nce and consequent poverty of the nobles, as
well as the increasing power of the priesthood, ultimately brought about
a disastrous change. The estates of the nobles and, it is also believed,
those attached to the cathedrals and churches, were in many cases
mortgaged to the Jews; hence it was not difficult for 'conscience' to
get up a persecution when goaded to its 'duty' by the pressure of want
and shame. Gradually the Jews were deprived of the privilege of living
where they pleased; their rights were diminished and their taxes
augmented."

To their lowest stage of misery, however, the Jews were reduced during
one of the most holy enterprises which the papacy launched during the
Middle Ages--the Crusades. "The crusading movement was inaugurated by a
wholesale massacre and persecution first of the Jew, and afterwards of
the Mussulman. . . . Shut out from all opportunity for the development
of their better qualities, the Jews were gradually reduced to a decline
both in character and condition. From a learned, influential, and
powerful class of the community, we find them, after the inauguration of
the Crusades, sinking into miserable outcasts; the common prey of clergy
and nobles and burghers, and existing in a state worse than slavery
itself. The Christians deprived the Jews even of the right of holding
real estate; and confined them to the narrower channels of traffic.
Their ambition being thus fixed upon one subject, they soon mastered all
the degrading arts of accumulating gain; and prohibited from investing
their gain in the purchase of land, they found n more profitable
employment of it in lending it at usurious interest to the thoughtless
and extravagant." In course of time the borrowers recouped their losses
by inaugurating raids upon the Jews. Jew-baiting, persecutions,
expatriations of Jewish settlers, were of frequent occurrence. Towards
the end of the thirteenth century 16,000 Jews were expelled from England
and their property confiscated. In Germany "they had to pay all manner
of iniquitous taxes--body tax, capitation tax, trade taxes, coronation
tax, and to present a multitude of gifts, to mollify the avarice or
supply the necessities of emperor, princes, and barons. It did not
suffice, however, to save them from the loss of their property. The
populace and the lower clergy also must be, satisfied; they, too, had
passions to gratify. A wholesale slaughter of the 'enemies of
Christianity' was inaugurated. Tre