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Warriors of Luxiria
BOXED SET • BOOKS 1-4

ZOEY DRAVEN
Copyright © 2017, 2023 by Zoey Draven

All rights reserved.

This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and events are the product of the author’s
imagination. Any resemblance to actual events, places, or persons are purely coincidental.

No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means,
including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author,
except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

Cover Art by Cormar Covers

For more information visit www.ZoeyDraven.com

 Contents

The Alien's Prize

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Epilogue

The Alien's Mate

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
 Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Epilogue

The Alien's Lover

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Epilogue

The Alien's Touch

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
 Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Epilogue

Warriors of Luxiria
Also by Zoey Draven
Thank You!
About the Author
The Alien’s Prize
 WARRIORS OF LUXIRIA - BOOK 1

Welcome to Luxiria, where the twin suns are hot and the alien warriors
are hotter…

Kate Harper finally had it all back on Earth: her dream job, an amazing best
friend, and an apartment completely void of her cheating ex. But when she
wakes up chained on an alien planet known as the Pit, her whole reality
flips upside down. Here, aliens fight to the death for the right to claim a
human female. Even worse? She realizes she’s up for grabs.

Vaxa’an, the Prime Leader of Luxiria, has a duty to his people: ensure their
dwindling race’s survival. Infamously ruthless and deadly, the Luxirian
knows he’ll have no trouble claiming a female at the Pit. What he doesn’t
expect to find is his fated mate, with her lush curves and haunting eyes that
call to him, and he’ll stop at nothing to claim her.

When Kate becomes the warrior king’s prize, her only goal is to return to
her old life. Certainly not to fall for an overbearing barbarian with a wicked
tongue, whose determined to make her his own.
 Chapter

One

T his can’t be happening. This can’t be happening, Kate Harper thought

wildly, casting her eyes from side-to-side as the group she was in—
all chained and as naked as she—were led into a massive open-air
room that could only be described as an arena.
A roaring crowd made her ears ring and she winced, wanting to squeeze
her eyes shut to block everything out, to wake up from this freaking
nightmare. Because she was just going to come out with what she knew was
undeniably true…
Aliens.
There, she’d said it.
At first, when Kate had woken up in the dimly lit room with shaking
walls of metal and to the weeping, hysterical cries of women she’d never
even seen before, she thought she’d been kidnapped by sex traffickers
straight out of her bed, because turning in for the night after watching an
episode of the Walking Dead was the last thing she remembered. Except her
‘sex traffickers’ weren’t even human. They had scaled green and brown
swirled skin, the eyes of lizards, and the mouth of—she shuddered—a…she
didn’t even know. They were hideously ugly, even more hideous than the
zombies she’d been watching just hours earlier.
So, at first, she thought her mind was playing tricks on her. Then she
just never woke up from her dream. It got worse. She’d watched in horror
as the aliens took the women out of their cages one-by-one and stripped
them naked, chaining their hands in shackles the color of brushed steel and
attaching them together in a single line. She was one of the last women. She
could still remember the feel of their cold talons on her flesh as her clothes
fell to the floor—her teddy bear pajama shorts she’d had for years and her
worn college alumni shirt—and the way their scales looked almost wet and
slimy underneath the harsh lighting. Shortly after they’d all been lined up,
the whole room shook and vibrated, a loud booming sound and a
mechanical whirring reaching her ears.
It was then she realized they were on a ship.
A freaking spaceship.
Kate had never been one to flip out. She had a very matter-of-fact
attitude about her, one that had served her well over the years. So, she
didn’t weep or cry out or beg as the line of naked women was led from the
ship and straight into a long, dark tunnel. She could hear the noise, the
chanting voices getting louder and louder. It was hot in the tunnel. Almost
unbearably so. Sweat broke out over her body and she tried to curl in on
herself to shield her naked breasts. They jiggled with every step, as did her
thighs and tummy. She wasn’t stick thin like some of the other women.
She was one of the curvier among them…which led her to realize that
there was no discernible pattern among the women the aliens had captured,
except that they were all relatively young, in their 20’s. They were all
different ethnicities, all different body types. Some were crying, others were
blankly staring in front of them, as though on auto pilot. A few, like herself,
were looking around, probably searching for a method of escape.
One of their captors led the chain at the front and she realized that he
had a long tail like an iguana that hovered just above the ground as he
walked. They passed another alien and the one in the front spoke to him, a
series of hissing, throaty sounds that she knew no human could ever hope to
replicate. Chills broke out over her body despite the heat.
A few moments later, they were led into the arena.
It was a massive structure made out of stone. She’d never been to
Rome, but she’d seen the Coliseum in photos…and this place reminded her
of it. Except they weren’t in Rome. Not by a long shot.
Automatically, she brought her hand up to shield her eyes from the
glaring light, her chains jingling. The top of the Coliseum-like arena was
open and her eyes widened when she spotted two suns. The bright stars
were steadily sinking into the horizon, casting an intense golden glow over
finely ground red rock followed by deep shadows from the stone pillars of
the structure that jutted up towards the reddening sky.
 A cumulative cry erupted from the women as they were led onto the
rock—and a few moments later, Kate realized why. The rock was hot. Tears
stung her eyes as her bare feet made contact. She hopped from one foot to
another, the soles of her feet starting to blister. The alien leading the chained
women made a harsh sound and slapped the girl at the front of the line
across the face, whipping her head to the side.
The woman whimpered. Most went silent, but the crowd only grew
louder. Kate grit her teeth, trying to ignore the pain as she pulled on the
chains, testing them. She was beginning to realize that she was in deep shit.
Seriously deep shit. This was becoming more and more real by the second.
What was also becoming more evident was that escape might be
impossible. The chains were thick and strong. There was no way she’d be
able to break her bonds, not without some sort of tool. And even if she
somehow managed to slip away, how far would she get? She was on a
strange alien planet. Everything she thought she knew was slowly being
turned on its head.
And soon, her feet would be useless too. Every step zapped pain down
her spine. Could she even run if she got away? She needed to be smart.
Focus, she commanded herself.
Her eyes finally adjusted to the light and she scanned around the stands
of the Coliseum. A knot lodged itself in her throat when she realized that
there were different species of aliens. Some looked like their captors, a
lizard humanoid alien, but others…not so much. Some were nothing more
than jellied blobs of matter, others looked more human. There were
seemingly thousands of them. The combined noise of their languages and
sounds created an ear-splitting buzzing that gave her an intense headache.
And then, suddenly, it went quiet.
The hissing, crackling voice of one of her captors filled the arena. The
lizard-humanoid alien used something like a microphone that amplified his
voice and whatever he was saying was met by cheers.
The women were shuffled into an empty stand, just feet away from the
arena floor, and Kate was thankful for the cool relief of the shaded stone
beneath her. They were lined up so that they were side-by-side, completely
on display and nude. Her nipples tightened into stiff points from fear, from
vulnerability, and she swallowed, trying to come up with some semblance
of a plan. She’d always had a plan.
 The woman next to her was a petite, thin blonde. There was a deep scar
that ran up the side of her thigh. What surprised Kate the most was that the
woman seemed calm. She stared ahead at the crowd of aliens like it was an
every day occurrence, like she’d seen it millions of times before.
The woman saw her looking and inclined her head just a tad, before her
gaze flitted to the alien at the end of the line that had secured them into the
stands.
It seemed odd to introduce herself, especially in a situation like this, but
the woman spoke before Kate could.
“You get used to it after a while,” the blonde murmured quietly. The
loud alien voice droned on in the background, being met by cheers every
now and again.
Kate’s breath left her. “You’ve done this before?”
“This is my third time now.”
“What—” Kate felt lightheaded suddenly. “What is happening? Where
are we?”
“Lower your voice,” the blonde said quietly. “Or they’ll come over
here.”
“Sorry,” Kate whispered, her arms trembling. “I just—I don’t know
what’s going on.”
“Only me and the redhead at the end over there have returned,” she said,
tilting her head down the row of women. The blonde looked back at the
arena before them. The air was charged with an electricity that prickled her
skin in awareness. It felt…ominous. The blonde continued, “This is a fight.
Winner takes his pick.”
“Pick of what?”
The blonde looked at her oddly. “Of us.”
Kate physically felt the blood drain out of her face. All thought ground
to a halt and she could only say, “But they’re aliens.”
No shit, Sherlock, she mocked herself.
“Like I said…you get used to it after a while. My first time? I freaked
the fuck out.”
Kate wanted to laugh, the kind of hysterical laughter that people only
had when they couldn’t believe what the hell was happening or when
something had gone seriously, seriously wrong.
“What happens after that? What happens after one…picks you?”
 Kate got a shrug and their chains tinked together. “I bit the first one that
tried to take me so he chose another girl. Your guess is as good as mine. But
let’s just say that I think there is a reason why we’re naked.”
How can she be so calm and collected about this? Kate wondered.
She realized the answer a moment later. Because she had to be. Kate
realized that freaking out would get her nowhere. It was very likely that the
blonde had come to the same conclusion: that they were fucked escape-
wise. Their options were limited.
The alien must’ve ended his little speech with a bombshell because the
arena went completely silent before chaos erupted. Kate realized they were
excited, even more so than they had been before. And she couldn’t help but
wonder why.
She glanced up at the setting suns and realized that was the least of her
worries. How the hell was she going to get off this planet and get back
home?
Steel doors on opposite sides of the arena hissed open slowly. The
crowd went quiet. With bated breath, Kate watched as a hulking, hunched
alien emerged from the tunnel. It had two legs and two arms, but its limbs
seemed stretched, corded together by surprisingly thick muscles. Its skin
was a velvet brown, its teeth sharp like razor points. Drool pooled on the
ground as it walked and the alien let out a roar so deafening that it made the
hair on her arms stand on end.
If this fight was for what Kate thought it was—to take one of them as a
sex slave—there was even more reason to fight back. There was no way
she’d let something like that get close to her, touch her.
Another big worry, however, had just appeared. Striding out through the
double doors on the opposite side of the arena was a man. No, not a man,
she realized. One of them. An alien. The crowd went absolutely bat shit
crazy when they spotted him.
A pulse of awareness fluttered through Kate, reverberating to her very
bones.
The alien was massive. Easily seven feet tall with ropes and ropes of
muscles that lined his shoulders, his chest, his abdomen, his forearms, his
thick thighs. His skin wasn’t green, or brown, or blue, but rather a subtle
gold. His skin shimmered like a mirage, reflecting the light of the fading
sun. That wasn’t the oddest thing, however. He had horns. Black horns that
jutted up from his temples and curved around his head, fading into long,
dark hair that fell to the middle of his back. He wore no armor, as the other
alien wore. The golden one was bare chested, proudly showing off a
multitude of scars that crossed and dissected his skin. A solid gold band
wrapped around one of his biceps and she saw the glinting of metal pierced
through his dusky nipples.
Brutal. Deadly. Intense.
Any one of those words would describe him.
What took her most by surprise was the heavy feeling in her breasts as
she looked at him. And the faint throbbing between her thighs. Kate cursed
herself. Feeling desire was the last thing she should be feeling right now.
She’d been kidnapped. She was chained and naked in an arena full of
aliens. She was lined up before two of those aliens who were about to fight
one another to take one of them.
So why couldn’t she rip her gaze from him?
The alien looked around the arena, scanning the crowds, eyes narrowed,
as if searching for something. His eyes tracked to the line of women she
was standing among. And then, suddenly, he was looking straight at her.
Not at the blonde next to her. Not at the woman on the other side of her
with flawless, mocha-colored skin. Her.
There was no mistaking it. His expression didn’t change but something
in the lines of his body did. His whole body tensed, his stomach clenched.
For a moment, Kate wondered if she’d angered him somehow.
At his sides, his hands flexed. He had claws, tipped in sharp black nails.
Kate gulped down air. Why was the air so thin suddenly?
Then, he tore his gaze away from her as though being forced to. His
eyes sought out his opponent. Kate felt bad for the velvet brown alien.
Almost.
Out of the corner of her eye, she saw the blonde glance her way. Kate
turned towards her, her heart pounding, suddenly very nervous about what
the outcome of the fight would be.
Pity shone in the blonde’s eyes. Because she knew what Kate already
suspected.
“Good luck,” the blonde whispered.
Quicker than Kate could blink, the fight began.
 Chapter

Two

- K ill. Protect. Mate. -

The Instinct rose up within Vaxa’an, a familiar and comforting
presence within him. The Instinct had been a part of his being since his
birth, but he had never felt this urgency, this need, this frenzy.
The fight had begun with a slash of his black claws. In the Pit, no
weapons were allowed. Vaxa’an felt the Nusseer’s brown hide give way,
felt the warm gush of black blood trickling down his claws. This would be a
quick fight. A necessary one.
The human would be his mate. Vaxa’an could hardly wrap his mind
around that, but the truth rang through him, as clear as the rising twin suns
on Luxiria.
Even though the Instinct wanted her fiercely, Vaxa’an couldn’t stop the
disappointment from sweeping his body. Humans were weak, seen as
nothing more than Breeders and pleasure-mates. He’d heard that a human
woman could make a male see stars when mating, that their soft bodies
were pliable and giving…but all he saw was weakness. A human mate
would have a hard time surviving on Luxiria, where brute strength—even
among their rapidly declining female population—was power. Luxirians
were a warrior race, bred for it through strong, proud lineages. From a
young age, they were trained using only the harshest of methods. It was
insult enough that Vaxa’an had to search outside of their race to continue
his line. As the leader of his people, he needed to ensure survival.
But a human…
They were a relatively new species to make themselves known, from a
planet called ‘Earth.’ He could easily implant her language into his mind
once he returned home, but would that be necessary? He only intended to
Breed her, to create heirs. His sire had been the Prime Leader, a title passed
down to Vaxa’an after his death. It would be his duty to impregnate her.
Vaxa’an couldn’t deny that the thought quickened his blood and stirred
his cock in his coverings. His human was lush. Her nipples were a soft pink
that he wanted to suckle. Her body certainly looked pliable, looked like it
could take the rough matings a Luxirian like him could give her. She’d be
impregnated before the lunar cycle was done, he vowed to himself, human
or not. He dodged a swipe of the Nusseer’s claws, making sure not to touch
its saliva. Poison would seep into his bones if he didn’t focus.
His training kicked in. He grew impatient to take his mate.
He let the Instinct take over, let it guide his movements and make him
quicker, fiercer, deadlier. He dodged, he lashed out, he weakened his
opponent like he’d been trained to do, waiting for the opportune moment to
strike. Every movement was calculated.
The Nusseer knew the moment his life was forfeit. The realization
flickered in its dark eyes right before Vaxa’an thrust his arm out and
embedded his claws deep inside the thick hide of its belly, where its heart
was. He squeezed his fist, popping the organ, and the Nusseer dropped at
his feet, rattling the ground like a quake.
The deafening roar of the crowd met his ears as he wiped his opponent’s
blood across his chest, a sign of respect for its life and of his victory. It was
an honor to wear the creature’s blood. His gaze sought out his mate’s and
the Instinct rumbled in his chest, his need increasing tenfold.
- Mate. Fuck. Possess. -
Never breaking his gaze off her, he strode to the stand where she stood
with the others. Up close, he studied her. His mouth watered, his eyes
traveling over her curves, her exposed cunt, her full breasts. Her lips were
an oddly enticing shade of pink, but she looked paler than she had a few
moments before. Her eyes were strange as well. Black in the center, and
then green, and then white. Different. And she was small. She stood in the
stand off the ground and she still only came up to his chest.
He saw her eyes focus on the smear of black blood on his chest and his
spine straightened proudly. She should know that he would kill for her, that
he would protect her from harm, that he would be the one to provide for her
until the end of their lives.
 It didn’t matter that she was human, he decided in that moment. She
was his. His people would accept it over time. He had to set the example
that this was the only way their race would survive, by continuing the line
through inter-species breeding.
To the Krevorag nearing him with its scaled skin and dark eyes, he said
in its language, “I want her. Release the chains.”
The Krevorag had started the Pit. He hadn’t known that only human
females were being offered and he thought it odd that other species were
absent. Some females, specifically Wrillonians, volunteered for the Pit,
reveling in the ferocity of males fighting for their right to breed with them.
Some, however, did not come willing. Vaxa’an ignored the moral
implications of his participation. He told himself it was necessary, that he
needed an eligible species as a Breeder. The moment his Instinct had picked
her, he knew that humans would be compatible.
The Krevorag approached the female and she swung her eyes towards
him, stepping back, trying to avoid him. Roughly, the Krevorag pulled her
forward, hissing, but a low growl from Vaxa’an stilled his arm immediately.
“You mark her and I will savor your death,” Vaxa’an warned, tone
deadly. He saw his female shudder and the Krevorag made quick work of
her chains, unhooking her, before reattaching the links to the other females.
Vaxa’an reached forward to take his mate but he only had a brief
moment to enjoy the feel of her warm skin against his own before…she bit
him.
Her blunt little teeth did little to cause pain. He was more shocked than
anything, giving her the opportunity she no doubt desired. She struggled
against his hold, scraping at his chest with her claws. But upon closer
realization, he realized she had no claws, just nails as dull as her teeth.
The crowd was amused, no doubt drunk on Krevoragian Brew, which
only added to their hysterics. According to rumor, it wasn’t anything new. A
female had bitten a warrior before and a few had tried to escape.
Unfortunately, Vaxa’an’s original fears about humans were correct. They
were weak. He subdued her easily, sweeping her up in his arms, the blood
of his opponent wetting her side.
She struggled against him, making mews of anger and frustration and
fear. In time, she would realize she had nothing to fear of him. He’d turn
her anger into need and her frustration into desire. He’d fuck it right out of
her. Feeling her luscious form pressed into him, he decided that three heirs
wouldn’t be enough. He’d sire many, many more with this female. His
attraction to her should scare him, but all he felt was relief and wicked
anticipation.
“Enough, female,” he growled out, feeling her struggles vibrate straight
to his cock. Fighting already made his blood run hot. There was a reason
why Luxirians, in addition to being a warrior race, were also known for
their more carnal needs. “Unless you want me to lay you down and fuck
you here.”
Of course, she wouldn’t understand him so she didn’t respond to his
bluff. Vaxa’an needed to get her to his ship, so they could take leave of this
planet and return to his own. The journey would only take three spans, but
he was needful. If he could take her within the next moment, it wouldn’t be
soon enough.
She was yelling something in his ear, which sounded like, “Laytmigao,
laytmigao!” Vaxa’an would need to implant her language as soon as he
reached his ship. It had been many, many lunar cycles since he’d needed the
language implanter, so he prayed to the Fates that it worked. The female
continued to struggle in his hold. He tightened his grip, but decided to
throw her over his shoulder to subdue her best. She screeched against his
bare back and he winced, his ears sensitive.
Her ample rump was on display for the entire arena and he ignored the
possessiveness that ate at him. To further motivate her to cease her struggle,
he brought his hand down on her rump, not hard, but he left it on her right
cheek as warning, his Instinct purring contently at the feel of her.
The female finally stilled, frozen, and he strode back down the tunnel
towards the ship bay. Species from all over the universe came to the Pit, to
watch the fights or to try to win a female for themselves. As the Prime
Leader of Luxiria, he’d been given the first fight of the night and the
Krevorags had been thrilled by his sudden appearance. As far as he knew,
he was the first Luxirian warrior to want a turn in the Pit.
In the ship bay, he spotted his vessel, a Luxirian emerging as he
approached. It was Lihvan.
“Prime Leader,” his war general greeted him with a respectful nod, his
dark eyes straying to the human female slung over his shoulder. Even
though Vaxa’an and Lihvan were as close as blood brothers, his general
knew the customs and abided by them among the public. “I see you were
victorious.”
 “Yes.” His chest swelled with smug pride. He held Lihvan’s gaze. “My
luxiva.” His mate. Or, at least, she would be. Very soon.
“The Instinct chose her for you?”
“Yes.”
Back when there was an abundance of female Luxirians, the Instinct
chose a female most compatible for breeding purposes. His race were
monogamous and Luxirians’ were infamously possessive over their
females. They didn’t share, but it hadn’t been uncommon for breeding
partners to mutually end their union once young were brought into the
world. If it did happen, the Instinct chose another female and the breeding
cycle would begin anew.
But a luxiva was different. Vaxa’an felt it, deep in his bones. The
Instinct knew. He would ask the Fates to bless their union and if they did,
Vaxa’an and his human female would be mated for life. The deepest bond.
A fated bond. The strongest of connections. There would be no others for
them during their lifetime.
His general inclined his head. “I congratulate you on the highest of
honors, Prime Leader.”
Lihvan averted his gaze, but Vaxa’an had seen the envy in his eyes. His
oldest friend had wanted to find a luxiva as long as any Luxirian had. But
after the sickness that had spread through the females like a blaze, many
males had given up hope. The fact that Vaxa’an had found a human
luxiva…it opened up a realm of possibilities, for him and his men.
“Shall we depart?” Lihvan asked, casting another glance at his mate.
His crew and Lihvan’s presence were cautionary ones. If their enemies
knew the Prime Leader was traveling alone to the Pit…they might have
made an opportunity out of it.
Vaxa’an gave a curt nod. “Immediately.”
He was eager to get his female home.
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 CHAPTER XI

AFTER THE EXPULSION

Twelve thousand of Spanish fugitives sought shelter in Navarre,

where, after a few years’ peace, they were again confronted with the
alternatives of baptism or banishment. Most of them, worn out with
distress and disappointment, adopted Christianity, and some of
these converts returned to Spain.
Eighty thousand of the exiles crossed into Portugal and
purchased permission to tarry in that kingdom for eight months,
preparatory to their departure for Africa. King John II. even connived
at the permanent settlement of some of them in the country. But the
King’s tolerance was not shared by his subjects. John
1481
had already been beset with complaints of Jewish
cavaliers being suffered to parade the streets mounted on richly
caparisoned horses and mules, arrayed in fine cloaks and velvet
doublets, and dangling gilt swords at their sides. Under his
successor popular hatred obtained the satisfaction which had
hitherto been denied to it. King Emanuel, a liberal but deeply
enamoured prince, was forced to yield to the wishes of his
superstitious betrothed,—the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella,—
who made the banishment of the Jews a condition of her acceptance
of his suit; and he ordered the hapless people to quit his dominions.
But, as though the measure of Israel’s woes were not
1495
yet full, the same King, yielding again to the pressure
of love, caused all Jewish children of fourteen years of age and
under to be torn from their parents in order to be kept in Portugal,
and be reared in the Catholic faith. The scenes of agony which
followed this diabolical edict would be revolting beyond endurance,
but for their occurrence directly after the autos-da-fé. Many Jewish
mothers, mad with grief and despair, slew their darlings with their
own hands and then destroyed themselves. A contemporary writer
concludes his description of these ghastly events with the
characteristic comment: “It was a great mistake in King Emanuel to
think of converting to Christianity any Jew old enough to pronounce
the name of Moses.” In the writer’s opinion the age limit ought to
have been three years.
Many Jews, afraid to face the perils of the unknown, shielded
themselves from the storm under the cloak of conversion, and either
remained in Portugal or returned to Spain to join the pseudo-
converts left there, and for ages after supplied the hounds of the
Inquisition with a healthy occupation. The State, of course, aided the
Church in her lethal work; for dissent in religion is close akin to
dissent in politics, and domestic discord is incompatible with
vigorous expansion abroad.
1498 Meanwhile Torquemada’s successor, Deza,
surpassed the great Inquisitor in ferocity and energy.
One of his confederates, called Lucero, was nicknamed even by his
own associates Tenebrero, on account of the darkness and cruelty of
his temper, which drove the people of Cordova to revolt. Immediately
after Cardinal Ximenes became Grand Inquisitor, and,
1506
with his predecessor’s fate before his eyes, proved
less savage. But what the Inquisition lost in height of iniquity was
amply compensated by the extension of its activity over a new field—
the vanquished Mohammedans—who were also permitted to choose
between baptism and banishment; while the Morescoes, or Moorish
converts, were treated in the same manner as the Jewish Marranos.
There were no fewer than thirty-four tracks by which the “foxes”
could be run to earth. One of these was the eating of bitter herbs and
lettuces at the time of the Passover. Every Christian was virtually a
spy and an informer, sometimes unintentionally, more often with
deliberate eagerness. Pedigrees were strictly examined, and those
found tainted with Jewish blood were cruelly persecuted, or at least
treated as social outcasts. Neither moral excellence nor even high
position in the Church, accompanied by sincere devotion, was
accepted as an expiation for the sin of birth. Detected heretics were
punished by imprisonment, by exile, by ruinous fines, and by fire.
And yet the pestilent sect, too clever to be convinced by theological
reasoning or to betray its want of conviction, survived and flourished
in secret—a vast freemasonry of passive unbelievers spreading its
crooked subterranean passages in every direction under the very
foundations of the Holy Office. Neither the penalties inflicted by the
State, nor the tortures, even more terrible, of the Church availed
against the treacherous tenacity of the eternal people. Persecution,
which goads the brave to heroism, makes hypocrites of the timid;
and these Marranos, compelled to pit their cunning against that of
the Holy Office, developed all the unlovely qualities of those who
lead a double life; who live a daily lie. They were forced to be false
either to their God or to themselves. They chose the latter course.
They aped their Christian neighbours in demeanour and dialect,
participated in religious rites and sacraments which they abhorred,
ate food which nauseated them, kissed relics which inspired them
with repugnance, and sprinkled themselves with holy water which
made them inwardly feel polluted. But the sad and sordid comedy
could not always be maintained. The voice of conscience
occasionally proved too strong even for the instinct of self-
preservation, and many a Marrano ended a miserable life by a noble
martyrdom. Again, the power of the blood, sometimes in the second
or third generation, asserted itself, and the child or the grandchild of
a convert, though he might be a priest or a monk, reverted to the
faith of his fathers.
The pseudo-converts of Portugal fared no better. In 1506 they
were massacred, and their women were dishonoured in great
numbers at Lisbon and in the open country. In the
About 1524
midst of these tribulations they heard of David
Reubeni, who had arisen in the East to fulfil the ancient prophecies,
and to bring about the ever-expected and ever-deferred liberation of
Israel. David came over to Europe, declaring himself to be the
brother of a Jewish prince reigning in Arabia, sent to solicit the
Pope’s assistance for a holy war against the Mohammedans.
Clement VII., a Pontiff too mediocre to excel in virtue or in
fanaticism, yet an adroit diplomat, received the envoy in audience,
and treated him with great distinction. David was acclaimed by the
Roman and other Jews with enthusiasm, and was finally invited by
the King of Portugal to his Court, whither he set sail in a ship flying a
Jewish flag. At Lisbon David met with a magnificent reception on the
part of the King and with frenetic applause on the part of the
Marranos, who saw in him the promised Redeemer and the future
King of Israel. But he was soon after expelled from Portugal, owing
to the relapse into Judaism of a young Marrano visionary, Diogo
Pires by name.
This “new-Christian,” excited by David’s mission, underwent
circumcision and received mysterious and wonderful messages from
heaven. He assumed the name of Solomon Molcho and fled to
Turkey, where he was welcomed with open arms by his co-
religionists at Salonica and Adrianople, communicated his
Cabbalistic hallucinations through Eastern and Central Europe,
preached the pleasures of martyrdom, visited Rome, in
1530
obedience to a divine vision, and made himself
supremely ridiculous by prophesying multifarious calamities to the
Eternal City. After an unsuccessful effort to win over the King of
Portugal and Charles V., Solomon proceeded to Venice in order to
secure the favour of that Republic, and there he narrowly escaped
the effects of a poisoned draught administered to him by a brother-
Jew. In the meantime some of his predictions, strangely enough, had
come true. Rome was sacked by the Imperial troops and devastated
by a flood, Lisbon was ruined by earthquakes, and a brilliant comet
announced the approaching end of the world. Thereupon Solomon
returned to Rome, where the Pope honoured him as a true, if
mournful, prophet. But, whilst in Rome, he had another narrow
escape—this time from the claws of the Inquisition—and was spirited
away by the friendly Pope in the dead of night, only to fall into them
next year at Mantua. There at last the poor self-
1532
deluded Messiah was accorded the crown of
martyrdom which he had so ardently coveted. He was burnt alive.
Solomon’s followers long refused to believe that he was dead;
cherishing hopes of his miraculous escape and re-appearance. But
he was dead in earnest.
 David Reubeni was denied even this last honour. The Emperor
Charles handed him over to the Spanish Holy Office, in the vaults of
which he languished for three years and was finally killed in an
obscure manner. An uncharitable and uncritical world has branded
Solomon as a fool and David as a rogue. Nothing fails like failure. If
an unsuccessful patriot is called an adventurer and an unsuccessful
financier a swindler, an unsuccessful Messiah must submit to be
stigmatised as an impostor.
Not many years afterwards the Inquisition was erected in
Portugal at the instigation of Ignatius Loyola, and at the beginning of
the seventeenth century there occurred at Lisbon an event which
supplied it with a fresh excuse for persecution. A Franciscan monk of
noble descent, Diogo by name, declared that by reading the Bible he
came to the conclusion that Judaism and not Christianity was the
true religion. Diogo was thrown into a dungeon; but, as he freely
confessed his guilt, there seemed to be no occasion for torture.
However, monks have seldom been governed by lay logic. Diogo
was put to the rack in order to betray his accomplices.
1603
After two years of torture, varied with theological
discussion, he was burnt at the stake in the presence of a large
concourse of people, including the Regent. Diogo’s example
invigorated the courage of the Portuguese crypto-Jews and caused
many to denounce Christianity openly, regardless of consequences.
Diogo’s martyrdom was celebrated by a young Jewish poet who,
however, escaped the crown which his enthusiasm deserved by
fleeing to Amsterdam. Another young Marrano poet also was
induced by Diogo’s constancy to revert to Judaism. This revival of
zeal for the old faith spurred the Holy Office to greater
strenuousness on its part. At one time one hundred and fifty
Marranos were arrested, tortured and threatened with cremation.
The multitude of victims, however, was embarrassing to the
Government. Moreover the Court lay under heavy pecuniary
obligations to the Marranos, and the latter exerted themselves by
might and money to procure the release of their brethren. They
offered to Philip III. not only a gift of the sums due to them but, in
addition, 1,200,000 cruzados (£120,000), and they also spent
150,000 cruzados among the King’s councillors in order to convince
them of the justice of their cause. Philip III. was not deaf to a plea for
mercy supported by so powerful an array of arguments, and he
induced Pope Clement VIII. to pardon the prisoners.
1604
The Inquisition was reluctantly obliged to content itself
with the semblance of an execution. The captives, clad as penitents,
were led to the auto-da-fé in Lisbon, where they publicly expressed a
hypocritical contrition for their sin and were rewarded with loss of all
civic rights.
1609 Five years later the Morescoes, or Moorish
converts, were finally expelled by Philip III., while the
Marranos endured and supplied victims for the grim altar of the Holy
Office. Granada, Cordova, Lisbon, and other cities in both Spain and
Portugal continued to be illuminated with the funereal flames of the
autos-da-fé. As late as 1652 we find a distinguished Portuguese
diplomatist of Jewish origin, Emanuel Fernando de Villa-Real, on his
return from Paris, where he acted as consul of the Portuguese Court,
seized, tortured, and burnt at the stake. Three years
1655
later fifty-seven crypto-Jews were on one day
sentenced at Cuenca; the majority to corporal punishment and loss
of property, ten to death by fire. In the same year twelve more
wretches were roasted in Granada, and in 1660 sixty Marranos at
Seville were led to the auto-da-fé, where four of them were strangled
and burnt, and three burnt alive, while the effigies of those who had
fled were solemnly cremated. Amongst the latter was the picture of
Antonio Enriquez de Gomez, the popular soldier and dramatist,
contemporary of Calderon, and author of twenty-two comedies which
earned great applause in Madrid. The original of the picture had
fortunately escaped to France, where he died five years after at the
age of sixty.
Another large contingent of Spanish emigrants repaired to the
ports of Santa Maria and Cadiz, and was conveyed by a Spanish
fleet to the Barbary coast. They landed at Ercilla, a Christian colony,
on their way to Morocco. But, long before they reached their
destination, the desert tribes attacked them, plucked them of the little
money which they had contrived to conceal on their persons before
leaving Spain, massacred many of the men, violated many of the
women; and the survivors, after untold hardships, and almost
starving, retraced their steps to Ercilla and sought repose in baptism.
Many Spanish Jews found refuge in Turkey. Bayezid II., on
hearing of their expulsion from Spain, is said to have exclaimed: “Do
they call this Ferdinand a politic prince, who thus impoverishes his
own kingdom and enriches ours?” The Turkish monarch’s speech
may be apocryphal. It sounds far too modern and occidental for a
Turk of the fifteenth century. Bayezid was probably swayed by
religious rather than by economic considerations. The Jews are
regarded by the Mohammedans as a “People of the Book,” and they
have much more in common with them than with the Christians. Both
sects believe in one only God, and reject the doctrine of the Trinity
as polytheistic; they both practise circumcision; they both indulge in
ceremonial ablutions and similar forms of external symbolism. Hence
there has always existed a certain degree of sympathy between the
followers of the Mohammedan and those of the Mosaic law. It is also
probable that the Sultan was glad to emphasise Moslem
benevolence by harbouring the victims of Christian barbarity.
But, be the Sultan’s motives what they may, his action is certain,
and highly creditable to his humanity. He welcomed the immigrants
into his dominions, where they throve as long as the Ottoman
Empire. In the golden age of the Osmanli the Jews of the Levant
eclipsed their Greek fellow-subjects in wealth and rivalled their
Turkish masters in display. All the physicians of
1566
Constantinople were Jews. A Jew became Duke of
Naxos and lord of other islands in the Aegean, while another Jew
was sent as envoy extraordinary to Venice. So great
1574
was Jewish influence over the Sultans Solyman and
Selim II. that the Christian ambassadors were compelled to disguise
their mortification, to court the favour and to solicit the mediation of
the Jews of Stamboul. Under the circumstances the light of Zion,
which had shone so bright through the clouds of adversity, was
dimmed by the glare of prosperity.
But the harmonic curve of the woes of Israel was not to be
broken. The Osmanli, who had filled Europe with the fame and the
terror of their arms a few generations before, began to decay as
soon as they ceased to conquer. An essentially nomad race, the
Turkish found a sedentary life pernicious to its vigour. The Sultans
sank into the soft dissipations of the harem, leaving women and
eunuchs to rule the Empire and Janissaries to defend it. The Jews
had reason to lament the decline of their lords. The yoke of tyranny
began to weigh heavily upon their necks. Their opulence attracted
the rapacity of the Pashas, and their impotence encouraged it.
Fanaticism followed greed, and the Jews, among other forms of
oppression to which they were subjected, were marked off from the
true believers by a black turban—a badge which may still be seen in
Turkey, as a survival of a necessity that exists no longer.
In that age of darkness and tribulation the hope of the Messiah
flamed up again. In the middle of the seventeenth century the
promised Redeemer made his appearance among the Turkish Jews
in the person of Sabbataï Zebi, born at Smyrna in 1626. Sabbataï’s
boyhood was spent in solitude and prayer; his early youth in
Cabbalistic mysticism, in self-mortification and in a self-denial all the
easier because Sabbataï was one of those happy, or unhappy,
mortals who are born blind to the temptations of the flesh and to its
joys. His strange life and even stranger ideas soon excited attention.
Some pronounced the young man mad and others inspired. He
regarded himself as the Messiah, and revealed himself as such in
the year 1648, which, mystics had foretold, was to see the first dawn
of the Redemption. The Synagogue excommunicated Sabbataï for
his presumption. But many believed in the handsome and eccentric
youth. Sabbataï’s belief in his own Messianic mission and the
devotion of his disciples were confirmed by persecution. Banished
from Smyrna, the prophet wandered to Stamboul and Salonica,
gaining adherents, and he took care that the year 1666, which had
been fixed as that of the Messianic era, should find him in
Jerusalem. That city both by virtue of its traditions and owing to the
condition of its Jewish inhabitants—impoverished by extortion and
ground down by oppression—afforded an environment eminently
favourable to miraculous display. Thence Sabbataï journeyed forth in
triumph to Aleppo, and finally returned to his native city, where his
new glory made the Synagogue forget his earlier condemnation and
disgrace. At Smyrna the enthusiasm of Sabbataï’s followers reached
the height of frenzy. The Messiah’s fame and the madness of his
disciples spread to the furthest corners of the earth—Venice,
Leghorn, Avignon, Amsterdam, London. The Rabbis of Prague and
Hamburg were suspected by the Orthodox of being secret adherents
of the Prophet of Smyrna, and excommunicated each other as
heartily as if they were Christian sectarians. In all these centres of
Judaism the Kingdom of Heaven was believed to have come, the
belief being shared by Christian Millennarians, and the Western
Jews abandoned themselves to an extravagance of excitement
scarcely compatible with elementary sanity. At Hamburg the
synagogue was converted into a theatre of corybantic exaltation,
wherein stately Spanish cavaliers and grey-bearded men of business
might be seen hopping, jumping and twirling solemnly about with the
scroll of the Law in their arms. Not less remarkable was the
behaviour of believers in the East. In Persia the Jews refused to till
their fields or to pay tribute, for, they said, the Messiah had come.
From all these quarters homage and treasure poured into the court
of Sabbataï, who now was universally hailed as King of Kings, and
signed himself, or allowed his scribes to do so, “I, the Lord, your
God, Sabbataï Zebi.”
But the Messiah’s reign was brief and his end inglorious.
Sabbataï resolved to repair to Constantinople that he might proclaim
his advent from the very capital of the East. He was not unexpected.
In the Straits of the Dardanelles Turkish officers arrested him, and
took him fettered to Stamboul. The landing-place was crowded with
a multitude of believers and others, all eager to behold the man who
had filled the world with so singular an epidemic. Among the latter
class of spectators was a pasha who welcomed the Redeemer with
a vigorous slap in the face. The treatment subsequently meted out to
poor Sabbataï was in harmony with this reception. He was thrown
into prison, and nothing but the Grand Vizier’s unwillingness to
create a new martyr saved him from death. Finally he was
summoned before the Sultan. After a short audience, the Messiah
issued forth from the Padishah’s presence a turbaned
Mohammedan, and his name was Mehmed Effendi.
 But even this catastrophe failed to break the spell which
Sabbataï’s personality had cast over the minds of men. The masses
clung to the hope which he had raised for ages after his death. Some
of his adherents, including his wife, imitated his example and
embraced Islam. The sect of these Hebrew Mohammedans, under
the name of Dunmehs, or Converts, still endures at Salonica and
other cities of the Ottoman Empire, and among them the belief
prevails that Sabbataï is not really dead. They form a body apart, knit
together by ties of consanguinity, detested by their former brethren in
the faith as a sect of apostates and suspected by their new brethren
as a sect of hypocrites.
The further decay of the Ottoman Empire, which brought
humiliation to the conquerors and kindled the desire for national
rehabilitation among their Christian subjects, however, brought
peace and commercial prosperity to the Jews. Lady
1717
Mary Wortley Montague, in her account of the policy
and the manners of the Turks in the eighteenth century, gives a
glowing description of the Jewish colony of Adrianople.
“I observed,” she says, “that most of the rich tradespeople are
Jews. That people are in incredible power in this country. They have
many privileges above all the natural Turks themselves, and have
formed a very comfortable commonwealth here, being judged by
their own laws. They have drawn the whole trade of the empire into
their hands, partly by the firm union amongst themselves, partly by
the idle temper and want of industry of the Turk. Every Bassa has his
Jew, who is his homme d’affaires; he is let into all his secrets and
does all his business. No bargain is made, no bribes received, no
merchandizes disposed of, but what passes through his hands. They
are the physicians, the stewards, and the interpreters of all the great
men. You may judge how advantageous this is to a people who
never fail to make use of the smallest advantages. They have found
the secret of making themselves so necessary that they are certain
of the protection of the Court whatever Ministry is in power. Even the
English, French, and Italian merchants, who are sensible of their
artifices, are, however, forced to trust their affairs to their negotiation,
nothing of trade being managed without them, and the meanest
among them being too important to be disobliged, since the whole
body take care of his interests with as much vigour as they would
those of the most considerable of their members. They are, many of
them, vastly rich.”
At the present moment the Jews, thanks to the profound
incompetence and sloth of the Turks, the unpopularity, disunion and
unrest of the Christian rayahs, and their own superior ability and
concord, thrive in many parts of the Sultan’s dominions, still
preserving the speech of their Spanish persecutors.
A few of the refugees from Spain found their way into France
and England, while some of those who were subsequently
persecuted in Portugal drifted to Holland. But a large number of
Spanish Jews set sail for Italy.
 CHAPTER XII

THE RENAISSANCE

While Popes and Emperors waged a fierce warfare against each

other for the heritage of the Roman Caesars, the democratic spirit of
the Italian people grew in safe obscurity, deriving fresh vitality from
the feud between those two great enemies of freedom. The
Emperor’s defeat saved Italy from political servitude, and the Pope’s
victory came too late to endanger intellectual liberty. The people who
claimed the right to act as they pleased were a fortiori ready to
vindicate their right to think what they pleased. Thus free thought,
which was stunted by the Popes of Rome in the far-off lands of the
North, flourished under the very shadow of St. Peter’s throne. It was
natural that it should be so. They who sit nearest the stage are least
liable to be duped by scenic devices. The Italians were too near the
Holy See to be impressed by its tricks or to be terrified by its
theatrical thunder. They had seen Gregory VII. as an illiterate Tuscan
lad playing in his father’s workshop, and they had known Innocent
III. as plain Signor Lothario, son of the Count of Segni. No one is a
demigod to his own parishioners.
Hence the lofty pretensions of the Popes were nowhere less
respected than in their immediate neighbourhood. The spiritual
autocrats, whose anathemas made foreign princes and peoples
tremble with superstitious terror, found many severe critics among
their own countrymen. The Italian chronicler Salimbene (1221–
1288), though himself a monk, in his vivid and varied picture of
thirteenth century life, does not hesitate to comment freely on the
greed, profligacy, gluttony, heresy and other sins of many a
contemporary pope, cardinal and bishop. Even more significant is
the attitude of the author of the Divina Commedia. There the judges
are judged, and they who doomed others to everlasting torture are
themselves consigned to a similar fate by the stern Florentine poet,
the spokesman of the Middle Ages. Celestine V., who, yielding to
base fear, abdicated St. Peter’s chair in 1294, is sentenced by Dante
to wander in hell naked, his face bedewed with blood and tears, and
beset by wasps and hornets; one of the dolorous tribe of trimmers
—“Wretches who never lived”; sinners whose very disembodied
74
shades are “both to God displeasing and to His foes.” Pope
Anastasius is condemned to an even worse plight, as a heretic.
Nicholas III. is found planted with his heels upwards, waiting to be
succeeded in that uncomfortable position by Boniface VIII., “the chief
of the new Pharisees,” who, in his turn, is to be followed by Clement
V., “the lawless pastor,” who, besides many other sins of omission
and commission, abetted Philip the Fair in the suppression of the
Templars, and with him divided the guilt, if he were defrauded of the
fruits, of the atrocious crime. To an equally sad eternity are doomed
popes and cardinals “over whom Avarice dominion absolute
maintains”; the monks of Cologne; and the “Joyous Friars” (Frati
Godenti), notorious for things worse than joyousness.
Nor did the great religious upheavals of the Middle Ages which
helped to tighten the Papal grip on the European mind produce any
injurious effects in Italy. Far otherwise. The most serious of those
movements, the Crusades, proved of signal benefit to the Italian
republics. The campaigns that drained other countries of men and
money, opened new sources of profit and power to Venice and
Genoa, Florence, Milan and Pisa; they invigorated their maritime
trade, and increased their knowledge of foreign lands. While the
kings and knights of Northern and Central Europe dreamed dreams
of military glory, of victory for the Cross, and of conquest for
themselves, the commonwealths of Italy realised the more solid, if
less splendid, boons of extensive commerce, and even more
extensive credit. When Bayezid, surnamed the Lightning, towards
the end of the fourteenth century, threatened to carry war into the
heart of holy Christendom and boasted that his horse should eat his
oats on the altar of St. Peter at Rome, it was not the Romans who
resented the impious insolence of the infidel. Nor were they moved
when the King of Hungary, Sigismund, panic-stricken, sent a bishop
and two knights with letters to King Charles VI. of France, the eldest
son of the Church, imploring him to ward off the evils that menaced
it. The Italians saw with calm unconcern the young Count de Nevers,
heir of the Duke of Burgundy, and cousin of the French monarch,
accompanied by four other princes, lead his brilliant host of knights
and squires against the “enemies of God.” It was the villeins of
Burgundy and the burgesses of Flanders who paid the expenses of
the ruinous campaign undertaken to save Rome from the Turk. And
if the honest, but credulous, Froissart is to be believed, the Italians,
so far from sympathizing with the aim of the expedition, actually
assisted the infidels by information and advice. Bayezid, on hearing
that the Christian forces had crossed the Danube, is reported by the
Chronicler to have said: “My wishes are now accomplished. It is now
four months since I heard of the expedition from my good friend the
Duke of Milan, who advised me to draw up my men with prudence.”
1396 Sept. 28 Furthermore, when the champions of the Cross
met those of the Crescent on the fatal field of
Nicopolis, and left upon it the flower of their chivalry,
the Italians were the only people who had no reason to mourn the
disaster. All useless prisoners were put to death; but the young
Count de Nevers, and a score other princes and barons of France,
were held by Bayezid to ransom. After a long and painful captivity
the survivors obtained their liberty for 200,000 florins. But, while this
immense sum and the costs of the negotiations and embassies, as
well as the means for the prisoners’ return home in a manner
befitting their high estate, were laboriously raised by extraordinary
taxes levied by the Duke of Burgundy upon all towns under his
obedience, and more especially upon those of Flanders—Ghent,
Bruges, Mechlin, and Antwerp—the merchants of Genoa showed
their enterprising genius, no less than their prosperity, by giving
prompt security to the Sultan for five times the amount stipulated.
Lastly, when the French lords, on their arrival at Venice, found
themselves hardly able to defray the expenses of their sojourn in
“one of the dearest towns in the world for strangers,” as Sir John
sensibly observes, they met with scant courtesy at the hands of the
Venetians. The King of Hungary, though the revenues of his realm
were “ruined for this and the ensuing year,” volunteered to assist the
princes by “offering for sale to the rulers of Venice the rents he
received from that town, which amounted to 7000 ducats yearly”; but
the Venetians, on hearing of the proposal, “coldly replied that they
would consider the matter,” and after a fortnight’s consideration
answered, “as I was told by one who heard it,” that “if the King of
Hungary was disposed to sell his whole kingdom, the Venetians
would willingly make the purchase, and pay the money down; but as
for such a trifle as 7000 ducats of yearly revenue, which he
possessed in the city of Venice, it was of so little value that they
could not set a price on it either to buy or sell, and that they would
not trouble themselves about so small an object.”
The narrative brings into vivid, if somewhat unpleasant,
prominence the contrast between the Italians and their neighbours
over the Alps: their wealth, their pride, their eagerness to draw profit
from other people’s enthusiasms, and their utter want of interest in
the questions which agitated so deeply the rest of mediaeval
Christendom. The sons of Italy were too much engrossed in the
affairs of this world to make any sacrifices to the next. Already
sensuous bliss was all the bliss they knew or cared for. Undistracted
by celestial chimeras, they would gladly have exchanged all the
dreams of eternity for one day’s enjoyment of earthly realities. But, if
their worldly prosperity and their practical wisdom made the Italians
selfish, they also made them tolerant. To them the prejudice of
feudalism was as unprofitable as its idealism.
The Jews reaped the fruit of Italian tolerance. By one of those
wonderful paradoxes with which history loves to surprise the student,
the people that had crucified Christ, the people that was held guilty
of the sufferings of His disciples at the hands of the Pagans, the
people that was execrated as a perpetual source of heresy, had from
the first dwelt and prospered in the very city which had witnessed the
most terrible of those sufferings, and which had early claimed to be
revered as the capital of Christendom and the Supreme Court of
orthodoxy. While their brethren in France, Germany, and England
underwent martyrdom, the Jews of Rome enjoyed comparative, if not
uninterrupted, peace. The fury of the Crusades, which stained the
waters of the Rhine and the Moselle with Hebrew blood, found no
parallel on the banks of the Tiber. The calumnies which stirred up a
tempest against the Jews in Norwich, aroused no responsive echo in
Rome. The Bulls which doomed the “accursed people” to
persecution in those distant realms remained unheeded in the very
place where they were framed and signed. The Popes, who
denounced and proscribed the “unclean and perfidious race” abroad,
with few exceptions, cherished, protected, and trusted individual
members of it at home.
1162–1165 Pope Alexander III., the great antagonist of the
German Emperor Frederick Barbarossa and of Henry
II. of England, had a Jewish Minister of Finance, or treasurer of the
household, and on his return to Rome, after his voluntary exile in
France, he was met by a jubilant procession of Jewish Rabbis. The
Roman Jews were not subject to any special tax, nor was their
evidence against Christians considered invalid. Even greater was the
liberty enjoyed by the Jews of Southern Italy and Sicily, where they
chiefly abounded. The Norman Kings confirmed to them the ancient
privilege of trial according to their own laws. In Sicily,
1198–1250
under Frederick II., there were Jewish administrators
and Jewish landowners. A favourite minister of King Roger of Sicily
frequented the Jewish synagogues and contributed to the expenses
of the Jewish community. Broadly speaking, until the end of the
fifteenth century, such ill-feeling as existed towards the Jews in Italy
proceeded entirely from their own aloofness and eccentricity, and
was in no way fostered by priests or pontiffs. Nothing is more
eloquent of the general prosperity of the Italian Jews in those days
than the silence of history concerning any religious activity amongst
them.
Besides the absence of ecclesiastical fanaticism, there were
other reasons to account for the Jew’s normal immunity from
persecution in mediaeval Italy. The Italians had no cause to envy the
Jew his commercial success. In Italy the sons of Israel found keen
competitors in the native Christians. The financial genius of the
Florentine and the Venetian was more than a match for that of the
Jew. The Italians, therefore, did not exclude the Jews from their
municipal and industrial organizations, but, by making the entrance
to their Guilds less difficult for non-Christians, enabled the latter to
engage in various trades elsewhere closed to them. Nor was the
Holy See strong enough to ban usury in Italy and to fan the
superstitious antipathy towards money-lenders as it did in other
countries. Among the Italians the interests of the market counted for
more than the interests of the Church, and canonical prohibitions
were easily set at naught for the sake of convenience. Furthermore,
the division of the peninsula into a number of States politically
sundered, and often hostile to each other, but geographically
connected, enabled the Jews to seek refuge in one place from
persecution in another, and as soon as the tempest was over to
return to their homes.
For all these reasons we find the relations between Jews and
Christians in Italy more cordial than in any other part of mediaeval
Europe. The foreign origin and foreign connections of the Jew, far
from being a source of prejudice, proved an attraction to the
educated Italian. It is easy to imagine those old schoolmen, with their
alert curiosity and unquenchable thirst for knowledge—in an age
when books were rare, travel perilous, and all that was distant in
space or time a desert, dimly known or utterly unknown—eagerly
seizing at every chance of enlarging their mental horizon and of
enriching their intellectual stores. A chance of this kind offered itself
in the Jewish Rabbis, physicians, and scholars, and the Italians did
not neglect it. Friendships between learned Hebrews and Christian
75
divines were not uncommon. In the tenth century we hear of a
Jewish doctor Donnolo being on intimate terms with the Lord Abbot
Nilus. One of the fruits of such friendships was the indirect
transmission to the West of a few rays of Hellenic light long before
the dawn of the Renaissance, through translations of the Arabic
versions of the Greek classics into Hebrew, and from Hebrew into
Latin. The most illustrious of these literary connections between
followers of the new and the old Hebrew prophet was the tender
affection which, towards the end of the thirteenth century, bound
Immanuel, “the Heine of the Middle Ages,” with Dante, the poet of
old Catholicism, and the embodiment of all that was true and pure
and truly noble in mediaeval Christianity. The two friends must have
formed a pair of extraordinary incongruity. Dante, grand, stern, and
sombre, couching the gloomiest conceptions in the light and graceful
language of Italy; Immanuel, witty and caustic, venting his frolicsome
sarcasms in the solemn tongue of the Hebrew prophets. The
contrast is brought home to us with almost deliberate vividness by
the works of the two friends. They both wrote visits to the land of the
dead. Dante’s is a tragedy; Immanuel’s a satirical comedy—almost a
parody. But in one respect the Jew shows himself superior to the
Christian. His paradise includes the great shades of the pagan world.
And yet it would be an error to imagine that the Jew, even in
those halcyon days of Italian freedom, was wholly exempt from the
penalty which pursues dissent. Whatever the feelings of the cultured
and the thoughtful might be, to the populace of Italy the Jew was a
pestilent heretic. As early as 1016 we hear of a massacre of the
Jews in Rome owing to an earthquake which wrought great havoc in
the city. The calamity occurred on Good Friday, and it was
ascertained that at the time of its occurrence the Jews were
worshipping in their synagogue. A coincidence to the mediaeval
mind was tantamount to conclusive proof of cause and effect. The
Roman rabble, under the influence of panic and superstition,
wreaked a terrible vengeance on the supposed authors of the
misfortune, and Pope Benedict VIII. sanctioned a crime which he
was probably unable to prevent. Innocent III. proved his consistency
by oppressing the “enemies of Christ” in Italy as scrupulously as
elsewhere, and the Jews were also expelled from Bologna in 1171.
In 1278—when Dante was a precocious youth of twelve years of
age, already devoted to his mystic adoration of Beatrice; when
Thomas Aquinas, the tolerant of Judaism, had been dead only four
years; and two years after the birth of the great painter Giotto, to
whom we owe the one portrait of Dante that has escaped the deluge
of the centuries—at that period at which the rosy morn of the
Renaissance was faintly gilding the eastern firmament, we find the
Jews compelled to attend Christian services and to submit to
sermons preached against their own religion. But, with few
exceptions, no bloody persecution soiled the canvas of Italian
history. In the ensuing century synagogues, plain, gaunt, and
ungainly, might still be seen in close proximity to gorgeous Christian
churches in Rome, and the congregations which thronged the latter
on Sundays had not yet discovered that it was their duty to punish
their neighbours for worshipping their god on Saturday. But the
discovery was not far distant.
In 1321 the Jews of Rome were charged with insulting the
crucifix as it was carried through the streets in a procession. The
accuser is said to have been a sister of John XXII., a pope among
whose principal claims to distinction love of gold ranked high.
Several priests corroborated the charge, and the Pope decided to
drive the Jews out of the Roman state. The details of the occurrence
are uncertain; but the reality of the danger to which the Jews found
themselves exposed is proved by the extraordinary fast instituted
that year. While fervent prayers were offered up in the synagogues,
messengers were despatched to the Pope at Avignon and to King
Robert of Naples, his patron, who also was a great friend of the
Jews, imploring that the decision might be cancelled. King Robert
pleaded their cause successfully, for, it is said, his eloquence was
supported by twenty thousand ducats presented by the Roman Jews
to the Pope’s sister.
In the middle of the same century we find the Jews of Rome
obliged to contribute towards the expenses of the popular
amusements in the Roman circus—a form of entertainment which
was an abomination unto the Lord of the Jews—12 gold pieces a
year; a small matter in itself, yet indicative of the direction in which
the current flowed. But a new power came to stem for a while this
current.
We are in the heart of the fourteenth century. Dante died in 1321,
and his obsequies were sumptuously performed at Ravenna. The
tomb which closed over Dante’s remains on that July day received
more than the spokesman of Mediaeval Faith. In it was buried
Mediaeval Faith itself. Catholicism, and all that it had meant to
Dante, was already a thing of the past. “One Church and one Empire
for all men,” the idols of the Middle Age, were to be deposed by the
ideal of “A Church and an Empire for each race of men,” gradually to
develop into “No Church and no Empire for any man.” The last of the
Catholics was carried to his grave, as the first of the Humanists
appears on the scene. Dante’s censures of popes and cardinals
were the rebukes of a brother; Petrarch’s denunciations are the
assaults of an enemy. Dante, while condemning individual
churchmen, sincerely reveres the Church which their malpractices
disgraced. To him the Papal Court may be a home of hypocrisy, a
nursery of shame, a cradle of crime, and he will have nothing to do
with it; but that does not lead him to question the spiritual authority of
that Court. His hero still is Gregory Hildebrand, della fede cristiana il
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santo atleta—the saintly athlete of the Christian Faith. To Petrarch
the Papal Court is all that and more. It is the mother of human
slavery and the fount of human misery—a “Western Babylon,” as he
calls it in one of his sonnets. It fills him with unutterable abhorrence.
Petrarch died in 1374, but the new spirit of which he was the
exponent did not die with him. It was transmitted to his disciple
Boccaccio, in whose hands the keen weapon of indignation was
replaced by the keener one of ridicule. Boccaccio’s popular tales
spread the infamy of the monasteries and nunneries, and the hatred
towards their inmates, far and wide. Henceforth contempt shall be
the portion of the Church which had inspired his predecessors with
mere horror. Poggio, Pulci, Franco, and others followed in the
footsteps of the master, and though they could not rival Boccaccio in
wit, they surpassed him in virulence.
The real importance of these attacks lies in the circumstance
that they were levelled not at persons but at institutions. The warfare
was not waged so much against the body as against the soul of
Catholicism. It is true that Italian Christianity had very early divested
itself of some of the Oriental austerity of the cult, and that great part
of its original colour had been toned down, or touched up, in
accordance with Occidental taste. After twelve centuries of Roman
practice very little, indeed, was left of the gospel preached on the
shores of the Sea of Galilee. The self-sacrifice of the prophet had
been replaced by the self-indulgence of the priest, the simplicity and
humility of the saint by the purple splendour of the ecclesiastical
prince, and the spirit of the Word had long been stifled beneath the
mummeries and pageants of Roman ritual. But still there remained