Page:History of the Reign of Ferdinand and Isabella the Catholic Vol. II.djvu/176

152 152 EXPULSION OF THE JEWS. PART action, in this case, than the spirit of religious — '■ — bigotry, which led to a similar expulsion of the Jews from England, France, and other parts of Europe, as well as from Portugal, under circum- stances of peculiar atrocity, a few years later. ^^ Indeed, the spirit of persecution did not expire with the fifteenth century, but extended far into the more luminous periods of the seventeenth and eighteenth ; and that, too, under a ruler of the en- larged capacity of Frederic the Great, whose in- tolerance could not plead in excuse the blindness of fanaticism. ^° How far the banishment of the Jews was conformable to the opinions of the most enlightened contemporaries, may be gathered from the encomiums lavished on its authors from more than one quarter. Spanish writers, without excep- tion, celebrate it as a sublime sacrifice of all tem- poral interests to religious principle. The best instructed foreigners, in like manner, however they may condemn the details of its execution, or com- miserate the sufferings of the Jews, commend the 19 The Portuguese government ropa Portuguesa, torn. ii. p. 496.) caused all children of fourteen Mr. Turner has condensed, with years of age, or under, to be taken his usual industry, the most es- from their parents and retained in sential chronological facts relative the country, as fit subjects for a to modern Jewish history, into a Christian education. The distress note contained in the second volume occasioned by this cruel provision of his History of England, pp. 114 may be well imagined. Many of - 120. the unhappy parents murdered their 2o They were also ejected from children to defeat the ordinance; Vienna, in 16G9. The illiberal, and many laid violent hands on and indeed most cruel legislation themselves. Faria y Sousa coolly of Frederic II., in reference to his remarks, that " It was a great mis- Jewish subjects, transports us back take in King Emanuel to tliink of to the darkest periods of the Visi- converting any Jew to Christianity, gotliic monarchy. The reader will old enough to pronounce the name find a summary of these enactments of Moses!" lie fi.ves three years in the third volume of Milman's of a?e as the utmost limit. (Eu- agreeable History of the Jews.