It is remarkable, however, that the Roman bishops, the recognized champions of Christianity, treated the Jews with the utmost toleration and liberality. The occupants of the Papal throne shielded the Jews, and exhorted the clergy and the princes against the use of force in converting them to Christianity. This liberality was in truth an inconsistency, for the Church, following the lines of development prescribed by the Council of Nice, had to be exclusive, and therefore hard-hearted and given to persecution. It could only say to Jew, Samaritan, and heretic: "Believe as I believe, or die," the sword supplying the lack of argument. But who would not prefer the benevolent inconsistency of Gregory the Holy to the terrible consistency of the bloodthirsty kings Sisebut and Dagobert, who, ecclesiastically speaking, were more Catholic than the Pope? But the toleration of even the most liberal of the bishops was not of much consequence. They merely refrained from proselytizing by means of threats of banishment or death, because they were convinced that in this manner the Church would be peopled with false Christians, who would curse it in their inmost hearts. But they did not hesitate to fetter and harass the Jews, and to place them next to the serfs in the scale of society. This course appeared absolutely just and pious to almost all the representatives of Christianity during the centuries of barbarism. Those nations, however, which were baptized in the Arian creed showed less intolerance of the Jews. The more Arianism was driven out of Europe, and the more it gave way before the Catholic religion, the more the Jews were harassed by proselytizing zeal. Their valiant resistance continually incited fresh attacks. Their heroic constancy in the face of permanent degradation is, therefore, a noble trait which history ought not to conceal. Nor were the Jews devoid of all knowledge in those illiterate times. They were certainly better acquainted with the records of their religion than the inferior clergy, for the latter were not capable of reading their missal. Our survey of the settlement of the Jews in Europe begins, on our way from Asia, with the Byzantine empire. They lived in its cities before Christianity had begun its world-conquest. In Constantinople the Jewish community inhabited a separate quarter, called the brass-market, where there was also a large synagogue, from which they were, however, expelled by one of the emperors, Theodosius II or Justinus II, and the synagogue was converted into the "Church of the Mother of God."