Meanwhile the undercurrent of prejudice was checked by the action of the Kings. When, for instance, the Crusaders from across the Pyrenees, red-handed from the massacre of the Albigenses, came to Spain as allies in the war against the Mohammedans, and began the work of exterminating the infidels by attacking the Jews of Toledo, King Alfonso IX. warded off the blows, and the misdirected zeal of the foreign fanatics was condemned even by the populace of Castile. ♦1215♦ When, again, Innocent III. at the Fourth Lateran Council ordered the Jews to be marked off by a special badge, the Jews of Spain, through their influence at Court, succeeded in avoiding the effects of the decree. King Alfonso connived at their disobedience, and vain were the unwearied efforts of Innocent’s successor, Honorius III., to enforce the Jewish disabilities. ♦1220♦ Similar immunity from the ignominious ordinances of St. Peter’s See was secured by the Jews of Aragon through the exertions of the physician of King Jayme I. ♦1248♦ Several years after King Ferdinand allotted three parishes to the Jewish community of Seville, and surrounded them with a wall for their defence. Within this enclosure were the exchanges, markets, slaughter-houses, synagogues and tribunals of the Jews, while their cemetery spread over an adjacent field. ♦1252–84♦ But how long could the Court maintain its Judaeophile attitude in the teeth of the growing animosity against the race? Alfonso X., surnamed the Wise, employed Jews as Chamberlains and Chancellors of the Exchequer, as well as in the construction of his famous Astronomical Tables. ♦1261♦ But the same King was forced to throw a sop to Cerberus by enacting that “the Jews may not enlarge, elevate, or beautify their synagogues.” Another law of Alfonso’s contained the following ominous statement: “Although the Jews deny Christ, they are still suffered in all Christian countries, so that they should remind everybody that they belong to that race which crucified Jesus.” During this reign conversion of a Christian to Judaism was punished with death. No Jew was to be elevated to any public office. The wearing of the badge was made compulsory, and anyone seen without it was, if rich, fined; if poor, scourged. Social intercourse between Jews and Christians was made a punishable offence. The Jews should not appear abroad on Good Friday. Though himself in the hands of a Jewish physician, Alfonso decreed that no Christian should take medicine prepared by a Jew. These restrictions, however, were tempered by measures protective of the religion, the persons and the property of the Jews; and they did not really become active until a much later period. ♦1263♦ Two years later there occurred in Barcelona, under the auspices of Jayme I., the famous disputation between the Dominican Pablo Christiani and the Rabbi Nachmanides, which led to the latter’s exile, and to the expurgation of the Talmud.[69]