The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition (1877)

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When the Moors conquered Spain, Mocatta writes, they included in their train numbers of African Jews who greatly prospered and multiplied, but were later persecuted and expelled during the Inquisition.
"Very thoughtful and instructive, his pages thrill the most indifferent, his conclusions are eminently fair." - Celebrities, 1881
"Accurate and scholarly, many readers of Mr. Mocatta's book will be surprised." - The Academy, 1877
"An interesting sketch." -The Saturday Reiew, 1877

The position of the Jews in Spain and Portugal during a great part of the middle ages forms an exceptionally bright spot in their dark and chequered history, and developed some striking intellectual and moral features in an age when a great part of what now constitutes Civilisation, was wrapped in mental darkness.The favoured position of the Jews in the Peninsula induced a vast Hebrew population to settle there; and their prosperity, attracting, as it did, the jealousy of the bulk of the people, would lead to their ultimate ruin.

The object of Mocatta's 1877 book "The Jews of Spain and Portugal and the Inquisition" is in the first place to shew the position of the Jews in the Peninsula daring the Middle Ages; and, secondly, to describe the means adopted for purging Spain and Portugal of Judaism, notably by bringing into play the fearful agencies of the Inquisition.

It commences by recounting the antiquity of Jewish settlements in the Peninsula, the incipient persecutions of the Roman rulers, the milder sway of the Arian princes, and afterwards the rabid intolerance of the later Gothic kings. Then follow the conquests of the Moors, bringing in their train numbers of Oriental and African Jews; the establishment of the Moorish Universities in Cordova, Seville, &c. at which numerous Hebrew scholars flourished and were encouraged; the consequent revival of Hebrew literature; the cultivation of philosophy, medicine, astronomy, grammar, biblical criticism, and poetry; and a cursory notice of the many eminent Jews who distinguished themselves in these various branches. It reviews further the services rendered by the Jews in translating the works of the Arabic philosophers into Latin, and generally assisting in the great work of disseminating science and learning; the retention of Jewish scholars at the Courts of the Christian princes; the ability of the Jews in matters of trade and finance, which caused many of them to be appointed to some of the highest offices of the State; and the gradual absorption of wealth by them owing to their administrative talents and thrift.

Having traced the effect of the pursuit of wealth upon the Jews themselves, it notices the persecutions which steadily set in towards the end of the 14th century, all ending in a wholesale simulated conversion, effected under terror, of a large number of the Spanish Jews. Their covert attachment to the practices of Judaism, called forth the stringent animadversion of the clergy, which culminated in the introduction of the Inquisition into Spain.The working of this tribunal in the two countries is shortly described, together with its baneful effects on the New Christians, as well as on the general population themselves.

The various criminating processes, dungeons, and tortures, are also sketched out. The Essay winds up with a short account of the gradual absorption of the New Christians in the mass of the population of the Peninsula, and of the fate and destiny of the vast numbers who escaped into more tolerant countries, and who established communities in the various centres of European civilisation, and elsewhere.

Frederick David Mocatta (1828–1905) was an English financier and philanthropist, from a notable Anglo-Jewish family supposed to have come from the East with the Moors into Spain—settled in that country until the expulsion of the Jews by Ferdinand and Isabella.

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