he present
writer in August, 1893.

Still another development of the theological spirit, mixed with
professional exclusiveness and mob prejudice, wrought untold injury.
Even to those who had become so far emancipated from allegiance to
fetich cures as to consult physicians, it was forbidden to consult those
who, as a rule, were the best. From a very early period of European
history the Jews had taken the lead in medicine; their share in founding
the great schools of Salerno and Montpellier we have already noted, and
in all parts of Europe we find them acknowledged leaders in the healing
art. The Church authorities, enforcing the spirit of the time, were
especially severe against these benefactors: that men who openly
rejected the means of salvation, and whose souls were undeniably lost,
should heal the elect seemed an insult to Providence; preaching friars
denounced them from the pulpit, and the rulers in state and church,
while frequently secretly consulting them, openly proscribed them.

Gregory of Tours tells us of an archdeacon who, having been partially
cured of disease of the eyes by St. Martin, sought further aid from a
Jewish physician, with the result that neither the saint nor the Jew
could help him afterward. Popes Eugene IV, Nicholas V, and Calixtus III
especially forbade Christians to employ them. The Trullanean Council in
the eighth century, the Councils of Beziers and Alby in the thirteenth,
the Councils of Avignon and Salamanca in the fourteenth, the Synod
of Bamberg and the Bishop of Passau in the fifteenth, the Council
of Avignon in the sixteenth, with many others, expressly forbade the
faithful to call Jewish physicians or surgeons; such great preachers as
John Geiler and John Herolt thundered from the pulpit against them
and all who consulted them. As late as the middle of the seventeenth
century, when the City Council of Hall, in Wurtemberg, gave some
privileges to a Jewish physician "on account of his admirable experience
and skill," the clergy of the city joined in a protest, declaring that
"it were better to die with Christ than to be cured by a Jew doctor
aided by the devil." Still, in their extremity, bishops, cardinals,
kings, and even popes, insisted on calling in physicians of the hated
race.(316)

(316) For the general subject of the influence of theological idea upon
medicine, see Fort, History of Medical Economy during the Middle
Ages, New York, 1883, chaps. xiii and xviii; al