Thomas Tamaio de Vargas, the editor of the spurious Luitprand, says, that not only many Hebrew words are mixed with the old Spanish, but that, _prô dolor!_ the black and stinking Jewish blood had been mingled with the most pure blood of the Spaniards. (p. 96.) They were very anxious, he says, to intermarry, and spoil the pure blood. And he adds, that the Spaniards call them _putos_, quia _putant_. “But,” says Sir Thomas Browne, “that an unsavoury odour is gentilitious, or national to the Jews, we cannot well concede. And if, (according to good relations,) where they may freely speak it, they forbear not to boast that there are at present many thousand Jews in Spain, France, and England, and some dispensed withal even to the degree of priesthood, it is a matter very considerable, and could they be smelled out, would much advantage not only the church of Christ, but also the coffers of princes.—The ground that begat or propagated this assertion might be the distasteful averseness of the Christian from the Jew upon the villainy of that fact, which made them abominable, and ‘stink in the nostrils of all men.’ Which real practice and metaphorical expression did after proceed into a literal construction, but was a fraudulent illation; for such an evil savour their father Jacob acknowledged in himself, when he said his sons had made him stink in the land, that is, to be abominable unto the inhabitants thereof.—Another cause is urged by Campegius, and much received by Christians; that this ill savour is a curse derived upon them by Christ, and stands as a badge or brand of a generation that crucified their _Salvator_. But this is a conceit without all warrant, and an easy way to take off dispute in what point of obscurity soever.” _Vulgar Errors_, Book iv. ch. 10. The Mahommedans also hold a like opinion of the unsavouriness of the Jews, and account for it by this legend which is given by Sale. “Some of the children of Israel abandoned their dwellings because of a pestilence, or, as others say, to avoid serving in a religious war; but as they fled, God struck them all dead in a certain valley. About eight days or more after, when their bodies were corrupted, the Prophet Ezekiel happening to pass that way, at the sight wept; whereupon God said to him, ‘Call to them, O Ezekiel, and I will restore them to life.’ And accordingly, on the prophet’s call, they all arose, and lived several years after; but they retained the colour and stench of dead corpses as long as they lived, and the clothes they wore were changed as black as pitch, which qualities they transmitted to their posterity.”