It was solemnly declared in the edict of expulsion that this decree was promulgated solely in obedience to the pressing need to cut off at the roots, once for all time, the evils arising out of the intercourse between Christians and Jews, since all other efforts hitherto undertaken with the same intent had proved fruitless.[236] By this edict all Jews of any age and either sex who should refuse to receive baptism must quit Spain within three months, and never return, under pain of death and the confiscation of their property. The cruelty of this expatriation calls for little exposition. Spain was the motherland of these Jews. For centuries it had been the home of their ancestors, and they held it in the affection implanted in the heart of each of us for the country which is his own. They must depart out of it, into exile in some foreign land, and the only terms upon which they could obtain immunity from that harsh decree was by the sacrifice of something dearer still, something as dear to them as honour itself. They must be false to the faith of their fathers and forswear the God of Israel. That was the choice forced upon the Children of Judah--the choice which the arrogant Christian Church had been forcing upon all men from the moment that she had found herself mistress of the power to do so. It was decreed that after the expiry of the three months allowed them in which to settle their affairs and be gone no Christian would be suffered to befriend or assist them, to give them food or shelter, under pain of being called to account as an abettor of heretics. Until their departure the persons and property of the exiled were nominally under the protection of the Sovereigns. They were permitted to dispose of what property they possessed, and to take the proceeds with them in bills of exchange[237] or in merchandise, but not in gold, which it was forbidden to carry out of the country. Little greater would have been the injury done them if their property had been confiscated outright. For being compelled to dispose of it at such short notice, and the buyers knowing that it must be sold, and eager to take advantage of these forced sales, what chance had the Jews of realizing anything that should approach its value? How could they avoid the pitiless Christian exploitation of their miserable position? “The Christians obtained,” says Bernaldez, “much property and many very rich houses and estates for little money; the Jews went about offering these, and could not find any buyers, so that they were forced to barter here a house for an ass, there a vineyard for a piece of cloth.”[238] From just this passage in the chronicle of an author whose detestation of the Jews we have earlier considered may be conceived how terrible was their distress, and how mercilessly was advantage taken of it by the Christians. [Illustration: _Photo by Donald Macbeth._ SANBENITO OF IMPENITENT. From Limborch’s “Historia Inquisitionis”]