And yet, despite pontifical anathemas and public opinion, things pursued their natural course, and usurers were to be found even among the tenants of ecclesiastical and monastic estates, until Gregory X., in 1274, issued a Bull forbidding the letting of lands or houses to the accursed tribe. But though the pious execrated the money-lender, the needy could not dispense with his services. The chief effect of the prohibition of money-lending, and of the superstitious disrepute in which it was held, was to force this important branch of economic life into the hands of the least respectable members of the community. Usury was by no means eschewed by the Christians, as Dante shows. But the masses of mediaeval Europe, especially in the north and centre, were too superstitious to brave the ban of the Church, too stupid and ignorant and thriftless to succeed in a business requiring dexterity, alertness, and economy. Thus trade in money, as most other kinds of European trade, fell from the very first into the hands of the Jews--the only people who had capital to lend and no caste to lose. Moreover, there was little else for the Jew to do in feudal Europe. The laws and the prejudices which in many countries forbade him to own land or to engage in various handicrafts and trades on one hand, and his own religious scruples on the other, narrowed his range of activity, and the current of energy and intelligence, compressed into one channel, ran with proportionately greater force. The reputation of the Jews for usury dates from the sixth century. But money-lending really became their characteristic pursuit since the commencement of the persecution already narrated. Then the Jews, by the periodical enactments of councils and the frequent publications of ecclesiastical edicts, were excluded from the markets, and thus, being unable to compete with the Christian merchants, were driven to deal only in second-hand articles, while others, possessed of some capital but forbidden to invest it in goods, were compelled to put it out to interest.