The fanatical Empress searched with the vigilance of an inquisitor for the slightest trace of Judaism in her Empire. Since 1731 there had lived in St. Petersburg a learned physician, by the name of Antonio Sanchez, evidently a Sephardic Marano, who professed Judaism in secret. Originally invited from Holland, Sanchez occupied in St. Petersburg the post of body-physician at the courts of Anna Johannovna and her successors, and he was at the same time in charge of the medical department of the army. He subsequently became a member of the Academy of Sciences, and wrote a number of medical works, which drew the attention of the scientific world to him. In 1749 Sanchez was suddenly dismissed from the Academy of Sciences, and compelled to transfer his abode to Paris. It seems that Empress Elizabeth had found out the secret "crime" of her body-physician, which was none other than his loyalty to Judaism. "As far as I am aware"--the president of the Academy, Razumovski, wrote to Sanchez--"you have not been guilty of any wrong-doing against her Imperial Majesty or against any of her interests. But she finds it contrary to her conscience to tolerate in the Academy a man who has deserted the banner of Christ, and has joined the ranks of those who fight under the banner of Moses and the Old Testament prophets." When the famous mathematician Euler heard of Sanchez' expulsion, he wrote: "I doubt whether amazing actions of this kind will contribute towards the reputation of the Russian Academy of Sciences." There was no one perhaps in the contemporary Government circles of Russia who was so ready to condemn this malicious policy, inspired by Byzantine clericalism, as that cultured "Westerner," Empress Catherine II. (1762-1796). Nevertheless in the first years of her reign she found herself unable to change a policy which had already been hallowed by tradition, and was regarded as "national" and truly Russian. Catherine II., in endeavoring to justify the dethronement of her husband, the Prussophil Peter III., was bound, in the first years of her reign, to act against her own convictions and pose as a national ruler, anxious to follow in the footsteps of her Orthodox predecessors. We derive our knowledge of this fact from her own memoirs, in which, speaking of herself in the third person, she makes this confession: