In the fifteenth century clerical agitation became very strong, and loan associations were formed under priestly management to suppress money-lending by Jews. One of the most notable agitators in this respect was Bernardin of Feltre, who is known through his participation in the ritual murder trial at Trent (1475). Italy became a force in Jewish culture by the establishment of the first Hebrew printing presses. The first book printed seems to have been published in 1474. One of the earliest printed books was the “Psalms” with the commentary of David Kimhi, 1475. The edict of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain affected also those of Sicily and southern Italy, at that time Spanish dependencies. Since that period there has existed no Jewish community in that part of Italy. HUNGARY In Hungary the Jews settled at a very early date. They were tax-farmers and financiers. Our first documentary evidence goes back to 1251, when King Bela IV granted them a charter, essentially a reproduction of that granted by the Duke of Austria in 1244. Under Louis (1342-1382) they were given the alternative of expulsion or conversion to Christianity. During the fifteenth century the Jews suffered from persecution and expulsion. POLAND In Poland the Jews appear in the thirteenth century as a small community without any intellectual life. In 1264 they obtained their first charter, this being confirmed by Casimir the Great (1333-1370). It is also a reproduction of the Austrian law of 1244. When Capistrano appeared (1450) in Poland the Jews suffered from mob attacks but fared not as badly as those of Bohemia. The persecution of the Jews in Western Europe, beginning with the crusades, drove many of them to emigrate to the large and thinly settled kingdom of Poland. Hence toward the close of the fifteenth century, Poland was the center of Rabbinic learning and has to-day proportionately the largest Jewish population in the world. THE EAST In 1187 Saladin reconquered Jerusalem. From that time Jews began to emigrate to Palestine and Egypt. The persecution of the Jews through the Inquisition and their expulsion from Spain drove many to Morocco and Algeria. The conquest of Constantinople by the Turks in 1453 brought many Jews to the Balkans, and the number of the immigrants was so large that their dialect, Ladino, became the universal language of the Jews of the East, just as in Poland and Hungary the immigrants from Germany made Yiddish predominant. JEWISH LITERATURE, THIRTEENTH TO FIFTEENTH CENTURY