January of the following year to sell their immovables, and within fourteen days after that date, they were to leave, for "he (the bishop) would no longer tolerate Jews in his diocese." The towns, barons, lords, and justices were enjoined to expel the Jews from their several jurisdictions, and Jewish creditors were deprived of a portion of the debts owing to them. When Jews were concerned, inhuman fanaticism could beguile a noble-hearted prince of the church and an entire chapter of ecclesiastics into a flagrant breach of faith. Capistrano's influence was most mischievous for the Jews of Silesia. Here he showed himself in truth to be the "Scourge of the Jews," as his admirers called him. The two chief communities in this province, which belonged half to Poland and half to Bohemia, were at Breslau and Schweidnitz, and the Jews composing them, not being permitted to possess real property, and being, besides, largely engaged in the money traffic, had considerable amounts of money at their command. The majority of the nobles were among their debtors, and several towns were either themselves debtors or had become security for their princes. Hence it is not unlikely that some debtors of rank secretly planned to evade their liabilities by ridding themselves of the Jews. At any rate the advent of the fanatical Franciscan afforded an opportunity for carrying out such a design. Capistrano came to the Silesian capital on the invitation of the bishop of Breslau, Peter Novak, who found himself unable to control his subordinate ecclesiastics. Summoning the clergy to his presence, the Franciscan preacher upbraided them for their sinful, immoral, and sensual lives. The doors of the church in which the interview took place were securely bolted, so that no lay ear might learn the full extent of the depravity of the ministers of the Gospel. But nearer to his heart than the reclamation of the clergy was the extermination of the Hussites, of whom there were many in Silesia, and the persecution of the Jews. The frenzied fanaticism with which Capistrano's harangues inspired the people of Breslau directed itself principally against the Jews. A report was spread that a Jew named Meyer, one of the wealthiest of the Breslau Israelites, in whose safe-keeping were many of the bonds of the burghers and nobles, had purchased a host from a peasant, had stabbed and blasphemed it, and then distributed its fragments among the communities of Schweidnitz, Liegnitz, and others for further desecration. It need hardly be said that the wounded host was alleged to have shed blood. This imbecile fiction soon reached the ears of the municipal authorities, with whom it found ready credence. Forthwith all the Jews of Breslau, men, women and children, were thrown into prison, their entire property in the "Judengasse" seized, and, what was most important to the authors of the catastrophe, the bonds of their debtors, worth about 25,000 Hungarian gold florins, confiscated (2d May, 1453).