Читать книгу The Jewish People in America (Vol.1-7) - Peter Wiernik - Страница 9

Table of Contents

Children torn from their parents were the first Jewish immigrants—Jewish history in the New World begins, as Jewish history in Spain ends, with the Inquisition—Emperor Charles V., Philip II. and Philip III.—Lutherans persecuted together with Jews and Mohamedans—Codification of the laws of the Inquisition, and its special edicts for the New World.

We have seen in the preceding chapter that the Jews were expelled forever from Spain and Portugal at the time when these two nations, with considerable assistance from professing and converted Jews, discovered the New World and took possession of it. Nothing could therefore have been farther from the thoughts and the hopes of the Jews of those dark days than the idea that America was to be, in a far-away future, the first Christian country to grant its Jewish inhabitants full citizenship and absolute equality before the law. For nearly a century and a half no professing Jew dared to tread upon American soil, and even the secret Jews or Marranos were as much in danger in the newly-planted colonies as in the mother countries under whose rule they remained for a long time.

The first Jewish immigrants in the New World were children who were torn away from the arms of their parents at the time of the expulsions, and even they were persecuted as soon as they grew up. The Marranos who sought a refuge in America in these early days were soon followed by the same agencies of persecution which made life a burden to them in their old home. We meet in America for more than a century after its discovery almost the same conditions as in Spain and Portugal after the Jews were exiled. Where the history of the Jews in Spain ends—says Dr. Kayserling—the history of the Jews in America begins. The Inquisition is the last chapter in the record of the confessors of Judaism on the Pyrenean peninsula and its first chapter in the western hemisphere. The Nuevos Christianos concealed their faith, or were able to conceal it, as little in the New World as in the mother country. With astonishing tenacity, nay, with admirable obstinacy, they clung to the religion of their fathers; it was not a rare occurrence that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the martyred Jews sanctified the Sabbath in a most conscientious manner, by refraining from work as far as possible and by wearing their best clothing. They also celebrated the Jewish Festivals, observed the Day of Atonement by fasting, and married according to the Jewish customs. They clung to their faith and suffered for it even as late as the eighteenth century, which means that the Jewish religion was handed down secretly and preserved in the seventh and eighth generation after the exile. Many went to the stake or died in the prisons of the Inquisition in the New World; many others were transported in groups to Spain and Portugal and gave up their lives as martyrs in Seville, Toledo, Evora or Lisbon. Their religious heroism will be apparent in all its magnitude when the immense documentary material which is heaped up in the archives of Spain and Portugal, and other places on this side of the ocean, will have been sifted and worked up. (“Publications,” II, p. 73.)

Intolerance reigned supreme in America almost immediately after its colonization, and the secret Jews who settled there were not permitted to enjoy peace or prosperity. Juan Sanchez of Saragossa, whose father was burnt at the stake, was the first to obtain permission of the Spanish government to trade with the newly-discovered lands. In 1502 Isabella permitted him to take five caravels loaded with wheat, barley, horses and other wares to Española (Little Spain, the large West Indian Island containing Haiti and Santo Domingo), without paying duty. In 1504 he was again permitted to export merchandise to that country. Other secret Jews went to the new places and settled there, some even obtaining positions in the public service. As early as 1511 we hear already of measures taken by Isabella’s daughter, Queen Juana of Castille, against “the sons and grandsons of the burned” who held public office. The Inquisition was introduced there by a decree of that year, and one of its first victims was Diego Caballera of Barrameda, whose parents, according to two witnesses, had been prosecuted and condemned by the same tribunal in Spain.

The Inquisitor-General of Spain, Cardinal Ximenes de Cisneros, on May 7, 1516, appointed Fray Juan Quevedo, Bishop of Cuba, his delegate for the Kingdom of Terra Firma, as the mainland of Spanish America was then called, and authorized him to select personally such officials as he needed to hunt down and exterminate the Marranos. Emperor Charles V. (1500–1558), with the permission of his former teacher, Cardinal Hadrian (1459–1523), the Dutch Grand-Inquisitor of Aragon who later became Pope (Hadrian or Adrian VI. 1522–23), issued an edict on May 25, 1520, whereby he ordained Alfonso Manso, Bishop of Porto Rico, and Pedro de Cordova, Vice Provincial of the Dominicans, as Inquisitors for the Indies and the islands of the ocean.

At first the secret Jews were not the only victims of the persecutions and not even the most numerous among them. “There were many heathenish natives who were forcibly converted by the mighty clerical arm of the Spanish conqueror, but who nevertheless remained at heart loyal to their hereditary belief and practised their idolatrous customs with as much zeal as the fear of discovery and consequent punishment would allow.” Fiendish atrocities were committed in the name of religion against those Indian Marranos, and the fearful persecutions depopulated the country to such an extent that the tyrants themselves perceived that they must desist.

The Inquisition in Spain itself had, however, fallen more or less into desuetude during the reign of the above-mentioned Emperor Charles V., who was the grandson of Ferdinand and Isabella, and had inherited their Spanish and American possessions. It was revived and invigorated under the more bigoted rule of his son, King Philip II. (1527–1598), who ascended the Spanish throne in 1556, after his father’s abdication. Under the new reign the laws of the Inquisition were codified and promulgated at Madrid on September 2, 1561. A printed copy of the new code was sent to America in 1569. Another document, dated February 5, 1569, issued by Cardinal Diego de Spinosa, General Apostolic Inquisitor against Heresy, Immorality and Apostasy, addressed “to the Reverend Inquisitors Apostolic ... in his Majesty’s Dominions and Seignories of the Provinces of Piru (Peru), New Spain and the new Kingdom of Granada and the other provinces and Bishoprics of the Indies of the Ocean” consists of forty sections prescribing the rules of procedure. (See Elkan Nathan Adler, The Inquisition in Peru, Publications XII, pp. 5–37.)

A later document containing the general edicts to be read on the third Sunday of Lent and the fourth Sunday of Anathema in every third year in the Cathedral of Lima and all the towns of the districts, was printed in Peru itself shortly after 1641, and records the names of the places which were included in the jurisdiction of those issuing it. It reads: “We, the Inquisitors against Heresy, Immorality and Apostasy in this city and Archbishopric of Los Reyes (Lima) with the Archbishopric of Los Charcas and Bishoprics of Quito, Cuzco, Rio de la Plata, Paraguay, Tucuman, Santiago and Concepcion of the Dominions of Chile, la Paz (Bolivia), Santa Cruz de la Sierra, Guamanga, Areguipa, and Truxillo, and in all the Dominions, Estates and Seignories of the Provinces of Peru, and its Viceroyalty Government and district of the Royal Audiencias thereto appertaining.” In this document we find the name of a new Christian sect which is to be punished for heresy together with the unbelievers who were known to the Inquisition of the earlier period. Lutherans are now enumerated among heretics after the Jews and the Mohamedans. Among the books and engravings which are considered as heretical and indecent are mentioned the books of Martin Luther and other heretics, the Alcoran or other Mohamedan books, “Biblias en romance” (Bibles in the vernacular) and others prohibited by the censorships and catalogues of the Holy Office, etc. Then follow lengthy descriptions of how to detect Jews, Mohamedans and Lutherans; and in the case of the first even the drinking of Kosher wine and the making of a “berakah” or pronouncing a blessing before tasting it are not omitted from the practices which characterized the secret Jew whom the Inquisition was to discover and punish.

But it seems that the Marranos came to America in large numbers despite all the severity of Philip II. His son Philip III. (1578–1621), who succeeded him in 1598, endeavored to prevent their emigrating to the New World and issued in the beginning of the seventeenth century, the following edict:

“We command and decree that no one recently converted to our holy faith, be he Jew or Moor, or the offspring of these, should settle in our Indies without our distinct permission. Furthermore we forbid most emphatically the immigration into New Spain of any one [who is at the expiration of some prescribed penance] newly reconciled with the Church; of the child or grandchild of any person who has ever worn the ‘san benito’ publicly; of the child or grandchild of any person who was either burnt as a heretic or otherwise punished for the crime of heresy, through either male or female descent. Should any one [falling under this category] presume to violate this law, his goods will be confiscated for the benefit of the royal treasury, and upon him the full measure of our grace or disgrace shall fall, so that under any circumstances and for all time he shall be banished from our Indies. Whosoever does not possess personal effects, however, should atone for his transgression by the public infliction of one hundred lashes.”

This characteristic specimen of anti-immigration legislation of three centuries ago, including what would in the colloquialism of to-day be called a “grandfather clause,” was the cause of much suffering; but it is not possible to state with any degree of certainty how far it was effective. It is probable that the number of Marranos in the “Indies” which belonged to the King of Spain went on increasing until about the middle of the seventeenth century, when certain territories were for the first time opened for them in the New World where they could practise Judaism openly.