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“ Comfort, My People.
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FURTHER ITEMS WILL FOLLOWS AS TIME ALLOWS.
A popular understanding is that usury is the levying of exorbitant interest on a loan. In the middle ages usury involved the automatic increase on the capital lent from the day of lending. Interest on a loan arose only after a period of delay from the day of lending. The taking of interest on a loan was treated as a sin, and was forbidden in Europe until 13th. century, following the teaching found in Luke, ch.6,v.35. After that time interest was allowed in the matter of raising credit for trade. A Jew was permitted to raise interest by usury by a decision of the 4th. Lateran Church Council in 1215. This gave the Jews some advantage in money lending, but is also exacerbated resentment against them, as though they were preying on the vulnerable in society. Money lending was one of the few activities allowed to Jews because of the restrictions mentioned before.
Thomas Aquinas considered that the possessions of the Jews could be expropriated since those possessions came to them through usury.The church generally was not committed to one view on the subject of lending at a fair profit. This form of business was seen as disreputable and it involved the risk of disinheritance of the children of lenders.The trade in usury had some protection from the civil authorities, but at the cost of opprobrium and hatred.
Jewish usurers were never secure because of the threat of physical attack, mob violence, expulsion, arbitrary cancellation of loans to the “ owner “ or “ protector “ of the Jews, the diversion of repayment monies by the “owner”, or because of a moratorium on the loans enforced by the Jews’ “owner.”
The Jews themselves were often treated as “ chattels” by the “owners”, and a lust for their money sometimes prompted their murder. “The ready cash in the hands of the Jews was also a poison which killed them. Had the Jews been poor, they would not have been burned.” ( SOURCE: “Valley of Tears” by Joseph ha-Kahen.)
Immense risks attended this form of livelihood, but money lending by the Jews gradually disappeared before the end of the middle ages, largely because of expulsions from England, France, Spain and various German cities. Heavy exactions were made upon them by their royal “protectors”, and Jewish wealth was exhausted in Europe by 15th. century as a result of these punitive measures.
Citizenship for the Jews was a different concept from that accorded to any Christian. It was limited in duration, it did not confer any rights to a civic position and it was susceptible to arbitrary withdrawal. The Jew was basically a stateless or “homeless” person. The subservience of the Jew was enforced by the Roman Catholic church, and the effect of the Jews’ limited rights and powers,was to create in later centuries, an inbred sense of mental inferiority, –which was often the opposite of reality.
Trade and craft occupations were governed by corporations and guilds to which the Jew was not admitted. Agricultural work was virtually debarred for the Jew because sales and leases of land were limited to 10 years, and from the 9th. century onwards Jews were not permitted to own lands.
Areas of residence for Jews was often limited ; they were sometimes excluded from cities and provinces because of jealousy prompted by the privileges granted to them by European princes, by commercial rivalry , by resentment arising through the indebtedness of borrowers, and even sometimes, by the misguided piety of the clergy. An example of the latter was the request of Eleanor, prompted by the church, for her son, Edward 1 i n 1275 to remove all the Jews from Marlborough, Gloucester,Worcester and Cambridge.
The Jews often needed protection by civil powers from baseless clerical allegations, such as well-poisoning and ritual murder of children, and the outbursts of excitable mobs.Protection was sometimes only gained by means of bribery. An understanding soon grew which thought that the Jews used bribery in all their business dealings.,- a concept which bred ill-will and suspicion.
“ The Holy Office of the Inquisition, seeing now some Christians are endangered by contact and communication with the Jews, has provided that the Jews be expelled from all our realms and territories, and has persuaded us to give our support and agreement to this, which we now do…. We do so despite the great harm to ourselves, seeking and preferring the salvation of souls above our own profit.”
SOURCE: Pilar Leon Tello, –“ Judios de Toledo.”
ORIGIN : A letter to the Count of Aranda from King Ferdinand, 31st.March, 1492.
“Throughout the 1480’s the signs multiplied of the approaching end of the era of cultural co-existence in Spain between Christians, Moors and Jews. Religious considerations were partly responsible….Ferdinand and Isabella …were deeply afflicted by the genuine fear that Christian souls would be lost for eternity by the…influence of other faiths. It was expressly for this reason that they established the Castilian Inquisition in 1479 and extended it to all their realms over the following years.”
SOURCE : Felipe Fernandez-Armesto.- “ Ferdinand and Isabella.”( 1975)
The baptised JEW ,-the converso, was treated as a Christian heretic, and not as a Jew in any sense of the word, from whom he was segregated. Tensions between the “new Christians” ( the conversos) and the old Christians, who were the traditional Roman Catholics,led to killings in Toledo and Cordoba. The result was the introduction of the office of the Inquisition into Spain from its origin in Rome, where it was in force from 1233.
Heretics were invited to surrender within 30 days under an “edict of grace.” The exposure of divided loyalties in the conversos was followed by confiscation of property by the crown, public humiliation by wearing the “sambenito” ( a garment of shame and exclusion), flagellation and removal frrom any responsible office. Following this elimination, heretics were identified under 37 points of practice,-e.g.- the celebration of Jewish holidays, or the adherence to their dietary laws. A small proportion of the Jewish conversos who refused to abandon their old practices and views were executed in a religious ceremony ,- the auto-da—fe. Most accepted a “reconciliation “with the church and a lifetime of imprisonments and humiliations, such as , the loss of property and exclusion of their offspring from any public office.
Relapsed heretics endured the fires of the auto-da-fe, and by 1570 almost all conversos or secret Jews had been “ eliminated”,-e.g. in Castile 2000 were burned, in Seville 700 were burned and in Toledo 200 were burned before that year.
During the whole reign of the Inquisition in Spain from 1480 to 1834 not less than 100,000 “heretics” died in the burnings, most of whom were the descendants of Jews who had accepted baptism as conversos many years earlier. The last great burning took place in Madrid in 1721-27 when 75 “heretics “ were burned.
The expulsion of the Jews in 1492 was the result of a royal decree that all Jews should convert to Christianity within 4 months or leave the country. Approximately 200,000 Jews left for countries in the east of the Mediterranean area, and others “converted”. Of course, Jews and other “ heretics” were not allowed entry into the new Spanish colonies in the Americas.
Jews were expelled from Portugal in 1496; prior to that time they had been subject to the same treatment as Spanish Jews. The expulsions from Spain and Portugal marked the onset of the decline in both countries of their naval, economic and colonial powers. The missionary impetus of Christianity also moved to northern Europe with the expansion of the Reformation there.
The Inquisition was inaugurated in Seville in 1480 as a royal and ecclesiastical institution,and its initial purpose was to discover among converted Jews ( conversos) and converted Muslims (moriscos) whether or not they actually practised their former Judaic or Islamic rituals. Before that time there had been toleration in Spain between Christians,Jews and Muslims in the period known as the “ conviviencia”, although massacres of Jews had taken place in 1391 in Toledo and in 1449 in Avila and Toledo.
TO BE CONTINUED…
