They also seem to have been able to make some proselytes from among the Christians, and we hear of one apostate of this kind, named Eleazar, to whom Alvar addressed several letters under the title of “the transgressor.”  This man’s original name was Bodon.  A Christian of German extraction,[1] he was brought up with a view to Holy Orders.  In 838, while on his way to Rome,[2] he apostatised to Judaism,[3] and opened a negotiation with the Jews in France to sell his companions as slaves, stipulating only to keep his own grandson.  The next year he let his hair and beard grow, and went to Spain, where he married a Jewess, compelling his grandson at the same time to apostatise.  In 845 or 847 his attitude became so hostile to the Christians in Spain, that the latter wrote to Charles, praying him to demand Eleazar as his subject, which however does not seem to have been done.  There seems good reason to believe that Eleazar stirred up the Moslems against the Christians, and the deaths of Prefectus and John may have been due to him.[4] After this we hear no more of Eleazar; but the position of the Jews with regard to the Arabs seems to have been for long after this of a most privileged character.  Consequently the Jews in Spain had such an opportunity to develop their natural gifts as they have never had since the capture of Jerusalem by Nebuchadnezzar; and they shewed themselves no whit behind the Arabs, if indeed they did not outstrip them, in keeping alive the flame of learning in the dark ages.[5] In science generally, and especially in the art of medicine they had few rivals, and in learning and civilisation they were, no less than the Arabs, far ahead of the Christians.[6]

    [1] “Ann.  Bertin.,” 839.

    [2] Orationis gratia, “Ann.  Bert,” 1.1.

    [3] Florez, xi. p. 20 ff.

    [4] The “Ann.  Bert.” say that he induced Abdurrahman II. to
    give his Christian subjects the choice between Islam, Judaism,
    or death.  See Rohrbacher, xii. 4.

    [5] Prescott, “Ferd. and Isab.” p. 153.

    [6] Ibid., p. 134.

The good understanding between the Jews and the Arabs with the gradual process of time gave place to an ill-concealed hostility, and at the beginning of the twelfth century there seems even to have been a project formed for forcing the Jews to become Moslems on the ground of a promise made by their forefathers to Mohammed that, if in five centuries their Messiah had not appeared, they would be converted to Mohammedanism.[1] Perhaps this was only a pretext on the part of the Moslems for extorting money; at all events the Jews only succeeded in evading the alternative by paying a large sum of money.  Even in the early years of the conquest they were subject to the rapacity of their rulers, for when, on the rumour of the Messiah having appeared in Syria, many of the Spanish Jews, leaving their goods, started off to join him, the Moslem governor, Anbasa, seized the property so left, and refused to restore it on the return of the disappointed emigrants.