Wherever they settled they built their synagogues and constituted their communities in exact agreement with the directions of the Talmud.”[40] Such constancy, admirable in itself, was, from a practical point of view, pregnant with perils which were not slow in declaring themselves. In 465 the Council of Vannes forbade the clergy to participate in Jewish banquets, because it was considered beneath the dignity of Christians to eat the viands of the Jews, while the Jews refused to partake of the viands of the Christians. This was the commencement of an active display of antipathy destined to endure down to our own day. ♦516♦ In Burgundy the conversion of King Sigismund to the Catholic faith inaugurated an era of oppression of all heretics--Arians as well as Jews. True believers, whether laymen or clergymen, were prohibited from taking part in Jewish banquets. From Burgundy the spirit of hostility spread to other countries. ♦538 and 545♦ The third and fourth Councils at Orleans reiterated the above prohibition, and the Jews were forbidden to appear abroad during Easter, because their presence was “an insult to Christianity.” ♦554♦ Clerical fanaticism was invested with constitutional authority by Childebert I. of Paris a few years after. Among these earlier persecutors of Judaism none distinguished himself more highly than Avitus, Bishop of Clermont. In him the Jews of Gaul found an enemy as implacable as their brethren of Alexandria had found in Cyril. He repeatedly strove to convert the Jews of his diocese, and, on his sermons proving ineffectual, he incited the Christians to attack the synagogues and to raze them to the ground. But even this argument failed to persuade the stiff-necked infidels of the truth of Christianity. The good Bishop, therefore, gave them the option of baptism or banishment, thus forestalling the King of England by seven and the King of Spain by nine centuries. One Jew chose baptism, and paraded the streets in his garments of symbolic purity during the Pentecost. But another Jew undertook to interpret the feelings of his brethren by soiling the devout apostate’s white clothes with rancid oil. The inopportune anointment led to a massacre and to the forcible baptism of five hundred more Jews, while the rest fled to Marseilles. ♦576♦ This triumph of the faith at Clermont was received with great rejoicings in the neighbouring countries, and Bishop Gregory of Tours showed a laudable lack of ecclesiastical jealousy by inviting a poet to sing in bad Latin the success of his colleague. ♦581♦