of the priests against the race; for the theologian does not agree with the psychologist in holding that a feigned or fictitious faith is better than none at all. As in the time of the Visigoth tyrants, so now thousands of Jews and forced converts fled to Africa. Many towns on the coast, from Algiers westward, were filled with the unfortunate refugees from Spain and Majorca, who found the African Berbers more humane than the European Christians. The recent tribulations and the anticipation of worse sufferings in the near future gave rise to a new Messianic frenzy. According to the Scriptures, the advent of the Redeemer was to be preceded by terrible persecution. ♦1391♦ Three Messiahs appeared to voice the convictions and to try the faith of the hunted people: Abraham of Granada, Shem-Tob, and Moses Botarel. All three were mystics, the last one also an impostor. The fifteenth century adds fresh scenes to the tale of sorrow, new “black-letter days” to the Jewish Calendar, and more dark pages to the history of Europe. In 1408 the anti-Jewish statutes of Alfonso the Wise were revived. Ruinous fines were imposed upon any Christian who should confer, or Jew who should accept, municipal or other office. ♦1412♦ Four years later the intercourse of the Jews with the Christians was restricted, and their commercial and industrial activity hampered by numerous prohibitions. They were forbidden to act as physicians, apothecaries, and stewards to the nobility; as bakers, millers, or vintners. They were debarred from selling oil or butter; from exercising the handicrafts of smith, carpenter, tailor, or shoemaker, and, of course, from farming or collecting the public revenues. It was further decreed that no Jew should carry any kind of arms, or be addressed as Don; that the unclean people should live in special quarters (_Juderias_) provided with not more than one gate each, and that they should not employ Christian servants. Thus the seclusion which was at first granted to the Jews as a privilege and a protection was now enforced as a means of oppression. Furthermore, they were stripped of their gay apparel, and compelled to wear a peculiar garment of coarse stuff and to display the hated badge, except such as could pay for permission to discard it, especially on their journeys. Lastly, they were forbidden to have their hair cut or their beards shaved. Confiscation of goods and corporal chastisement were the penalties inflicted for any breach of these and other regulations, the aim of which was, by humiliating and impoverishing the race, to induce it to embrace Christianity. A contemporary Jewish writer thus describes the sad effects of this edict: “Inmates of palaces were driven into wretched nooks, and dark and lowly huts. Instead of rustling apparel, we were obliged to wear miserable clothes which drew contempt upon us. Prohibited from shaving the beard, we had to appear like mourners. The rich tax-farmers sank into want, for they knew no trade by which