The ridicule is aimed at the famous Jew, Isaac of Norwich, a rich money-lender and merchant, to whom abbots, bishops, and wealthy vicars were heavily indebted. At Norwich he had a wharf at which his vessels could receive and discharge their freights, and whole districts were mortgaged to him at once. He lent money to the king's exchequer. He was the Rothschild of his day. In the picture, which represents the outside of a castle--his own castle, wrested from some lavish Christian by a money-lender's wiles--the Jew Isaac stands above all the other figures, and is blessed with four faces and a crown, which imply, as Mr. Pike conjectures, that, let him look whichever way he will, he beholds possessions over which he holds kingly sway. Lower down, and nearer the centre, are Mosse Mokke, another Jewish money-lender of Norwich, and Madame Avegay, one of many Jewesses who lent money, between whom is a horned devil pointing to their noses. The Jewish nose was a peculiarly offensive feature to Christians, and was usually exaggerated by caricaturists. The figure holding up scales heaped with coin is, so far as we can guess, merely a taunt; and the seating of Dagon, the god of the Philistines, upon the turret seems to be an intimation that the Jews, in their dispersion, had abandoned the God of their fathers, and taken up with the deity of his inveterate foes. So far as the records of those ages disclose, there was no one enlightened enough to judge the long-suffering Jews with just allowance. Luther's aversion to them was morbid and violent. He confesses, in his Table-talk, that if it had fallen to his lot to have much to do with Jews, his patience would have given way; and when, one day, Dr. Menius asked him how a Jew ought to be baptized, he replied, "You must fill a large tub with water, and, having divested a Jew of his clothes, cover him with a white garment. He must then sit down in the tub, and you must baptize him quite under the water." He said further to Dr. Menius that if a Jew, not converted at heart, were to ask baptism at his hands, he would take him to the bridge, tie a stone round his neck, and hurl him into the river, such an obstinate and scoffing race were they. If Luther felt thus toward them, we can not wonder that the luxurious dignitaries of the Church, two centuries before his time, should have had qualms of conscience with regard to paying Isaac of Norwich interest upon money borrowed. CHAPTER VII. CARICATURES PRECEDING THE REFORMATION. [Illustration: Luther inspired by Satan.]