Christian in sickness or administer medicine to him,[226] but the prohibition was impossible of enforcement. About 1462, the Franciscan, Alonso de Espina, bitterly complains that there is not a noble or a prelate but keeps a Jewish devil as a physician, although the zeal of the Jews in studying medicine is simply to obtain an opportunity of exercising their malignity upon Christians; for one whom they cure they slay fifty, and when they are gathered together they boast as to which has caused the most deaths, for their law commands them to spoil and slay the faithful.[227] It was but a few years after this that Abiatar Aben Crescas, chief physician of Juan II of Aragon, the father of Ferdinand, vindicated Jewish science by successfully relieving his royal patient of a double cataract and restoring his sight. On September 11, 1469, pronouncing the aspect of the stars to be favorable, he operated on the right eye; the king, delighted with his recovered vision, ordered him to proceed with the left, but Abiatar refused, alleging that the stars had become unfavorable, and it was not until October 12 that he consented to complete the cure.[228] The friars themselves believed as little as royalty in the stories which they invented to frighten the people and create abhorrence of Jewish physicians. In spite of the fact that Ferdinand and Isabella, in the _Ordenanzas_ of 1480, repeated the prohibition of their attending Christians, the Dominicans, in 1489, obtained from Innocent IV permission to employ them, notwithstanding all ecclesiastical censures, the reason alleged being that in Spain there were few others.[229] [Sidenote: _REPRESSIVE LEGISLATION_]