it himself (1566). Through Sofia, Nissa, and Belgrade he rode

with 200,000 men. On the night of September 5-6, 1566, while besieging

the fortress of Szigetvar, he yielded his life, upright in his tent;

like Vespasian, he was too proud to take death lying down. On

September 8 Szigetvar fell, but the siege had cost the Turks 30,000

lives, and summer was fading. A truce was signed, and the army marched

disconsolately back to Constantinople, bringing not victory but a dead

emperor.

Must we judge and rank him? Compared with his analogues in the

West he seems at times more civilized, at times more barbarous. Of the

four great rulers in this first half of the sixteenth century,

Francis, despite his swashbuckling vanity and his hesitant

persecutions, strikes us as the most civilized; yet he looked to

Suleiman as his protector and ally, without whom he might have been

destroyed. Suleiman won his lifelong duel with the West; indeed, the

Emperor Maximilian II in 1568 resumed payment of tribute to the Porte.

Charles V had stopped the Sultan at Vienna, but what Christian army

had dared approach Constantinople? Suleiman was master of the

Mediterranean, and for a time it seemed that Rome remained Christian

by his and Barbarossa's sufferance. He ruled his empire

indifferently well, but how much more successfully than poor Charles

struggling against the princely fragmentation of Germany! He was a

despot, by unquestioned custom and the consent of his people; did

the absolutism of Henry VIII in England or of Charles in Spain win

such public affection and confidence? Charles could hardly have been

capable of ordering the execution of his son on mere suspicion of

disloyalty; but Charles in his old age could cry out for the blood

of heretics, and Henry could send wives and Catholics and

Protestants to the block or the pyre without missing a meal.

Suleiman's religious tolerance, limited though it was, makes these

executions look barbarous by comparison.

Suleiman fought too many wars, killed half his progeny, had a

creative vizier slain without warning or trial; he had the faults that

go with unchecked power. But beyond question he was the greatest and

ablest ruler of his age.

CHAPTER XXXII: The Jews: 1300-1564

I. THE WANDERERS

-

IN his Flores Historiarum (1228) Roger Wendover told of an

Armenian archbishop who, visiting the monastery of St. Albans early in

the thirteenth century, was asked about the story that a Jew who had

talked with Christ was still alive in the Near East. The archbishop

assured the monks that the story was true. His attendant added that

the archbishop had dined with this immortal only a short time before

leaving Armenia; that the man's name, Latin-wise, was Cartophilus;

that when Jesus was leaving the tribunal of Pontius Pilate this

Cartophilus struck the Lord in the back, saying, "Go faster"; and that

Jesus said to him, "I go, but thou shalt tarry till I come." Other

Armenians, visiting St. Albans in 1252, repeated the tale. Popular

fiction expanded it, varied the name of, the wanderer, and told how,

every hundred years or so, he fell into a grave illness and deep coma,

from which he recovered as a youth with memories still fresh of the

trial, death, and resurrection of Christ. The story sank out of record

for a while, but reappeared in the sixteenth century; and excited

Europeans claimed to have seen Ahasuerus- as der ewige Jude or le

Juif errant was now called- at Hamburg (1547 and 1564), Vienna

(1599), Lubeck (1601), Paris (1644), Newcastle (1790), finally in Utah

(1868). The legend of the Wandering Jew was welcomed, in a Europe that

was losing its faith, as a reassuring proof of the divinity and

resurrection of Christ, and a fresh pledge of His second coming. For

us the myth is a somber symbol of a people losing its homeland in

the seventy-first year of the Christian era, wandering for eighteen

centuries over four continents, and suffering repeated crucifixions,

before regaining its ancient habitation in the unstable flux of our

time. `06321

-

The Jews of the Dispersion found least misery under the sultans in

Turkey and the popes in France and Italy. Jewish minorities lived

safely in Constantinople, Salonika, Asia Minor, Syria, Palestine,

Arabia, Egypt, North Africa, and Moorish Spain. The Berbers gave

them a reluctant toleration, yet Simon Duran led a flourishing

settlement in Algeria. In Alexandria the Jewish community, as

described by Rabbi Obadiah Bertinoro in 1488, lived well, drank too

much wine, sat cross-legged on carpets like the Moslems, and removed

their shoes before entering the synagogue or the home of a

friend. `06322 German Jews finding refuge in Turkey wrote back to

their relatives enthusiastic descriptions of the happy conditions

enjoyed there by the Jews. `06323 In Palestine the Ottoman pasha

allowed the Jews to build a synagogue on the slope of Mt. Zion. Some

Western Jews made pilgrimages to Palestine, holding it good fortune to

die in the Holy Land, and best of all in Jerusalem.

Nevertheless the center and zest of Jewish thought in this age

were in the unforgiving West. There they were least unfortunate in

enlightened Italy. In Naples they enjoyed the friendship of King

Robert of Anjou. They prospered in Ancona, Ferrara, Padua, Venice,

Verona, Mantua, Florence, Pisa, and other hives of the Renaissance.

"Italy has many Jews," said Erasmus in 1518; "Spain hardly any

Christians." `06324 Commerce and finance were respected in Italy,

and the Jews who served those necessities were valued as stimulating

agents in the economy. The old requirement that Jews should wear a

distinguishing badge or garment was generally ignored in the

peninsula; well-to-do Jews dressed like the Italians of their class.

Jewish youths attended the universities, and an increasing number of

Christians studied Hebrew.

Occasionally some holy hater like St. John of Capistrano would

excite his hearers to demand the full enforcement of all "blue law"

canonical disabilities against the Jews; but though Capistrano was

supported by Popes Eugenius IV and Nicholas V, the effect of his

eloquence was transient in Italy. Another Franciscan friar, Bernardino

of Feltre, attacked the Jews so vociferously that the civic

authorities of Milan, Ferrara, and Venice ordered him to be silent

or decamp. When a three-year-old child was found dead near the house

of a Jew in Trent (1475), Bernardino proclaimed that the Jews had

murdered it. The bishop had all the Jews in Trent imprisoned, and

some, under duress of torture, said that they had slain the boy and

drunk his blood as part of a Passover ritual. All the Jews in Trent

were burned to death. The corpse of "little Simon" was embalmed and

displayed as a saintly relic; thousands of simple believers made

pilgrimages to the new shrine; and the story of the alleged

atrocity, spreading over the Alps into Germany, intensified

antisemitic feeling there. The Venetian Senate denounced the tale as a

pious fraud, and ordered the authorities within Venetian

jurisdiction to protect the Jews. Two lawyers came from Padua to Trent

to examine the evidence; they were nearly torn to pieces by the

populace. Pope Sixtus IV was urged to canonize Simon, but he

refused, and forbade honoring him as a saint; `06325 however, Simon

was beatified in 1582.

In Rome the Jews for centuries enjoyed fairer conditions of life and

liberty than anywhere else in Christendom, partly because the popes

were usually men of culture, partly because the city was ruled and

divided by Orsini and Colonna factions too busy fighting each other to

spare hostility to others, and perhaps because the Romans were too

close to the business side of Christianity to take their religion

fanatically. There was as yet no ghetto in Rome; most of its Jews

lived in the Septus Hebraicus on the left bank of the Tiber, but

they did not have to; palaces of the Roman aristocracy rose amid

Jewish dwellings, and synagogues near Christian churches. `06326

Some oppression remained: the Jews were taxed to support the

athletic games, and were forced to send representatives to take part

in them, half naked, against Jewish customs and tastes. Racial

antagonism survived. Jews were caricatured on the Roman stage and in

Carnival farces, but Jewesses were regularly presented as gentle and

beautiful; note the contrast between Barabas and Abigail in

Marlowe's Jew of Malta, and between Shylock and Jessica in The

Merchant of Venice.

By and large the popes were as generous to the Jews as could be

expected of men who honored Christ as the Messiah and resented the

Jewish belief that the Messiah had not yet come. In establishing the

Inquisition the popes exempted unconverted Jews from its jurisdiction;

it could summon such Jews only for attacks on Christianity, or for

attempts to convert a Christian to Judaism. "Jews who never ceased

professing Judaism were, on the whole, left undisturbed" `06327 by the

Church, though not by the state or the populace. Several popes

issued bulls aiming to mitigate popular hostility. Pope Clement VI

labored in this regard, and made papal Avignon a merciful haven for

Jews fleeing from the predatory government of France. `06328 Martin V,

in 1419, proclaimed to the Catholic world:

-

Whereas the Jews are made in the image of God, and a remnant will

one day be saved, and whereas they have besought our protection:

following in the footsteps of our predecessors, we command that they

be not molested in their synagogues; that their laws, rights, and

customs be not assailed; that they be not baptized by force,

constrained to observe Christian festivals, nor to wear new badges,

and that they be not hindered in their business relations with

Christians. `06329

-

Eugenius IV and Nicholas, as we shall see, issued repressive

legislation; but for the rest, says Graetz, "among the masters of

Italy, the popes were most friendly to the Jews." `063210 Several of

them- Alexander VI, Julius II, Leo X- ignoring old decrees,

entrusted their lives to Jewish physicians. Contemporary Jewish

writers celebrated gratefully the security enjoyed by their people

under the Medici popes, `063211 and one of them called Clement VII

"the gracious friend of Israel." `063212 Says a learned Jewish

historian:

-

This was the heyday of the Renaissance period, and a succession of

cultured, polished, luxurious, worldly-wise popes in Rome regarded the

promotion of culture as being as important a part of their function as

the forwarding of the religious interests of the Catholic Church....

They tended, therefore, from the middle of the fifteenth century

onward, to overlook inconvenient details of canon law and to show... a

wide tolerance for those who were not Catholic. The Jewish

loan-bankers constituted an integral part of the economic machinery of

their dominions, while as broad-minded men of the world they

appreciated the conversation of Jewish physicians and others with whom

they came into contact. Hence the persecutory regulations that had

been elaborated by the Fathers of the Church, and codified by the

Third and Fourth Lateran Councils, were almost entirely neglected by

them.... With this example before their eyes, the other Italian

princes- the Medici of Florence, the Estensi of Ferrara, the Gonzaga

of Mantua- acted in much the same fashion. Though they were

disturbed by occasional interludes of violence or fanaticism- as for

example when Savonarola obtained control of Florence in 1497- the Jews

mixed with their neighbors and shared in their life to a degree that

was almost unexampled. They played a distinct part in certain

aspects of the Renaissance.... They mirrored it in their own lives and

in their literary activities in the Hebrew tongue; they made important

contributions to philosophy, music, and the theater; they were

familiar figures in many of the Italian courts. `063213

-

Some once famous figures illustrate these bright days in the

relations of Christians and Jews. Immanuel ben Solomon Haromi (i.e.,

of Rome) was born in the same year as Dante (1265), and became his

friend. He was as much a Renaissance man as a loyal Jew could be:

physician by profession, preacher, Biblical scholar, grammarian,

scientist, man of wealth and affairs, poet, and "writer of frivolous

songs that very often passed the bounds of decency." `063214 A

complete master of Hebrew, he introduced the sonnet form into that

language; he almost rivaled the Italians in fluency and spirit, and

not again before Heine would a Jewish poet show such talent for

satire, such brilliance and wit. Perhaps Immanuel had imbibed some

of the Averroist skepticism of the age; one of his poems expresses a

distaste for heaven with all its virtuous people (he thought only ugly

women were virtuous), and a preference for hell, where he expected

to find the most tempting beauties of all time. In his old age he

composed a weak imitation of Dante- Topheth we-Eden ( Heaven and

Paradise ); in Judaism, as in Protestantism, there was no purgatory.

More generous than Dante, Immanuel, following Rabbinical tradition,

admitted into heaven all "the righteous of the nations of the

world"; `063215 however, he condemned Aristotle to hell for teaching

the eternity of the universe.

A similar spirit of lighthearted humor gave tang and verve to the

writings of Kalonymos ben Kalonymos. King Robert of Naples, on a visit

to Provence, noticed the young scholar of the Beautiful Name, and took

him to Italy. At first Kalonymos was all for science and philosophy;

he translated Aristotle, Archimedes, Ptolemy, Galen, al-Farabi, and

Averroes into Hebrew, and wrote in a high ethical vein. But he found

the gay mood of Naples easy to assimilate. When he moved to Rome he

became a Jewish Horace, satirizing amiably the faults and foibles of

Christians, Jews, and himself. He mourned that he had been born a man;

had he been a woman he would not have had to pore over the Bible and

the Talmud, or to learn the 613 precepts of the Law. His Purim

Tractate made fun of the Talmud, and the popularity of this satire

among the Roman Jews suggests that they were not as pious as their

more unhappy brethren in other lands.

The Renaissance revived not only Greek but Hebrew studies.

Cardinal Egidio de Viterbo invited Elijah Levita from Germany to

Rome (1509); for thirteen years the Jewish scholar lived in the

Cardinal's palace as an honored guest, teaching Egidio Hebrew, and

receiving instruction in Greek. Through the efforts of Egidio,

Reuchlin, and other Christian pupils of Jewish teachers, chairs of

Hebrew were established in several Italian universities or

academies. Elijah del Medigo, who taught Hebrew at Padua, was so

highly regarded there, despite his refusal of conversion, that when

a violent controversy broke out among the Christian students over a

problem in scholarship the university authorities and the Venetian

Senate appointed Del Medigo to arbitrate, which he did with such

erudition and tact that all parties were satisfied. Pico della

Mirandola invited him to teach Hebrew in Florence. There Elijah joined

the humanist circle of the Medici, and we may still see him among

the figures painted by Benozzo Gozzoli on the Medici palace walls. The

scholar gave no encouragement to Pico's notion of finding Christian

dogmas in the Cabala; on the contrary, he ridiculed that apocalypse as

a heap of stupefying absurdities.

-

North of the Alps the Jews were less fortunate than in Italy. They

were expelled from England in 1290, from France in 1306, from Flanders

in 1370. France recalled them in 1315 on condition of giving to the

king two thirds of any money they might collect on loans made before

their expulsion; `063216 when the royal profits on these operations

ended the Jews were banished again (1321). They returned in time to be

blamed for the Black Death, and were again exiled (1349). They were

recalled (1360) to lend financial aid and skill in raising sums to

ransom the captured French king from England. But in 1394 an Israelite

converted to Christianity mysteriously disappeared; the Jews were

accused of killing him; some tortured Jews confessed that they had

advised the convert to return to Judaism; public opinion was inflamed,

and Charles VI reluctantly ordered another banishment of the

harassed race.

There was a substantial community of Jews in Prague. Some of them

went to hear the sermons of Huss's forerunner Milicz because he showed

so much knowledge and appreciation of the old Testament. Huss

studied Hebrew, read Hebrew commentaries, and quoted Rashi and

Maimonides. The Taborites who carried Huss's reforms close to

communism called themselves the Chosen People, and gave the names

Edom, Moab, and Amalek to the German provinces against which they

waged war. The Hussite armies, however, were not averse to killing

Jews; when they captured Prague (1421) they gave them not the

Mohammedan choice of conversion or taxation, but the simpler choice of

apostasy or death. `063217

Of all the Christian states Poland was second only to Italy in

hospitality to the Jews. In 1098, 1146, and 1196 many Jews migrated

from Germany to Poland to avoid death at the hands of Crusaders.

They were well received, and prospered; by 1207 some of them owned

large estates. In 1264 King Boleslav the Pious gave them a charter

of civil rights. After the Black Death more Germans moved to Poland,

and were welcomed by the ruling aristocracy as a progressive

economic ferment in a nation still lacking a middle class. Casimir III

the Great (1333-70) confirmed and extended the rights of the Polish

Jews, and the Grand Duke Vitovst guaranteed these rights to the Jews

of Lithuania. But in 1407 a priest told his congregation at Cracow

that Jews had killed a Christian boy and had gloated over his blood;

the charge provoked a massacre. Casimir IV renewed and again

enlarged the liberties of the Jews (1447); "we desire," he said, "that

the Jews, whom we wish to protect in our own interest as well as in

the interest of the royal exchequer, should feel comforted in our

beneficent reign." `063218 The clergy denounced the King; Archbishop

Olesnicki threatened him with hell-fire; and John of Capistrano,

coming to Poland as papal legate, delivered incendiary speeches in the

market place of Cracow (1453). When the King suffered defeat in war

the cry arose that he had been punished by God for favoring

infidels. As he needed the support of the clergy in further war, he

rescinded his charter of Jewish liberties. Pogroms occurred in 1463

and 1494. Perhaps to prevent such attacks, the Jews of Cracow were

thereafter required to live in a suburb, Kazimierz.

There, and in other Polish or Lithuanian centers, the Jews,

overcoming all obstacles, grew in number and prosperity. Under

Sigismund I their liberties were restored, except of residence; and

they remained in favor with Sigismund II. In 1556 three Jews in the

town of Sokhachev were charged with having stabbed a consecrated

Host and made it bleed; they protested their innocence, but were

burned at the stake by order of the bishop of Khelm. Sigismund II

denounced the accusation as a "pious fraud" designed to prove to

Jews and Protestants that the consecrated bread had really been

changed into the body and blood of Christ. "I am shocked by this

hideous villainy," said the King; "nor am I sufficiently devoid of

common sense as to believe that there could be any blood in the

Host." `063219 But with the death of this skeptical ruler (1572) the

era of good feelings between the government and the Jews of Poland

came to an end.

-

For a time the Jews lived peaceably in medieval Germany. They

functioned actively along the great river avenues of trade, in the

free cities and the ports; even archbishops asked Imperial

permission to harbor Jews. By the Golden Bull (1355) the Emperor

Charles IV shared with the Imperial electors the privilege of having

Jews as servi camerae - servants of the chamber; i.e., the electors

were empowered to receive Jews into their dominions, protect them, use

them, and mulct them. In Germany, as in Italy, students eager to

understand the Old Testament at first hand learned Hebrew; the

conflict between Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn stimulated this study; and

the first complete printing of the Talmud (1520) provided further

impetus.

The influence of Judaism culminated in the Reformation.

Theologically this was a reversion to the simpler creed and severer

ethic of early Judaic Christianity. Protestant hostility to

religious pictures and statuary was, of course, a return to the

Semitic antipathy to "graven images"; some Protestant sects observed

Saturday as the Sabbath; the rejection of "Mariolatry" and the worship

of saints approached the strict monotheism of the Jews; and the new

ministers, accepting sex and marriage, resembled the rabbis rather

than the Catholic priests. Critics of the Reformers accused them of

"Judaizing," called them semi-Judaei, "half-Jews"; `063220 Carlstadt

himself said that Melanchthon wanted to go back to Moses; Calvin

included Judaizing among the deadly sins of Servetus, and the Spaniard

admitted that his Hebrew studies had influenced him in questioning the

trinitarian theology. Calvin's rule in Geneva recalled the dominance

of the priesthood in ancient Israel. Zwingli was denounced as a

Judaizer because he studied Hebrew with Jews and based many of his

sermons and commentaries on the Hebrew text of the Old Testament. He

confessed himself enchanted by the Hebrew language:

-

I found the Holy Tongue beyond all belief cultivated, graceful,

and dignified. Although it is poor in the number of words, yet its

lack is not felt because it makes use of its store in so manifold a

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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