mber of others.

While in Italy the Spanish-Jewish exiles fell into line in the
Renaissance movement, the large numbers of them that sought refuge in
Portugal turned their attention chiefly to astronomical research and to
voyages of discovery and adventure, the national enterprises of their
protectors. Joao II. employed Jews in investigations tending to make
reasonably safe the voyages, on trackless seas, under unknown skies, for
the discovery of long and ardently sought passages to distant lands. In
his commission charged with the construction of an instrument to
indicate accurately the course of a vessel, the German knight Martin
Behaim was assisted by Jews--astronomers, metaphysicians, and
physicians--chief among them Joseph Vecinho, distinguished for his part
in the designing of the artificial globe, and Pedro di Carvallho,
navigator, whose claim to praise rests upon his improvement of Leib's
_Astrologium_, and to censure, upon his abetment of the king when he
refused the request of the bold Genoese Columbus to fit out a squadron
for the discovery of wholly unknown lands. But when Columbus's plans
found long deferred realization in Spain, a Jewish youth, Luis de
Torres, embarked among the ninety adventurers who accompanied him. Vasco
da Gama likewise was aided in his search for a waterway to the Indies by
a Jew, the pilot Gaspar, the same who later set down in writing the
scientific results of the voyage, and two Jews were despatched to
explore the coasts of the Red Sea and the island of Ormus in the Persian
Gulf. Again, Vasco da Gama's plans were in part made with the valuable
assistance of a Jew, a profound scholar, Abraham Zacuto, sometime
professor of astronomy at the University of Salamanca, and after the
banishment of Jews from Spain, astronomer and chronographer to Manuel
the Great, of Portugal. It was he that advised the king to send out Da
Gama's expedition, and from the first the explorer was supported by his
counsel and scientific knowledge.

Meritorious achievements, all of them, but they did not shield the Jews
against impending banishment. The exiles found asylums in Italy and
Holland, and in each country they at once projected themselves into the
predominant intellectual movement. A physician, Abraham Portaleone,
distinguished himself on the field of antiquarian research; another,
David d'Ascoli, wrote a defense of Jews; and a third, David de Pomis, a
defense of Jewish physicians. The most famous was