he soul, a most serious charge, which, if sustained,
would have thrown her into the clutches of the Inquisition. In two days
she wrote a brilliant defense completely exonerating herself and
exposing the spitefulness of the attack, a masterful production by
reason of its vigorous dialectics, incisive satire, and noble enthusiasm
for the cause of religion. Together with some few of her sonnets, this
is all that has come down to us of her writings. She opened her
vindication with the following sonnet:

"O Lord, Thou know'st my inmost hope and thought,
Thou know'st whene'er before Thy judgment throne
I shed salt tears, and uttered many a moan,
'Twas not for vanities that I besought.
O turn on me Thy look with mercy fraught,
And see how envious malice makes me groan!
The pall upon my heart by error thrown
Remove; illume me with Thy radiant thought.
At truth let not the wicked scorner mock,
O Thou, that breath'dst in me a spark divine.
The lying tongue's deceit with silence blight,
Protect me from its venom, Thou, my Rock,
And show the spiteful sland'rer by this sign
That Thou dost shield me with Thy endless might."

Sara's vindication was complete. Her friend Ceba was kept faithfully
informed of all that befell her, but he was absorbed in thoughts of her
conversion and his approaching end. He wrote to her that he did not care
to receive any more letters from her unless they announced her
acceptance of the true faith.

After Ansaldo's death, we hear nothing more about the poetess. She died
at the beginning of 1641, and the celebrated rabbi, Leon de Modena,
composed her epitaph, a poetic tribute to one whose life redounded to
the glory of Judaism.

Our subject now carries us from the luxuriant south to the dunes of the
North Sea. Holland was the first to open the doors of its cities
hospitably to the three hundred thousand Jews exiled from Spain, and its
busy capital Amsterdam became the centre whither tended the intelligent
of the Marranos, fleeing before the Holy Inquisition. Physicians,
mathematicians, philologists, military men, and diplomats, poets and
poetesses, took refuge there. Among the poetesses,[33] the most
prominent was Isabella Correa, distinguished for wit as well as poetic
endowment, the wife of the Jewish captain and author, Nicolas de Oliver
y Fullano, of Majorca. One of her contemporaries, Daniel de Barrios,
says that "she w