[Illustration:  Fig. 358.—­Jews taking the Blood from Christian Children, for their Mystic Rites.—­From a Pen-and-ink Drawing, illuminated, in the Book of the Cabala of Abraham the Jew (Library of the Arsenal, Paris).]

Square, a special judge named by the duke was set over them.  Exempted from the city rates, they paid a special poil tax, and they contributed, but on the same footing as Christian vassals, to extraordinary rates, war taxes, and travelling expenses of the nobles, &c.  This community even became so rich that it eventually held mortgages on the greater part of the houses of the town.

In Venice also, the Jews had their quarter—­the Giudecca—­which is still one of the darkest in the town; but they did not much care about such trifling inconveniences, as the republic allowed them to bank, that is, to lend money at interest; and although they were driven out on several occasions, they always found means to return and recommence their operations.  When they were authorised to establish themselves in the towns of the Adriatic, their presence did not fail to annoy the Christian merchants, whose rivals they were; but neither in Venice nor in the Italian republics had they to fear court intrigues, nor the hatred of corporations of trades, which were so powerful in France and in Germany.

It was in the north of Europe that the animosity against the Jews was greatest.  The Christian population continually threatened the Jewish quarters, which public opinion pointed to as haunts and sinks of iniquity.  The Jews were believed to be much more amenable to the doctrines of the Talmud than to the laws of Moses.  However secret they may have kept their learning, a portion of its tenets transpired, which was supposed to inculcate the right to pillage and murder Christians; and it is to the vague knowledge of these odious prescriptions of the Talmud that we must attribute the readiness with which the most atrocious accusations against the Jews were always welcomed.

Besides this, the public mind in those days of bigotry was naturally filled with a deep antipathy against the Jewish deicides.  When monks and priests came annually in Holy week to relate from the pulpit to their hearers the revolting details of the Passion, resentment was kindled in the hearts of the Christians against the descendants of the judges and executioners of the Saviour.  And when, on going out of the churches, excited by the sermons they had just heard, the faithful saw in pictures, in the cemeteries, and elsewhere, representations of the mystery of the death of our Saviour, in which the Jews played so odious a part, there was scarcely a spectator who did not feel an increased hatred against the condemned race.  Hence it was that in many towns, even when the authorities did not compel them to do so, the Israelites found it prudent to shut themselves up in their own quarter, and even in their own houses, during the whole of Passion week; for, in consequence of the public feeling roused during those days of mourning and penance, a false rumour was quite sufficient to give the people a pretext for offering violence to the Jews.