which the productions of classic authors had been laboriously effaced to make room for saintly homilies and patristic legends. Perfection in calligraphy had kept pace with the other artistic achievements of the Spanish Hebrews. Their Biblical manuscripts had a world-wide celebrity for accuracy of text and beauty of ornamentation. Many were illuminated with arabesques and floral designs executed in colors and embellished with gold. So highly were these copies of the Scriptures valued that in Spain one of but ordinary merit readily brought a hundred crowns. The number of Hebrew writers who attained distinction in the Middle Ages was enormous. The great catalogue of Bartholoccius, which enumerates those of Spain, Italy, and France--countries particularly subject, directly and individually, to Arab influence--fills four volumes in folio and contains four thousand names. Among these, authors of Spanish origin largely predominate. The activity of the Hebrew intellect was not hampered by conventional restrictions of sex, nor deterred by the difficulties or demands of any profession or calling. Among that people, precautions arising from Oriental jealousy, which had been observed from time immemorial, required the seclusion of women; and this custom was naturally unfavorable to female education. They were practically the slaves, first of their fathers, then of their husbands. In public they always appeared veiled from head to foot. In so little esteem were they ordinarily held, that it was not considered necessary to instruct them even in the doctrines of religion. Whatever talents, therefore, Jewish females possessed were, until the Saracen domination in Europe, unknown and undeveloped.