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.Many Jews had two wives, which privilege, however, was conferredby royal permission.Frequent sentences of excommunication were imposed by therabbis on members of Jewish congregations.Vigorous persecutionof the Karaites (a Jewish sect) by the Jews was carried on untilthey were totally suppressed.* * * * * *Under Henry IV of Castile (1454-74) and John II of Aragon(1456-79) the Jews again came to positions of influence and power.The various enactments of the Cortes against the Jews wereignored by the king, the dukes and the grandees.Even bishopricsemployed Jews as tax-collectors.* * * * * *The dawn of the fifteenth century dimly illuminated a dyingworld.Western Europe cast grotesque shadows before the dancingflames of expiring Christendom.Islam was on the march. 142BEASTS OF THE APOCALYPSEChristianity was crumbling under repeated blows that increasedin steady crescendo.The Turks were over-running Asia Minorand lower Hungary.They were in control of most of the Balkans,By mid-century they would be masters of Constantinople andGreece.The insistent cries of the Popes, calling on the rulers ofEurope to unite for the defense of Christendom, went unheeded.The Spaniards would never forget that it was the Jews whoinvited the Mohammedans into Spain, and opened the gates of thecities to the invaders.The Spaniards were driven into the littlekingdom of the Asturias in the mountains of the north, fromwhere they prepared for the reconquest of their country.Meanwhilethe hordes of Islam invaded France along the Mediterranean,to be stopped at last by Charles Martel.Spain, however, was still lost to Christendom.The voice ofPope Innocent III was finally heard and ten thousand knights anda hundred thousand infantrymen arrived from France and Germanyto reinforce the armies of Castile and Aragon.The Saracen hordeswent down to defeat in the battle of Las Navas de Tolosa in 1212.At the beginning of the fifteenth century the Mohammedans heldonly Grenada, but it was protected by formidable strongholds andconstituted a continuous threat to Spain.Unlimited reinforcementsand supplies were available to the Moors from Africa and Spain sseven hundred years of sacrifice trembled in the balance so longas Islam retained its foothold in the country.The political unity Ferdinand and Isabella brought to Spainsupplied the lacking ingredient needed to complete the reconquestof Spain.The task of unification, however, was not an easy one.The country was neither of one race nor religion.The Jewsconstituted an indigestible element, refusing to assimilate; theywere powerful and arrogant.The Marranos (so-called by the Jewsfrom the Hebrew Maranatha , meaning the Lord is coming ),who professed Christianity but continued as secret Jews,numbered about three million of the population.They wereextremely influential, possessed most of the wealth and politicalpower, and controlled taxation.The Spaniards distrusted them,knowing that they despised Christianity.It was generally believedthat they were in full sympathy with the Moors and that theywould again betray Spain should a safe opportunity present itself.* * * * * *In June of 1485 the Jews and Marranos conspired to seize the cityof Toledo during a procession on the feast of Corpus Christi.Theplot was discovered in time and the conspirators were punished bythe Inquisition.In 1488, on Good Friday, a rabbi and severalJews threw a large wooden crucifix into the dust at Casar dePalomero.The reports of Jewish ritual murders continued throughtout the BEASTS OF THE APOCALYPSE143centuries with nagging persistency.The Spanish Christians firmlybelieved these stories.It is said that the Jews gave vent to theirdeep hatred for Christ and his teachings by crucifying Christianboys on Good Friday, or using wax images for the purpose whenthey might not safely abduct a child.The Jews have insisted thatthese stories were Christian fabrications for the purpose of stirringthe people to do violence to the Jewish communities.While itmay be reasonably conceded that such charges were made fromtime to time without justification, all of them cannot be summarilydismissed on the grounds of fanaticism and vindictiveness.Thefact is that Jews were actually tried and convicted of such crimes.Bishop Juan Arias de Avila, a son of Jewish converts, pronouncedthe sentence of guilty on seventeen Jews of Segovia in 1468 forthe crucifixion of a Christian boy.The crucifixion of a Christian boy at La Guardia- -the Santa Nino Juan, son of Alonso Pasamontes and Juana La Guindera - bycertain Jews and conversos, appears to have been established byevidence that would support such a finding in a court of law today,in spite of the use of torture and the methods of the Inquisition.Two juries reviewed the evidence and unanimously found the ac-cused guilty as charged.The first jury was composed of Spain s mostimminent men, several of whom were famous Renaissance scholarsoccupying the principal chairs at the University of Salamanca.Thesecond jury was composed of five men in Avila.Twelve men,highly educated and bound by the most solemn oath, passed onthe evidence and unanimously voted for conviction.Jewish writers, and particularly Dr.Meyer Kayserling, claimthat Fernando was the grandson of a Jewess, Paloma of Toledo,but there is little historical evidence to support their contention.Zurita (Anales de la corona de Aragon) says that Fernando smaternal grandmother was Dona Marina de Cordoba.It wouldappear that the Jewish claim is founded solely on gossip.Thereis evidence that Paloma of Toledo was the wet-nurse of one of theancestors of Fernando s grandfather, the Admiral Don Fadrique,a century before, in the reign of Pedro the Cruel.The Semiticcharacteristics attributed to Fernando appear in only one portraitand are not indicated in the others.Why Jewish authors desiredto plant Jewish blood in one of the monarchs who expelled theJews from Spain is something of a mystery.* * * * * *The Catholic monarchs, Ferdinand and Isabella, had little fond-ness for the Jews.The conversos , (the Marranos Jews who hadpretended to accept Christianity) constituted the greatest problemat the beginning of their reign.Ferdinand commanded all con-versos to reconcile themselves with the Inquisition by the endof 1484 or suffer the consequences.The Moors held only a feeble 144 BEASTS OF THE APOCALYPSEgrasp on Granada, but the monarchs and the people of Spainstill feared an alliance of the Jews with their ancient enemy.Granada fell at last and Ferdinand and Isabella issued their jointdecree expelling the Jews.(March 31, 1492.) One of the reasonsgiven for the edict was that the converted Jews relapsed becauseof the proximity of the unconverted Jews who continually attemptedto seduce them from Christianity.Isaac Abravanel offered themonarchs 600,000 crowns to withdraw the decree of expulsion, butthe offer was refused.It is estimated that about 200,000 Jews leftthe country.* * * * * *Spain rose to its greatest glory after the expulsion of the Jewsin 1492.A century later it became a world power under Phillip II.In 1580 the New World, Spanish Netherlands, and Portugal wereunder Phillip s banner.* * * * * *In 1858, during the republic, the edict of expulsion of the Jewswas repealed through the influence of H.Guedalla of London.The historical position of Jewry in Europe is confused by bothGentile and Jewish historians, who, in strange servility on the partof the Gentile, and in the inherent pretense of the Jew, wouldpicture the European Christian a blood-thirsty persecutor, and theJewish sojourner an innocent victim
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