The prison known by the name of The Leads of Venice is of so notorious a character that its mere mention is sufficient, without its being necessary for us to describe it.  To the subject of voluntary seclusions, to which certain pious persons submitted themselves as acts of extreme religious devotion, it will only be necessary to allude here, and to remark that there are examples of this confinement having been ordered by legal authority.  In 1485, Renee de Vermandois, the widow of a squire, had been condemned to be burnt for adultery and for murdering her husband; but, on letters of remission from the King, Parliament commuted the sentence pronounced by the Provost of Paris, and ordered that Renee de Vermandois should be “shut up within the walls of the cemetery of the Saints-Innocents, in a small house, built at her expense, that she might therein do penance and end her days.”  In conformity with this sentence, the culprit having been conducted with much pomp to the cell which had been prepared for her, the door was locked by means of two keys, one of which remained in the hands of the churchwarden (marguillier) of the Church of the Innocents, and the other was deposited at the office of the Parliament.  The prisoner received her food from public charity, and it is said that she became an object of veneration and respect by the whole town.

[Illustration:  Fig. 356.—­Cat-o’-nine-tails.—­Fac-simile of a Woodcut in the “Cosmographie Universelle” of Munster.]

Jews.

Dispersion of the Jews.—­Jewish Quarters in the Mediaeval Towns.—­The Ghetto of Rome.—­Ancient Prague.—­The Giudecca of Venice.—­Condition of the Jews.—­Animosity of the People against them—­Severity and vexatious Treatment of the Sovereigns.—­The Jews of Lincoln.—­The Jews of Blois.—­Mission of the Pastoureaux.—­Extermination of the Jews.—­The Price at which the Jews purchased Indulgences.—­Marks set upon them.—­Wealth, Knowledge, Industry, and Financial Aptitude of the Jews.—­Regulations respecting Usury as practised by the Jews.—­Attachment of the Jews to their Religion.

A painful and gloomy history commences for the Jewish race from the day when the Romans seized upon Jerusalem and expelled its unfortunate inhabitants, a race so essentially homogeneous, strong, patient, and religious, and dating its origin from the remotest period of the patriarchal ages.  The Jews, proud of the title of “the People of God,” were scattered, proscribed, and received universal reprobation (Fig. 357), notwithstanding that their annals, collected under divine inspiration by Moses and the sacred writers, had furnished a glorious prologue to the annals of all modern nations, and had given to the world the holy and divine history of Christ, who, by establishing the Gospel, was to become the regenerator of the whole human family.