It is impossible to calculate the number of lives that have been lost in consequence of this single accusation. It has lived on even into the present century.* In the fourteenth century the Black Death devastated the Continent of Europe. Soon the opinion gained ground that the Jews were responsible for the ravages of the plague. It was claimed that the Rabbi of Toledo had sent out a venomous mixture concocted of consecrated wafers and the blood of Christian hearts to the various congregations, with orders to poison the wells. The Pope himself undertook to plead for their innocency, but even papal bulls were powerless to stay the popular madness. In Dekkendorf a church was built in honor of the massacre of the Jews of that town, and the spot thus consecrated has remained a favorite resort of pilgrims down to modern times. The preaching friars of the Franciscan and Dominican orders were particularly active in fanning the embers of bigotry whenever they threatened to die down. In England, France and Spain the horrors enacted in Germany were repeated on a scale of similar magnitude. The tragic fate of the Jews of York, the fury of the Pastoureaux, the miserable scenes that accompanied the exodus of the Jews from Spain are familiar facts of history. In Poland, in the seventeenth century, the uprising of the Cossacks under the chieftainship of Chmielnicki became once more the signal of destruction. It is estimated that in ten years (1648-1658) upwards of two hundred and fifty thousand Jews perished.** Even when the lives of the Jews were spared, their condition was so extremely wretched that death might often have seemed the preferable alternative. * In the year 1840 it was simultaneously renewed in Rhenish Prussia, on the Isle of Rhodos, and in the city of Damascus. In that city the most respected members of the Jewish community were arrested, with the assistance of the French Consul, Ratti Menton, and underwent cruel torture. The intense excitement caused throughout Europe at the time is, doubtless, still fresh in the memory of many who will read these pages. The utter falsity of the charge was at last exposed, thanks to the efforts of the Austrian Consul Merlato and the energetic action of Lord Palmerston. ** Graetz, Gesch. der Juden, X. p. 78. The theory propounded by the Church and acted out by the temporal rulers of the Middle Ages is expressed in the words of Innocent III., "Quos propria culpa submisit perpetuae servituti, quum Dominum crucifixerint--pietas Christiana receptet et sus-tineat cohabitationem illorum."*