History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)Graetz, Heinrich
History
History of the Jews, Vol. 5 (of 6)
Graetz, Heinrich
Jews -- History
It is evident that Frederick William admitted the Jews purely from
financial considerations. But he occasionally showed unselfish goodwill
towards some. When he agreed to the quixotic plan of Skytte, a Swedish
royal councilor, to found, at Tangermünde in the Mark, a university for
all sciences and an asylum for persecuted savants, he did not fail,
according to his programme, to admit into this Athens of the Mark,
Jewish men of learning, as well as Arabs and unbelievers of every kind,
but on condition that they should keep their errors to themselves, and
not spread them abroad.
At another spot in Christian Europe a few rays of light pierced the
darkness. About the same time that the Jews were expelled from Vienna,
a false accusation, which might have had far-reaching consequences,
cropped up against the Jews of a city recently brought under French
rule. In Metz, a considerable community had developed in the course
of a century from four Jewish families, and had appointed its own
rabbi since the beginning of the seventeenth century. The Jews of Metz
behaved so well that King Louis XIV publicly declared his satisfaction
with them, and renewed their privileges. But as Metz at that time still
had a German population, narrow guilds continued to exist, and these
insisted upon limiting the Jews in their occupations. Thwarted by the
magistrates, some of them roused in the populace a burning hatred of
the Jews. A peasant had lost a child, and the news was quickly spread
that the Jews had killed it to practice sorcery with its flesh.
The accusation was brought specifically against a peddler, Raphael
Levi. Scraps of paper with Hebrew letters, written by him during his
imprisonment, served as proofs of his guilt. A baptized Jew, Paul du
Vallié (Vallier, formerly Isaac), son of a famous physician in that
district, with the aid of another Jewish convert, translated the scraps
to the disadvantage of the accused.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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