desperate situation, of the want of education prevalent among them. They could not produce a single man who could expose the imposture of the Frankists and the hollowness of their creed in well-turned or even tolerable language. The proud leaders of the Synod behaved like children in their anxiety. They helplessly devised extravagant schemes, wished to appeal to the pope, and to incite the Portuguese in Amsterdam and Rome to protect them from the machinations of their vindictive enemies. Bishop Dembowski consented to the proposition of the Frankists, and issued a command that the Talmudists send deputies to a disputation at Kamieniec, failing which he would punish them and burn the Talmud as a book hostile to Christianity. In vain the Polish Jews referred to their ancient privileges, screened themselves behind great nobles, and spent large sums of money. They were obliged to prepare for the disputation and render account to the enemies they had so greatly despised. Only a few rabbis appeared. What could the representatives of the Talmud, with their profound ignorance and halting speech, effect against the audacious denunciations of the Frankists, particularly as they also acknowledged the Zohar as a sacred book, and this, as a matter of fact, formulates the doctrine of a kind of Trinity! What happened at the disputation of Kamieniec has never transpired. The Talmudists were accounted as vanquished and refuted. Bishop Dembowski publicly declared (October 14, 1757), that, as the anti-Talmudists had set down in writing and proved the chief points of their confession of faith, they were permitted everywhere to hold disputations with the Talmudists. Copies of the Talmud were ordered to be confiscated, brought to Kamieniec, and there publicly burned by the hangman. Dembowski was permitted arbitrarily to favor the one party and condemn the other. The king of Poland and his minister, Count Brühl, troubled themselves but little about internal affairs, still less about the Jews. Hence Dembowski, who at about that time was made archbishop of Lemberg, was allowed with the aid of the clergy, the police, and the Frankists, to search for copies of the Talmud and other rabbinical writings in the towns of his bishopric, collect them at Kamieniec, and drag them through the streets in mockery. Only the Bible and the Zohar were to be spared, as in the time of the Talmud persecution under Popes Julius IV and Pius V. Nearly a thousand copies of the Talmud were thrown into a great pit at Kamieniec and burnt by the hangman. The Talmudists could do nothing, but groan, weep, and proclaim a rigorous fast-day on account of "the burning of the Torah." It was the Kabbala that had kindled the torches for the funeral pile of the Talmud. The clergy, in conjunction with the anti-Talmudists, daily made domiciliary visits into Jewish houses to confiscate copies of the Talmud.