As the preaching of the crusade had been accompanied by several abuses that might prove injurious to the success of the holy expedition, a council assembled at Tours, employed itself in remedying and stopping the evil at its source. We have seen, on preceding occasions, that preachers of the crusades, by receiving criminals under the banners of the cross, had scandalized Christian knights; and crusades, as was seen in the twelfth century, were not considered as a means of salvation for the faithful, and as the way of the Lord, in which all the world might enter. Great criminals no longer found a place in the ranks of the pious defenders of Christ. The council of Tours decided that Crusaders, arrested by justice, should be transferred to the hands of an ecclesiastical judge, who would pay no respect to their privileges, and should even take the cross from them, if he found them guilty of homicide or any other great crime committed against divine and human laws. As in other crusades, the people were led into violent excesses against the Jews, whom they accused of having immolated the God for whom they were going to fight, and who retained immense treasures in their hands, whilst the Crusaders were obliged to pledge their property to perform the voyage to Palestine. In order to stop the course of these popular violences, the council forbade any ill-treatment of the Jews, either by plundering them of their wealth or by doing them personal injury, under pain of heavy ecclesiastical censures. Another abuse, not less prejudicial to the Crusaders than all the others, had been likewise observed. The preachers of the holy wars and many other theologians had permitted Crusaders to buy off their vow by paying a sum of money equal to that which they would have expended in their pilgrimage:[244] this abuse caused great scandal among the faithful, but the Holy See, which derived considerable sums from it, paid no attention to the complaints made on account of it in England and many other states of Europe.