The animosity thus fomented against the Jews found frequent opportunities of translating itself into acts of horror. In France, after the war declared against the unfortunate people by the Church, they lost the royal protection which they had enjoyed hitherto, and were henceforth exposed not only to the spasmodic fury of the populace, but also to systematic persecution on the part of bishops, barons and towns. Bishop Odo of Paris, in 1197, forbade the Christians to have any dealings, social or commercial, with the Jews. ♦1236♦ The Crusaders called to arms by Gregory IX. attacked the Jewish communities of Anjou, Poitou, Bordeaux, Angoulème, and elsewhere, and on the Jews refusing to be baptized, the holy warriors trampled many of them, men, women and children, to death under the hoofs of their horses, burned their synagogues, and pillaged and sacked their private dwellings. St. Louis encouraged the conversion of the Jews, permitting the children of baptized fathers to be torn away from their unregenerate mothers. ♦1246♦ By a decree of the Council of Beziers the disabilities of the Jews were once more confirmed, and the Christians were now forbidden to call in Jewish doctors, thus depriving the Jews of the profession which they had hitherto almost monopolised in Europe. ♦1257♦ A few years after Pope Alexander IV., who had just established the Inquisition in France at the request of St. Louis, issued another Bull in which the ruler of that kingdom and other princes were again exhorted to enforce the distinctive garb upon the Jews and to burn all copies of the Talmud. To omit minor acts of oppression, the fanatical sect of the “Shepherds,” following the example of the Crusaders, massacred the Jews on the Garonne in 1320. ♦1218–1250♦ In Germany the sufferings of Israel were equally severe. The Emperor Frederick II., despite his infidelity and his enmity towards the Papacy, adopted the Pope’s anti-Jewish decrees. He excluded the Jews from public offices, he censured the Archduke of Austria for tolerating and protecting them, he enforced the use of the badge in his Italian and Sicilian dominions, and he oppressed them with heavy taxes, dwelling with especial satisfaction on the dictum that the Jews were the Emperor’s serfs. In the troublous period which followed Frederick’s death the Jews were slain and burnt in great numbers at Weissenberg, Magdeburg, and Erfurt, while other cities year after year witnessed wholesale slaughter, and “Jew-roaster” became a coveted title of honour. In addition to occasional massacre, from the end of the twelfth to the middle of the fifteenth century the German Jews underwent eight expulsions and confiscations of their communal property: Vienna (1196), Mecklenburg (1225), Frankfort (1241), Brandenburg (1243), Nuremberg (1390), Prague (1391), Heidelberg (1391), and Ratisbon (1476).