In the days of suffering and disgrace which came to Columbus after his discoveries, Santangel and Sanchez remained faithful to him and often interceded in his behalf with Ferdinand and Isabella. They both died in 1505, about one year before the great discoverer whose success they made possible. Their immediate descendants occupied high positions in the royal service.
* * * * *
Columbus was not the only renowned discoverer of that time who was directly and indirectly assisted by Jews. The great and cruel Vasco da Gama, who did for Portugal almost as much as Columbus did for Spain, could hardly have carried out his important undertakings without the help of at least two Jews. One of them was the above-mentioned Abraham Zacuto, who, like many of his unfortunate brethren, went from Spain to Portugal after the calamity of 1492. He was highly favored by King João and by his successor, Dom Manuel, and the latter consulted him on the advisability of sending out under Vasco da Gama’s command the flotilla of four boats which was to reach India by the way of Cape of Good Hope. Zacuto pointed out the dangers which would have to be encountered, but gave it as his opinion that the plan was feasible and predicted that it would result in the subjection of a large part of India to the Portuguese crown. Zacuto’s works and the instruments which he invented and made available materially facilitated the execution of the enterprises of Vasco da Gama and other explorers. As in the case of Columbus and Spain, da Gama sailed in the year of the expulsion of the Jews from the country which fitted out his expedition (1497). When he returned Zacuto was an exile in Tunis, though he probably could have remained in Portugal, just as Abravanel could have remained in Spain.
It was during his return voyage to Europe, while staying at the little island of Anchevide, sixty miles from Goa (off the Indian coast of Malabar) that Vasco da Gama met the second Jew who became very useful to him and to Portugal. A tall European with a long white beard approached his ship in a boat with a small crew. He had been sent by his master, Sabayo, the Moorish ruler of Goa, to negotiate with the foreign navigator. He was a Jew who, according to some chronicles, came from Posen, according to others from Granada, whose parents had emigrated to Turkey and Palestine. From Alexandria, which some give as his birthplace, he proceeded across the Red Sea to Mecca and thence to India. Here he was a long time in captivity, and later was made admiral (capitao mór) by Sabayo.
The Portuguese were overjoyed “to hear so far from home a language closely related to their native speech.” But he was soon suspected of being a spy and was forced by torture to join the expedition and—as a matter of course—to embrace Christianity. The admiral acted as his godfather and his name came down to us as Gaspar da Gama or Gaspar de las Indias. He was brought to Portugal, where he was favored by King Manuel and “rendered inestimable service to Vasco da Gama and several later commanders.” He accompanied Pedro Alvarez Cobral on the expedition in 1500 which led to the independent discovery of Brazil, which became a Portuguese possession. On the return voyage Gaspar met Amerigo Vespucci, who received much information from him and mentions him as a linguist and traveller who is trustworthy and knows much about the interior of India.
On another expedition in which he accompanied his godfather in 1502, Gaspar found his wife in Cochin. She had remained true to him and to Judaism since he was carried away by the Portuguese, but probably both of them considered it unsafe for her to join him. He again journeyed to Cochin in 1505 in the retinue of the first Viceroy of India, which also included the son of Dr. Martin Pinheiro, the Judge of the Supreme Court of Lisbon. The young Pinheiro carried along a chest filled with “Torah” scrolls which were taken from the recently destroyed synagogues of Portugal. Gaspar’s wife negotiated the sale in Cochin, “where there were many Jews and synagogues,” obtaining four thousand parados for thirteen scrolls. The viceroy later confiscated the proceeds for the state treasury and sent an account of the whole affair to Lisbon.
Another Portuguese commander and governor of India, Alphonse d’Albuquerque, obtained much information and valuable assistance from his interpreter, a Jew from Castille whom he induced to embrace Christianity and to assume the name Francisco d’Albuquerque. His companion Cufo or Hucefe underwent the same change of religion and visited Lisbon, but soon found himself in danger and escaped to Cairo, where he again openly professed Judaism.
CHAPTER II.
EARLY JEWISH MARTYRS UNDER SPANISH RULE IN THE NEW WORLD.
Children torn from their parents were the first Jewish immigrants—Jewish history in the New World begins, as Jewish history in Spain ends, with the Inquisition—Emperor Charles V., Philip II. and Philip III.—Lutherans persecuted together with Jews and Mohamedans—Codification of the laws of the Inquisition, and its special edicts for the New World.
We have seen in the preceding chapter that the Jews were expelled forever from Spain and Portugal at the time when these two nations, with considerable assistance from professing and converted Jews, discovered the New World and took possession of it. Nothing could therefore have been farther from the thoughts and the hopes of the Jews of those dark days than the idea that America was to be, in a far-away future, the first Christian country to grant its Jewish inhabitants full citizenship and absolute equality before the law. For nearly a century and a half no professing Jew dared to tread upon American soil, and even the secret Jews or Marranos were as much in danger in the newly-planted colonies as in the mother countries under whose rule they remained for a long time.
The first Jewish immigrants in the New World were children who were torn away from the arms of their parents at the time of the expulsions, and even they were persecuted as soon as they grew up. The Marranos who sought a refuge in America in these early days were soon followed by the same agencies of persecution which made life a burden to them in their old home. We meet in America for more than a century after its discovery almost the same conditions as in Spain and Portugal after the Jews were exiled. Where the history of the Jews in Spain ends—says Dr. Kayserling—the history of the Jews in America begins. The Inquisition is the last chapter in the record of the confessors of Judaism on the Pyrenean peninsula and its first chapter in the western hemisphere. The Nuevos Christianos concealed their faith, or were able to conceal it, as little in the New World as in the mother country. With astonishing tenacity, nay, with admirable obstinacy, they clung to the religion of their fathers; it was not a rare occurrence that the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the martyred Jews sanctified the Sabbath in a most conscientious manner, by refraining from work as far as possible and by wearing their best clothing. They also celebrated the Jewish Festivals, observed the Day of Atonement by fasting, and married according to the Jewish customs. They clung to their faith and suffered for it even as late as the eighteenth century, which means that the Jewish religion was handed down secretly and preserved in the seventh and eighth generation after the exile. Many went to the stake or died in the prisons of the Inquisition in the New World; many others were transported in groups to Spain and Portugal and gave up their lives as martyrs in Seville, Toledo, Evora or Lisbon. Their religious heroism will be apparent in all its magnitude when the immense documentary material which is heaped up in the archives of Spain and Portugal, and other places on this side of the ocean, will have been sifted and worked up. (“Publications,” II, p. 73.)
Intolerance reigned supreme in America almost immediately after its colonization, and the secret Jews who settled there were not permitted to enjoy peace or prosperity. Juan Sanchez of Saragossa, whose father was burnt at the stake, was the