in order to extort money from the Christians, and to allow them to press wine which was used in the Lord’s Supper. ♦1209♦ All the above exhortations were systematised by the Council of Avignon. By the Statutes then passed the Jews were officially pronounced as polluted and polluting. It was decreed that “Jews and harlots should not dare to touch with their hands bread or fruits exposed for sale.”[50] The old Church law which forbade the Jews to employ Christian servants was renewed and enforced. The faithful were warned neither to receive services from Jews nor to render services to them, but to avoid them as a pest. All who had any dealings with Jews who transgressed these decrees were threatened with excommunication. Raymund of Toulouse, the protector of the Albigensian heretics and friend of the Jews, and all the barons of free cities, were bound by oath to carry out the decisions of the Council. ♦1211♦ Once more oppression from without fanned the longing for Redemption in the hearts of the Jews. The yearning after Zion, invigorated by Jehuda Halevi’s poetry, impelled more than three hundred Rabbis of France and England to emigrate to the Holy Land, where they visited the spots hallowed by the spirits of the past, wept over the ruins of their departed glory, and built synagogues and schools in order to keep alive the memory and the hope of a better day. Meanwhile the Pope did not allow the iron to cool. In 1215 a great Œcumenical Council was convoked in Rome, under his presidency, to complete the ruin of the Albigenses, to stimulate the Crusades against the Saracens of Spain and Palestine, and, generally, to promote the kingdom of God on earth. The Jews, knowing from experience that any measures taken to that end could not fail to redound to their detriment, hastened to send deputies to Rome, in order to ward off the blow. But their endeavours proved fruitless. Four out of the seventy canonical decrees passed by the Council referred to them. The King of France, the Duke of Burgundy, and all other princes were called upon to lend their help in reducing the doomed people in their respective dominions to that state of bondage which was ordained for it by the divine will, as interpreted by theological bigotry. The Pope’s order met with general obedience. In most European countries the Jews were forbidden to hold any public appointment of trust, or to show themselves in the streets at Easter. They were obliged to pay tithes to the Church that persecuted them, and the head of each Jewish family was forced to subscribe an annual sum at the Easter festival. They were compelled by heavy fines and penalties to wear a yellow badge of distinction, which in their case meant a badge of shame, and the Christians were exhorted by their pastors not to allow their homes or their shops to be defiled by the presence of Heaven’s enemies.