CHAPTER TWO

THAT THE JEWS ARE, AND HAVE BEEN, TRAITORS

In addition to what has been said in the previous chapter, where evidence has been offered to prove and confirm that the Jews are arrogant and mendacious, I can find something else about them that is worthy of the greatest abhorrence. It is that they are all treacherous. In the year 1348, Illescas reports,1 when Clement VI was the Supreme Pontiff,2 there was a great pestilence in most of the world. The culprits of this were the Jews who used poisons to infect the drinking water and for this reason the populace in Spain, Italy, France and Germany could not be restrained and slaughtered innumerable Jews in those provinces. They were punished by God, who cast them across the world like a ball. This is what Justin wrote in his Dialogue against Trypho: Per omnes partes dispersi sunt, vt testes sint iniquitatis suæ, & veritatis nostræ.3 Titus and Vespasian exiled them, as I have already said, from Jerusalem and they could not return there except with licences to do so. Those who did return did so as pilgrims, even though it was their homeland, and they shed many tears and bemoaned with sighs the destruction of the Temple. In order to be able to visit that place they paid a tribute. The Emperor Claudius threw them out of Rome like a ball in the ninth year of his reign, and fifty-one years after the death of Christ, because of their rebelliousness and many

1 Gonzalo de Illescas, Historia pontifical y catholica (Barcelona, 1602), II, fols. 18r-18v. 2 Pope Clement VI (1342–1352). 3 Justin Martyr (ad 100–165), also known as Saint Justin was an early Christian apologist and author of the Dialogue with Trypho (Dialogus cum Tryphone, originally in Greek), a polemical dialogue with a Jew intended to prove the veracity of Christianity’s claim to sup- plant Judaism as the true faith. The dialogue was usually printed in collected works by Justin Martyr, of which there were numerous editions in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Oddly, Fray Torrejoncillo appears to be in error and really referring to the doc- trine of the Jews as a ‘witness people’ elaborated by Saint Augustine of Hippo (ad 354–430) in his Enarrationes in Psalmos (Enarratio in Psalmum LVIII), where the phrase is rendered as “…per omnes gentes dispersi sunt Judaei, testes iniquitatis suæ et veritatis nostræ”. This Latin passage translates as: “The Jews were dispersed throughout the world so that they should bear witness to their iniquity and to our truth”.

118 chapter two other evil deeds. Hugh,4 Lyra5 and the Carthusian6 have reported that the Jews induced Agrippina, the wife of Claudius and over whom they had some influence, to judaize, as Orosius7 and Suetonius8 relate (this is also mentioned in chapter 18 of the Acts of the Apostles9). The Jews were expelled with great turmoil from Italy and Flanders. King Philip the Tall10 cast them out of France three times. The first time was because of the eleventh tax,11 by which they were destroying the kingdom and the follow- ing one due to their poisoning of wells to murder Christians. The one after that was because it was discovered that, in order to ridicule the person of Christ, they murdered a Christian child every year, crucifying him and inflicting upon him the same sufferings and injuries. The final and fourth time they were expelled by King Louis of France,12 a hundred years before their expulsion from Spain. The aforesaid king granted them thousands of presents and favours in the hope that they would abandon their blindness and obstinacy but he was not able persuade them and thus expelled four hundred and twenty-three thousand of them. Even the Muslims kicked them out in the year 1122.13 They were expelled from Spain by King Fernando and Queen Isabel in the year 1490 and twice from Portugal,

4 Hugh of Saint Cher (c. 1200–1263), a French Dominican monk and biblical commen- tator who became a papal legate in 1233 and a cardinal. See his Postillae in universea Biblia, juxta quadruplicem sensum litteralem, allegoricum, moralem, anagocicum (Lyon, 1645). 5 Nicholas of Lyra (c. 1270–1349) a Franciscan friar and noted biblical commentator. Also the author of the anti-Jewish work Pulcherrimae quaestiones Iudaicam perfidam in catholicam fide improbantes. 6 Denis the Carthusian (1402–1471) was a noted mystic and theologian in the Netherland who wrote a number of biblical commentaries. 7 Paulus Orosius (c. ad 375–c.418) was a priest and student of Saint Augustine of Hippo, chiefly famous for his influential book Historiarum Adversum Paganos (History against the Pagans) in seven books; The reference is to the seventh book of the History against the Pagans. 8 Gaius Suetonius Tranquillus, commonly known as Suetonius, was a Roman historian (c. ad 70–c.130). The reference is to his biography of Claudius (Claudius, 25.4). 9 Acts of the Apostles 18:2 incidentally refers to Claudius’ expulsion of the Jews from Rome as the background for the meeting of the Apostle Paul with Aquila and his wife Priscilla in the Greek town of Corinth. 10 King Philip IV of France (1285–1314). His sobriquet was actually ‘le Bel’ (the Fair). 11 The onzena, an eleven percent tax. 12 Torrejoncillo appears to make a mistake here, confusing King Louis X (1314–1316), who allowed the Jews to return to France in 1315, with King Charles VI (1380–1422), who decreed their final expulsion on 17 September 1394. The mistakes appear to have been copied from his unattributed source: Manuel dos Anjos, Sermaõ que pregou o Bispo de Fez D. Fr. Manoel dos Anjos no auto da fee que se celebrou na praça da cidade de Evora o primeiro de Abril de 1629. na quinta dominga de Quaresma (Évora, 1629), fol. 21r. 13 This is apparently a reference to the persecution of Jews by the Almoravid and Almohad dynasties in Islamic Spain and North Africa in the twelfth century.