In Germany, though the virulence of both clergy and people seems to have been very nearly of the same character as in France, the sovereigns of the country were evidently disposed to extend the shield of their protection over this unhappy and persecuted race. Frederick II., a monarch whose character forms a curious and interesting study, dealt with them in a manner which contrasts strangely with the demeanour of contemporary rulers towards them. At Hagenau, in Lower Alsatia, three children had been found dead in the house of a Jew. There was no evidence that the Jew had murdered them; but the tale was instantly conveyed to the emperor with a demand for vengeance. ‘Three children found dead! Let them be buried then,’ was his answer. He followed up this novel mode of dealing with the matter, by causing a judicial inquiry to be made as to whether it was a regular Jewish custom to sacrifice Christian children at the feast of the Passover. Of course no legal tribunal could give any other decision than that there was no sort of evidence of such a practice.[115] At the Council of Vienna, held in 1267, restrictions unheard of even in the harshest times were proposed and ordered. The Jews were forbidden to hold even the most ordinary intercourse of every-day life with the Christians. They were not to be allowed to use the public baths, or put up at the public inns, or to accept any public contract, or employ any Christian servant. To the requirements already exacted of them was added that of wearing a high peaked cap, which at once and inevitably declared their nationality. A permit must be purchased, before it could be lawful for any one to buy meat of a Jew. At Munich, in 1287, an old woman having confessed that she had sold a child to the Jews, whose blood they intended to use for some unholy purpose, the rabble, without further inquiry, slaughtered all the Jews on whom they could lay their hands. The city guard, unable to quell the tumult, advised the Jews to retire for safety into their synagogue, which being a building of solid stone, was likely to be secure against violence. But the populace attacked and destroyed it, and all within it, notwithstanding the efforts of the duke himself to protect them. To close the horrors of this century, there was another frightful massacre of the Jews at Nuremburg in 1292. A fanatic peasant, named Raind Fleish, gave out, during the war raging between Nassau and Austria, that he had been sent by Almighty God to exterminate the whole race of Israel. The people, believing him, set upon the Jews in Nuremburg and the other Bavarian cities, and burnt all that fell into their hands. The others, preferring to die by their own act rather than by the swords of their enemies, set their own houses on fire, and perished with their wives and children in the flames. FOOTNOTES: [114] Caorsini, Italian usurers who drove a great trade in money-lending.