The History of Jews and Moors in Spain. Joseph Krauskopf
that have descended to us in the "Arabian Nights' Entertainments." The dulcet strains of the dreamy and love-awaking mandolin, accompanying the rapturous love song of some chivalrous knight to his lady fair, break on our ears. Soon all is silent. We fain would stay, but our guide is weary from his day's task. Perchance the sweet strains of the serenade have awakened within his bosom tender longings for his fair Shulamite, "whose eyes are as the dove's, and whose lips are like a thread of scarlet, and whose speech is comely," (Song of Solomon, chap. iv.) to whom he would eagerly speed. And so we retrace our steps. For miles we walk in a straight line, by the light of public lamps; seven hundred years after this time there was not so much as one public lamp in London. For miles we walk along solidly paved streets. In Paris centuries subsequently, whoever stepped over his threshold on a rainy day stepped up to his ankles in mud. We have reached the bank of the Guadalquivir, and we have parted with our guide.
We have seen in one day more than we ever dared to dream of; enough to tempt us to visit it again and again, and not only Cordova, but also Grenada, Toledo, Barcelona, Saragossa, Seville, and other cities, to acquire a better acquaintanceship with their scholars and institutions, and with the wondrous advance of their civilization. Before we return, however, we shall visit France, Germany, England and Northern Spain, during the same era of the world's history, about ten centuries back, and the scenes that we shall meet there will enable us to appreciate all the better the benefits which the Moors and the Jews lavished upon Europe, and we shall become the more painfully conscious of the unatonable crime Spain has committed in expelling the Moors from Europe, and degrading the Jews for centuries to the dregs of mankind.
CHAPTER II.
EUROPE DURING THE DARK AGES.
UPON THE OCEAN.—DESOLATE EUROPE.—LONGING AFTER CORDOVA.—SOUTHERN SPAIN CONTRASTED WITH THE REST OF EUROPE.—REVOLTING UNCLEANLINESS.—ASCETIC MONKS ESTABLISH THE BELIEF THAT CLEANLINESS OF BODY LEADS TO POLLUTION OF SOUL.—INTELLECT FETTERED HAND AND FOOT.—CLERGY RETARDING PROGRESS.—SECULAR KNOWLEDGE SPURNED.
On, on, we glide upon the smooth, broad bosom of the majestic Guadalquivir, along graceful groves and parks and palaces, through woods and meads, hills and dales, shades and sun. A last glance, and beauteous Cordova hides her proud head behind the sun-kissed horizon.
Fair Cordova, fair Andalusia, fair Southern lands of Spain, fare ye well, take our brief adieu, till we visit you anew.
On, on, we sail, towards the Atlantic now we speed.
We have reached the shores of the interminable ocean. Its wild waves dash fiercely against the rock-ribbed shores, as if impatient for our return. Our goodly ship, staunch and strong, raises and lowers its festooned bow upon the heaving billows of the waters vast, and its pendant is playing in the wind, and its sails from the foreroyal to the mizzenroyal, and up to the very top of the mainroyal are furled to the full, in its hearty welcome to our return. We embark, and—
"On, on the vessel flies, the land is gone.
Four days are sped, but with the fifth, anon,
New shores descried, make every bosom gay,"
For we are to visit beautiful France, and learned Germany, and busy England, and Italy, of classic fame.
Once more we are on the continent. Once more our observations are to be put to the task. Once more we think ourselves some six and eight and ten centuries back in the world's history. Once more the eye is to be made to see what the mind has refused to credit.
Dreary and chilling and appalling are the scenes that now break upon our view. Longingly we think of thee, fair Cordova, thou pride of beauteous Andalusia. We think of thy pavements of marble, of thy fountains of jasper, of thy wondrous artistic skill, of thy exquisite gardens, of thy famous poets and musicians, artists and writers, philosophers and scientists, of thy chivalrous knights and enchanting ladies. Longingly we think of thy wondrous beauty, that would, indeed, in our present surroundings, have sounded fabulous had not our own eyes seen it. Had we been suddenly transplanted from the midst of blossoming and ripening summer, joyous because of its balmy breath and the melodious song of its birds, and the fragrant breath of its flowers, and the gladdening sight of its ripening fruit into the midst of the barren winter, where nature is frozen dead, and the storm rides on the gale, and the earth is bare and naked, and the air is cold and dreary, and the sun shines gloomily through the bleak and murky skies, that sudden change could not have been more keenly nor more painfully felt than that which marked the contrast between the southern lands of Spain and the countries of France and Germany and England and Italy, during the same age of the world's history. Scarcely a city anywhere, save those few that had been erected along the Rhine and the Danube by the Romans. Nothing that could, even with the broadest stretch of leniency, be designated as agricultural. Everywhere pathless forests, howling wastes, ill-boding wildernesses, death-exhaling swamps, pestiferous fens. Prussia, and many more of to-day's proudest stars in the galaxy of European provinces, we find still uncivilized, still roaming about in the very costumes of native barbarians, in the spirits—and vampires—and nixes—and gnomes—and kobolds—inhabited pathless forests. Nowhere a street or highway, save those the Romans had built. Everywhere we must make our way, amidst indescribable difficulties, through almost impassable mud and clay. The people crowded together in miserable hamlets, inhabit wretched homesteads, crudely and bunglingly put together of undressed timber, or of twigs wattled together and covered with clays or thatched with straw or reeds, consisting seldom of more than one room, which shelters alike man, woman, child, man servant, maid servant, fowl and beast, a commingling of sex and species not altogether conducive to modesty or morality. The floor, for the main part is composed of the hard bare ground, or at best is covered with dry leaves or with filthy rushes. Nowhere a window, nowhere a chimney, the smoke of the ill-fed, cheerless fire escaping through a hole in the roof. Straw pellets constitute the bed, and a round log serves the place of bolster and pillow, one platter of treen stands in the center of the table—if "table" it might be called—from which man, woman and child, master and servant, maid and mistress, eat with spoons of wood. Fingers serve the place of knives and forks, and a wooden trencher makes the round to quench the thirst.
Everywhere we meet with men with squalid beards, and women with hair unkempt and matted with filth, and both, clothed in garments of untanned skin, or, at best, of leather or hair cloth, that are not changed till they drop in pieces of themselves, a loathsome mass of vermin, stench and rags. No attempt at drainage; the putrefying slops and garbage and rubbish are unceremoniously thrown out of the door.
The most revolting uncleanness abounds, and we cannot help thinking of the scrupulous cleanliness that distinguished Cordova, for cleanness is one of the most rigorous injunctions and requirements with both the religion of Mohammed and the religion of Moses. Here, on the contrary, personal uncleanliness, the renunciation of every personal comfort, the branding of every effort for better surroundings, we are told, upon inquiry, has the highest sanction of the church. The sordid example set by the Ascetic monks has established the belief that cleanliness of the body leads to the pollution of the soul, that in the past those saints were most admired who had become one hideous mass of clotted filth. With a thrill of admiration a priest informs us that St. Jerome had seen a monk who for thirty years had lived in a hole, and who never washed his clothes, nor changed his tunic till it fell to pieces; that St. Ammon had never seen himself naked; that the famous virgin, named Silvia, had resolutely refused for sixty years, on religious principles, to wash any part of her body, except her fingers; that St. Euphraxia had joined a convent of 130 nuns, who shuddered at the mention of a bath; that an anchorite had once imagined that he was mocked by an illusion of the devil, as he saw gliding before him through the desert a naked creature black with filth and years of exposure; it was the once beautiful St. Mary of Egypt, who had thus during forty-seven years been expiating her sins of Asceticism.
We have seen enough to lead us to the conclusion, that when we enter into an examination of the mental and moral