The confidence reposed by all classes in the Hebrews, despite the universal and ineradicable prejudice entertained against their nationality, affords undeniable proof of their integrity. Their financial capacity and experience procured for them the office of receiver of royal taxes in countries where public sentiment was absolutely opposed to their toleration. Their fitness for this important and responsible post was emphasized not only by their abilities, but by the fact that their prosperous circumstances were, in a measure, a guaranty of their honesty, their wealth removing the principal incentive to peculation. The most bigoted Christians eagerly sought their services in the management of property and the settlement of estates; and to their sagacity and wisdom was frequently committed the solution of the difficult problems relating to the methods of taxation and enforced contribution adopted by both the Crown and the Church. During the Middle Ages, every court in Europe patronized the Hebrew physician. His practice, while by no means free from the prevailing charlatanism of the time, embodied many principles of the healing art still recognized as sound, and represented all that was then known of medical science. In literary culture, as in commercial ability and scientific acquirements, the mediæval Jew of Christian Europe had no rivals. It was an extraordinary circumstance when a sovereign could even read, in an age when one of the greatest princes in Europe was invested with the title of Beauclerc because he could write his own name legibly, a remarkable distinction in an era of almost universal ignorance. Such accomplishments, when they did exist in any community, were almost entirely confined to the clerical profession, and, even among its members, were far from being generally diffused. The officiating priest had, ordinarily, sufficient education to enable him to stumble through the pages of his missal. In the monastic establishments, where the opportunity afforded by solitude and leisure permitted, and even encouraged, the cultivation of letters, the talents of able men were too often wasted in frivolous and unprofitable pursuits. While such unpromising conditions prevailed among the higher classes, the state of the populace was incredibly degraded. The latter naturally looked to its spiritual advisers for instruction and guidance, and the evil influence of the Church was everywhere significantly disclosed by the crowds of stupid and fanatical devotees who listened with awe and rapture to the incoherent harangues of monkish zealots, or, bowed upon their faces, grovelled in the mire before the idolatrous shrine of some spurious saint.