§ 95.3. =The Jews in Europe.=--By trade, money lending and usury the Jews succeeded in obtaining almost sole possession of ready money, which brought them often great influence with the needy princes and nobles, but was also often the occasion of sore oppression and robbery, as well as the cause of popular hatred and violence. Whenever a country was desolated by a plague the notion of well-poisoning by the Jews was renewed. It was told of them that they had stolen the consecrated sacramental bread in order to stick it through with needles, and Christian children, that they might slaughter them at their passover festival. From time to time this popular rage exploded, and then thousands of Jews were ruthlessly murdered. The crusaders too often began their feats of valour on Christian soil by the slaughter of Jews. From the 13th century in almost all lands they were compelled to wear an insulting badge, the so called Jews’ hat, a yellow, funnel-shaped covering of the head, and a ring of red cloth on the breast, etc. They were also compelled to herd together in the cities in the so called Jewish quarter (Italian=Ghetto), which was often surrounded by a special wall. St. Bernard and several popes, Gregory VII., Alexander III., Innocent III., etc., interested themselves in them, refused to allow them to be violently persecuted, and pointed to their position as an incontrovertible proof of the truth of the gospel to all times. The German emperors also took the Jews under their special protection, for they classed them, after the example of Vespasian and Titus, among the special servants of the imperial chamber, (_Servi camera nostræ speciales_).[271] In England and France they were treated as the _mancipium_ of the crown. In Spain under the Moorish rule they had vastly increased in numbers, culture and wealth; also under the Christian kings they enjoyed for a long time special privileges, their own tribunals, freedom in the possession of land, etc., and obtained great influence as ministers of finance and administration, and also as astrologers, physicians, apothecaries, etc.; but by their usury and merciless greed drew forth more and more the bitter hatred of the people. Hence in the 14th century in Spain also there arose times of sore oppression and persecution, and attempts at conversion by force. And finally, in A.D. 1492, Ferdinand the Catholic drove more than 400,000 Jews out of Spain, and in the following year 100,000 out of Sicily. But even the baptized Jews, the so-called “New Christians,” who were prohibited from removing, fell under the suspicion of secret attachment to the old religion, and many thousands of them became victims of the Inquisition.--Many apologetic and polemical treatises were composed for the purpose of discussion with the Jews and for their instruction, but like so many other formal disputations they did not succeed in