Long after Christian heresy had been condemned by Venetian law, and the authority of the Inquisition, under certain important limitations, recognised, the Jews were suffered to prosper in the Republic. Even the Holy Office was not permitted to molest them. Toleration was essential to the welfare of the mercantile commonwealth, and the statesmen of Venice, in conformity with the old Italian tradition, declined to sacrifice the interests of the State--the supreme aim of a Government--to theological bigotry. Venetian justice in those days might have chosen for its motto the divine precept given to Israel on the eve of its redemption from the house of bondage: “One law shall be to him that is home-born and unto the stranger that sojourneth among you.” Venice, accordingly, was the resort and rendezvous of foreigners of every race and religion: a city of many colours and many tongues; a humming bee-hive of traders and travellers, of scholars and Shylocks, all of whom were welcomed so long as they conformed to the laws of the land. Among these multifarious elements of harmonious confusion none was more conspicuous than the Jew. Spain, as we have seen, embraced the opposite principle, and at the end of the fifteenth century, a great number of Jewish refugees from that country joined their brethren in Venice, where they were allowed to settle under certain conditions agreed to between the Government of the Republic and Daniel Rodrigues, the Jewish Consul of Venice in Dalmatia. But, as tolerance began to decline, the life of the Venetian Jews was made bitter to them by a variety of harsh enactments which hampered their movements and checked their development; such as the law that compelled them to reside at Mestre, the law that forbade them to keep schools, or teach anything, on pain of 50 ducats’ fine and six months’ imprisonment, and numerous other restrictions which culminated in their confinement in the Ghetto. Meanwhile persecution and the accumulation of sufferings brought back to life the old Messianic Utopia. According to one calculation the Redeemer was expected in the year 1503, and the end of the world to come soon after the fall of Rome. Cabbalistic mysticism encouraged these expectations, and in 1502 a certain Asher, in Istria near Venice, assumed the character of Precursor. Like John the Baptist, Asher preached repentance and contrition, promising that the Messiah would appear in six months. He gained many devoted disciples both in Italy and in Germany, and his predictions called forth much fasting and praying and charity, as well as considerable exaltation and extravagance. The prophet’s sudden death brought the dream to an end; but it revived thirty years later among the much-tried Marranos of Spain and Portugal.[78]