=3. Life in France till the Expulsion thence.=――From the date of Charles the Bald’s death (877), and the accusation of poison brought against his Jewish doctor Zedekiah, the position of the Jews in France grew slowly and gradually, but quite steadily, worse, till injustice reached its climax in an edict of expulsion (1394). From the ninth to the twelfth century Jewish schools and synagogues continued to exist, and the people were tolerably protected from violence. So late as 1165, when a famous Jewish Spanish traveller named Benjamin of Tudela was visiting France, he found such institutions flourishing in most of the towns which he included in his travels, and he seems to have made a very comprehensive tour both north and south. In Narbonne the traveller speaks of great tracts of land being cultivated by Jews and being held by them, under what we should call a leasehold tenure, from the lords of the soil. Paris seems to have been a favourite city with the race even at that time, and Christian writers confirm Benjamin of Tudela’s account of the prosperous and respected condition of the Jews who were dwelling there. The crusades, and the need of money for conducting them, were the chief causes for the persecutions which were so soon to follow. The sufferings of the Jews in France were, as a rule, due less to bigotry and religious hatred on the part of the priests and the populace, than to the avarice of the kings. In Spain, Jews were hunted out of the country as heretics. In France they were treated more as sponges, first squeezed, and then tossed away. Towards the end of the twelfth century King Philip Augustus ordered them, in a body, out of his dominions (1180), and the purchase-money that the Jews gave for the right to return brought them a short interval of ‘protection.’ Expelling the Jews, and selling permission to them to come back, was found an excellent means of raising a large sum of money, and the process was repeated in 1306, when Philip IV., one of the most cruel sovereigns who ever sat on any throne, was King of France. Before they were expelled, in 1306, their goods were pillaged and confiscated to a great extent, and it must have been difficult for the poor exiles to raise the enormous sum which was demanded, a few years later, for the right to return. Like Noah’s dove, which in the whole wide world found no resting-place for the sole of her tiny foot, the Jews, at this date, had small choice or chance of safe asylum in any country, or we might wonder at their paying for permission to go back to such inhospitable shores. Under ‘Saint’ Louis (Louis IX., 1226‒1270) a new form of persecution was hit upon. Killing Jews and plundering their property was commonplace; it was decided to destroy their literature. So a raid was made on Jewish libraries, and, as a beginning, twenty-four cart-loads full of Talmudical books were burnt in Paris. It was under this king, too, that the Jews were prohibited from practising as