2io THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



remained for a long time within the circle defined by the Emperor. 

 The Jews were forbidden marriage with Christians, the ownership and 

 sale of Christian slaves, and jurisdiction in court over Christians ; fur- 

 ther, Jews and Christians were not allowed to take a common meal, 

 and the employment of a Jewish physician was forbidden. Bitter hos- 

 tility against the Jewish people is breathed first in the Frankish Em- 

 pire in the writings of the Archbishops Agobard and Amolo, of Lyons, 

 about the year 848 ; the latter recommended Sisibut's action as one 

 acceptable to God, and worthy of imitation a bad sign of what was 

 to come. However, these writings also indicate, first, that at that 

 time the charge of a usurious fleecing of the Christians by the Jews 

 was not yet brought forward ; and, further, that the Emperor, the offi- 

 cers of state, and even the agricultural population, were well-disposed 

 to the Jews, and that the state still protected them. 



But with the end of the eleventh century a turn of things began, 

 which proved full of disaster to the Christians as well as to the Jews 

 and the pagans. The highest authority in the Western world had 

 announced the principle of the religious wars, and found the means to 

 foster them and continuously excite them anew. It had become an 

 expiatory and saving work to conquer non-Christian peoples, and to 

 plunder and destroy those who resisted ; hence, it was unavoidable 

 that the condition of the Israelitish people should take a much worse 

 shape than before ; and, although in general Europe was making 

 steady progress in the formation of orderly civil governments, this 

 progress was of no advantage to the Jewish people ; rather did each 

 century, until the Reformation, bring an increase of their misery. For 

 the Israelite was in the eyes of the then existing Christians worse than 

 an unbeliever ; he was called in the official language of the Church 

 perfidus i. e., a man who deserves neither truth nor confidence. 

 " Oremus et pro perfidis Judais " stood in the Liturgy for Good Fri- 

 day, and all theologians and canonical writers of that time used the 

 expression. The Jew should be avoided like one afflicted with a 

 plague, even whose breath contaminates, or like a dangerous tempter, 

 whose words hide the poison of doubt and unbelief. The laity were 

 forbidden to speak even one word with him on the subject of religion. 



When, therefore, the hosts of the Crusaders went out to war 

 against the Mohammedans in Asia, they began slaying the Jews at 

 home, and plundering their houses. And the kingdom of Jerusalem 

 began its existence by burning the Israelites who lived there, together 

 with their synagogues. 



Those were acts of fanatical and untamed bands. For princes and 

 peoples, for priests and laymen, the utterances of the Popes and coun- 

 cils respecting the rights and duties of Christians to the Jews were 

 naturally accepted as giving the law. Before this, the Roman bishops 

 had not concerned themselves about the Jews ; their epistles and en- 

 actments during the first six centuries contain nothing about them, the 



