Modern prejudice, like mediæval ignorance, is reluctant to confess the obligations learning owes to Hebrew genius and industry. The Jews were, in turn, the teachers, the pupils, and the coadjutors of the Moors; the legatees and the distributors of the precious stores of Arab wisdom. The rabbis, few of whom, it may be remarked, were not expert workmen in the mechanical trades, a knowledge of which was enjoined by their religion, spread the love of letters everywhere. All treatises in Arabic, of practical or scientific value, were translated into Hebrew. Their familiarity with every branch of classical literature is apparent in their writings; even the Fables of Æsop were reproduced in their language. Purity of diction and elegance of style were striking characteristics of all the literary productions of the Spanish Jews. The most eminent Christian prelates of Spain during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were apostate rabbis. The proficiency of their medical practitioners has already been repeatedly alluded to. For years after the banishment of the Jews from the Peninsula, entire districts remained without the benefits of medical treatment. Such as were able resorted to foreign countries at great expense and inconvenience; the vast majority of invalids suffered without relief. The reputation of the Hebrew was so great, even in the sixteenth century, that Francis I. sent to the Emperor Charles V. for a Jewish physician; and one who had been converted to Christianity having undertaken the journey to Paris, the French king refused to receive him as soon as he learned that he was an apostate. Hebrew erudition exercised no small influence on both Moorish and Spanish literature. Many of the treatises of the Jewish philosophers, written in Arabic, enjoyed a wide circulation in the cultivated society of the khalifate and of the principalities which succeeded it. The first biography of the Cid was written by Ibn-Alfange, a Jew. The collection of tales entitled El Conde Lucanor, by Don Juan Manuel, is borrowed from a composition of similar character by Moses Sephardi, a Hebrew fabulist. In the works of all the distinguished Jewish writers who had either directly or remotely been subjected to the influence of the Moslem academies of Spain, Aristotelian and Neo-Platonic opinions prevail. Orthodox Judaism could not survive in the atmosphere of those infidel institutions. The rabbis were, without exception, to a greater or less degree, infected with pantheistic ideas. They were firm believers in the heretical doctrine of Emanation and Absorption. In common with their Arabic associates, who had long since repudiated the legends of the Koran, they accepted in all its portentous significance the aphorism, “Science is religion.”