=1. Under Catholic Kings in Spain.=――Most of the Jews who were driven into exile by the Almohade persecutions, travelled no further than those provinces of Spain which had seceded from Mahomedan rule. The Catholic kings were ready, for their own sakes, to give a welcome to the learned, useful Jews. Alfonso VIII., who reigned in Castile from 1166 till 1214, was particularly well affected towards them. It was said that he loved a beautiful Jewess of Toledo named Rachel; the poor girl, at any rate, was murdered by good Catholics on the suspicion of it. For the next hundred and fifty years after the Almohade persecution, the position of the Jews in Spain was still seemingly, and on the surface of things, a position with which to be satisfied. They were rich, they were at ease, and they were of use to their countrymen in a hundred ways. But as Spain grew, by sure degrees, less and less Mahomedan, and more and more Catholic, the Popes began to take a more active interest in its affairs. The head of the Church disliked the sight of so many synagogues in Christian Spain, and in respect to heresy in general, and to the Jews as special examples of heresy, the clergy were often more Papist than the Popes. The earlier Catholic kings, however, were too alive to their own interests to be tempted into persecution from religious motives only. They needed the Jews. They depended on Jewish loyalty in their armies, and on Jewish brains in their offices. They could not afford to alienate such service. When, in the middle of the thirteenth century, Pope Gregory IX. tried hard to stir up Alfonso the Wise to join in the general European craze of the time against the Jews, we find Alfonso, proving one of his claims to that surname of his, by refusing to be stirred up. Alfonso’s predecessor, Ferdinand the Saint, had shown a like wisdom under similar circumstances. The Popes notwithstanding, the kings of Spain continued to personally employ Jews as physicians and as ministers of finance, and in every branch of culture and of commerce in their kingdoms, remained well content to see Jews come to the front. So life went on smoothly under those sunny skies, but the volcano was only slumbering, and every now and then ominous little rumbles gave forth a warning of the explosion that was in store.