Page 86 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

from off the Jews that the local population had to bear, so it came
about that as foreigners in the country they not only enjoyed equal
rights but formed a privileged section of the population.
The Jews had acquired great wealth through slave-trade and
finance businesses which they used forthwith to loan money to the
needy local population and the city-dweller at high interest. Already
under the reign of the above-mentioned Alfonso III, who had
generously granted all freedoms to them, there appeared in many
places of the empire complaints about unheard of usury and the
king was forced to pass laws against this; these ruled that the interests
on capital could not increase.
Since these clauses bore little fruit, the next king, Don Diniz
(1279), tried to force the Jews by law to agricultural work and
residence in order to lead them away from usurious businesses. He
stipulated an order to the Jewish Braganzas that they had to buy
every year a certain sum of houses, vine- and farm-land without
having the right to dispose of these landed properties. Every newly
arrived Jew had to contribute his share to the purchase amount.
Through this opportunity, however, all the rights of the Jews were
at the same time further strengthened, every attack against them
and every contempt of them was strictly forbidden.
This desire to make of the Jews farmers and citizens failed
completely, for it was easily possible for the ChiefRabbi and Finance
Minister Don Juda (who, according to Graetz, was so rich as to be
able to advance money for the purchase of entire cities) and other
high personages among Israel to gradually thwart the enforcement
of the said clauses. The wealth of the Jews and, accordingly, their
usury increased, they possessed the most beautiful palaces ofLisbon,
they headed the financial businesses of the king and knew how to
bring the poor and the rich into a relationship of economic
dependence. When all requests for help to the king bore no fruit, a
complaint was directed to the Pope in 1309 in which was expressed
the indignation that the king surrounded himself with Jewish
statesmen, that there was no business that did not pass through the
hands of the Jews, that even bishops were held captive in cloisters.
"The Jews are becoming proud and asserting themselves", it says

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