Page:Short Treatise on God, Man and His Wellbeing.djvu/49

Rh views in a book published in 1623. Da Costa replied, in 1624, with a treatise which was very confused, and which, while accusing de Silva of slander against the author, actually reiterated those heresies. Partly from fear that an outcry might be raised against the Jews as promulgators of heresy, the Jewish authorities excommunicated Uriel da Costa, and as a kind of official repudiation of all responsibility for him, they communicated the facts to the civil authorities, who thereupon imprisoned him, fined him, and ordered his book to be burned. Shunned by Jews and Christians alike, da Costa found his existence very lonely and intolerable, and in 1633 he made up his mind, as he said, &quot;to become an ape among apes,&quot; and made his peace with the Synagogue. But he soon got quite reckless again, and was excommunicated a second time. Again he grew weary of his isolation, and once more he approached the Synagogue authorities for the removal of the ban. Determined not to be duped again, yet reluctant to repel him absolutely, they imposed hard conditions on him. He submitted to the conditions—he recanted his sins publicly in the Synagogue, received thirty-nine lashes, and lay prostrate on the threshold of the Synagogue while the congregation stepped over him as they passed out. It was a cruel degradation. And so heavily did his humiliation weigh on his mind that he committed suicide soon afterwards. This happened in 1640, and Spinoza must have remembered the scandal.

If the Jewish community in Amsterdam felt it necessary to repudiate, in such drastic manner, their responsibility for Uriel da Costa's heresies, so as to avoid giving offence to their Christian neighbours, there was every reason why they should feel even greater discomfort on account of Spinoza's heresies in 1656. It was a critical period in the annals of Jewish history. During the Muscovite and Cossack invasion of Poland (1654-1656) entire Jewish communities were