Zawis and Kunigunde/Chapter 16
CHAPTER XVI.
MARRIAGE EMBASSY TO HUNGARY.
During this long interval Solomon and Don Abraham had been engaged, the one in embassies among his brethren in Poland, Hungary and Russia, and partly in directing the travels of Spanish Jews, who found Spain utterly uninhabitable by men of their race. By means of merchants already established in Russia Solomon effected exchanges whereby considerable sums escaped from the inquisitional search of the Castilian authorities, who proved themselves far more truculent than those of Aragon. The other exerted himself in establishing a connection, by way of the Volga and the Caspian on one side, and the’ trade routes from Barcelona through Dalmatia on the other, between the many wanderers of his race who passed eastward from Spain, and joining men of the same faith in the orient spread a knowledge of the condition of Europe, the means of entry, and the furious fanaticism prevalent there, among the now restless and conquering hordes that had begun the final movement from the confines of Turcomania and Tartary. Returning at this time in order to escort his family to a friendly shelter accorded to him among the Kharesmians, he decided to pay a final visit to his friends in Moravia.
Zawis resolved to avail himself of the mediation of Solomon, Don Abraham, and his brother Witek in the negotiation he had just commenced with Ladislaus of Hungary forthe hand of his youngest sister Judith. This princess had entered a convent; but as in the case of Otakar, the vows assumed presented no obstacle to an offer of marriage from so distinguished a suitor. It was known also at that period that Ladislaus suffered from a cutaneous affection, then extremely common, for which local practitioners could suggest no cure, especially as the study of medicine had beer severly proscribed under ban of the kingdom as well as the church. Ladislaus exhibited an irritability of temper, and impatience of contradiction that rendered him easily influenced by appeals to excess of severity.[1] For this reason Solomonm Don Abraham and Witek determined to assume all their dignity. No other men in Europe could command more courtly demeanor, more royal self-carriage, and more diplomatic learning and address. Abraham, himself a member of one of the most cultivated and exalted reigning families, who had augmented the splendor of Cordova; Solomon, a rabbi of the rabbis, of the school that had shed infinite luster on the science of Spain; and Witek, a knight unstained in honor, and not surpassed in grave discourse even by his brother, formed an embassy by whose presence Ladislaus felt himself abashed. The foremost position necessarily fell to Witek as the personal representative of his brother; to Abraham and Solomon fell such a share as their wisdom might suggest.
Ladislaus received this deputation in the midst of a retinue of the most heterogeneous character and appearance. Abraham, clad in his full robes with aigrette and plume, advanced at the head of the cavalcade. His charger, an Arab of descent that might be from the stud of King Solomon, proudly represented the symmetry, gentleness, and endurance of the noblest in Arabia. Witek, in full knight’s armor, bearing his shield and cognizance with sash of white and scarlet silk, came next; and then rode his escort, consisting of twelve stout men at arms, every man a bronzed veteran who had followed Otakar from Kressenbrünn to Remove and the Baltic, and had seen alike the flight of the Hungarians, Cumanians, and Prussians, and sometimes of the Teutonic brethren also, who found the blue eyes and fair hair of the sons of Pogesania not unaccompanied by stalwart arms and keen military perception.
In the rear rode Solomon on a Spanish mule, his quiet demeanor and professional garb denoting his character as a student. The cortege reproduced in all particulars the elements of an oriental embassy of the first rank, the prince, the knight, and the statesman.
Ladislaus very ceremoniously acknowledged the honor done to his sister and his house, and the dignity of the princely nobleman who had commissioned the embassy. Abraham and Solomon, accustomed to the stately splendor of Cordova, the wealth of taste and ornament in its palaces, the profusion of art in accessories and embellishments, the combined utility and beauty of aqueduct and fountain, and the splendor of coloring in the habiliments even of the poorest, that shone out even where soiled and worn, felt a momentary thrill of pride, at observing, as now they did for the first time with keen ferception because their thoughts assumed that direction, the contrast presented between the royal surroundings of the king of Hungary and the wonders their people had conferred on Spain, that despised and mutilated them.
Witek explained his embassy formally. “My brother, the Lord Zawis,” he said, “seeks an alliance with the illustrious house of Hungary. He desires thus to testify at once his confidence in the royal family of which your highness is the royal chief, and his personal devotion to the excellent and virtuous lady whose hand he solicits.”
“Permit me,” added Abraham “to add my personal tribute of respect and admiration for the distinguished nobleman whom I have the honor, in part, to represent. His character and his career are alike illustrious in wisdom, virtue, and patriotism. He has long nobly and with miarked success ruled a nation requiring allthe dignity of self-possession, all the skill of statesmanship, and all the patience of true courage to control. He has evoked order out of extreme confusion; he has created prosperity where he found only poverty and ruin; and he has placed his country on an elevation to be respected and trusted, after it had been prostrated by enemies of whom your highness is by no means the least in power and courage. His personal character is exhibited by the preference accorded to him by the distinguished queen whom he has lost; and he believes he sees in the princess whom he solicits a worthy successor of the amiable lady whom his country still deplores.”
Abraham’s diplomatic purpose extended beyond the marriage alliance. It included also a deeper meaning; and as such Ladislaus interpreted his address. To Solomon, for the present, fell the more prosaic duty of assuring the king that Bohemia and Moravia were absolutely free from epidemic; that peace and revived prosperity encouraged domestic industries; and that repose seemed to portend a happy residence at Fürstenberg, should the king accept the very friendly overture now made.”
Ladislaus replied that he felt flattered by the request presented for his sister’s hand.
“I am especially honored,” he added, “by the illustrious embassy that my brother Zawis has commissioned; and I return to your highness,—to your excellent valor,—and to your scholarly wisdom, my profound acknowledgment for the conspicuous courtesy with which you have honored my court, and the exalted sentiments and polished language which you have spoken. That you considered such commendation of your illustrious chief appropriately presented to me demands my grateful thanks for the compliment it implies, that I am a person to whom such sentiments and such expression of them could rightfully and worthily be addressed. Permit me to add, that I trust three such distinguished personages will deign to favor me still further, with the expression of your wise counsel, so soon as we can have provided such entertainment as is fitting.”
The best resources of Hungary furnished a royal banquet; and Ladislaus had acquired sufficient knowledge of Jewish and Islamite abhorrence of the forbidden quadruped carefully to banish every, even indirect viand of that quality from the bountiful repast. “Pardon our national custom,” said Ladislaus, in having his first measure of wine poured. “I drink to your best health, highness, and valiant lords and gentlemen.”
Abraham and Solomon permitted a portion of wine to be set before each of them; and as Ladislaus drank to their health they raised the cup to their lips, allowing the wine barely to touch, but did not taste. This concession, the highest compliment they could offer, afforded Ladislaus and Witek perfect gratification; as on this point alone they had apprehended a slight fissure in the otherwise firm and placid surface of friendly harmony. Ladislaus and his lords were prepared, in perfect candor, to accept such expression of statesmanship as their guests might be pleased to present.
“Your highness,” said Ladislaus, “has traveled and observed in the east, and west, and south. From the north at present I anticipate nothing. Perhaps you will favor us with your judgment of the political prospects of those countries, and of the cause of them.”
“Your royal courtesy,” replied Abraham, “will permit me to dispose myself, according to the gravity of this occasion, in the attitude I find most consonant to discourse.” He then seated himself on a large cushioned divan, after his national custom. Then bending his head a little, and stroking his long black beard with his left hand, the prince said:
“I have observed, among the nations that I am familiar with, that the complex principle which we call humanity can be successfully addressed only in part to a race that could not develop the same principle to an equal degree for itself.
“An isolated race, like the Tatars, acquires one idea in great intensity, usually that of extreme hostility to strangers, in order to preserve its own isolation. Conversely, the people that develops a passion for inflicting death as a penalty for opinions that it dislikes, exhibits therein a descent towards barbarism. The passion itself has its origin in sources allied to savagery.
“An inferior race, receiving from another more advanced an idea higher than it had developed for itself, intensifies that idea to the exclusion of others; and if the higher race does not practice the same idea with equal vigor, it will become the victim of the inferior rendered desperate by the singleness that concentrates all its energy.
“During six centuries the Asiatic and African tribes in Spain have presented to the Spanish mind an example of advance in elegant arts, in science, and in all polite and useful literature. The picture here presented has stung the Spaniards to desperation, by its elevation above them. They see glories before them which they never could have created, and these glories appeal to their activity; but their passion for cruelty prevents an imitation or even admiration of those glories. We have infused a feeling, but cannot confer capacity. They desire greatness for themselves; but they reproduce the ferccity of barbarism by the intensity of the one idea that their chosen moral isolation has developed. We have presented to the Spaniards a wealth of scientific acquirement, artistic taste, and splendor of constructive achievement such as no other nation has ever received. Yet a wilderness surrounds the halls of beauty; poverty and degradation bave replaced elegance of attire and of manners; and the howl of the wolf has in wide districts supplanted the cheerful song of the shepherd and the cultivator. We developed one idea in our isolation, and by that one we swept the world before us for a time. Our devotion to one exclusive idea will prove our ruin. The Spaniards in their seclusion have reproduced that love of shedding blood which furnishes a demonstration of the readiness of men to re-exhibit the passion necessary to the isolation of savages, as the result of cultivating that solitude that distinguishes savages. The cold separation of their monasteries has produced some of the most intense examples of this passion.
“They have extended this tendency from open warfare to secret murder; and this intoxicating fury blinds their eyes to the noble attainments of science, the glorious achievements of handicraft, and the profound investigations of philosophy. But the science that they despise, the art and beauty that they deface, must, according to the essential attributes of the human mind, produce a power in some people that cultivate and apply them with generous intelligence, which will inflict on ignorant and cruel Spain a bloody chastisement that will cover her with infamy. She renders herself empty even of her natural strength; she cuts out her own vitals, and exposes her wanton decrepitude to the anger of insulted humanity. The alleged divine sanction on which she rests this wantonness is only the alarmed revival of atavistic ferocity that seems celestial only because it springs from a hostility to that complex progress that presents, in its exaltation, a menace to the ignorance that cowers before it. That overawing splendor seems to embody an evil deity. The savage never stays his hand to reflect upon the wonders that he destroys. If he did he would not be a savage.
“On the other hand, oriental tribes, now rapidly combining in nations, have received from contact with people in some respects more advanced, an idea of the elevation of human character by one grand sentiment, the oneness of the Deity. That single principle has become with them not only a dominating creed, but an excluding philosophy. It exalts men to the throne of God according to their theory. They have heard, far and wide, of the outrage as they deem it, done to this sacred sentiment in the persons of their brethren chiefly in Spain. In proportion as European nations mingle this idea with others more sensuously human, in that proportion will the sense of wrong advance to a passion in the oriental mind. The orient is even now in preparation fora tremendous advance on Europe. Hungary lies in the line of that advance; and woe, woe to Hungary if she wastes her strength in bloody spectacles dooming her best to the flames, and to lingering tortures of want and pain. The nations of the east have heard, and their fierceness has been aroused. When they come let Hungary groan for her slaughtered multitudes, her desolated altars, her ravaged cities, and her children sold into slavery. All this terror will seem to the invaders the just chastisement inflicted by the One for outrages against the only humanity that they know. Evil begets only evil; and the excesses of Europe must arouse passions suited to other excesses that may seem a natural retribution. Then the cry to heaven over desecrated fanes shall be an idle mockery; prayer for the intervention of the supreme one, uttered by the priests of cruelty, must arise in a vain delusion before the eternal fixedness of the resultant penalty of evil.
“Kings and statesmen will wisely rule in conformity to the eternal predestination of cause and effect, and make provision accordingly.”
Abraham well knew that a strong party at court still favored his sentiments; and a rugged clanking of weapons followed his address.
Ladislaus felt himself between two fires, and hastened to suggest another theme. “I know,” he said, “that my learned and skillful friend, the honored Rabbi Solomon, whom I am personally glad to welcome, will I trust enlighten us respecting the methods of promoting the internal peace of kingdoms, and the mutual accord of the nationalities that inhabit then.”
Solomon, arrayed in his dark flowing robe, drew his athletic figure to its full height; and being a master of dialectics, and trained in a school of orators, he well understood the advantage of an impressive manner. Assuming his gravest aspect, and speaking with clear intonation, he said, calmly surveying the king and his lords, and keeping them, as a wise orator always will, full in his eye, so that they at once felt his look, and he observed their emotions:
“By the especial grace of your highness I am accorded an opportunity such as has been rarely presented to a student of society, and least of all to an individual of my own nation. To the kingly solicitude of your highness, to the human laws and constitution of Hungary, especially those that form the main structure of its jurisprudence, and to the courtesy accorded to my friendly mission I must attribute this great opportunity.
“At this epoch I observe two conflicting tendencies in the progress of European nations. One of these is of a twofold character, and is composed in part of the active efforts of my own people in furtherance of their ancient mercantile proclivities and habits, and in part of the struggles of very numerous and zealous advocates of a larger search into the ethics of human opinion, and the free range of human thought, than has been customary, or formally approved in recent years.
“Earnest men and conservative rulers have extended the supposed sphere of their authority to the restraint of intellectual aspiration and the suppression of metaphysical effort after the transcendent and the holy inthe relations between man and his Maker. Very strenuous efforts both of power and of rhetoric have been legitimized to restrain the evolving elasticity of mental effort, that springs of necessity, from conformation and from temperament such as God has bestowed on each human mind, and to restrict the limits of thought within the enshackled range of fixed prescription and à priori decree. In harmony with this effort for a wider mental life, and a more naturally emotional expression of religious feeling, tending and leading to a more expanding experience in the apprehension of human opportunities in every domain of mind, of morals, and of mercantile industry, has been exhibited the peculiar, albeit not naturally peculiar, taste and skill of my own people in those departments that are most intimately associated with the accumulation of wealth, the laws and customary principles that control mercantile relations, and the dexterous or in the apprehension of some, the magical knowledge of computation and of exchange that enable ordinary comparison to perfect its combinations. The Hebrews are the bankers, the merchants,the physicians, the students of the laws of life, of exchange, and of those productions that distinguish one country and are needed in another. These two departments combine in producing a social tendency towards an enlargement of social and industrial ideas, and a more strict adaptation of means to ends such as distinguishes the highest intelligence.
“On the other hand, I am pained to observe not only a tendency but a fixed system of placing restraint on the cultivation of the mind.
In many localities even the elementary schools are’ closed; and men are left to pursue, as best they may, an unenlightened search even for the most common means of sustaining life and its duties. Since Duke Conrad, fifty-four years ago, totally destroyed all the schools in the Hessian territory established by an earnest brotherhood, and the entire village of Weilandsdorf; since forty-one schools in the district of Passau were annihilated at the same period, to the present hour, omitting a multitude of similar instances in every country in Europe, and conspicuously and overwhelmingly in Spain and France, the antagonistic current of repression of educational effort has encountered the opposite tendency I have described. In the midst of this chaos of public instruction, in this confusion of thought on mercantile relations, in this grievous ignorance of facts and principles, the Jew cultivates his calculations, and details of comparison and of opportunity; he estimates values; he studies contracts and the intricacies of legal obligation. By these methods he introduces into his negotiations an accuracy of estimate and of legal principle that his more confused and ignorant Christian competitor cannot even comprehend. He asserts a legal contract, and he is answered with a prayer to heaven; he insists on his recompense for his money, and he hears an appeal to catechism; he relies on business exactitude, and he confronts an ejaculation to a saint. The Christian is of purpose left in his ignorance that his imagination may be inflated. He trusts to heavenly intervention when the Jew trusts to his mortgage; and when the mortgage presses hard, the Christian accuses the Jew of intimacy with Satan. In this hour magic means mercantile knowledge, legal strictness, skill in language and precision of formalities. While the Christian at once alarms and incapacitates himself by brooding over the fictitious terrors of the unseen world, and blends his intellect with his imagination, so that every event, and every detail of each is attributed to some angelic or satanic agency, and means to ends are totally neglected, the Jew studies interest and discount, he frames sales and purchases in strictly legal phraseology, he studies legal positions, and the intricacies of judicial wile; and as an imagination, however fervid, cannot dream away a mortmain, or dull the edge of a legal maxim, the Christian finds himself confronted with perplexities that his ignorance and his chagrin attribute to the venom of sorcery, and the magic diablery of the great fiend. I fearlessly assert that priests and doctors will not permit Christians to be the equals of Jews in commercial knowledge or skill. I affirm my belief, with equal fearlessness, that this inequality will continue, and my nation will suffer in Hungary, and in Poland and Russia, until Christians shall acquire for themselves that knowledge of legal detail, and the internal mechanism of financial order that shall enable them to cope with Jews on an equality So soon as the Russian shall exchange accurate knowledge for vodki; and the Pole shall substitute the growing tendency in his nation, which I observe is now beginning, to dream of tutelary supernaturalism, for the study of the natural facts that beneficent nature presents everywhere, we shall find the Jews have a harder struggle to reach wealth than they now encounter.
“No Jew ever dreams of staring at a picture in order to cure an ulcer; or applies to dry bones, whether of skull or hand, to remove a mortgage bond from his farm. Let the nations study to apply remedies that are suited to the occasion; and mankind shall then be in line to act in co-operation with the processes of nature, of which our constitution forms the culminating part. When men shall learn thus to place themselves side by side in the common obedience to natural laws, and shall instruct themselves in the qualities of objects in food, medicinal plants, light, air, water and the effects of natural processes, then shall the Jew and the Christian tive in harmony together; and the government of states shall be but the clerical procedure to administer their organized authority. Then shall the king be not at once the tormentor and the slave of his people, but as the honored receptorium of the wisdom and virtue of his age.”
Solomon well knew during this address, that the king’s afflicting ailment required alleviation such as he only could supply He knew that the virulence of the Sarcoptes Scabiei must compel respectful attention to his philosophy, and that the king and his nobles endured tortures from the truculent prohibition of that medical science which an inhuman fanaticism had forbidden alike the priest and the layman to acquire.[2]
Solomon also was fully known to have received the commission to investigate the perfect health of the princess Judith, and her absolute exemption from the least symptom of that prevailing contagion, that for centuries before and after this period formed the dreadful domestic penalty inflicted by superstitious barbarism.
- ↑ Napoleon Bonaparte contracted a similar disease at the siege of Toulon from the rammer of a gun. He did not eradicate it until after he became emperor; and much of his sleepless restlessness and impatience rose from the torment of this ailment.
- ↑ See Councils of Rheims, 1131; of Lateran, 1139; of Tours, 1163; Labbe Conc. t. X. pp. 984, 1101, 1421; Bulls of Alexander and of Honorius III., du Boulay, Hist. Univ. t. III. p. 96. Martene Thes. Nov. Anec. t. IV. pp. 1760, 1819, 1943. Hist. Litt. t. XVI. p. 99.