History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 3 (of 3)Scott, S. P. (Samuel Parsons)
Islamic
History of the Moorish Empire in Europe, Vol. 3 (of 3)
Scott, S. P. (Samuel Parsons)
Arabs -- Europe -- History; Islamic civilization; Muslims -- Spain -- History; Spain -- History -- 711-1516
to the number of Jews expelled from Spain; it was, however, not less
than four hundred thousand, and was probably near a million. Their
sufferings equalled, if they did not surpass, those of the Moriscoes,
afterwards condemned by a similar proscription. The air was filled
with their lamentations. Many remained for days in the cemeteries,
weeping over the graves of their ancestors. The majority who travelled
by land went on foot. With the exiles departed the greater portion of
the learning, the skill, the wealth, the industry, and the prosperity
of Spain. Their estates were confiscated by the crown. Rigid personal
search was made of every individual for concealed valuables, which
impelled many to swallow their gold. Brigands stripped them on the
highway. Sailors robbed them on the sea. Their wives were ravished,
their children despatched before their eyes. Many perished from want
of food. A pestilence decimated an entire company, and the survivors
were abandoned to die on a desert island, without water or shelter.
Great numbers were sold by their barbarous custodians to slave traders.
The inadvertent disclosure of wealth was fatal to its possessor;
he was at once thrown overboard, and his property became the spoil
of the murderer. Those who landed in Morocco were not permitted to
enter the cities, and a famine which at that time was desolating the
country made it impossible for such an increased population to obtain
subsistence. Encamped in the arid desert, they were compelled to have
recourse to unwholesome roots and herbs in a desperate effort to
sustain life. Thousands died of exposure. Many sold their children
to avoid starvation. A large proportion of these refugees landed in
Italy, where an enlightened public sentiment stood ready to profit
by the wealth and industry that the narrow spirit of Spanish bigotry
was so determined to throw away. Pope Alexander VI., the head of the
house of Borgia, notwithstanding that the prominent Israelites of
Rome offered him a thousand pieces of gold to exclude them, received
the heretics proscribed by the most Catholic sovereigns with the
utmost consideration and sympathy. The maritime states of the Adriatic
compelled their Hebrew citizens, who, fearing commercial rivalry, were
inclined to regard this influx of strangers with disfavor, to render
substantial assistance to their unfortunate brethren. In Holland,
also, the exiles were welcomed with a hospitality that in after years
the advantages derived from their establishment abundantly repaid.
The antipathy entertained by the Spanish populace towards the Jews,
diligently fostered by the infamous arts of the Inquisition, was far
from being dissipated by the banishment and extermination of the
victims of its malevolence; in default of the living, its vengeance
was wreaked upon the dead. Nearly a century after the expulsion, when
an avowed Israelite could not be found in the Spanish monarchy, the
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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