Another class and race, broken fragments of which we have before encountered, secured more rest in Spain than elsewhere, yet from a different cause. Homeless Israel in the Arab found a friend. Not that the Mahometans loved the Jews, but because the Christians hated them, was their condition made so tolerable in Spain under Saracen rule. Then, and until their expulsion, they occupied an important position, being the chief money-handlers, merchants, and bankers. Overcome in their dislike for each other by a more bitter hatred against their common enemy, the Jews and Moors lived upon terms somewhat approaching equality. The Jews surpassed their Moorish masters in wealth, and were but little inferior to them in arts and letters. They were not only usurers, but husbandmen, artisans, and doctors. As Christian domination extended southward, this comparatively happy state of the Spanish Jews disappeared. Under pretext of justice, their moneys were wrested from them by the nobles; indeed, if too stubborn they were not unfrequently put to death; and with the capitulation of Granada and the loss of their Moorish allies, the condition of the Jews became pitiable in the extreme. Two incidents of the crowning of Pope John XXIII., in 1410, as related by Monstrelet, give us a tolerably fair idea of the feelings entertained toward the Jews. In his progress through Rome, these people presented him with a manuscript copy of the old Testament. He, "having examined it a little, threw it behind him, saying, 'Your religion is good, but this of ours is better.'" And again, "There were before and behind him two hundred men-at-arms, each having in his hand a leathern mallet, with which they struck the Jews in such wise as it was a pleasure to see." With such an example the condition of the Jews grew more serious. As for the Spaniards, they bettered the instruction, as was sufficiently proved by their expulsion-edict of March, 1492—an edict forbidding unbaptized Jews to be found within the limits of Spain at the end of four months; an edict allowing them in that time to sell their property, but forbidding them at the end of that time "to carry away with them any gold, silver, or money whatsoever;" "an edict," says the Catholic historian, Lafuente, "that condemned to expatriation, to misery, to despair, and to death, many thousands of families born and bred in Spain."