ic
ballads, must recollect how often the females, during the dark ages, as
they are called, were initiated into the mysteries of surgery, and how
frequently the gallant knight submitted the wounds of his person to her
cure, whose eyes had yet more deeply penetrated his heart.

But the Jews, both male and female, possessed and practised the medical
science in all its branches, and the monarchs and powerful barons of the
time frequently committed themselves to the charge of some experienced
sage among this despised people, when wounded or in sickness. The aid
of the Jewish physicians was not the less eagerly sought after, though
a general belief prevailed among the Christians, that the Jewish Rabbins
were deeply acquainted with the occult sciences, and particularly with
the cabalistical art, which had its name and origin in the studies of
the sages of Israel. Neither did the Rabbins disown such acquaintance
with supernatural arts, which added nothing (for what could add aught?)
to the hatred with which their nation was regarded, while it diminished
the contempt with which that malevolence was mingled. A Jewish magician
might be the subject of equal abhorrence with a Jewish usurer, but he
could not be equally despised. It is besides probable, considering the
wonderful cures they are said to have performed, that the Jews possessed
some secrets of the healing art peculiar to themselves, and which, with
the exclusive spirit arising out of their condition, they took great
care to conceal from the Christians amongst whom they dwelt.

The beautiful Rebecca had been heedfully brought up in all the knowledge
proper to her nation, which her apt and powerful mind had retained,
arranged, and enlarged, in the course of a progress beyond her years,
her sex, and even the age in which she lived. Her knowledge of medicine
and of the healing art had been acquired under an aged Jewess, the
daughter of one of their most celebrated doctors, who loved Rebecca as
her own child, and was believed to have communicated to her secrets,
which had been left to herself by her sage father at the same time, and
under the same circumstances. The fate of Miriam had indeed been to fall
a sacrifice to the fanaticism of the times; but her secrets had survived
in her apt pupil.

Rebecca, thus endowed with knowledge as with beauty, was universally
revered and admired by her own tribe, who almost regarded her as one of
those gifted women mentioned in the sacre