wisdom. It is in the full blaze of sunlight that the real horror resumes, this time inflicted upon the flesh, not dreamed; branded on the soul, not imagined. The nightmare is real, fed by a collective hallucination that will bloody the pages of history for the next four hundred years.
In 1314, charged with heresy, Jacques de Molay, the last Grand Master of the Knights Templar is burned at the stake on orders of Pope Clement V, King Philip IV’s all-too-obliging yes-man.
“Damned,” “accursed,” “banned,” are Spanish epithets reserved for Marranos, the crypto-Jews of the Iberian Peninsula who, by coercion or out of pragmatism, convert to Christianity in the aftermath of the pogroms of 1391. These “conversos,” as they are also called, number more than 100,000. With them the history of the Jews enters a new phase. Hatred of the Jews sparks the introduction of the Inquisition in Spain and hastens their mass expulsion from the Iberian Peninsula.
The Marranos and their descendants are divided into three groups. Some are indifferent to Judaism or any other religion; they welcome the opportunity to trade oppression for the lucrative careers and life of ease opened to them as Christians. The phenomenon inspires the bitter quip, “Conversion is an ignominy of which only Jews are capable….” Others cherish the Jewish faith, preserve traditions and secretly attend synagogue. Others yet, by far the largest in numbers, yield to circumstances, posture as Catholics but remain Jews in their home life and religious rituals.
Incited by the Catholic clergy, Marranos, many among them cultured and affluent, arouse the envy and hatred of the populace. They are routinely hounded and mistreated. The first in a series of riots against them breaks out in Toledo in 1449 and is accompanied by murder and pillage. Prompted by two priests, the mob plunders and burns scores of homes. Another attack takes place in Toledo in July 1467. Some 1,600 houses are consumed. Many Marranos perish in the flames or are slain, some by hanging.
Six years later, emulating Toledo, Córdoba erupts in a conflict pitting Christians and Marranos. On March 14, 1473, during a religious procession, a young girl inadvertently spills the contents of a chamber pot from her window, splashing an image of the Virgin Mary. Outraged, thousands join in a strident call for revenge. The mob pounces on the Marranos, accusing them of heresy, killing them and burning their houses. Girls are raped. Men, women, and children are put through the sword. The massacre and pillage lasts three days and nights. To prevent the repetition of such excesses, Marranos are expelled from Córdoba.
Attacks on Marranos spread to other cities, where they are killed, their houses ransacked and their possessions purloined.
The advent of the Inquisition is followed by an edict forcing Jews to retreat to their ghettoes. Issued by King Ferdinand and Queen Isabella “the Catholic,” the edict lays the groundwork for the deportation and exile of the Jews from the country. The decree of expulsion materially increases the number, already large, of those who purchase freedom in their beloved homeland by accepting baptism.
More obsessive than the Spaniards’, the hatred of the Portuguese toward the Jews, which had long smoldered, turns to violence in Lisbon. On April 17, 1506, a Dominican priest rouses the populace and, crucifix in hand, strolls through the streets of the city, crying “Heresy!” and calling upon the people to exterminate the Marranos. More than 500 Marranos are massacred and incinerated on the first day. The innocent victims of popular fury, young and old, living and dead, are dragged from their houses and thrown pell-mell upon the pyre. By the second day, at least 2,000 Marranos perish.
In 1562, foreshadowing Kristallnacht and the ensuing genocide nearly four centuries later, and to facilitate the planned slaughter of more Marranos, high-ranking Church officials decree that they be required to wear special badges and confined to the ghettoes. The yellow star patch and crude tattoos would come later.
Under constant threat of persecution, destitution and death, the Marranos take flight. Many emigrate. Some go to Italy. Others settle in France, Flanders and The Netherlands. Others yet flee as far east as Greece, Romania, Bulgaria, Turkey and the Levant.
Large numbers of Marranos, however, stay put. Many in Madrid, conscious of their Jewish heritage, are well disposed toward the Jews. Some, like Manuel Albeniz, patronize La Escudilla, a popular kosher restaurant.
Accused by the church of being a relapsed heretic at a farcical trial engineered to placate the English Court, Joan of Arc is burned at the stake in 1431. Her ashes are dumped in the Seine. A retrial 25 years later establishes her innocence and she is declared a martyr. It will take nearly 500 years before she is “beatified,” a status that entitles the faithful to seek the intervention of a dead person in their private affairs. Eleven years later she is canonized a saint and granted a permanent seat in heaven.
In 1468 the Flemish city of Ghent is sacked and the first documented Church-mandated tortures and executions take place, “to fight the Devil’s work.”
Alain de la Roche, a French Dominican priest, writes and illustrates an “authoritative” treatise on the creatures, some real, others skillfully improvised, that personify “sin.” The demented tract is promptly endorsed by the Church and circulated among high-ranking prelates.
In 1481, the “Holy” Inquisition, under the bestial tutelage of Tomas de Torquemada -- himself the grandson of a “converso” -- and acting on behalf of the king and queen, engages in wholesale persecution, torture, murder and expropriations masterminded to purge Spain of the Jews and to enrich the Church.
Six years later, backed by a papal bull (edict) the German inquisitor Heinrich Kramer publishes the Malleus Maleficarum, or Witches’ Hammer, a manual that “ascertains the existence” of witchcraft. Challenging and chastising skeptics, the Malleus offers “evidence” that witches are more often women than men. It trains inquisitors to identify them, describes the physical characteristics of the “possessed” and teaches their tormentors the essential methods (think “enhanced interrogation techniques,” -- including water-boarding) most effective against a long list of imaginary transgressions. A latter-day variation on the theme, phrenology, a thoroughly discredited late 18th century pseudoscience based on the false assumption that mental faculties (or the lack thereof) can be identified by palpation of the skull, would unfairly brand certain people morons, criminals and perverts -- labels that better describe the practitioners of this quackery than their unwitting subjects.
Repression escalates and spreads like wildfire.
Jews are expelled from Spain. In Portugal they are forced to convert to Christianity -- or else. So are the Moors. The persecution continues under the reign of King Philip II and Pope Clement VIII. Openly anti-Semitic, the pontiff links Jews with usury -- the only occupation they are legally entitled to pursue, not with their own money but with funds supplied to them and controlled by an elite of rich, non-Jewish trades people.
Barely concluded, the One Hundred Year War stokes the political and religious discord that cleaves France and England. It will take nearly four centuries for the enmity to cease.
The plague, cholera and a host of venereal diseases erupt, claiming thousands in their wake. The Jews are blamed for spreading these scourges.
Religious frictions, awakened by isolated efforts to breathe fresh air into the Church and resisted by those who aspire to dogmatize it further, threaten to destroy the very fabric of Christianity
Members of a Calvinist sect in Northern Italy are nearly exterminated by the Armies of French king Francis I in a campaign billed as a “crusade against religious perversion.”
In
