Between Martin Luther and Ignatius Loyola there is commonly supposed to gape a very wide chasm. However that may be, there is one point at which the two apostles meet--hatred of Israel. Loyola’s disciples penetrated by degrees into every realm in Europe, and into every realm they brought with them that supple and sinuous spirit which was destined to dominate European history for ages, and to endow the European languages with a new word of evil import. In them Israel found an enemy powerful as Fate, and, like Fate, everywhere present, everywhere invisible and inexorable. Thus those Jews who had escaped from the zeal of nascent Protestantism were doomed to fall a prey to the zeal of reanimated Catholicism. As in Italy, so in Central Europe, the reign of Pope Paul IV. marks the revival of Catholic Obscurantism. In 1557 the Inquisition was introduced into France under Henry II.--a prince who could be profligate without being gay, and who atoned for his gloomy immorality by so genuine a horror of heresy and culture that at his accession both Huguenots and scholars thought it advisable to quit Paris. In 1559--four years after the creation of the Ghetto in Rome--all Hebrew books were confiscated in Prague, at the instigation of a baptized Jew named Asher. A fire that soon after broke out in the Jewish quarter afforded the Catholics of Prague an opportunity of exhibiting their piety. They plundered the houses of the Jews, and even threw their women and children into the flames. At the same time the Emperor Ferdinand I. ordered the expulsion of the Jews from Prague and the rest of Bohemia, imposed many restrictions on those of Austria, and drove them from Lower Austria. ♦1569♦ Ten years later the Jews of Avignon and Venaissin, which, besides Marseilles, were the only communities left in France after the expulsion of 1395, and which, favoured by the enlightened Popes Leo X., Clement VII., and Paul III., had acquired great wealth, were ordered to quit the country, and, like the refugees from Spain and Italy, they sought and found a haven of refuge in the Sultan’s dominions. ♦1620–1648♦ During the Thirty Years’ War the Catholic Emperor Ferdinand II. protected the Jews, forbidding their coffers to be robbed except by himself. The Bohemian Jews alone, after having paid a certain sum, are known to have bound themselves to contribute forty thousand gulden a year towards the expenses of the war. In Vienna also, now the headquarters of Catholicism, the Jews were allowed to grow fat. ♦1624♦ The Emperor permitted them to build a synagogue and to discard the badge; but the Christian citizens protested, demanding their banishment. In face of this opposition the Court acted with admirable tact. To the Christians it said: “You shall see the Jews banished, if you pay twenty thousand florins,” and to the Jews it whispered: “You need not fear, if you pay more.” To judge from the result, the Jews must have outbidden the Christians. ♦1630♦