While their religion and laws were thus respected, they were required to respect Christianity. They were not allowed to read or keep books contrary to their own law or to the Christian law. Proselytism from Christianity was punishable by death and confiscation, and any insults offered to God, the Virgin, or the saints, were visited with a fine of ten maravedís or a hundred lashes.[261] Yet, if we are to believe the indignant Lucas of Tuy, writing about 1230, these simple restraints were scarce enforced. The heretic Cathari of Leon, he tells us, were wont to circumcise themselves in order, under the guise of Jews, to propound heretical dogmas and dispute with Christians; what they dared not utter as heretics they could freely disseminate as Jews. The governors and judges of the cities listened approvingly to heresies put forth by Jews, who were their friends and familiars, and if any one, inflamed by pious zeal, angered these Jews, he was treated as if he had touched the apple of the eye of the ruler; they also taught other Jews to blaspheme Christ and thus the Catholic faith was perverted.[262] This represents a laxity of toleration impossible in any other land at the period, yet the Spanish Jews were not wholly shielded from inroads of foreign fanaticism. Before the crusading spirit had been organized for the conquest of the Holy Land, ardent knights sometimes came to wage war with the Spanish Saracens, and their religious fervor was aggrieved by the freedom enjoyed by the Jews. About 1068, bands of these strangers treated them as they had been wont to do at home, slaying and plundering them without mercy. The Church of Spain was as yet uncontaminated by race hatred and the bishops interposed to save the victims. For this they were warmly praised by Alexander II, who denounced the crusaders as acting either from foolish ignorance or blind cupidity. Those whom they would slay, he said, were perhaps predestined by God to salvation; he cited Gregory I to the same effect and pointed out the difference between Jews and Saracens, the latter of whom make war on Christians and could justly be assailed.[263] Had the chair of St. Peter always been so worthily filled, infinite misery might have been averted and the history of Christendom been spared some of its most repulsive pages.