=10. Abarbanel’s Intercession.=――An effort was made at the last moment to soften the hard hearts of Ferdinand and Isabella. They had a Jewish treasurer called Abarbanel, a learned, upright man, who used all the weight of his influence and his character and his services on the side of his unhappy people. He even condescended to bribe the king, and offered to pay 3,000 ducats into the treasury as a ransom. The mercenary Ferdinand hesitated. The property of the Jews was as precious to him as their souls――perhaps, on the whole, more so, and the edict might have been repealed after all, had not Torquemada passionately broken in on the interview. He held a crucifix on high, and exclaimed, ‘Behold him, whom Judas sold for thirty pieces of silver! Are you bargaining to sell him yet again, and at a higher price?’ The king and queen were frightened at this threatening eloquence, and held to their resolve. And on the 30th of July, 1492, to the disgrace of the rulers and to the ruin of their country, every unbaptized Jew and Jewess was turned out of Spain. Illustration: _Edw^d. Weller_ EUROPE in the MIDDLE AGES _London Longmans & Co._ CHAPTER XXII. JEWS IN CENTRAL EUROPE IN THE MIDDLE AGES. =1. General Position of European Jews.=――Some faint reflection of the happiness and prosperity that was, for so long, the portion of the Jews in Spain, fell fitfully, and for a short while, to the share of their neighbouring brethren in France, and in the few civilised states of Central Europe. Such happiness and prosperity, however, was nowhere, and at no period, even for the brief intervals in which it lasted, secure. The tolerance extended to the Jews, in the Middle Ages, was based on no appreciation of their higher qualities, and was dictated wholly by self-interest. The scholarship of the Jews was very little cared for, perhaps not at all, unless it showed itself in medical skill. And even then it was a perilous, rather than a precious, possession, for if a Jewish physician cured his patient he was quite likely to be accused of witchcraft, or if, despite all his care, the patient died, some affectionate relative or some disappointed legatee would very possibly bring a charge of poisoning against the poor doctor. This happened once in a very distinguished case. Charles the Bald of France died rather suddenly in 877, and it was widely said that he was poisoned by Zedekiah, the Jewish physician of his good father, Louis le Débonnaire, and from that date the fortunes of the Jews in France steadily declined. The schools in the south of France certainly flourished, and were maintained even in the less settled districts in the north and east, and in small towns on the Danube and the Maine, for Jews hunger after education as much as they do after bread; but to the