[Sidenote: The Marranos.] For a while the legal situation of the Jews was comparable to that of the Mudéjares, but the Christian clergy was particularly vindictive against the former, and popular sentiment was bitterly hostile to them, due not only to the influence of the church, but also in part to hatred of the Jewish tax collectors, and partly to the avarice awakened by the wealth of the Jews (fabulously exaggerated as a rule). This enmity was evidenced in more and more restrictive laws and in the open insults and violence of the Christian populace. Popular feeling began to make itself more rigorously felt from about the year 1391. In 1391 a great massacre of the Jews took place in Seville, and this was a signal for similar massacres in other parts of Spain. Shortly afterward the Jews lost their separate law courts; they were forbidden among other things to engage in commerce with Christians, to rent the taxes[38] or hold public positions, to be artisans, to carry arms, or to have intimate relations with Christians; and they were even compelled to listen to sermons preached with a view to their conversion. These laws were not always enforced, but the position of the Jews was far from equalling that of the Mudéjares. Great numbers of them were converted, but it was believed, probably with truth, that they continued to practise the Jewish faith in secret. The converts were insulted by their Christian brethren, even in the name “Marranos” (pigs) applied to them as a class. They were also envied because of their industry and wealth, and were accused of diabolical practices of which they were almost certainly not guilty. In the last years of the reign of Henry IV the massacres of Jews began to be extended to them as well as to the unconverted element. [Sidenote: Changes in the laws of marriage, the family, and property.]