In about 1612 a Jewish jeweller, with a dozen friends, in search of a home, presented a petition to the Senate of Hamburg, offering nine thousand marks for the right of residence in the city for twelve years, promising to pay an annual tax of four hundred marks, and professing themselves ready to submit to any conditions. But Hamburg, the Protestant, refused to listen even to the argument which so frequently overcame Papist fanaticism. Hamburg already contained Portuguese Jews disguised as Christians. These, induced by the example of their brethren in Amsterdam, had recently thrown off the mask, and by so doing had accentuated the indignation of the Lutheran citizens against the whole race. The Senate, indeed, aware of the commercial value of the Jews, declined to yield to the popular demand for their expulsion. The clergy lifted up their voices against the Laodicean lukewarmness of the Government, and the latter, anxious to avoid the reproach of lack of Christian fervour on one hand, and, on the other, the material loss which the banishment of the Jews would entail, appealed to the theological faculties of Frankfort-on-the-Oder and Jena for a justification of their tolerance. These august bodies approved of the Senate’s policy, but recommended the Jews of Hamburg to embrace Christianity. The Senate welcomed the approbation, ignored the recommendation, and granted to the Jews the right of abode on payment of one thousand marks a year, and subject to certain restrictions. For example, they were forbidden to have synagogues and to practise Jewish rites or circumcision, though they were allowed to have a cemetery of their own. As the colony grew in numbers, in wealth, and in commercial importance, it ventured to transgress many of these prohibitions. Relying on their power, the Jews of Hamburg quietly built a synagogue in about 1626.