In the very same inauspicious year the Holy Office began the persecution of the Marranos of Naples, then under Spanish rule. These pseudo-Christians were ordered to wear the badge or to leave the country. Rightly divining that the badge was only the prelude to worse things, they preferred to go into exile. Some of them bent their steps to Ancona and Ferrara, but the majority set out for Turkey. Many were captured by pirates on their voyage and were carried off to Marseilles, where the French King Henry II., though otherwise a prince of unimpeachably obscurantist leanings, received them kindly; but, as he dared not retain them, he despatched them to Turkey. ♦1550♦ Ten years later the Dominicans inflamed the Genoese against the small Jewish community in the Republic, and the Jews were banished. These were but two episodes in the later history of the Italian Jews, interesting chiefly as indicative of that change of feeling which led to the tragedy of the Ghetto. As we have seen, there always was a natural tendency for the children of Israel to gravitate towards the same point--a habit which originated the Jewries of England, the _Judenstadt_ of Germany, the _Juderias_ of Spain and the Jewish quarters in most mediaeval countries. But we have also seen that, under tolerable conditions, the Jews entertained no unconquerable aversion from dwelling amidst the Gentiles, and that, when treated as human beings, they developed a certain degree of community of feeling and interest with their fellow-creatures. Further, we have noticed this gradual reconciliation blocked partly by the efforts of the Synagogue, but far more successfully by those of the Church; and we have found in certain countries the Jews claiming from the princes who favoured and fleeced them segregation as a privilege and as a means of self-protection.