EMPIRE IN THE EAST 133to hide the taste and odor of spoilage. Hence the paradox that the
cuisine of warmer countries is typically "hotter" than that of colder
lands—there is more to hide.
Condiments brought a further dividend. The people of that day
could not know this, but the stronger spices worked to kill or
weaken the bacteria and viruses that promoted and fed on decay.
Tabasco and other hot sauces, for instance, will render infected
oysters safer for human consumption; at least they kill
microorganisms in the test tube. Spices, then, were not merely a
luxury in medieval Europe but also a necessity, as their market value
testified.
ccOs Cafres da Eur op a"—
The "Kaffirs of Europe"^11
To understand the rise and fall of empires, one must always look as
much at the forces and circumstances of the home country as at
conditions in the field. When the Portuguese conquered the South
Atlantic, they were in the van of navigational technique. A readiness
to learn from foreign savants, many of them Jewish, had brought
knowledge that translated directiy into application; and when, in
1492, the Spanish decided to compel their Jews to profess
Christianity or leave, many found refuge in Portugal, then more
relaxed in its anti-Jewish sentiments. But in 1497, pressure from the
Roman Church and Spain led the Portuguese crown to abandon this
tolerance. Some seventy thousand Jews were forced into a bogus but
nevertheless sacramentally valid baptism. In 1506, Lisbon saw its first
pogrom, which left two thousand "converted" Jews dead. (Spain had
been doing as much for two hundred years.) From then on, the
intellectual and scientific life of Portugal descended into an abyss of
bigotry, fanaticism, and purity of blood.*
The descent was gradual. The Portuguese Inquisition was installed
only in the 1540s and burned its first heretic in 1543; but it did not
become grimly unrelenting until the 1580s, after the union of the
Portuguese and Spanish crowns in the person of Philip II. In the
- The Portuguese "old Christians" eventually came to call themselves puritanos.