The History of Jews and Moors in Spain. Joseph Krauskopf
of the people, whose personal and domestic life hold so low a rank in the history of civilization, we must not place our expectations too high. But low as we picture it to ourselves, the reality we find is infinitly lower than even our most lenient imagination had pictured it. Only a week ago we found Cordova proud, and distinguished, and peerless in the realm of culture, and art, and philosophy, and science, and now, during the same period of the world's history, we find a deep black cloud of appalling ignorance overhanging France, and Italy, and Germany and England, here and there only broken by a few, a very few, glimmering lights. Intellect, fettered hand and foot, lies bleeding at the feet of benighted barbarism, writhing in pain beneath the lashes of degrading superstitions, and groveling credulity. We search for the cause of this stupendous ignorance, and we soon find that to the clergy, more than to all other causes combined, belongs the very ignoble distinction of having ushered into Europe this stolid ignorance, and for being responsible for the unatonable crime of having retarded the advance of civilization by many centuries.
To the all powerful and all controlling influence of the Church is to be ascribed the universal paralysis of the mind during the very same period, when art and science and independent research flourished in Southern Spain under Moorish and Jewish influence. Whomsoever we approach, be they dignitaries of the Church or Church menials, distinguished luminaries or obscure parish priests, a conversation with them soon proves to us the sad truth, that their stock of knowledge exhausts itself with an enumeration of some monstrous legends or with the practice and teaching of some degrading and repulsive superstitions.
Secular knowledge is spurned. Physical science is held in avowed contempt and persecuted upon the ground of its inconsistency with revealed truth. Philosophical research is prohibited, under the severest punishment, as pernicious to piety. Upon inquiry as to the cause of this persecution of learning on the part of the church, which, as we modestly dare to suggest, has nothing to lose, but everything to gain from rational research and diligent pursuit of knowledge, a bishop emphatically informs us that they did this with the sanction and authority of the fourth council of Carthage, which had prohibited the reading of secular books by bishops, and with the authority of Jerome who had condemned the study of secular subjects, except for pious ends, and as there was no lack of piety (so they artlessly thought) they saw little use in preserving the learning and literature of the accursed Jews and heathens, and fearing lest they fall into the hands of others, not so pious as they, and not so protected against their pernicious influence by the knowledge of legends, or by the skillful use of magic spells, or exorcising charms, as they were. Or perhaps secretly fearing, lest an intimate knowledge of the learning of the ancients might open the eyes of the people to the ignorance and extortions and crimes and corruptions of the Church, they condemn that whole literature to the flames. Hundreds and thousands of valuable manuscripts are thus pitilessly destroyed. We fain would stay their cruel hand, but we fear for our lives. We see them erase the writing from hundreds and thousands of parchment copies of ancient priceless lore, and substitute in its stead legends of saints, and ecclesiastical rubbish, occasioning thus the loss of many an ancient author that is now so painfully missed.
We turn away from this revolting stupidity, but nowhere a pleasing sign to allay our anguish, or appease our grief-stricken heart.
"Oh, thou monstrous ignorance, how deformed dost thou look."
Nowhere freedom of humane thought. Everyone compelled to think as ecclesiastical authority orders him to think. In Germany, France and Northern Spain we find scarcely one priest out of a thousand who can write his name. In Rome itself, once the city of art and culture and learning, as late as 992, a reliable authority informs us, there is not a priest to be found who knows the first elements of letters. In England, King Alfred informs us that he cannot recollect a single priest south of the Thames (then the most civilized part of England) who at the time of his accession understood or could translate the ordinary Latin prayer, and that the homilies which they preached were compiled for their use by some bishop from former works of the same kind, or from the early Patristic writings. Throughout Christendom we find no restraint on the ordination of persons absolutely illiterate, no rules to exclude the ignorant from ecclesiastical preferment, no inclination and no power to make it obligatory upon even the mitred dignitaries, to be able to read a line from those Scriptures which they are to teach and preach as the rule of right and the guide to moral conduct. Darkness, intense darkness, stupendous ignorance everywhere. We shudder as we think of the cruelties which this ignorance will bequeath as its curse upon mankind. We shudder as we think of how this ignorance needs must check the advance of civilization. We know that knowledge will not be fettered forever, but before it shall be able to assert its right to sway over the mind of men, countless giant minds will have to be crushed and indescribable suffering will have to be endured. We know that "ignorance seldom vaults into knowledge, but passes into it through an intermediate state of obscurity, even as night into day through twilight." We tremble for those independent spirits that shall live during that transitory period. That twilight will be reddened by the reflection of streams of human blood.
We fain would speed away from these European lands, for we instinctively feel that we are in lands under the curse of God, and smitten with darkness, because their people had laid cruel hands upon the lands and the people of learning and culture and art.
But we must stay. We must note, distressing though the duty be, the terrible influence which this ignorance exercised upon the morals of the Church itself, and upon the mental and moral and political and social and industrial state of the people.
CHAPTER III.
EUROPE DURING THE DARK AGES.
(CONTINUED.)
GROSS SUPERSTITIONS.—A CRUCIFIX THAT SHED TEARS OF BLOOD.—THE VIRGIN'S HOUSE CARRIED THROUGH THE AIR BY ANGELS.—SATAN IN THE FORM OF A BEAUTIFUL WOMAN.—SCENES IN HELL.—THE BURNING OF WITCHES.—A KING WHO CANNOT WRITE HIS NAME.—FEUDAL LORDS AS HIGHWAY ROBBERS.—THE SERFDOM OF THE PEASANTS.—RETURN TO CORDOVA.
We promised to make a careful examination into the influence which the ignorance of the clergy exercised upon the aspect of religion, upon the morals of the Church, and upon the social, industrial, political, moral and mental state of the people at large. We fear we made a rash promise. So heart-rending are the sights we see, if we are to give a faithful report, those unacquainted with the state of European civilization during the period which we are traversing, we fear, may accuse us of exaggeration, or worse still, may think that we, who belong to the race that suffered most during that period from the corruption of the Church, are animated by a spirit of revenge, and, therefore, find intense delight in holding so revolting a picture before our readers. But, happily, our readers are not composed of such. We are addressing intelligent people, men and women who know that our people have suffered too terribly and too unjustly from false accusations during many, many centuries, to render ourselves guilty of the same crime; men and women who know, that it is not from choice, but from historic necessity, that we contrast the social, and moral and intellectual state of Christian Europe during the Dark Ages, with the social and moral and intellectual state of Moorish and Jewish Europe of the same period, to appreciate the better the wonderful civilization of "The Jews and Moors in Spain."
Our search discloses to us the sad and terrible truth that ignorance, especially active ignorance, is the mother of superstition, and both the parents of fanaticism, and the offspring of this trio is deliberate imposture, extortion, corruption, crime, and these, in their turn, beget the world's misfortunes. This sad truth stares us in the face whatever church, cathedral, monastery or community we enter. Everywhere miracles and relics and idolatry. Everywhere the teaching and preaching of hell and Satan and witchcraft, and of the necessity of blind credulity and unquestioning belief. Every cathedral and monastery has its tutelar saint, and every saint his legend, and wondrous accounts are spread concerning the saint's power, for good or evil, often fabricated to enrich the church or monastery under his protection.