=5. What became of the Spanish and Portuguese Exiles.=――The Jews who were expelled from the Peninsula underwent awful experiences. There were so many of them seeking new homes, that governments, not cruelly disposed, yet hesitated in their own interests from offering asylum to such crowds. In Italy, to which many turned in the hope of a genial climate and congenial pursuits, scant hospitality was experienced. Genoa distinctly closed her gates against the fugitives; Venice received them, but shut them up in a _ghetto_ (1516); and Rome, even the Jews of Rome, were very doubtful as to the expediency of extending a welcome. Naples was more generous, but the result was hardly more fortunate for the Jews. In deference, perhaps, to Abarbanel, who led a party of refugees to his kingdom, Ferdinand of Naples received them graciously, and took Abarbanel into his own service. But hardly were they settled in their new homes, when the Black Pestilence broke out in Ferdinand’s State, and for a whole year made ravages among his subjects. Great numbers of the Jewish exiles crossed the Straits of Gibraltar, and made settlements on the northern coast of Africa, and in Egypt. A painful difference, at best, such rough colonising must have proved to the cultured grandees of Spain, and worse than roughnesses were in store for them. The resources of civilisation, in those parts of the world, were not equal to such a sudden influx of strangers needing to be fed, and, delicately nurtured and luxuriously brought up as these Jews had been, they had to suffer the horrors of actual famine. Of those who managed to survive, many were seized by captains of privateering vessels, and sold into slavery, and some lingered on, to meet a worse fate at the hands of the natives. The barbarous tribes of Africa had not arrived at the civilised pitch of persecuting Jews for religion’s sake, but they had mastered the elementary reasons for persecution. They had got so far as to believe that Jews, however poor they looked, were potential mines of wealth, made and designed for plunder. On this belief they acted in a shockingly literal manner. Numbers of Jews who fell into the hands of these savages were actually ripped open by them, in the hope that gold was the ordinary lining of Jewish bodies. Some eighty thousand of the exiles travelled no further than Portugal, and there, for three or four years, they seemed tolerably secure. But in 1496 dynastic considerations induced King Manuel of Portugal, contrary to his own convictions, to follow the lead of his parents-in-law, Ferdinand and Isabella. An edict of expulsion against ‘Jews and Moors’ was pronounced. Ten months were granted for preparation, and then the Jews of Portugal were dispersed, as their Spanish brethren had been, over Italy, Africa, and Western Turkey, and gradually, and by degrees, a small contingent found a safe asylum in the Netherlands.