In the chief Italian cities also the Jews were, on the whole, well treated. The Venetians, as we have seen, allowed them to open a bank in their city; and they appear to have been the first who did so. But it may be doubted whether any large amount of gratitude was due to them on that account. It is tolerably clear that the Caorsini, Lombards, and Florentines (as the native money-lenders were called), who had hitherto engrossed the trade, exacted such enormous profits that the change to the Jews must of necessity have been a commercial advantage. It was doubtless on this account that their establishment at Venice was speedily followed by their admission to Genoa, Florence, Mantua, Verona, and Leghorn—in fact, into all the leading Italian cities—their central seat of business being fixed at Rome. But if the amount of interest they demanded was not so exorbitant as that of the Caorsini, it was still enough to be a heavy burden on all classes.[145] Towards the end of the century the celebrated Bernardino di Feltre was stirred up to preach publicly against their exactions, and the terms on which Christians stood with them, at Piacenza. It is curious to read the language he employs, which is a strange mixture of the most truly Christian and the most utterly unchristian sentiment. He regards the Jews simply as if they had been wicked men, towards whom Christian charity must be felt and shown, but whom it is the duty of all Christian men to shun and condemn. No Christian, he says, ought to employ a Jewish physician; no Christian ought to be a guest at a Jewish feast—the risk of moral contamination is too great! ‘Yet,’ he adds, ‘in defiance of these obstacles, which the law, no less than duty, enjoins, Christians had recently resorted in crowds to a Jewish marriage feast which lasted eight days; and it was notorious that whenever Christians were attacked by illness they resorted to a Jewish physician!’ The mob, as might be expected, understood very little of his refined distinctions. They interpreted his words as an exhortation to make an attack on the Jews. They rose accordingly, and hanged and tore in pieces all they met with.[146]