Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its HistoryBesant, Annie
Religion
Christianity: Its Evidences, Its Origin, Its Morality, Its History
Besant, Annie
Christianity -- Controversial literature
Spite of all this awful suffering, heretics and Jews remained
antagonistic to the church, and in March, A.D. 1492, the edict of the
expulsion of the Jews was signed. "All unbaptized Jews, of whatever age,
sex, or condition, were ordered to leave the realm by the end of the
following July. If they revisited it, they should suffer death. They
might sell their effects, and take the proceeds in merchandise or bills
of exchange, but not in gold or silver. Exiled thus, suddenly from the
land of their birth, the land of their ancestors for hundreds of years,
they could not in the glutted market that arose sell what they
possessed. Nobody would purchase what could be got for nothing after
July. The Spanish clergy occupied themselves by preaching in the public
squares sermons filled with denunciations against their victims, who,
when the time for expatriation came, swarmed in the roads, and filled
the air with their cries of despair. Even the Spanish onlookers wept at
the scene of agony. Torquemada, however, enforced the ordinance that no
one should afford them any help.... Thousands, especially mothers with
nursing children, infants, and old people, died by the way--many of them
in the agonies of thirst" (Ibid, p. 147). Thus was a peaceable,
industrious, thoughtful population, driven out of Spain by the Church.
Nor did her hand stay even here. Ferdinand, alas! had completed the
conquest of the Moors; true, Granada had only yielded under pledge of
liberty of worship, but of what value is the pledge of the Christian to
the heretic? The Inquisition harried the land, until, in February 1502,
word went out that all unbaptized Moors must leave Spain by the end of
April. "They might sell their property, but not take away any gold or
silver; they were forbidden to emigrate to the Mahommedan dominions; the
penalty of disobedience was death. Their condition was thus worse than
that of the Jews, who had been permitted to go where they chose" (Ibid,
p. 148). And so the Moors were driven out, and Spain was left to
Christianity, to sink down to what she is to-day. 3,000,000 persons are
said to have been expelled as Jews, Moors and Moriscoes. The Moors
departed,--they who had made the name of Spain glorious, and had spread
science and thought through Europe from that focus of light,--they who
had welcomed to their cities all who thought, no matter what their
creed, and had covered with an equal protection Mahommedan, Christian,
and Jew.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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