“Give me one reason,” thundered the duke.
Zaki, during the night, had pondered half a dozen good reasons, but on the spur of the moment dismissed them all and said, “Because I have three daughters, Excellency, and like a good father I wish to marry them to Jewish men, whom I can find in Salonica.”
The duke considered this unexpected reasoning and began to laugh. “You have to find three husbands, Zaki?”
The rabbi said “Yes,” and sensing that he had enlisted the interest of the duke, added, “It’s not easy, Excellency. To find one good husband these days is not easy.”
“And you think that in Salonica …”
“Yes.”
The duke called in his younger brother, for whom he had obtained the appointment as Archbishop of Podi, and when that amiable prelate heard of Rabbi Zaki’s request to leave the city he did his best to quieten the Jew’s fears. “The duke commands here,” the archbishop reasoned, “and you should know that he will tolerate no act against his Jews.”
“I need you for my commerce,” the duke said.
“But I heard the friar say we were to be burned,” Zaki said. “I believe him.”
“That one?” the archbishop asked, laughing like a man recalling a pleasant day in the field. “You certainly know that my brother and I found his silly sermon as repugnant as you did, Zaki. Consider it only as a part of the Easter celebration and pay no more attention.”
“I cannot put it out of my mind. I am afraid.”
The tall archbishop summoned Zaki to the window and pointed toward the center of the piazza, where from a granite plinth rose a statue of the Duke of Podi astride a white stallion. The sculptor had caught the condottiere, sword in hand, at the moment of his conquest of Podi, and his manly bearing lent dignity and courage to the city he ruled. “Do you suppose a warrior like the duke would ever permit a preaching friar or even a Pope to determine his behavior?” The churchman laughed at the absurdity, but when Zaki repeated that he wanted to go, the archbishop shrugged his shoulders. “In Podi we hold no man against his will,” he said compassionately. “But regulations covering departures are administered by the friars,” and he sent for the very man who had preached the Lenten sermon.
The Dominican bowed to the duke, acknowledged the archbishop and looked with disgust at the Jew who defiled the ducal rooms. “He should not be allowed to leave,” the friar warned. “He was baptized a Christian and it’s abhorrent that he should join the Turk.”
“He’s determined,” the archbishop said, whereupon the Dominican asked for pen and paper and began listing the restrictions under which Zaki might depart: “He may take with him no papers proving that Christians owe him debts. Nor any books written or printed, no money minted in this state, no lists of names which might help the Turk, nor any instruments for the Christian sacraments. And at the pier, in view of all, he must kneel and kiss the New Testament, acknowledging its divine inspiration.”
When the terms of departure were agreed upon, the Duke of Podi signed the paper and in later years this fact would be remembered against him. The archbishop signed, too, and this was also recorded. Finally the Dominican thrust the document at the Jew, warning him, “If one item is transgressed, you may not depart.”
But Zaki had his permission, and in a kind of mysterious terror he fled the room where he had always been treated so justly by the duke and his brother, for he sensed the deepening of a tragedy whose outlines he only vaguely understood; but as he crossed the piazza on his way to talk with a ship captain about passage, he stopped at the marble statue of the condottiere and muttered a prayer, “May God, Who allowed you to conquer this city, allow you to keep it.”
Then, as he neared home, he began to sweat, for although he had convinced the duke, the archbishop, the friar and the ship captain, he still had to convince his wife, and this would prove most difficult of all. But on one point he felt not the slightest uncertainty: even though he knew that tragedy was about to engulf Podi, if his wife and daughters refused to flee with him he would have to remain with them. “Rachel is sometimes a trial,” he muttered to himself, “but no man can desert his wife. Besides, she’s given me three lovely daughters.” For her sake he prayed that he could persuade her to leave the city.
When he reached his shoemaker’s shop he tried to put on a look of firmness and he must have succeeded, for Rachel saw that a decision of moment was about to be announced.
“I’ve been to the duke’s,” he began.
“Yes?”
“And he has agreed to let us go.”
“Where?”
“I’ve also been to see the captain and he has agreed …”
“Where?”
“There’s no turning back, Rachel,” the fat rabbi pleaded. “Evil days are ahead in this city …”
“Where?” she screamed. “Salonica?”
“Yes,” he said bravely, raising his arms to fend off the attack that must take place.
To his surprise Rachel sat down. She breathed heavily, made no other sound and hid her face in her hands. After a while she gave a low sob and summoned her daughters from the other room. “We’re going to Salonica,” she announced softly, like the whisper of a volcano afraid to explode. The oldest girl, Sarah, gasped and her mother leaped from the chair. “Yes!” she shouted. “Your father’s taking us to Salonica!” The youngest child began to cry and Rachel slapped her. “We’re going to Salonica,” she shouted in a hysterical giggle. “You’re all going to marry Turks.” She collapsed in the chair; even the older girls began crying, whereupon she stormed about the room, shouting, “We’re going to Salonica, oh, my God!” Then she slapped each of the girls harshly and announced calmly, “We shall do as your father says. No one in this room will ever again argue about his decision.”
She kept her word. With demonic frenzy she applied herself to packing the family goods, but as she tied each parcel the Dominican friar would come to inspect it, reminding her that many of the things she wanted to take belonged, by agreement, to the Church. Once Zaki was afraid that Rachel would fly at the Dominican, but she patiently surrendered even the toys of her children. When the friar had completed his third scrutiny Rachel declared war, muttering, “Very well.” Digging up a secret hoard of forbidden gold pieces she sewed them adroitly into unlikely places, so that when the rabbi’s family was given its final searching she succeeded in smuggling so many coins that she could support the family for some years in its flight.
The Jews of Podi came to the pier to bid their frightened rabbi farewell, and to him they seemed like a necklace of beautiful pearls strung along the dock, causing tears to well up in his eyes as he listened to their farewells; fortunately he could not hear their whispers: “Look at our crazy rabbi. Lost his head because a whore pulled down his pants.” And then, like the shadow of death crossing the waves, a darkness came over Zaki’s vision and he saw his beloved congregation as it was to be. There stood fat Jacopo, who had been in the race, and he would be burned alive in 1556. Beside him stood thin Meir, a cherished friend who would be burned alive in 1555. There were the sisters Ruth and Zipporah; the elder would be burned alive in 1555, but the younger would die in prison almost torn apart by torture. There was also the gentle Josiah, who would die at the stake in 1556, but because he was dim-witted he would escape death by flame, because at the end he would say uncomprehendingly, “Of course I accept conversion,” and the executioner would mercifully strangle him before the fires began.
The cloud passed, and the doomed Jews stepped aside as the smiling Duke of Podi came onto the dock, crying, “Good-bye, Zaki. No one in Podi had bitterness against you. You’re being very stupid.” And one day this generous-hearted man would be humbled and hounded from his dominion because of the assistance he would give his Jews in their time of trial.
It would not be proper to claim that on this day in 1541 Zaki foresaw these precise events in the darkened faces of his friends, but he knew with a certainty that similar things were bound to h
appen. To no one could he confide, not even to his bewildered, faithful wife, the reasons for his insight: “If men repeat often enough their hatreds the evil comes to pass.” He looked at his dear friends, his lovely companions doomed in their goodness, and he wept.
His wife, ashamed of his latest display of cowardice, refused to weep. But as the ship started to move she cried hysterically, “We are going to Salonica.” During the first days of the tedious voyage she and her daughters kept to themselves, but when Muslim pirates threatened the ship she began to wail, “Is this what you are taking us to Salonica for?” And she made so much commotion that the captain bellowed “Rabbi, shut that woman up or I’ll let the pirates catch us.” Zaki went to his wife and pleaded, “Rachel, if we have escaped Italy, God will not abandon us to slavery now.” His wife looked at him with blank amazement and forgot the pirates: her husband was still talking gibberish, and she was so appalled to have married such a fool that she kept her mouth shut.
The pirates were outdistanced, but the ship was forced to land in northern Africa, where shoemakers were not needed and where Rachel and the girls had to work. And after many years they came to Safed.
2
On a cold, wintry morning in 1540 the citizens of Avaro in central Spain found on their doorsteps a printed broadsheet commanding them to report to the Holy Inquisition anyone who had publicly accepted baptism as a Christian and had then secretly continued to practice as a Jew. To aid informers in spying out this crime, a series of ingenious tests was provided:
Put before your neighbor morsels of food such as pork, rabbit and congers eels, and if he refuse to eat, he is a Jew.
Watch with great care everything your neighbor does on Friday. Does he put on fresh linen? Does he light candles at least an hour before honest men do? Does his wife clean the house that day? If you catch him doing these things, you have a Jew.
Go to your roof on Friday two hours before sundown and watch all the chimneys of the city. Any that stops smoking suddenly as the sun sets betrays a Jew. Run and catch his name.
When you visit your neighbor’s home spy out to see if he washes his hands more than most. When his wife kneads bread does she throw a small bit into the fire? If you detect any of these matters, report your neighbor at once, for he is a Jew.
In church does your neighbor, while professing to be a true man, rock his head back and forth and bend occasionally at the waist? Does he recite the Psalms like an honest man, then refuse at the end to repeat the Gloria Patri? Does he attend with special reverence whenever testimony from the Old Testament is mentioned? Does his tongue seem to gag in his mouth when he is called upon to recite the phrase, “Father, Son and Holy Ghost?” If he does any of these things, you have caught a Jew.
At Holy Communion watch your neighbor with redoubled vigilance. Does he swallow the wafer with forthright honesty like a true Christian, or does he try to hide it in his mouth for deliverance later to Satan? Or does he linger with it on his lips, then swallow it swiftly when he catches you looking at him? If he does either of these tricks, remember his name.
Be vigilant ever. If you are present when your neighbor dies, see if at his last breath he turns his face to the wall. When a son is born to your neighbor see if his wife delay for forty days before returning to normal life. Watch if the new child is called secretly by a name from the Old Testament. Try diligently to see if his son is circumcised. And inspect all that your neighbor does, because you may succeed in routing out a Jew, and if you triumph over this devil, great grace is yours.
A few days later the distinguished advisor to King Charles of Austria and Spain, Counselor Diego Ximeno, whose ancestors had for eleven hundred years lived in Spain as Jews, and for the last century as converts to Christianity, happened to choke as he was eating a piece of pork. Inadvertently he allowed the pork to fall to the floor, where, seeing it ruined, he absent-mindedly ground it into the dust with his heel. A jealous neighbor detected him doing these things and next day satisfied himself beyond question that Diego Ximeno was a secret Jew because he spotted the robust, handsome counselor washing his hands three times in the course of one day, whereas a believing man would not have done so.
Accordingly, this trusted friend went quietly to the office of the Inquisition and reported: “I have strong reason to suspect that Diego Ximeno is a Jew.” The Dominican in charge of recording accusations raised his eyebrows, for although in recent years some rather prominent citizens of Avaro had been caught in the nets of the Inquisition, no one of Diego Ximeno’s importance had yet been apprehended, and to catch a man of his dignity would bring the local office into national prominence. Senior officials of the Inquisition were therefore summoned and the informant was questioned avidly. “For some time,” he told them, “I have suspected Diego of being a secret Jew, but not until the paper arrived telling me what specifically to look for did I know how to trap him.”
The committee itself had a much longer list of ways to catch a Jew than the one which it had sponsored in print, and one by one these questions were put to the excited witness and he was led to review his years of friendship with the counselor, until all reached the conclusion that Diego Ximeno at one time or other had been guilty of almost every act that betrayed a secret Jew. It was safe for the informer to make his nebulous accusations, for under the codex of inquisitorial procedure he would never face the man he was condemning, nor would Ximeno ever be told who had informed against him or what had been the charge. At the end of several hours the priests conducting the interrogation thanked the neighbor, and when he was gone, concluded, “At last we have caught a truly great one. Honor is ours.”
That afternoon uniformed guards of the Inquisition marched to Ximeno’s office and without advising him of any particulars arrested him and hauled him away to a cramped, dirty subterranean cell, where he was kept in absolute silence for four months. The inquisitors knew that they must prepare their case against such a man with care, for even though he had had Jewish ancestors a hundred years ago he also had great influence with the court, and his arrest had already caused many horsemen to ride between Avaro and Vienna. Finally the Inquisition was ready to interrogate the prisoner, which it did with secrecy and solemnity, but since Ximeno was not told what the specific charges against him were, he confessed to nothing. On the second day no progress was made, nor on the third, so on the fourth the court convinced itself that in Diego Ximeno they had a secret Jew who was going to prove exceedingly difficult.
Accordingly, he was returned to solitary confinement, where he languished for the rest of 1540 and all of 1541, during which time he was required to pay substantial sums for his keep and for the marshaling of further evidence against him. Regardless of the eventual outcome of his trial he was being financially ruined, and he knew it.
The Avaro chapter of the Inquisition could afford to move so deliberately because of the significance of the work in which it was engaged. Before it became powerful in Spain the Inquisition had been in existence as a necessary arm of the Church, for some six or seven centuries, during which it had served to protect Christianity from numerous heresies. For the first half-thousand years of its operation it had been a generally benign office, but with the ascendancy of Tomás de Torquemada as Inquisitor-General of Spain and his elevation of the Inquisition to a position independent of both Pope and emperor, the policing powers of the body had degenerated into a kind of panic and terror: in a period of seventeen years, some 120,000 of Spain’s inquisitive intellectuals were killed. And then, with Torquemada dead and the Faith apparently secure against false movements, a time was reached when the terror could be relaxed, but at this moment Martin Luther in Germany launched the most dangerous heresy of all, so that even a fool could see that the true Christian Church was imperiled by Protestantism. What was almost as disturbing, certain Christians like Erasmus of Rotterdam were writing books that cunningly mocked the Church, and as if this danger were not enough, Jewish families who had some centuries before accepted baptism into
Christianity were discovered to be secretly adhering to old Judaic rites. Thus the Church was beset from without and from within, and only the Inquisition, superior even to the Pope, could hope to root out the heresies, burn the incriminating books and track down the Lutherans and the secret Jews.
The official figures for the Inquisition of Avaro illustrate the Church’s response to the peril it faced. In the two centuries before the arrival of Torquemada, Avaro beheaded only four persons, and these were grievous enemies of the Church who refused to recant gross sin. But from 1481 to 1498, under the whip of Torquemada, the Avaro judges executed eleven thousand heretics. In the quiet period that followed, the number dropped to less than twenty a year, but in 1517, with the appearance of Luther as a mortal threat and with the influx of works by Erasmus, the number of executions rose sharply.
It is significant that in this period of sixty years, from 1481 to 1541, not a single professed Jew was executed by the Avaro Inquisition. If any man, upon arrest, could say boldly, “I am a Jew and have always been known as one,” he was banished from the realm, but he was not burned. The Spanish Church had to despise him and send him on those mournful wanderings which the New Testament had predicted, but it never touched him. At the same time, however, the Avaro Inquisition had rooted out some eight thousand people whose families had once been Jews but who had converted to Christianity, accepting baptism and full membership in the Church while secretly continuing to practice Jewish rites. And of these eight thousand faithless ones more than six thousand had been burned alive. There was the girl Maria del Iglesia, whose family had been Christian for three centuries, who fell in love with the young man Raimundo Calamano and in a moment of courtship confidence confessed to him that she and her family observed Passover: he ran straight to the Inquisition, and three days before she was to marry, troops broke into the Del Iglesia home to find forty-one Jews eating matzoth, and all were burned alive. There was the renowned scholar Tomás de Salamanca, who taught the youth of Avaro, and one day his nine-year-old son burst into the street, shouting, “My father whipped me. He fasts on Yom Kippur.” So after investigations extending over a period of seven years, sixty-three close associates of Tomás had to be burned alive. What was especially frightening was the fact that among the confessed Jews were seventeen nuns who had held Jewish rituals in their convent, thirty monks, seven priests and two bishops. The Church was being dangerously corrupted from within, and only the most painstaking investigation could protect it. For that reason the case against Diego Ximeno, counselor to the king, moved slowly.
The Source: A Novel Page 94
