However, for the hardships imposed by the Christian Church there was an approved Christian remedy. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest authority on morals in Europe in the thirteenth century, had written: “If rulers think they harm their souls by taking money from usurers, let them remember that they are themselves to blame. They ought to see that the Jews are compelled to labour as they do in some parts of Italy.”[117] A Christian king, and one whom Edward revered as his old leader in arms and as a model of piety, had already acted in accordance with the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. In 1253 St. Louis sent from the Holy Land an order that all Jews should leave France for ever, except those who should become traders and workers with their hands.[118] And now, when Edward was forbidding the Jews of England to practise usury, he naturally dealt with them in the fashion recommended by the great teacher of his time and adopted by the saintly king. “The King also grants,” said the Statute of 1275, “that the Jews may practise merchandise, or live by their labour, and for those purposes freely converse with Christians. Excepting that, upon any pretence whatever, they shall not be levant or couchant amongst them; nor on account of their merchandise be in scots, lots, or talliage with the other inhabitants of those cities or boroughs where they remain; seeing they are talliable to the King as his own serfs, and not otherwise.... And further the King grants, that such as are unskilful in merchandise, and cannot labour, may take lands to farm, for any term not exceeding ten years, provided no homage, fealty, or any such kind of service, or advowson to Holy Church, be belonging to them. Provided also that this power to farm lands, shall continue in force for ten years from the making of this Act, and no longer.”[119]