From their contact with Arabs and Christians the Jews seem to have lost many of their distinctive beliefs, and in the twelfth century Maimonides,[2] the greatest name among the Spanish Jews, wrote against their errors.  One of these seems to have been that the books of Moses were written before the Creation;[3] another, that there was a series of hells in the next world.[4]

Many Jews attained to very high positions among the Arabs, and we hear of a certain Hasdai ibn Bahrut, who was inspector of customs to Abdurrahman III., ambassador to the King of Leon in 955, and the king’s confidential messenger to the monk, John of Gorz, a few years later.  He was also distinguished as a physician.[5]

    [1] Conde, ii. 326.

    [2] Fleury, v. 409.

    [3] Cp. the Moslem belief about the Koran.  Sale, Introduc., p.
    50. (Chandos Classics.)

    [4] Ibid., p. 72.

    [5] Al Makk., i., App. v. p. xxiv.  Note by De Gayangos.

While the Arabs still retained their hold on the fairest provinces of Spain, the lot of the Jews, even in Christian territories, was by no means unendurable.  They were sometimes advanced to important and confidential posts, and it was the murder of Alfonso VI.’s Jewish ambassador by the King of Seville which brought about the introduction of the Almoravides into Spain.

There is a strange story told of the Jews at the taking of Toledo by the Christians in 1085.  They waited on Alfonso and assured him that they were part of the ten tribes whom Nebuchadnezzar transported into Spain, and not the descendants of those Jerusalem Jews who crucified Christ.  Their ancestors, they said, were quite free from the guilt of this act, for when Caiaphas had written to the Toledan synagogue for their advice respecting the person who claimed to be the Messiah, the Toledan Jews returned for answer, that in their judgment the prophecies seemed to be fulfilled in Him, and therefore He ought not by any means to be put to death.  This reply they produced in the original Hebrew.[1] It is needless to say that the whole thing was a fabrication.

Gradually, as the Christians recovered their supremacy in Spain, the tide of prejudice set more and more strongly against the Jews.  They were accused of “contempt for the Catholic worship, desecration of its symbols, sacrifice of Christian infants,"[2] and other enormities.  Severe laws were passed against them, as in the old Gothic times, and their freedom was grievously curtailed in the matters of dress, residence, and profession.  As a distinctive badge they had to wear yellow caps.[3]

    [1] Southey, “Roder.,” i. p. 235, note.

    [2] Prescott, “Ferd. and Isab.,” pp. 134, 135.

    [3] Al Makk., i. 116.

At the end of the fourteenth century the people rose against them, and 15,000 Jews were massacred in different parts of Spain.  Many were nominally converted, and 35,000 conversions were put to the credit of a single saint.  These new Christians sometimes attained high ecclesiastical dignities, and intermarried with the noble families—­the taint of which “mala sangre” came afterwards to be regarded with the greatest horror and aversion.