A. C. 1381.] CHARLES II. 323 The bility and people. During the administration of the Duke of Anjou, a tumult took place, arising out of the heavy burthens of the people. nobles cried aloud for the expulsion of the Jews; the people wreaked their rage partly on the archives where their debts were registered, partly on the Jews, who were pillaged and slain, their children torn from their mother's arms, and carried to the churches to be baptized. The strong arm of authority allayed for a time, but could not suppress the brooding storm of popular emotion. During the early part of the reign of Charles the Sixth, the Jews were treated with equity and consideration; in the frequent disputes which arose about the registering and recovery of their debts, they obtained equal justice; in one respect alone they were unfortunate-they were withdrawn from the special jurisdiction of the king, and submitted to the ordinary tribunals. But the distresses of the country still increased; with the distresses, the difficulty of obtaining money: every order lay at the mercy of the money-lender. But former calamities did not teach the Jews moderation; regardless that they were arraying against themselves both nobles and people, they went on accumulating their perilous riches, till, like a thunderclap, the fatal edict burst upon them, commanding them once more to evacuate the kingdom, though on milder terms, with the liberty of receiving all debts due to them, and of selling their property. The cause of this change in the royal policy is probably to be sought in the malady of the unhappy king. His confessor was perpetually at his ear, urging to the disordered and melancholy monarch the sin of thus protecting an accursed people from the miseries to which they were deservedly doomed by the wrath of God. The nobles hated them as debtors, the people as fanatics. The queen was won over, and the advice of those few wise counsellors who represented the danger of depriving the country of the industry of such a thriving and laborious community, was overborne by more stern advisers. An accusation made without proof against the Jews of Paris, of the murder of a convert to the Church, aggravated the popular fury. Four of the most wealthy were Scourged two successive Sundays in all the cross roads of Paris, and bought their lives at the price of 18,000 francs. The rest were allowed a month to wind up their affairs, and the whole Jewish community crossed for the last time the borders of France, for a long and an indefinite period of banishment. The history of the German Jews during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries displays the same. dreary picture of a people, generally sordid, sometimes opulent, holding their wealth and their lives on the most precarious tenure. No fanatic monk set the populace in commotion, no public calamity took place, no atrocious or extravagant report was propagated, but it fell upon the heads of this unhappy caste. Fatal tumults were caused by the march of the Flagellants, a set of mad enthusiasts, who passed through the cities of Germany, preceded by a crucifix, and scourging their naked and bleeding backs as they went, as a punishment for their own offences and those of the Christian world. These fanatics atoned, as they supposed, rather than aggravated their sins against the God of A. C. 1370.] STORY OF THE HOST IN BRUSSELS. -- 325 op Mercy, by plundering and murdering the Jews in Franckfort and other places. The same dark stories were industriously propagated, readily believed, and ferociously avenged, of fountains poisoned, children crucified, the Host stolen and outraged. The power of their liege lord and emperor, even when exerted for their protection, was but slightly respected and feebly enforced, especially where every province and almost every city had or claimed an independent jurisdiction. Still, persecuted in one city, they fled to another, and thus spread over the whole of Germany, Silesia, Brandenburg, Bohemia, Lithuania, and Poland pressed by the nobles, anathematized by the clergy, hated as rivals in trade by the burghers in the commercial cities, despised and abhorred by the populace. Of the means by which the general hatred was exasperated and kept alive, we will select one legend, (the story has its parallel in almost every country,) which is commemorated, to their infinite shame, in the enlightened city of Brussels to the present day, by a solemn procession of the clergy and the exposition of the Host. It is taken from a book regularly reprinted and sold, and which all faithful members of the Church are directed to receive as undoubted truth, because "charity believeth all things!!"-A Jew, named Jonathan of Enghien, desired to possess himself of the consecrated Host in order to treat it with the sacrilegious insult by which that impious race delight in showing their hatred to Christianity. He applied to one John of Louvain, whose poverty could not resist the bribe of sixty golden coins, called moutons d'or. John mounted by night into the chapel of St. Catherine, stole the pix with its sacred contents, and conveyed it to Jonathan. The Jew, triumphant in his iniquity, assembled his friends, when they blasphemed the Host in the most impious manner, but abstained from piercing it with their knives till the approaching Good Friday. In the mean time, on account of the murder of their son, Jonathan's wife persuaded him to migrate to Brussels. There the Host was borne into the synagogue, treated with the grossest insult, then pierced with knives. The blood poured forth profusely, but the obdurate Jews, unmoved by the miracle, dispersed tranquilly to their homes. Having done this, they resolved to send their treasure to Cologne. They made choice of a woman, unfortunately for them, secretly converted to the Catholic faith, as the bearer. Her poverty but not her will consented: but during the night, seized with remorse of conscience, she determined to denounce the crime to the clergy. The consequences may be anticipated: all the Jews were arrested, put to the torture, convicted, condemned to be torn by red-hot pincers, and then burned alive. The picture of their sufferings as they writhed on the stake is exhibited with horrid coolness, or rather satisfaction, in the book of the legend. And this triumph of the faith, supported, it is said, by many miracles, is to the present day commemorated in one of the first Christian cities in Europe. |