Summary The story of Acosta deals with the persecution of the Jews during the time of the middle ages. Our unfortunate hero is a descendant of an unhappy family whose father was driven out from Spain on account of his religious belief. He settled down in Portugal where he fell a victim of the inquisition, leaving a wife and three children. The church at that time issued a decree that the Jews should be burned alive unless they turned Christians. Acosta's mother, for the sake of her children, embraced the Christian religion, and Acosta, a born genius, found favor with the Cardinal of the Church. He adopted and educated him according to the formalities of the Catholic faith of those days. But the beaten path was too narrow for the born genius. As a boy of twelve, he stole out at night from the dormitory, taking with him a cross to safeguard against persecution and a volume of the Talmud which was so near to his heart. Such were the companions that accompanied him on his unknown journey, unmapped, for the present as well as for his future life. But, luckily, the following morning he was found, exhausted and starved, by Dr. De Silva, who recognized him as a Jew by a volume of the Talmud in the boy's possession. He took him to his home and informed Acosta's mother, by letter, that he had found her boy. Dr. De Silva adopted him and gave him a liberal education. Fifteen years later, we find the unhappy family in Amsterdam reunited. Here the Jews enjoyed more freedom than in Spain, and acquired wealth and culture. As a great teacher, Acosta. like all great men, came before his time; as a noble soul, he was too tender to fight the bigots and conventionalities of his age, and as a reformer, his ideas soared above the crowd. In his days of affliction, Judith, the daughter of Vanderstraten, shared his trials, his pains and woes with him. Her tenderness and sympathy won Acosta's admiration and their constant companionship soon ripened into love. After he had published his first book, he aroused the attention of the most enlightened minds of his age, and stirred up the fanatics who found his views to be detrimental to the prevailing ideas of the time and the church especially. He was brought before the Council of the Wise, and found guilty of blasphemy, excommunicated from the church, banished from the country and his book committed to the flames. When brought in the synagogue before the Council of the Wise to renounce his teachings and repent, he said that he had nothing to renounce and repent. He wrote what his mind and heart dictated to him. And when the ban was put upon him, and when Judith heard the curses from the Rabbi's lips that, "Crave shalt thou for the love of a woman and whoever yields it be dead," she threw herself in his arms, denounced the judges and made a declaration of love to which Ben Jochai vigorously protested. When Vanderstraten finds himself financially embarrassed, he applies to Ben Jochai for aid, who, in turn, asks him for his daughter's hand. The bargain is made with the consent of Judith. And when on the wedding day Acosta comes to bid farewell to his dearest, who, in his day of trial gave him so much succor, he finds that she took the vial. Acosta finds that he has nothing to live for now, but the gloomy shadows of his thoughts. Despondent and grief-stricken, Acosta dies by his own destruction. View more details

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