Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. I.djvu/379

235 THE INQUISITION. 235 By the middle of the fifteenth century, the Albi- chapter . Vll. gensian heresy had become nearly extirpated by the Inquisition of Aragon ; so that this infernal engine might have been suffered to sleep undis- turbed from want of sufficient fuel to keep it in motion, when new and ample materials were dis- covered in the unfortunate race of Israel, on whom the sins of their fathers have been so unsparingly visited by every nation in Christendom, among whom they have sojourned, almost to the present century. As this remarkable people, who seem to have preserved their unity of character unbroken, amid the thousand fragments into which they have been scattered, attained perhaps to greater consid- eration in Spain than in any other part of Europe, and as the efforts of the Inquisition were directed principally against them during the present reign, it may be well to take a brief review of their pre- ceding history in the Peninsula. Under the Visigothic empire the Jews multiplied Retrospec- " ■*• ■*■ live view o exceedingly in the country, and were permitted to gpJl"^'^ '" acquire considerable power and wealth. But no sooner had their Arian masters embraced the ortho- dox faith, than they began to testify their zeal by pouring on the Jews the most pitiless storm of per- secution. One of their laws alone condemned the whole race to slavery ; and Montesquieu remarks, side of the breast ; to attend mass ing, and tioenty times at midnight " / every day, if he had the means of (Ibid. chap. 4.) If the said Ro^er doing so, and vespers on Sundays failed in any of the above requisi- and festivals ; to recite the service tions, he was to be burnt as a for the day and the night, and to relapsed heretic ! This was the repeat the pater noster seven times encouragement held out by St. in the day, ten times in the even- Dominic to penitence.