LITMIR.BIZ

Скачать книгу

an insoluble riddle. This shows that his whole demonstration and his analysis (schematism) cannot stand the test of criticism, but rests on false assumptions.

      Spinoza might have brought Judaism into extreme peril; for he not only furnished its opponents with the weapons of reason to combat Judaism more effectually, but also conceded to every state and magistrate the right to suppress it and use force against its followers, to which they ought meekly to submit. The funeral piles of the Inquisition for Marranos were, according to Spinoza's system, doubly justified; citizens have no right on rational grounds to resist the recognized religion of the state, and it is folly to profess Judaism and to sacrifice oneself for it. But a peculiar trait of Spinoza's character stood Judaism in good stead. He loved peace and quiet too well to become a propagandist for his critical principles. "To be peaceable and peaceful" was his ideal; avoidance of conflict and opposition was at once his strength and his weakness. To his life's end he led an ideally-philosophical life; for food, clothing, and shelter, he needed only so much as he could earn with his handicraft of polishing lenses, which his friends disposed of. He struggled against accepting a pension, customarily bestowed on learned men at that time, even from his sincere and rich admirers, Simon de Vries and the grand pensionary De Witt, that he might not fall into dependence, constraint, and disquiet. By reason of this invincible desire for philosophic calm and freedom from care, he would not decide in favor of either of the political parties, then setting the States General in feverish agitation. Not even the exciting murder of his friend John de Witt was able to hurry him into partisanship. Spinoza bewailed his high and noble friend, but did not defend his honor, to clear it of suspicion. When the most highly cultivated German prince of his time, Count-Palatine Karl Ludwig, who cherished a certain affection for Jews, offered him, "the Protestant Jew," as he was still called, the chair of philosophy in the University of Heidelberg under very favorable conditions, Spinoza declined the offer. He did not conceal his reason: he would not surrender his quietude. From this predominant tendency, or, rather, from fear of disturbance and inconveniences and from apprehension of calling enemies down upon him, or of coming into collision with the state, he refused to publish his speculations for a long time. When at last he resolved, on the pressure of friends, to send "The Theologico-Political Treatise" to press, he did not put his name to the work, which made an epoch in literature, and even caused a false place of publication, viz., Hamburg, to be printed on the title-page, in order to obliterate every trace of its real authorship. He almost denied his offspring, to avoid being disturbed.

      As might have been foreseen, the appearance of "The Theologico-Political Treatise" (1670), made an extraordinary stir. No one had written so distinctly and incisively concerning the relation of religion to philosophy and the power of the state, and, above all, had so sharply condemned the clergy. The ministers of all denominations were extraordinarily excited against this "godless" book, as it was called, which disparaged revealed religion. Spinoza's influential friends were not able to protect it; it was condemned by a decree of the States General, and forbidden to be sold – which only caused it to be read more eagerly. But Spinoza was the more reluctant to publish his other writings, especially his philosophical system. With all his strength of character, he did not belong to those bold spirits, who undertake to be the pioneers of truth, who usher it into the world with loud voice, and win it adherents, unconcerned as to whether they may have to endure bloody or bloodless martyrdom. In the unselfishness of Spinoza's character and system there lurked an element of selfishness, namely, the desire to be disturbed as little as possible in the attainment of knowledge, in the happiness of contemplation, and in reflection upon the universe and the chain of causes and effects which prevail in it. A challenge to action, effort, and resistance to opposition lay neither in Spinoza's temper, nor in his philosophy.

      In this apparently harmless feature lay also the reason that his most powerful and vehemently conducted attacks upon Judaism made no deep impression, and called forth no great commotion in the Jewish world. At the time when Spinoza threw down the challenge to Judaism, a degree of culture and science prevailed in the Jewish-Portuguese circle, unknown either before or after; there reigned in the community of Amsterdam and its colonies a literary activity and fecundity, which might be called classical, if the merit of the literary productions had corresponded with their compass. The authors were chiefly cultivated Marranos, who had escaped from the Spanish or Portuguese prisons of the Inquisition to devote themselves in free Holland to their faith and free inquiry. There were philosophers, physicians, mathematicians, philologists, poets, even poetesses. Many of these Marranos who escaped to Amsterdam had gone through peculiar vicissitudes. A monk of Valencia, Fray Vincent de Rocamora (1601–1684), had been eminent in Catholic theology. He had been made confessor to the Infanta Maria, afterwards empress of Germany and a persecutor of the Jews. One day the confessor fled from Spain, reached Amsterdam, declared himself as Isaac de Rocamora, studied medicine at the age of forty, and became the happy father of a family and president of Jewish benevolent institutions. The quondam monk, afterwards Parnass (president of the community), was also a good poet, and wrote admirable Spanish and Latin verses.

      Enrique Enriquez de Paz of Segovia (1600–1660), the Jewish Calderon, had a very different career. Having entered the army while young, he behaved so gallantly that he won the order of San Miguel, and was made captain. Besides the sword, he wielded the pen, with which he described comic figures and situations. Enriquez de Paz, or, as he was styled in his poetical capacity, Antonio Enriquez de Gomez, composed more than two and twenty comedies, some of which were put upon the stage at Madrid, and, being taken for Calderon's productions, were received with much applause. Neither Mars nor the Muses succeeded in protecting him against the Inquisition; he could escape its clutches only by rapid flight. He lived a long time in France. His prolific muse celebrated Louis XIV, the queen of France, the powerful statesman Richelieu, and other high personages of the court. He bewailed in elegies his misfortunes and the loss of his country, which he loved like a son, step-mother though she had been to him. Although blessed by fortune, Enriquez de Paz felt himself unhappy in the rude north, far from the blue mountains and mild air of Spain. He lamented:

      "I have won for myself wealth and traveled over many seas, and heaped up ever fresh treasures by thousands; now my hair is bleached, my beard as snowy white as my silver bars, the reward of my labors."

      He lived in France, too, as a Christian, but proclaimed his sympathy with Judaism by mourning in elegiac verses the martyrdom of Lope de Vera y Alarcon. Finally he settled down in the asylum of the Marranos, whilst his effigy was burnt on the funeral pile at Seville. There had been again a great auto-da-fé (1660) of sixty Marranos, of whom four were first strangled and then burned, whilst three were burned alive. Effigies of escaped Marranos were borne along in procession, and thrown into the flames – amongst them that of the knight of San Miguel, the writer of comedies. A new-Christian, who was present at this horrible sight, and soon after escaped to Amsterdam, met Gomez in the street, and exclaimed excitedly: "Ah! Señor Gomez! I saw your effigy burn on the funeral pile at Seville!" "Well," he replied, "they are welcome to it." Along with his numerous secular poems, Enriquez Gomez left one of Jewish national interest in celebration of the hero-judge Samson. The laurels which the older Spanish poet Miguel Silveyra, also a Marrano, whom he admired, had won by his epic, "The Maccabee," haunted him until he had brought out a companion piece. To the blind hero who avenged himself on the Philistines by his very death, Gomez assigned verses which expressed his own heart:

      "I die for Thy holy word, for Thy religion,

      For Thy doctrine, Thy hallowed commandments,

      For the nation adopted by Thy choice,

      For Thy sublime ordinance I die."

      Another point of view is presented by two emigrant Marranos of this period, father and son, the two Pensos, the one rich in possessions and charity, the other in poetical gifts. They probably sprang from Espejo, in the province of Cordova, escaped from the fury of the Inquisition, and at last settled, after many changes of residence, as Jews in Amsterdam. Isaac Penso (died 1683) the elder, a banker, was a father to the poor. He spent a tithe of the income from his property on the poor, and distributed, up to his death, 40,000 gulden. His decease aroused deep regret in the community of Amsterdam. His son (Felice) Joseph Penso, also called De la Vega from his mother's family (1650–1703), was a rich merchant, and turned his attention to poetry. A youth of seventeen, he awoke the long-slumbering echo of neo-Hebraic poesy, and caused

Скачать книгу