The guilt of the Jews was rendered more credible by the flight of a few of them, who were, however, soon taken. Capistrano assumed the direction of the inquiry into this important affair. As inquisitor, the leading voice in the prosecution of blasphemers of the consecrated wafer by right belonged to him. He ordered a few Jews to be stretched on the rack, and personally instructed the torturers in their task--he had experience in such work. The tortured Israelites confessed. Meantime another infamous lie was circulated. A wicked baptized Jewess declared that the Breslau Jews had once before burnt a host, and that, on another occasion, they had kidnaped a Christian boy, fattened him, and put him into a cask studded with sharp nails, which they rolled about until their victim gave up the ghost. His blood had been distributed among the Silesian communities. Even the bones of the murdered child were alleged to have been found. The guilt of the Jews appeared established in these various cases, and a large number, in all 318 persons, were arrested in different localities, and brought to Breslau. Capistrano sat in judgment upon them, and hurried them to execution. At the Salzring--now Blücherplatz--where Capistrano resided, forty-one convicted Jews were burnt on one day (2d June, 1453). The rabbi (Phineas?) hanged himself; he had also counseled others to take their own lives. The remainder were banished from Breslau, all their children under seven years of age having previously been taken from them by force, baptized, and given to Christians to be brought up. This was Capistrano's wish, and in a learned treatise he explained to King Ladislaus that it was in consonance with the Christian religion and orthodoxy. The honest town clerk, Eschenloer, who did not venture to protest aloud against these barbarities, wrote in his diary, "Whether this is godly or not, I leave to the judgment of the ministers of religion." The ministers of religion had transformed themselves into savages. The goods of the burnt and banished Jews were, of course, seized, and with their proceeds the Bernardine church was built. It was not the only church erected with bloody money. In the remaining Silesian towns the Jews fared no better. Some were burnt, and the rest chased away, stripped almost to the skin. When the young king, Ladislaus, was petitioned by the Breslau town council to decree that from that time forward no Jew would be allowed to settle in Breslau, not only did he assent "for the glory of God and the honor of the Christian faith," but he added, in approval of the outrages committed, "that they (the Silesian Jews) had suffered according to their deserts," a remark worthy of the son of Albert II, who had burnt the Austrian Jews. The same monarch also sanctioned-- doubtless at the instigation of Capistrano, who passed several months at Olmütz--the expulsion of the Jews from the latter place and from Brünn.