Page:Littell's Living Age - Volume 133.djvu/141

Rh and the anathema of excommunication was fulminated against the obstinate infidel from the pulpit of the synagogue.

Many curious accounts of the institution of excommunication as practised by the Jews of that time are extant; and the student is generally refreshed in his journey over the abstract wastes of philosophy by the narration of a scene that might fittingly have been invented for an opéra comique. In the handsome old Portuguese synagogue of Amsterdam an awestruck crowd is assembled.


 * The ceremony begins by the lighting of numbers of black wax candles and the opening of the tabernacle in which the books of the law are kept. The chantre, from an elevated place, intones with a loud, lugubrious voice the words of execration, whilst another chantre winds a horn — or a cornet, called in Hebrew sophar. The black wax candles are held downwards, so that their wax falls drop by drop into a vat full of blood. The people, filled with holy horror and with sacred rage at the sight of this sombre spectacle, cry, Amen, with a furious voice that testifies to their belief that they would be rendering service to God if they were to tear the excommunicate to pieces, which they would no doubt do if they met with him in that moment, or on coming out of the synagogue.

But Lucas expressly states that the melodramatic accessories of horn, and candles dripping into the blood-vat, were not observed in the case of Spinoza, who was not accused of blasphemy (a crime which is punished with the above-described species of anathema), but only of contempt for Moses and the law; for which the ceremony of excommunication consisted in the simple reading of the anathema. This of itself may, perhaps, be considered sufficiently melodramatic. The document is important as well as curious; we therefore translate it in full. It bears the date of the 6th day of the month Ab, in the year 5416, that is to say, the 16th July, 1656. It is written as follows —


 * The herem that was given forth of the Sanctuary on the 6th day of the month Ad, against.


 * The Masters of the Ecclesiastical Council make known to you that, having long had knowledge of the bad opinions and of the bad works of Baruch de Espinoza, they have carefully studied by various ways and promises to draw him back from his bad ways; and being nothing able to remedy the same, but, on the contrary, getting daily fresh notification of the horrible heresies that he practised and taught, and of the enormous works that he wrought (ynormes obras que obrava); and finding many witnesses, worthy to be believed, of these things, who deposed and testified in the presence of the said Espinosa, who was by them convicted: after due consideration of all things, in the presence of the Lords of the Wise Men (dos SSrs. Hahamim), have determined, with their assent, that the said Espinoza shall be anathema and separated from the nation of Israel, as they now declare in the Herem, with the Herem following (como actualmente o poni em Herem, com o Herem sequinte): —


 * By the sentence of the Angels, by the sentence of the Saints, we anathematize, separate, and curse and execrate Baruch de Espinoza, with the consent of the Ecclesiastical Tribunal, and with the consent of all that holy community before the holy Sepharim, with their six hundred and thirteen precepts that are written in them, with the Herem with which Joshua cursed Jericho, with the malediction with which Elisha cursed the children, and with all the maledictions that are written in the law: cursed be he by day and cursed be he by night, cursed be he in his sleeping and cursed be he in his uprising, cursed in his going out and cursed in his entering in; may the Lord refuse to know him, may the fury of the Lord and his jealousy be hot after that man, and lay upon him all the maledictions that are written in the Book of the Law; and may the Lord blot out his name from beneath the heavens, and may the Lord separate him for evil from all the tribes of Israel, with all the maledictions of the firmament that are written in the Book of the Law; and you, cleaving to the Lord your God, may you have life!


 * But take notice, that none may speak with him by mouth, none by writing, none show him any favor, none be under the same roof with him, none within the distance of four ells from him, none read any document made or written by him.

A smile involuntarily rises as we read this breathless cursing, and we think of Mr. Shandy and of Dr. Slop, of Trim and of Uncle Toby, and his "For my own part, I could not have the heart to curse a dog so." On the lips of the outcast thinker it must have produced a harder, bitterer curl. Spinoza changed his Jewish name of Baruch for the Christian one of Benedict. Very willingly withdrawing from the society of those of his race, he found friends both sympathetic and generous amongst the Gentiles. Of his family — of those, that is, who if the ties of blood are to be anything but fetters, ought to have been forthcoming as a help and a