For three months fire and sword raged unresisted in the majority of the Spanish Jewries. When the storm abated, the Jews remaining were so broken in spirit that they did not venture forth from their places of refuge. The sad occurrences were described in a heart-breaking, tearful epistle to the community of Perpignan, which Chasdaï Crescas, who had been robbed of an only son and his entire fortune, penned in answer to their sympathetic inquiries. Thus, to Spanish Jews came the tragical fate which had befallen their German brethren, hardly half a century before, at the time of the Black Death. They also had acquired materials for bitter songs of lamentation, which they inserted in the Jewish liturgy. But the consequences of the persecution were even more terrible than the persecution itself. Their pride was completely crushed, and their spirit permanently darkened. They who had formerly held their heads so proudly aloft, now slunk timidly along, anxiously avoiding every Christian as a possible murderer or instigator of murderous assaults. If hundred Jews were assembled, and a single rough abused them, they fled like a flock of frightened birds. This persecution gave them their first experience of the bitterness of exile, for, notwithstanding many untoward circumstances, they had always imagined themselves secure and at home in Spain. Now, for the first time, their haughty demeanor was humbled. They were no longer the men who had so valiantly wielded the sword in the armies of Don Pedro. In Portugal alone the Jews were free from fanatical attacks. Its king, Don João I, enjoyed a popularity to which, in a crisis, he was able to appeal. As his instructions were cheerfully obeyed, he was able to preserve order and put down outbreaks with a firm hand. The chief rabbi, Don Moses Navarro, brought under his notice the two bulls of the popes Clement VI and Boniface IX, in which force was forbidden in converting Jews. The king immediately issued an order (July 17th, 1392) prohibiting persecutions. Wide publicity was given to the bulls in every town in Portugal, and they were inserted among the statutes of the realm. Portugal thus became an asylum for the persecuted Jews of Spain. The Jews of the south of France were not entirely exempted from the horrors of this persecution. The tempest which had crossed the sea to the island of Majorca also whirled over the snow-capped Pyrenees, and caught up the Jews of Provence in its deadly eddies. No sooner was intelligence received of the bloody massacres of the Jews of Spain than the populace of Provence rose, and began to plunder and murder their Jewish neighbors.