In the earlier half of the Middle Ages the Jews were still permitted to enjoy a certain measure of liberty. In Spain, France and Germany they lived on amicable terms with their neighbors, they engaged in trade and manufacture, and were allowed to possess landed property. In the tenth and eleventh centuries a great part of the city of Paris was owned by Jews. But at the time of the Crusades a terrible change in the aspect of their affairs took place. The principles embodied in the canonical law had by this time entered into the practice of the European nations. Fanaticism was rampant. The banks of the Rhine and the Moselle became the theatre of the most pitiless persecution. Among the Crusaders the cry was raised, "We go to Palestine to slay the unbelievers; why not begin with the infidel Jews in our own midst?" Worms, Spires, Mayence, Strassburg, Basle, Regens-burg, Breslau, witnessed the slaughter of their Jewish inhabitants. Toward the close of the thirteenth century one hundred thousand Jews perished at the hands of Rindfleisch, and the murderous hordes of whom he was the leader. To add fuel to the passions of the populace the most absurd accusations were brought forward against them, and their religion was made odious by connecting it with charges of grave moral obliquity. Jewish physicians being in great request, especially at the court of kings, it was given out that with fiendish malice they were wont to procure the death of their Christian patients.* They were accused of killing Christian children, and using the blood of Christians in celebrating the Passover festival, and this monstrous falsehood was repeated until no one doubted its substantial truth. Let it be remembered that this charge was originally preferred, in a somewhat different shape, against the Christians themselves. It floated down, as such rumors will, from age to age, until, its authorship being forgotten, it was finally used as a convenient handle against the hated Jews. In this manner the Easter-tide which was to announce the triumph of a religion of love became to the Jews a season of terror and mortal agony, and the Easter dawn was often reddened with the flames that rose from Jewish homes. * Thus in the case of Charles the Bald, and others.