Isabella of Spain
by William Thomas Walsh
This book has a large amount of information about Jews in medieval Spain. It repudiates the works of Lea and Loeb, who seem to have established much about what people today think they know about Spanish Jews. Originally published in 1931 (London: Sheed & Ward), with 644 pp. total. Later editions (New York: Tudor Publishing Co., 1938, etc.) had xviii + 515 pp. = 111 fewer pages (and this was with illustrations not in the 1st edition -- it had none). All scans from the 1st edition text.
SEE LINK TO THE WALSH/ROTH ACADEMIC BRAWL FARTHER DOWN.
A sampling, both from Ch. 12:
"Look at the effigies on some of those orange-tinted marble tombs in Spain. They are not the faces of yellow Tartars or brown Bushmen or black voodoo doctors. They are the faces of our own western European stock, some of them fine, noble and sensitive; such faces as you might meet in Italy, in France, in Germany, in Poland, in Great Britain or Ireland; among professional men or business men in London or New York clubs."
"It is interesting to note how men under stress of circumstances shift gradually from one point of view to another, believing all the while that they are consistent."
Refreshing, to see how (many) old history books used to be written. This is one excellent example:
Correspondence between Walsh and Dr. Cecil Roth regarding this book.
See the the sparks fly! Walsh thoroughly trounces him, too!
From The Dublin Review, October 1932:
http://frontpage.inficad.com/~hermitage/judaism.htm#Walsh
(Thanks to St. Anthony of the Desert's Catholic Website)
(Some of you out there might see the irony in this graphic. I've taken a piece of standard allied war propaganda and inverted it -- originally the red cross was in front of the black swastika.)