THE JEWS IN EUROPE. 303 



those who went out of the land the numbers vary from 170,000 to 

 400,000 perished by plague, famine, or shipwreck. The descendants 

 of the survivors, the Sephardim, found reception in Italy and in that 

 part of the Orient which was under Turkish dominion ; also for a short 

 time in Portugal. Spain, however, became filled with families of 

 mixed descent, and the contrasts of pure and impure blood, of old 

 Christians and neo-Christians, poisoned the whole social life. 



The fate of the Jews was still worse in Portugal than in Spain. 

 For a Ion or time their condition was better than in the rest of the Pen- 

 insula. The murderous storm of 1391 did not extend to them ; they 

 enjoyed some privileges, had property in land, and pursued agriculture 

 and wholesale businesses. But in the reign of King Manuel (1495), 

 otherwise praised as gentle and humane, they met with a deadly blow : 

 their children under fourteen years were snatched from them and bap- 

 tized ; they themselves could remain in the land only as they became 

 converted to the Church. Thus this kingdom also was filled with 

 those who feigned conversion and were forcibly baptized. The re- 

 sults were fearful. In the year 1506, in Lisbon, two thousand new 

 converts were put to death in three days, because one of the neo-Chris- 

 tians had ventured to doubt a supposed miracle. Soon after, the In- 

 quisition was introduced as the well-tried instrument for handing over 

 the property of the wealthy neo-Christians to the state treasury. 



In the larger commercial cities of Italy, the existence of the Jews 

 was, comparatively speaking, endurable. Since the trade in money 

 was already in the hands of Christian bankers, they occupied them- 

 selves more here with mercantile business. They encountered no 

 risings of the mob, or massacres. 



All these things become more comprehensible when we observe 

 that the historians of the time, in narrating the enormities that were 

 committed, give no sign of pity, and do not utter a word of indigna- 

 tion. Many times the clerical chroniclers even express their satisfac- 

 tion : for example, the Monk of Waverley writes in a triumphant tone 

 of the massacre, in London, at the coronation of Richard I, which was 

 perpetrated without any provocation on the part of the Jews, and closes 

 with the exclamation, " Blessed be the Lord, who has given up the 

 godless to their deserts ! " (" Annales Monast.," p. 246). And yet they 

 do not fail to point out that avarice was a principal cause of these mis- 

 deeds ; that nobles and citizens who were in debt incited to them, in 

 order, by a single stroke, to become free of their (Jewish) creditors ; 

 for money was in truth the protecting as well as the destroying angel 

 of the Jews in those days. The unhappy ones must press their debtors, 

 always expecting that at the next moment they themselves would suffer 

 from the inevitable reaction against them. 



Since the clergy declared the mere existence of the Jews among 

 the Christians to be an immeasurable danger, requiring the most care- 

 ful watching and isolating, we should expect that they would have 



