John Wülfer of Nuremberg, who was educated for the church, and had studied with a Jew of Fürth and afterwards in Italy, thoroughly acquainting himself with biblical and Talmudical literature, sought after Hebrew manuscripts and old Jewish prayer-books to found an accusation against the Jews. Christians, instigated by baptized Jews, took offense at a beautiful prayer (Alenu), which arose in a time and country in which Christianity was little known. Some Jews were wont to add a sentence to this prayer: "For they (the heathen) pray unto vanity and emptiness." In the word "emptiness," enemies of the Jews pretended to see an allusion to Jesus and to find blasphemy against him. The sentence was not printed in the prayer-books, but in many copies a blank space was left for it. This vacant space, or the presence of the obnoxious word, equally enraged the Protestants, and Wülfer, therefore, searched libraries to find authority for it, and when he found the word in manuscripts, he did not fail to publish his discovery. He praised Prince George of Hesse because he made his Jews swear an oath never to utter a blasphemous word against Jesus, and threatened to punish them with death in case of transgression. Wülfer, on the other hand, was candid enough to confess that the Jews had been long and cruelly persecuted by Christians, that the accusation against them of using blood was a mischievous invention, and that the testimony of baptized Jews deserved little credence. John Christopher Wagenseil, a lawyer and professor at Altorf, was a good-hearted man, and kindly disposed towards the Jews. He had traveled farther than Wülfer, had penetrated through Spain into Africa, and took the greatest pains to hunt up such Jewish writings as attacked Christianity from the ground of Holy Scripture or with the weapons of reason. His discoveries filled his quiver "with the fiery darts of Satan." Wagenseil looked up that insipid compilation of the magical miracles of Jesus (Toldoth Jesho), with which a Jew, who had been persecuted by Christians, tried to revenge himself on the founder of Christianity, and he spent much money in hunting up this Hebrew parody of the Gospel. Few Jews possessed copies of it, and the owners kept them under lock and key for their own security. Because one Jew had once written these absurdities about Jesus, and some Jews had copies of the book in their possession, while others had defended themselves against attacks by Christians, Wagenseil felt assured that the Jews of his time were vile blasphemers of Jesus. He therefore implored the princes and civil magistrates to forbid the Jews most strictly to continue such blasphemy. He directed a pamphlet, "The Christian Denunciation," to all high potentates, urging them to impose a formal oath upon Jews, not to utter any word of mockery against Jesus, Mary, the cross, the mass, and other Christian sacraments. Wagenseil had two pious wishes besides. One was that the Protestant princes should