they could gain a livelihood, and the handicraftsmen found no custom. Starvation stared everyone in the face. Children died on their mothers’ knees from hunger and exposure.”[70] In the midst of all this suffering the Church was not idle. The chief of the apostles was Vincent Ferrer, a Dominican friar and indefatigable winner of souls, afterwards canonised for his exertions. This sincere, though forbidding saint, who called his bigotry religion and his hatred of heretics love of God, rushed from synagogue to synagogue, crucifix in hand, preaching the gospel of peace in a voice of thunder, and endeavouring to persuade the infidels to repentance by promises of comfort in this world and by threats of everlasting damnation in the next. Ferrer was more than an orator. His sermons were accompanied with exhibitions of the priest’s dramatic genius and of the saint’s thaumaturgic powers. Impressive processions and sacred hymns, banners, crucifices, and assaults upon the Jews heightened the effect of his impassioned appeals. Thousands of wretches succumbed to Ferrer’s eloquence, and many synagogues were turned into churches. This result was by contemporary piety attributed to the fiery exhortations addressed to the Jews, and to the miracles performed for their benefit, by St. Vincent; but a twentieth century heretic, while admitting the efficacy of exhortation and miracle, may be pardoned for suspecting that the systematic persecution on the part of the State and the spontaneous fury of the mob had at least some influence in turning the hearts of the infidels. ♦1413♦ From Castile the preacher and persecution travelled to Aragon. The newly-elected King Ferdinand, who owed his elevation to Ferrer’s influence, showed his gratitude by placing his conscience in the saint’s keeping and the royal power at his disposal. St. Vincent, thus armed with both necessaries of success--enthusiasm and means--journeyed to and fro in the country, denouncing, exhorting, threatening, and baptizing; and the victims of his fervour in the two kingdoms are said to have exceeded twenty thousand souls. Such is the persuasive power of theological reasoning, when assisted by brute force. In the same year a compulsory controversy between Hebrew renegades and Rabbis, on the traditional lines, was begun in Tortosa.