acknowledged their crime, but all the Jews in the region of Lake Geneva and in Savoy were burnt at the stake. The report of the demonstrated guilt of the Jews rapidly made its way from Geneva into Switzerland, and here scenes of blood of the same horrible description were soon witnessed. The consuls of Berne sent for the account of the proceedings of the courts of justice at Chillon and Chastelard. They then put certain Jews to the torture, extracted confessions from them, and kindled the funeral pyre for all the Jews (September). The annihilation of the Jews on the charge of poisoning was now systematically carried out, beginning with Berne and Zofingen (canton Aargau). The consuls of Berne addressed letters to Basle, Freiburg, Strasburg, Cologne, and many other places, with the announcement that the Jews had been found guilty of the crime imputed to them; and also sent a Jew, bound in chains, under convoy, to Cologne, that every one might be convinced of the diabolical plans of the Jews. In Zurich the charge of poisoning the wells was raised together with that of the murder of a Christian child. There, also, those who appeared to be guilty were burnt at the stake, the rest of the community expelled from the town, and a law passed forbidding them ever to return thither (21st September). The persecution of the Jews extended northwards with the pestilence. Like the communities around Lake Geneva, Jews in the cities surrounding Lake Constance, in St. Gall, Lindau, Ueberlingen, Schaffhausen, Constance (Costnitz), and others, were burnt at the stake, put to the wheel, or sentenced to expulsion or compulsory baptism. Once again Pope Clement VI took up the cause of the Jews; he published a bull to the whole of Catholic Christendom, in which he declared the innocence of the Jews regarding the charge leveled against them. He produced all possible reasons to show the absurdity of the accusation, stating that in districts where no Jew lived the people were visited by the pestilence, and that Jews also suffered from its terrible effects. It was of no avail that he admonished the clergy to take the Jews under their protection, and that he placed the false accusers and the murderers under the ban (September). The child had become more powerful than its parent, wild fancy stronger than the papacy.