In post-Talmudic times, the problem of capital punishment according to Jewish law scarcely arose. Although the theory of it had been fully worked out, there were no occasions for the application of the theory, both because the Temple no longer stood and the Jewish courts had no jurisdiction,[224] and because after the interruption of _Semicha_ (ordination), no judges were regarded as competent.[225] This statement is true, however, only with certain limitations. Although as a general rule the Jewish courts in the diaspora had no jurisdiction in capital cases, there were times and places in which the power of imposing the death penalty was vested in the Jewish courts. Thus Asheri (c. 1300) wrote: “In no country of which I have heard have Jews their own courts for the trial of criminal cases except here in Spain. It was a source of great astonishment to me when I came to Spain, that the Spanish Jews should try criminal cases without the full and authorized Sanhedrin; but I was informed that this was done in accordance with an order of the government.”[226] Similarly, we find the Jews of Tudela asking the viceroy of Navarre, “That he would be pleased to order and that we practise the Jewish law as our ancestors have hitherto; that is, when a Jew or Jewess commits a sin, on our magistrates applying to the bailiff and notifying to him the sin committed, and the punishment it deserved according to Jewish law, the bailiff shall execute it, and enforce the sentence of our said magistrates, whether of condemnation or acquittal; or of any demand from one Jew to another, as we have been accustomed, not affecting the rights of our lord the king.” This right was granted them.[227] Asheri himself unhesitatingly imposed the sentence of death on an informer.[228] The _Moser_ (informer, _delator_), constituted so poignant a danger to Jewry in exile, that the death penalty was not infrequently consummated in his case. Jewish law gives the right to kill the informer, on the principle of life for life. Since he is seeking your life, you are justified in saving your own by taking his.[229] The death sentence on the _Moser_ was pronounced by the Jewish community and carried out by the non-Jewish authorities to whom the convicted _delator_ was handed over. Maimonides (12th cent.) declares that it regularly happens in the cities of the West that they kill informers, or hand them over to the non-Jews to be killed or dealt with according to their guilt.[230]