and, consequently, such dealings
were stigmatized as disgraceful. The Jews were far from sharing these
high-minded scruples, and they took advantage of the ignorance of
Christians by devoting themselves as much as possible to enterprises and
speculations, which were at all times the distinguishing occupation of
their race. For this reason we find the Jews, who were engaged in the
export trade from the twelfth to the fifteenth centuries, doing a most
excellent business, even in the commercial towns of the Mediterranean. We
can, to a certain extent, in speaking of the intercourse of the Jews with
the Christians of the Middle Ages, apply what Lady Montague remarked as
late as 1717, when comparing the Jews of Turkey with the Mussulmans: "The
former," she says, "have monopolized all the commerce of the empire,
thanks to the close ties which exist amongst them, and to the laziness and
want of industry of the Turks. No bargain is made without their
connivance. They are the physicians and stewards of all the nobility. It
is easy to conceive the unity which this gives to a nation which never
despises the smallest profits. They have found means of rendering
themselves so useful, that they are certain of protection at court,
whoever the ruling minister may be. Many of them are enormously rich, but
they are careful to make but little outward display, although living in
the greatest possible luxury."

[Illustration: Fig. 365.--Costume of an Italian Jew of the Fourteenth
Century.--From a Painting by Sano di Pietro, preserved in the Academy of
the Fine Arts, at Sienna.]

[Illustration: The Jews' Passover.

Fac-simile of a miniature from a missel of fifteenth century ornamented
with paintings of the School of Van Eyck. Bibl. de l'Arsenal, Th. lat., no
199.]

The condition of the Jews in the East was never so precarious nor so
difficult as it was in the West. From the Councils of Paris, in 615, down
to the end of the fifteenth century, the nobles and the civil and
ecclesiastical authorities excluded the Jews from administrative
positions; but it continually happened that a positive want of money,
against which the Jews were ever ready to provide, caused a repeal or
modification of these arbitrary measures. Moreover, Christians did not
feel any scruple in parting with their most valued treasures, and giving
them as pledges to the Jews for a loan of money when they were in need of
it. This plan of lending on pledge, or usury, belonge