THE JEWS IN EUROPE. 305 



a trade, nor could he any more take up with traffic in money, and his 

 only resource was to become a barterer and dealer in small wares. The 

 worst and most horrible thing was that the new convert fell a prey to 

 the power of the Court of Inquisition, and, wherever there was an in- 

 quisitor, he was liable to arrest and torture on a mere suspicion, and 

 could be sentenced either to money-fines or to imprisonment. That 

 the inquisitor could impose fines upon merely suspected persons was 

 already, in 1330, the teaching of the canonical writers, and nothing 

 was easier or more tempting than the discovery of some cause of sus- 

 picion against a rich Israelite, baptized or unbaptized. 



While the Spaniards were striving to root out Israel from the Penin- 

 sula, they prepared for themselves a most fearful scourge, under whose 

 lashes they were to bleed for centuries. For, since they drove so 

 many Jews into the Church through fear of death, and forced them to 

 continuous hypocrisy, they caused the establishment of the Holy Office, 

 which was directed at first against this secret retention of the Jewish 

 faith. The majority of educated Spaniards at the present day doubt- 

 less acknowledge the Inquisition to have been the sorest national mis- 

 fortune ; it was an institution which has served to dishonor the Spanish 

 name, and has been a source of manifold misery and a school of hy- 

 pocrisy to the Spanish people. But that this institution maintained 

 itself so long in Spain, and for over two hundred years found contin- 

 ually new victims for its " acts of faith," is owing to the events of 

 1328, 1391, and 1492, along with the distinction, contrived by the 

 Church, between absolute and relative coercion in baptism. 



Many thousands of Jews were then forced to be baptized ; they 

 were often allowed no other alternative than that of death or entrance 

 into the Church. In many cases they preferred death, and perished 

 either by their own hands or at the hands of their oppressors, and the 

 example of some who were steadfast inspired whole hosts to copy after 

 them. At the same time, there was a considerable number who, in 

 fear of death, or to escape banishment and loss of property, suffered 

 themselves to be baptized ; and it was just as natural that, when they 

 breathed free, again, they should renounce Christianity and turn back 

 to the cult of their fathers. 



The doctrine was indeed continuously taught and accepted that a 

 baptism forced upon one was null and invalid, and it would hence 

 seem self-evident that he who had been coerced should be free to turn 

 back to his ancestral religion. But, as early as 633, the Spanish Visi- 

 gothic bishops had declared that those forcibly baptized should be held 

 in the Church. This had passed over into Gratian's book of doctrines 

 and statutes, and now no one was any longer permitted to surren- 

 der the Christian faith once confessed, or return to the practices of 

 Judaism. He was once for all a Christian, and, as such, subject to 

 the jurisdiction of the religious court ; if he went back to the faith 

 of his fathers he must suffer, as every heretic and apostate, the death 

 vol. sxi. 20 



