In the time of Pope Gregory VII. the Bishop of Speyer, in order to save the Jews from the violence of the mob, allotted to them a particular quarter which they might fortify and defend. In the middle of the thirteenth century King Ferdinand of Castile granted a similar privilege to the Jews of Seville. In the city of Cologne the Jews, a century later, paid an annual fee of twenty marks to the officer whose task it was to lock the gates of their special quarter at sundown and to unlock them at dawn. The feudal lawlessness of the times made such precautions necessary not only for the Jews, but for all mortals who were not strong enough to secure respect for their persons and property; so much so that the Jews of Prague who lived outside the Jewish quarter resolved of their own accord to join their brethren in the _Judenstadt_ for greater safety. ♦1473♦ Compulsory concentration of the Jews within separate quarters, it is true, was not unknown even in those days. Restrictions of this kind seem to have been in force in Sicily as early as the fourteenth century, and in certain German States even in the thirteenth and twelfth centuries, while the “Jewish barrier” of Tudela dates from the eleventh century. Such cases, however, were sporadic and exceptional. It is in the enlightened age with which we are now dealing, and in the most enlightened country in Europe, that the isolation of Israel begins to be rigidly and universally enforced as a means of coercion. The walls of the Jewish quarter are no longer a bulwark against attack, but a barrier against escape. The name, as well as the institution under its new and offensive form, is of Venetian origin. The term is derived from the _Getto_--the old, walled iron-foundry, within the precincts of which the first Jewish _Ghetto_ was established in the city of St. Mark, in 1516. The Jews had made Venice their home in very early times; but their colony, in its subsequent extent, dates from the beginning of the thirteenth century. It was then that Jewish merchants from north and east began to pour into the city that was to become, partly by their help, the commercial capital of Italy. Their relations to the Christian inhabitants were neither hostile nor yet hearty. The common people detested them, but the Government was consistent in its protection of their persons and interests. An incident that occurred in the fifteenth century serves to illustrate the Jew’s position in the Venetian Republic.