Spain, and because the knowledge of those learned men who were the ornaments of those schools could, from this latter place, be diffused all over his realms with greater facility.

When this pious king reduced the city of Seville to subjection, the Jews, who had synagogues in it, went out to receive him, and, as a proof of submission and respect, put into his hands a silver key, with spaces in it alternately plain and gilt, with a Hebrew inscription upon it, of which the following are the words:

THE KING OF KINGS SHALL OPEN: THE KING OF ALL THE EARTH SHALL ENTER.

9

St. Ferdinand left the Jews in possession of the great Jewry which they had in the city of Seville, on con

9 A drawing of this key may be seen in the Anales de Sevilla by Don Diego Ortiz de Zúñiga, Madrid, 1677. The author omits to state that the words

66

GOD SHALL OPEN-KING SHALL ENTER

are carved on the wards of the key. Zúñiga interprets the two passages thus: By the miraculous way which God should open for him, and by that way only, could the holy king enter, who was worthy to reign over the whole earth, and that way the King of kings had opened or would open for him." He also informs us that another key, said to have been presented at the same time to St. Ferdinand by the Moors, and inscribed with Arabic characters of similar import to those engraved on the key delivered to that monarch by the Jews, was, when he wrote (viz. about 1677), in the possession of Don Antonio Lope de Mesa, an inhabitant of Seville. The former of these keys was then (and I believe now both of them are) in the safe keeping of the dean and chapter of Seville. As this author has favoured us with drawings of both the keys, I have had a facsimile of them prepared for the readers of this work. The key represented on the left side of the plate is the one given by the Jews. See Zúñiga's Anales de Sevilla, p. 17, 18.-Translator.

dition that they paid him the same tributes as they used to render to the Moorish kings. The Archbishop, together with the dean and chapter of Seville, were appointed collectors of the tribute, the sum of which was to be applied to the maintenance of the ornaments and the divine service of the holy church: but it is an undoubted fact that they bore this burden with a heavy heart, inasmuch as, by deferring the times of its payment, they gave occasion to the turbulent clergy to make a complaint of them to king Alfonso the Eleventh, in the year 1327. The Jews, in exculpation of themselves, said that the chapter, influenced by excessive cupidity, was setting up a claim to more money than what they were bound to pay in the name of tribute. At last the king gave a commission to Fernando Martinez de Valladolid, his chief notary in the realms of Castile, to investigate this matter, and as this man gave judgment the same year in favour of the claims of the Archbishop, dean, and chapter of the holy church of Seville, the Jews had no other means of escaping the penalties with which they were threatened, than by satisfying the claim of three maravedis a year per head, a tax due from the moment of their birth till the completion of their sixteenth year (a maravedi was, at that time, equivalent to tenpence), making a total of thirty pence annually, for which they were made liable from the moment that St. Ferdinand rescued the city of Seville from the Moors.10

10 Zúñiga, Anales de Sevilla, p. 184, &c.-Translator.

His son, Alfonso the Tenth, to whom fame justly awards the name of Learned, in the composition of his Tables, availed himself of the knowledge of the most learned among the Jews and Arabs. In the preface of a very ancient manuscript copy of the Alfonsine Tables, the following curious words occur: "The king ordered meetings of the undermentioned individuals to be holden, to wit, Aben Rajel and Alquibicio, his Toledan masters, Aben Musio and Mahomet of Seville, and Josef Aben Ali and Jacobo Abvena of Córdova, and more than fifty others whom he brought from Gascony and Paris, at high salaries, and directed them to translate the Quadripartite of Ptolemy and compare it with the books of Mentesam and Algazel. Samuel and Jehuda (the converted alfaquí" of Toledo) were charged to see that the meetings took place in the alcázar of Galiana, and to hold disputations on the motion of the firmament and stars. When the king was not present, Aben Rajel and Alquibicio acted as presidents. There were frequent disputations among them from the year 1258 to 1262, and at last they made some famous Tables, as every one knows; and after this work was completed by them, and they had received many rewards from the king, he sent them back well-pleased to their own countries, and gave them privileges, and granted to them and their descendants exemption from the payment of taxes, duties, and contributions; respecting which there are letters extant at Toledo, bear

11 An alfaquí was a Mussulman doctor.--Translator.

ing the date of the 12th of May, in the era 1300.12 King Alfonso the Tenth, out of gratitude, no doubt,

12 The Marquis of Mondejar, in his Noticias Históricas del rey Don Alonso el Sabio, makes mention of this manuscript, and cites from it the above extract. To make the Spanish era agree with the Christian, thirty-eight years must always be subtracted from the former, so that the era 1300 corresponds to A. D. 1262. An account of the Alfonsine Tables is given in the Penny Cyclopædia (vol. 1. p. 37). It is obvious that the Alquibicio in our author's text and the Al Cabit of the Cyclopædists are the same person. As some important matters given in the Cyclopædia are not mentioned in the manuscript just cited, I shall transcribe the whole article of the former on this interesting subject: "Alonsine or Alphonsine Tables, an astronomical work, which appeared in the year 1252, under the patronage of Alonso X., in the first year of his reign. They contain the places of the fixed stars, and all the methods then in use for the computation of the places of the planets: but they are not made from original observations, nor is there any material difference between the astronomy contained in them and that of Ptolemy, except in two points. The length of the year is supposed to be 365 days, 5 hours, 49 minutes, and 16 seconds; which is a more correct value than had been given before, being only 26 seconds over the best modern determinations. The mean precession of the equinoxes is stated at half its real amount, being such as would carry the equinoctial points round the circumference of the globe in 49,000 years. An inequality, however, is supposed, having a period of 7000 years, by which the mean precession is alternately augmented and retarded 18 degrees. It is difficult to say whence a theory so at variance with the phænomena could be derived. The general opinion is, that these tables were constructed by Isaac Ben Said, a Jew, but others suppose that Al Cabit and Aben Ragel, the preceptors of Alonso, were the real superintendents. The numbers above cited, in speaking of the precession, have been supposed, from their connexion with the number 7, and the difficulty of accounting for them otherwise, to have been the ideas of a Jew. These tables are constructed for the meridian of Toledo, and the epoch 1256. They were not held in much esteem by succeeding astronomers. Regiomontanus says, 'beware lest you trust too much to blind calculation and Alphonsine dreams.' And Tycho Brahé, who reports that 400,000 ducats had been spent upon them, laments