Five years later the Council of Maçon passed various enactments emphasising the social inferiority of the Jews, and the bigotry of the Councillors. King Chilperic also dabbled in compulsory proselytism, and the later Merovingian Kings Clotaire II. and Dagobert carried on the work in grim earnest. ♦615. 629♦ The former of these princes, in obedience to the decrees of the Clermont and Maçon Councils, debarred the Jews from such official posts as conferred on the holders authority over Christians, and in the following year the Council of Paris recommended their indiscriminate dismissal from all state offices. But the decline of the “Merovingian drones” brought at last relief to the Jews of Gaul. In Spain, as in Gaul, Israel had pitched its tent very early--in all probability before the fall of the Roman Republic. The number of the colonists was subsequently increased by the captives carried off from Palestine by Titus and Hadrian, and sold in various provinces of the Empire, as well as by voluntary emigrants; so that the peninsula was gradually dotted with their synagogues; many towns became known as “Jewish” owing to the predominance of the chosen people in their population, and many Jewish families pointed with pride to lengthy pedigrees, real or imaginary, some dating their immigration from the destruction of the Second Temple, others tracing their ancestry to David; and not a few even claiming descent from settlers brought to Spain by no less a personage than Nebuchadnezzar!