"Here lies a man, and still no man;
If thou wert a man, angels of heaven
Must have overshadowed thy mother."
These lines were afterwards effaced, and the following substituted:
"Here lies Moses Maimuni, the excommunicated heretic."
These two inscriptions shadow forth the bitter differences which broke out after Maimuni's death, and divided Judaism into two camps.
CHAPTER XV.
NEW POSITION OF THE JEWS IN CHRISTIAN LANDS AT THE BEGINNING OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY
Effects of the Death of Maimuni – Abraham Maimuni, the son of Maimuni – Hostility of the Papacy against the Jews – Pope Innocent III – The Albigenses – Emigration of Rabbis to Palestine – The Lateran Council and the Jewish Badges – Synod of Rabbis at Mayence – The Dominicans and the Rise of the Inquisition – King Jayme of Aragon and his Physician Benveniste – Stephen Langton and the Jews of England – Gregory IX and Louis IX of France – The Jews of Hungary.
1205–1232 C. E
Maimuni, the most intellectual rabbi and the deep religious philosopher, constitutes the zenith in mediæval Jewish history, and soon after his death the shadows begin to incline. Gradually the sunshine lessens, and gives way to dismal gloom. His intellectual bequest produced a far-reaching cleavage, which divided Judaism, or its leaders, into two hostile camps, and aroused a weakening, factional spirit which presented points of attack to deadly foes. The Church, whose arrogance was constantly gaining ground, interfered in the disputes of Judaism, and brought into play against the refractory Synagogue seductive allurements, terrifying punishments, secret poison, or blazing fire. Maimuni's death and the ascendancy of the papacy were two misfortunes for Judaism which removed it from its lofty position to the deepest degradation.
Maimuni's death not only produced a gap and a standstill in the spiritual aspirations of the Jews, but deprived them of a dignified and mighty leader, who had been able to bring together under one standard a people scattered all over the world. To him the congregations in the East and West had freely submitted, he had had prudent counsel for every contingency; but after his departure the Jews stood without a leader, and Judaism without a guide. His son, Abulmeni Abraham Maimuni (born 1185, died 1254), certainly inherited his deep sense of religion, his amiable, peace-loving character, his high dignity as supreme head (Nagid) of the Egyptian Jews, and his position as court physician to Saladin's successors; but his intellect and energy were not transmitted to him. Abraham Maimuni was skilled in medicine, was physician in ordinary of the Sultan Alkamel – a brother of Saladin – and presided over the hospital at Cairo, together with the physician and Arabic historian Ibn-Abi Obsaibiya. He was likewise a Talmudical scholar, defended the learning of his father with Talmudical weapons, and delivered rabbinical judgments. He was also well versed in philosophy, and composed a work to reconcile the Agada with the philosophical ideas of the time. But Abraham Maimuni was a man of learning, not of original, intellectual power. He followed with slavish fidelity in the footsteps of his great father, and appropriated his method of thought, surrendering his own intellectual independence. Abraham made the Maimunist system of teaching his own. Hence it happens, that what is striking originality in the father, appears in the son as a copy and an insignificant commonplace. Abraham Maimuni, it is true, enjoyed wide-spread esteem, but he was by no means an authority compelling attention and claiming submission.
In Europe, too, there were no men of commanding influence after the death of Maimuni. There appeared local, but not generally recognized authorities. There existed no man who could step into the breach to pronounce the right word at the proper moment, and point out the right way to wavering minds. If Maimuni had had a successor of his own spirit and character, the dissensions between the faithful and those who interpreted the Bible literally would not have effected such great disasters, nor would mysticism have been able to lure men's minds into its web.
Whilst Judaism was thus left without a leader, there sprang up against it, in the early part of the thirteenth century, a power, exercising ruthless, inexorable oppression, such as had not been practised against it since the time of Hadrian. The pope Innocent III, who was the father of all the evils experienced by the European nations up to the time of the Lutheran reformation: the tyrannical domination of the Roman Church over princes and peoples, the enslaving and abasing of the human mind, the persecution of free thought, the institution of the Inquisition, the auto-da-fé against heretics, i. e., against those who dared doubt the infallibility of the Roman Bishop; – he was also the pope Innocent III who was an embittered enemy of Jews and Judaism, and dealt severer blows against them than any of his predecessors.
The little band of Jews was like a thorn in the side of the mighty potentate of the Church, who enthroned and dethroned kings, distributed crowns and countries, and who, through his army of papal legates, spies, Dominican and Franciscan monks, with their bloodthirsty piety, had subjugated the whole of Europe, from the Atlantic ocean to Constantinople, and from the Mediterranean to the Arctic regions. This handful of human beings, with their clear intellect, their purified faith, their moral force and their superior culture, was a silent protest against Roman arrogance. At the beginning of his reign, Innocent, although not exactly well-disposed to the Jews, was at least ready, like his predecessors, to protect them from unjust treatment. New crusades were now being preached against the Sultanate of Egypt, which had declined in power since the death of Saladin, in order to wrest from its control the Holy City. The crusaders, now that they had obtained a remission of sins, might say, "We may commit offenses, since the taking up of the Cross has absolved us from all sins, ay, and even enables us to redeem the souls of sinners from purgatory." Jew-baiting, compulsory baptism, plundering and assassination, were once more the order of the day. The Jews, seeing that they needed special protection, appealed to Innocent to curb the violence of the crusaders. Most graciously did he vouchsafe them that which the leader of any respectably organized band of brigands would not have refused. The Jews were not to be dragged by force to be converted, neither were they to be robbed, injured, or killed without judicial sanction. They were not to be molested during their festivals by being whipped, and having stones thrown at them; and, lastly, their cemeteries were to be respected, and their dead were neither to be disinterred nor dishonored. So much had Christianity degenerated, that decrees like these, and a constitution (Constitutio Judæorum) like this, had to be promulgated for the sake of the Jews. So deluded were its leaders, that the head of the Church passed these resolutions, not from the simple motive of humanity, but from a perverse notion that the Jews must be preserved, so that the miracle of their general conversion to Jesus might have an opportunity of being accomplished.
The Jews, who by the experience of a thousand years had learnt the art of recognizing foes and friends behind their masks, were by no means mistaken as to the real sentiments of Innocent towards them. When Don Pedro II, King of Aragon, returned home from his journey to Rome (Dec., 1204), where he had caused himself to be anointed and crowned by the Pope, receiving at the same time his territory as tributary to Peter's chair, the Aragonian congregations were in great anxiety as to what might befall them. Don Pedro had taken an oath, that he would persecute all heretics then in his country, defend the liberties and rights of the Church, and faithfully obey the Pope. What if the liberty of the Church should be interpreted thus: That the Jews were either to be driven out of the land, or degraded to the position of bondmen! The Aragonian Jews, apprehending something of the sort, appealed to their God in fervent prayer, appointed a general fast, and, with a scroll of the Torah, assembled to meet the king on his return. Their fear on this occasion, however, was groundless. Don Pedro, who was not very warm in his allegiance to the Pope, and was intent only on strengthening his own power, had no thought of persecuting the Jews. Besides, owing to his periodic money difficulties, he could not do without them; he had become their debtor. Innocent, however, watched the princes with a jealous eye, lest they should concede to the Jews anything beyond the bare right to live. The French king, Philip Augustus – the arch-enemy of the Jews, who, having tortured and plundered them, had driven them out of his country, and recalled them only because of his pecuniary embarrassments – was reprimanded by the Pope for favoring the Jews. The Pope wrote that it offended his sight that some princes should prefer the descendants of the crucifiers to the heirs of the crucified Christ, as if the son of the bond-woman could ever be the heir of the son of the free-woman; that it had reached his ears that in France the Jews had obtained possession, through usury, of the property of the Church and of the Christians, and that, in spite of the resolution of the Lateran Council, under Alexander III, they kept Christian servants and nurses in their houses; and further, that Christians were not admitted as witnesses against the Jews, which was also contrary to the resolution of that assembly; and again, that the community of Sens had built a new synagogue which was situated higher than the church of that neighborhood, and in which prayers were read, not quietly, as before the expulsion, but so loudly as to interrupt the divine service in the church. Lastly, Innocent censured the king of France for allowing the Jews too much liberty. They had the audacity during the Easter week to appear in the streets and villages, scoffing at the faithful for worshiping a crucified God, and thus turning them away from their faith. He vehemently repeated the diabolical calumny that the Jews secretly assassinated Christians. As to the public and daily murders of Jews, the chief of the Church had little to say. He exhorted Philip Augustus to maintain true Christian zeal in oppressing the Jews, and did not fail to mention at the same time that the heretics in his country ought to be exterminated. The spiritual ruler of Europe could find no rest while Jews and heretics remained. In the same year (May, 1205), Innocent wrote a sharp pastoral letter to the king of Castile, Alfonso the Noble, a protector of the Jews, because he would not suffer the priests to deprive the Jews of their Mahometan slaves by causing them to be baptized, or to collect tithes from the farms of Jews and Mahometans. The Pope threatened the proud Spanish king with the displeasure of the Church, if he should continue to allow the Synagogue to thrive, and the Church to be reduced. Innocent insisted upon the Jews' paying tithes to the clergy on all lands which they had acquired from the Christians, so that the Church, whose power depended so much on money, should suffer no loss. His plan of coercion, to give force to his directions, was indirect excommunication. As he could not punish Jews with excommunication, he threatened to inflict that penalty on Christians who carried on any intercourse with such Jews as would not humor his apostolic caprice.
The deep prejudice of Innocent against the Jewish race was made still more evident by a denunciatory letter which he wrote to Count Nevers, who was favorably disposed to the Jews. Because this count did not embitter the lives of the latter, and abstained from molesting them, the Pope wrote to him thus (1208): "The Jews, like the fratricide Cain, are doomed to wander about the earth as fugitives and vagabonds, and their faces must be covered with shame. They are under no circumstances to be protected by Christian princes, but, on the contrary, to be condemned to serfdom. It is, therefore, discreditable for Christian princes to receive Jews into their towns and villages, and to employ them as usurers in order to extort money from Christians. They (the princes) arrest Christians who are indebted to Jews, and allow the Jews to take Christian castles and villages in pledge; and the worst of the matter is that the Church in this manner loses its tithes. It is scandalous that Christians should have their cattle slaughtered, and their grapes pressed by Jews, who are thus enabled to take their portion, prepared according to their religious precepts, and hand over the leavings to the Christians. A still greater sin is it that this wine prepared by Jews should be used in the church for the sacrament of the Lord's Supper. Whilst the Christians are excommunicated for favoring the Jews, and their land is laid under the ban, the Jews are all the time laughing in their sleeves at the fact that, on their account, the harps of the Church are hung on willows, and that the priests are deprived of their revenues." Innocent in his pastoral letter threatened Count de Nevers, as well as his supporters, with the severest punishment which the Church was capable of inflicting in the event of their continuing to favor the Jews. He was the first pope who directed against the Jews the burning fury and inhuman severity of the Church. Everything provoked his wrath against them; he begrudged them the very air and light, and only a delusive hope restrained him from openly preaching a crusade and a war of annihilation against them. Innocent was well aware why he so thoroughly abhorred Jews and Judaism. He hated those among them who indirectly agitated against the rotten form of Christianity, upon which the papacy had built its power. The aversion of the truly God-fearing and moral Christians to the arrogance, unchastity, and insatiable covetousness of the hierarchy had in some measure been prompted by the Jews. The Albigenses in southern France, who were branded as heretics, and who were the most resolute opponents of the papacy, had imbibed their hostility from intercourse with educated Jews. Amongst the Albigenses there was a sect which unhesitatingly declared the Jewish Law preferable to that of the Christians. The eye of Innocent was, therefore, directed to the Jews of the south of France, as well as to the Albigenses, in order to check their influence on the minds of the Christians. Count Raymund VI of Toulouse and St. Gilles, styled by the troubadours and singers of that time "Raymund the Good," who was looked upon as a friend of the Albigenses, and consequently cruelly harassed, was also credited by the Pope with favoring the Jews. In the list of transgressions which he drew up against the count, Innocent charged him with the crime of employing Jewish officials in his state, and of generally favoring the Jews. In the bloody crusade which the Pope opened against him and the Albigenses, the Jewish communities of southern France necessarily came in for their share of suffering. Raymund was humbled, and had to submit to being dragged into the church naked, and scourged by the papal legate, Milo. He was also forced to confess that, amongst other sins, he had committed the gross crime of entrusting public offices to Jews. Thereupon the legate ordered him, under penalty of losing his dignity, to humbly take an oath that he would discharge all Jewish officials in his country, that he would never again appoint them, and never admit any Jews to either public or private offices. The unfortunate prince was compelled, the sword being pointed at his breast, to make and to repeat this declaration (June, 1209). Thirteen barons who were connected with Raymund, and were regarded as protectors of the Albigenses, were similarly forced by Milo to give an assurance on oath that they would depose their Jewish officers, and that they would never again place any public trust in their hands. In the meantime, a fanatical crusading army was organized against the Albigenses at the instigation of the Pope and the bloodthirsty monk, Arnold of Citeaux. It was led by the ambitious and rapacious Count Simon de Montfort, and it marched against the Viscount Raymund Roger and his capital Béziers. Roger was doubly hated by the Pope and his legate as the secret friend of the Albigensian heretics, and as the protector of the Jews. On the 22d July (1209) the beautiful city of Béziers was stormed, and its inhabitants were massacred in the name of God. "We spared neither dignity, nor sex, nor age," wrote Arnold, the man of blood, to the Pope, "nearly 20,000 human beings have perished by the sword. After the massacre the town was plundered and burnt, and the revenge of God seemed to rage upon it in a wonderful manner." Even orthodox Catholics were not spared, and to the question of the crusaders as to how the orthodox were to be distinguished from the heretics, Arnold answered, "Strike down; God will recognize His own." Under these circumstances, the flourishing and cultured Jewish communities of Béziers had still less reason to hope for any indulgence. The result was that two hundred Jews were cut down, and a large number thrown into captivity. The Jews, on their side, marked this year of the Albigensian crusade as a "year of mourning."
In consequence of the diplomatic victory over Raymund of Toulouse, and the military victory over Raymund Roger of Béziers, the intolerant Church had acquired supremacy not only in the south of France, but everywhere else. The audacity of free-thinkers, who claimed the right to form their own opinion upon religion, the Holy Scripture, or upon the position of the clergy, was punished by bloodshed. In the Church language of that epoch, the Pope had to wield the spiritual and the secular sword. Those who thought rationally were killed, and independent thinking was branded as a crime. The disciples of the philosopher, Amalarich of Bena, who maintained that Rome was licentious Babylon, and the Pope, the Antichrist; that he dwelt on the Mount of Olives, i. e., in the luxury of power, and that intelligent men, who considered that to build altars for saints, and to worship the bones of martyrs was idolatry, were burnt as blasphemers in Paris. Philosophical writings which were brought over to France from Spain, and which might have enriched or fertilized Christian theology, amongst others the works of the great Jewish philosopher, Solomon Gebirol, which had been translated by order of an archbishop, were interdicted, and forbidden to be read by the Parisian synod. The light which was just dawning on the nations of Europe was extinguished by the representatives of the Church.
The Jews of southern France and of Spain were the only apostles of higher learning. But the Church begrudged them even this glory, and worked with all its might to degrade them. The Council of Avignon (Sept. 1209), presided over by the papal legate, Milo, at which Count Raymund was again laid under the ban, and at which the severest measures were passed against heretics, resolved that all barons of free cities should take an oath that they would entrust no office whatever to Jews, nor allow Christian servants to be employed in Jewish houses. One of the ordinances of this council prohibited the Jews from working on Sunday and all Christian holidays, and also forbade them to eat meat on Christian fast-days. Everywhere the Jews felt the heavy hand of the Romish Church, which stretched forth unhindered to degrade them to the dust.
In England, the Jews had at that time three enemies: the licentious, unprincipled John Lackland, who shrank from no expedient to extort money from them; the hostile barons, who saw in them the source of the king's wealth, by depriving them of which they thought to gain the means of damaging the power of the king; and, lastly, Stephen Langton, whom the Pope had appointed Archbishop of Canterbury, and who had introduced the tyrannical spirit of the Church into England. At the beginning of his reign, King John assumed the appearance of friendship towards them, for as he had usurped the crown of his nephew, and in consequence had France and a part of the English nobility against him, he naturally sought to win over to his side the moneyed classes of the people. He appointed a Talmudical scholar, Jacob of London, as chief rabbi over all the English communities (presbyteratus omnium Judæorum totius Angliæ), and all his subjects were warned against attacking either his property or his dignity. The king called this chief rabbi his "dear friend." Every outrage that was offered to the latter was looked upon by the king as a personal insult to himself. He further renewed and confirmed the privileges and liberties of the Jews which they had received from Henry I, including the remarkable provision that a Christian was bound to prefer his complaint against a Jew before a Jewish tribunal. The Jews, it is true, had to pay much money – 4000 silver marks – for these generous concessions. But it was a great boon that they received protection and freedom of movement in return for their money. When the Jews were in peril from a London mob, John wrote a threatening letter to the authorities of the capital, reproaching them with the fact that, whilst the Jews in other parts of England were unmolested, those of London were exposed to injury, and stating that he would hold them responsible for all bodily and material damage suffered by the Jews. As, however, John proceeded to quarrel more and more with his barons, and became involved in oppressive money difficulties, he gradually abandoned his mild demeanor, which had never been genuine, and adopted a totally different attitude towards the Jews. On one occasion he imprisoned all the English Jews in order to extort money from them (1210), and he demanded from one Jew of Bristol alone the sum of 10,000 marks of silver. As the latter could not, or would not pay, John had his teeth extracted one by one.
The crushing antipathy against them from all sides, and their yearning for the Holy Land, which the poet Jehuda Halevi had aroused, induced more than 300 rabbis of France and England to emigrate to Jerusalem (1211). The most renowned of them were Jonathan Cohen of Lünel, who had been in correspondence with Maimuni, and was one of his admirers, and Samson ben Abraham, an opponent of the school of Maimonides. Many of the emigrants stopped on their way at Cairo in order to make the acquaintance of Maimuni's son, who received them with great respect and joy. Only Samson ben Abraham, the exponent of a one-sided Judaism, avoided meeting the son of the man whom he considered almost a heretic.
The French and English emigrants, who were honorably received, and provided with privileges by the Sultan Aladil, Saladin's able brother, lost no time in building houses of prayer and learning in Jerusalem, and transplanted the Tossafists' method of exposition to the East. Intellectual activity, even in the field of the Talmud, did not, however, thrive in the Holy City. It seemed as if the curse of heaven had fallen upon this once glorious, and now distressed city, for since the Roman legions, under Titus and Hadrian, had struck down her noblest sons, she had become altogether barren. Not a single man of importance had sprung up in the city since the destruction of the Synhedrion. Jerusalem, like the whole of Palestine, was notable only on account of its illustrious dead. Pious men, who yearned for the home of their ancestors, searched only for their graves, for living fountains were no longer there. Jonathan Cohen and his associates conscientiously visited the spot upon which the Temple had once stood, the graves of the patriarchs, kings, prophets and doctors of the Mishna, and wept, and prayed upon the ruins of departed glory. They met the Exilarch David, of Mosul, who bore a letter of recommendation from the Caliph Alnasir Ledin Allah, which secured him free access to every place of interest. In the East the Jews were still allowed to maintain a certain show of dignity; caliphs and sultans, the wielders of the spiritual and the worldly might, granted them so much – for money. In Europe, however, the very lives of the Jews were continually in peril from a fanaticism which was ever being goaded into activity.
The Almohade Prince of the Faithful, Mahomet Alnasir, of northern Africa, had called to arms the entire male population at his disposal for a holy war against the increasing power of the Christians in Mahometan Spain, and led at least half a million warriors across the sea into Andalusia. The strong city of Salvatierra, in spite of the gallant defense of the knightly order of Calatrava, fell into the hands of the Mahometans (September, 1211). In this long siege, the Jewish community of Salvatierra was destroyed, and a remnant fled to Toledo. The Christian kings of Spain, terrified by this danger, laid aside their mutual hostilities in order to oppose the powerful enemy with united forces. But as the Christian population of Spain did not feel itself strong enough to undertake a war against the Mahometans, Alfonso the Noble, King of Castile, appealed to Innocent to decree a general crusade against the Crescent, and the Pope very readily consented. Thus it was that many European warriors crossed the Pyrenees, amongst them the bloodthirsty Cistercian monk, Arnold, with his troops, who had assured themselves of future bliss by all sorts of barbarities practised on the Albigenses and the Jews of the south of France. The wrath of the Ultramontanes, as they were called, in contradistinction to the Spanish warriors, against everything that was not Roman Catholic had risen to the point of frenzy; they took umbrage at the comparatively happy state of the Jews in the Spanish capital, at their wealth, their freedom, and their importance at court. These foreign crusaders, animated by Arnold's violent fanaticism, suddenly attacked the Jews of Toledo, and killed many of them (June, 1212), and all the Jews would have fared very badly, had not the noble Alfonso interfered in their behalf, and had not the Christian knights and citizens of Toledo, animated by a sense of honor, repelled the attacks of the fanatics. This was the first persecution of the Jews in Castile, the attack, however, being made by foreigners, and disapproved by the natives.
The Church, however, soon educated the Spanish kings and the people to become the enemies of the Jews. The extraordinary change of sentiment towards the Jews which had set in since Innocent's pontificate was shown by a resolution of the Synod of Paris of the same year. King Louis VII, and even his son Philip, had stoutly resisted the canonical institute which provided that the Jews were not to employ Christian servants. But now the French councils, under the presidency of the papal legates, and with the consent of the king, sought to extend this narrow-minded provision, so that not only was a Christian woman prohibited from nursing a Jewish child, but a Christian midwife was not even allowed to attend upon a Jewish woman in confinement, because Christians, who stayed with Jews, took a liking to Judaism. It was with reason, therefore, that the Jews, on hearing of the formation of a new council, were greatly alarmed lest they should be subjected to a new species of tyranny. When, therefore, the papal legate, Peter, of Benevento, convened a synod in Montpellier (beginning of 1214), to which he invited priests and laymen, in order completely to divest the Count of Toulouse of his dominions, and hand them over to Simon de Montfort, and to adopt the severest measures against the remnant of the Albigenses, the Jews of the south of France felt that a great danger was menacing them, and at once took steps to avert it. At the instance of the illustrious Don Isaac (Zag) Benveniste, physician in ordinary to the king of Aragon, many Jewish congregations sent each two deputies to use their influence with clergymen and laymen, that no new restrictions might be imposed upon the Jews. And it seems that they succeeded in warding off the danger; for the council of Montpellier omitted all mention of the Jews in its deliberations.
Hardly had this local danger been averted, when another and more general one appeared to be advancing. This threw all those Jews who received tidings of it into the greatest consternation. Innocent III had, through an encyclical, pastoral letter, convoked to Rome the representatives of entire Christendom for a general Œcumenical Council, at which the energetic prosecution of the crusades against the Mahometans in the Holy Land, in the Pyrenean peninsula, and against the heretics of the south of France, was to be decided upon; the deposition of the Count of Toulouse, and the transference of his estates to Simon de Montfort were to be ratified, and the reformation of the Church, i. e., the extension of her power in the states, was to be promoted. The congregations of the south of France, who had been informed that a severe blow was about to be dealt the Jews at the meeting of this council, were completely staggered. Isaac Benveniste accordingly invited Jewish deputies to the town Bourg de St. Gilles, in order to select certain influential and able men as deputies to Rome, who should endeavor to prevent the enactment of resolutions against the Jews. The names of the delegates chosen for this purpose are unknown, because their labors proved fruitless. The great Fourth Lateran Council was presided over by Pope Innocent III, and comprised over 1200 deputies from many Christian states, both churchmen and laymen. At this council, the papacy was permitted to make the greatest demands ever preferred by it. To its action is due the founding of the two orders of the Dominicans and Franciscans, distinguished by their hatred of freedom and their bloodthirstiness. This council, which wrapped round Christian Europe the ignominious coil of spiritual servitude, and threw it back into the ignorance of barbarism, inflicted deep wounds on Judaism. On the feast of the Maccabees, during which the children of Jacob celebrated their deliverance from Syrian tyranny, this council, which placed the yoke of the deepest degradation on the posterity of the Maccabean heroes, brought its deliberations to a conclusion (30th November, 1215). Though in the midst of gigantic undertakings, the Pope and the Elders of the Council nevertheless did not forget the Jews. Four of the seventy canonical decrees then passed dealt with the Jews. One canon set forth that Christian princes should keep strict watch over the Jews, lest they exact too high an interest from their Christian debtors. This restriction is not altogether unjustifiable – although, indeed, the Christian clergy and laity promoted Jewish usury, and profited by it; and Christian companies, like the Lombards and the Caorsini (called also Ultramontanes), practised usury on an enormous scale. The Church did not take any notice of the financial needs of the time, and kept to the strict letter of the Bible. The council, from its point of view, was also in a measure justified in forbidding baptized Jews to retain Jewish customs, because it would have been suicidal to the Church to allow freedom of conscience. If the accusation was true that some Jews at that time mocked at the Christian processions at Easter, then the authorities of the Church were partly right in forbidding them to show themselves openly on that day; although equitable legislation would not place restrictions on a whole community on account of the transgressions of a few indecorous members. Still more unjust was the canon which not only decreed that the Jews should give tithes of their houses and property, but also that the head of every Jewish family should pay a yearly tax at the Easter festival. The Catholic clergy considered themselves lords, to whom the Jews, their subjects, were to bring tribute. But it was characteristic of the spirit of Innocent, the persecutor of the Albigenses, that the law was renewed, that "no Christian prince shall bestow any office on a Jew." The transgressor of this rule was to be punished with excommunication, and every Jewish official was to be excluded from the society of Christians until he resigned his office in disgrace. The council, however, was unable to bring forward even a show of reason for this canonical decree; neither the New Testament, nor the Fathers of the Church, however much they hated the Jews, had offered a precedent for it. The Lateran Synod was compelled to go back to the Provincial Council of Toledo, under Recared, king of the Catholic Visigoths, in order to find a precedent for this scandalous law. The depth of the degradation of the Jews, however, was reached by the decision of the council that Jews in all Christian countries and at all times should wear a dress differing from that of the Christians. The reason urged was that in many countries where Jews (and Mahometans) wore the ordinary costume, intermarriages took place between the Jews and the Christians. By a sophistical argument it was shown that this law was contained in the Bible, and that Moses had commanded the Jews to wear a peculiar dress. Therefore it was decreed that, from the twelfth year of their age, Jews were to wear a peculiar color as a badge of their race, the men, on their hats, and the women, on their veils. This stigma on the Jews was an invention of Pope Innocent and of the Fourth Council assembled at Rome. It cannot, however, be strictly called an invention, because the pope borrowed the idea of forcing the Jews to wear a peculiar badge from the fanatical Mahometans. The Almohade Prince of the Faithful of Africa and southern Spain, Abu-Yussuff Almansur, had forced those Jews who had adopted the Mahometan faith through compulsion to wear a hideous dress, heavy clothes with long sleeves, which almost reached the feet, and instead of turbans, large bonnets of the ugliest shape. Said this fanatic: "If I knew that the converted Jews had adopted the Mahometan belief with an upright heart, then I would allow them to intermarry with the Mussulmans. If, on the other hand, I were convinced that they are still sceptics, I would put the men to the sword, enslave their children, and confiscate their goods. But I am doubtful about this point; therefore they shall appear distinguished by a hateful uniform." His successor, Abu-Abdullah Mahomet Alnasir, allowed them to change this mean apparel for yellow garments and turbans. By this color the class of people who were outwardly Moslems, yet in their heart of hearts still Jews, was characterized in the first decade of the thirteenth century in the kingdom of Morocco. This barbarous treatment of the Jews, Pope Innocent III now imitated, and their greatest humiliation during six centuries of European life dates from November 30th, 1215.