I have several times gone abroad to preach the gospel to the Saracens; I have, for the sake of the faith, been cast into prison and scourged; I have laboured forty-five years to gain over the shepherds of the church and the princes of Europe to the common good of Christendom. Now I am old and poor, but still I am intent on the same object. I will persevere in it till death, if the Lord himself permits it." He sought to found, in Pisa and Genoa, a new order of spiritual knights, who should be ready, at a moment's warning, to go to war with the Saracens, and for the recovery of the Holy Sepulchre. He succeeded in exciting an interest in favour of his plan, and in obtaining letters to pope Clement the Fifth, in which this matter was recommended to the head of the church. Pious women and noblemen in Genoa offered to contribute the sum of thirty thousand guilders for this object. He proceeded with these letters to visit pope Clement the Fifth at Avignon; but his plan met with no encouragement from that pontiff. He next appeared as a teacher at Paris, and attacked with great zeal the principles of the philosophy of Averroes, and the doctrine it taught respecting the opposition between theological and philosophical truth.* Meanwhile, the time having arrived for the assembling of the general council of Vienne, A.D. 1311, he hoped there to find a favourable opportunity for carrying into effect the plan which for so long a time had occupied his thoughts. He was intent on accomplishing three objects: first, the institution of those linguistic missionary schools, of which we have spoken on a former page; secondly, the union of the several orders of spiritual knights in a single one, which would not rest till the promised land was recovered; thirdly, a speedy adoption of successful measures for checking the progress of the principles of Averroes. To secure this latter object, men of suitable intellectual qualifications should be invited to combat those principles, and he himself composed a new work for this purpose. The first he actually obtained from the pope. An ordinance was passed for the establishment of professorships of the Oriental languages; advising that, in order to promote the conversion of

His Lamentatio seu expostulatio philosophiæ s. duodecim principia philosophiæ, dedicated to the king of France, which he composed at Paris, in 1310, is directed against the Averroists.

96

RAYMUND'S RETURN TO AFRICA, AND DEATH.

the Jews and the Saracens, professional chairs should be established for the Arabic, Chaldee, and Hebrew languages in all cities where the papal court resided, and also at the universities of Paris, Oxford, and Salamanca. He now could not bear the thought of spending the close of his life at ease in his native land, to which he had returned for the last time. He desired nothing more than to offer up his life in the promulgation of the faith. Having spoken, in one of his works, of natural death, which he ascribed to the diminution of animal warmth, says he, "Thy servant would choose, if it please thee, not to die such a death: he would prefer that his life should end in the glow of love, as thou didst, in love, offer up thy life for us.' "Thy servant," says he, "is ready to offer up himself, and to pour out his blood for thee. May it please thee, therefore, ere he comes to die, so to unite him to thyself that he, by meditation and love, may never be separated from thee." On the 14th of August, 1314, he crossed over, once more, to Africa. Proceeding to Bugia, he laboured there, at first, secretly, in the small circle of those whom, during his last visit to that place, he had won over to Christianity. He sought to confirm their faith, and to advance them still farther in Christian knowledge. In this way he might no doubt have continued to labour quietly for some time, but he could not resist the longing after martyrdom. He stood forth publicly, and declared that he was the same person whom they had once banished from the country, and exhorted the people, threatening them with divine judgments if they refused, to abjure Mohammedanism. He was fallen upon by the Saracens with the utmost fury. After having been severely handled, he was dragged out of the city, and, by the orders of the king, stoned to death. Merchants from Majorca obtained permission to extricate the body of their countryman from the heaps of stones under which it lay buried, and they conveyed it back, by ship, to their native land. The 30th of June, 1315, was the day of his martyrdom.†

*The words of Raymund, in his work De Contemplatione, c. cxxx. Distinct. 27, f. 299: "Homines morientes præ senectute moriuntur per defectum caloris naturalis et per excessum frigoris et ideo tuus servus et tuus subditus, si tibi placeret, non vellet mori tali morte, imo vellet mori præ amoris ardore, quia tu voluisti mori tali morte."

We cannot in this place go back to the reports of contemporaries,

RELATION OF THE JEWS TO CHRISTIANITY.

97

We must now cast a glance at the relation of the dispersed Jews to the Christian church.

As it regards the Jews, who were scattered in great numbers in the West, it is to be remarked that the frequent oppressions, injuries, and persecutions which they had to suffer from the fanaticism and cupidity of so-called Christians, were not well calculated to open their minds to the preaching of the gospel; though, through fear, and to escape the sufferings or the death with which they were threatened, they might be induced to submit to the form of baptism, and to put on the profession of Christianity.* Hermann, a monk of the twelfth century, from the monastery of Kappenberg, in Westphalia, who himself had been converted from Judaism to Christianity, speaking, in the history which he has given of his own conversion, of the praiseworthy conduct of an ecclesiastic, from whom, when a Jew, he had met with kindly treatment, goes on to say-"Let those who read my account imitate this illustrious example of love, and instead of despising and abhorring the Jews, as some are wont to do, let them, like genuine Christians, that is, followers of him who prayed for those that crucified him, go forth and meet them with brotherly love. For since, as our Saviour says, 'salvation cometh of the Jews' (John iv. 22), and as the apostle Paul testifies, 'through their fall salvation is come unto the Gentiles' (Romans xi. 11), it is a worthy return, and well pleasing to God, when Christians labour, so far as it lies in their power, for the salvation of those from whom they have received the author of their salvation, Jesus Christ. And if they are bound to extend their love even to those from whom they suffer wrong, how much more bound are they to show it to those through whom the greatest of all blessings has been derived to them? Let them, therefore, so far as they can, cherish but in the later accounts are to be found differences. According to one of them, he met his death in Tunis; according to another, he first went to Tunis, and afterwards proceeded to Bugia. If we may believe one account, the merchants, after having uncovered him from the heap of stones, found a spark of life still remaining; they succeeded in fanning this slumbering spark to the point of reanimation, but he died on board ship, when in sight of his native land.

In the first crusade, the Jews in Rouen were, without distinction of sex or age, barred up in a church, and all who refused to receive baptism murdered. See Guibert. Novigentens. de vita sua, 1. II. c. v.

VOL. VII.

H

98

SPREAD OF FALSE REPORTS ABOUT THE JEWS.

their love for this people, helping them in their distresses, and setting them an example of all well-doing, so as to win by their example those whom they cannot persuade by their words, for example is really more effectual than words in producing conviction. Let them, also, send up fervent prayers to the Father of mercies, if peradventure God may one day give that people repentance to the acknowledging of the truth, 2 Timothy ii. 25." By means of the only business allowed to them, in their state of oppression, traffic and usury, they acquired great wealth; thereby sometimes attaining to great influence, even with monarchs; but this wealth also excited the cupidity of the great, and exposed them to be still more hated and persecuted.* The fanaticism awakened by the crusades was often directed against the Jews, as the domestic enemies of the Cross; and hundreds, nay thousands, fell victims to such animosity. Rumours became current against the Jews, of the same description as have prevailed at all times against religious sects persecuted by popular hatred; as, for example, against the first Christians, who were charged with such crimes as flattered the credulous fanaticism of the populace. It was said that they stole Christian children for their passover festival, and, after having crucified them with all imaginable tortures, used their entrails for magical purposes.† If a boy, especially near the time of the feast of Passover, was missed by his friends, or if the corpse of a boy, concerning whose death nothing certain was known, happened to be found, suspicion lighted at once upon the Jews of the district where the accident had occurred. Men could easily discover what they were intent on finding-marks of the tortures which had been inflicted on the sufferers. It might doubtless happen, too, that enemies of the Jews, or those who gloated on their wealth, would disfigure the discovered bodies, in order to

*The Jew introduced in Abelard's dialogue concerning the supreme good, inter philosophum, Judæum, et Christianum, observes, in drawing a lively picture of the wretched situation of the Jews: "Unde nobis præcipue superest lucrum, ut alienigenis fœnerantes, hinc miseram sustentemus vitam, quod nos quidem maxime ipsis efficit invidiosos, qui se in hoc plurimum arbitrantur gravatos." See this tract, published by Prof. Rheinwald, p. 11.

In the historical work of Matthew of Paris are to be found many stories relating to persecutions of the Jews, which had been provoked by the circulation of such fables.

SPREAD OF FALSE REPORTS ABOUT THE JEWS.

99

lend the more plausibility to the accusations brought against Jews. Hence a boy so found might sometimes be honoured by the people as a martyr, and become the hero of a wonderful story.* The most extravagant of such tales might find credence in the existing tone of public sentiment, and seem to be confirmed by an investigation begun with prejudice and conducted in a tumultuary manner. If, at the commencement of such movements, wealthy Jews betook themselves to flight, when they foresaw, as they must have foreseen, the disastrous issue to themselves, this passed for evidence of their guilt and of the truth of the rumours.† If twenty-five knights affirmed, on their oath, that the arrested Jews were guilty of the abominable crime, this sufficed to set the matter beyond all doubt, and to authorize the sentence of death.‡ Whoever interceded in behalf of the unfortunate victims, exposed himself by so doing to the popular hatred, which looked upon all such pity as suspicious. Thus, in the year 1256, pious Franciscans in England, who were not to be deterred by the force of the prevailing delusion, ventured to take the part of certain Jews, accused of some such abominable crime, that were languishing in prison, and they succeeded in procuring their release and saving their lives; but now these monks, who had acted in the spirit of Christian benevolence, were accused of having allowed themselves to be bribed by money.§ Thus they lost the good opinion of the lower class of people, who ever after refused to give them alms.||

These pious monks, and also the most influential men of the church, protested against such unchristian fanaticism. When the abbot Bernard of Clairvaux was rousing up the

* See Matth. of Paris, at the year 1244. Ed. London, 1686, f. 567. In the case here in question, men were forced to allow, that five wounds could in nowise be made out in the corpse discovered.

† See 1. c.

See the account given by the above-cited historian, at the year 1256, f. 792.

§ The above historian, Matthew of Paris, otherwise a violent enemy of the mendicant monks, says, however, of this accusation: "Ut perhibet mundus, si mundo in tali casu credendum est." He himself only finds fault with the interposition of those Franciscans, since it is his opinion that those Jews had deserved death; but he honours in the Franciscans their compassion, and their charitable hope that these Jews might still, sometime or other, be converted. A.D. 1256, f. 792.