Previous to this date most of the Roman Jews voluntarily dwelt in a special quarter on the left bank of the Tiber, known as _Seraglio delli Hebrei_ or _Septus Hebraicus_; but they were not isolated from the Christians; for many of the latter, even members of the nobility, had their luxurious palaces in the midst of the Jewish houses, and many a stately Roman church reared its proud _Campanile_ in the vicinity of a synagogue. All this was now altered. The palaces of the Christian nobility and the places of Christian worship were removed, or fenced off, from the abodes of the unclean, and these were surrounded by great grim walls, with porticoes and gates guarded by watchmen, who shut them at midnight and opened them at early morning, except on the Sabbath and on the Lord’s Day, or other Christian feasts, when the gates remained closed the whole day, so that no infidel could go forth and defile the Christian festivities with his unhallowed presence. On week days the bell that called the faithful to vespers was for the Jew who valued his life a signal to retire to his prison. All the inmates of this prison, men and women alike, on leaving its precincts, were obliged to wear a special garb: the men a yellow hat, the women a yellow veil or a large circular badge of the same colour on their breast. Thanks to this mark of distinction no Jew or Jewess could step or stand outside the Ghetto gates without meeting with insult and outrage on the part of the mob. The yellow badge was the favourite mark for the missiles of the street urchins, and for the sneers of their elders; so that the prison often became a haven of refuge for the Jew. Meanwhile the Portuguese Marranos, who had found an asylum in Ancona, under the protection of Pope Clement VII., and who had continued to live there unmolested under Paul III. and Julius III., were exposed to even more violent persecution than their Jewish brethren of Rome. A month after the establishment of the Ghetto in the latter city, a secret order was issued by Paul IV. that all the Marranos of Ancona should be cast into the vaults of the Holy Office and their goods confiscated. Some of the prisoners professed penitence, and were banished to Malta; the rest were burnt at the stake. The few who succeeded in escaping the racks of the Inquisition took refuge in the dominions of the Dukes of Urbino and Ferrara, while of the exiles in Malta some fled to Turkey; and all these refugees combined in a scheme of revenge upon the Pope by attempting to place his seaport Ancona under a commercial ban. But their efforts failed, owing to the conflicting interests of the various Jewish communities in Italy and the Levant, and the Rabbis assembled at Constantinople for the purpose could not arrive at a unanimous decision. ♦1558♦