It may not be amiss, at this point of history, to inquire how far the severe language and harsh treatment with which even really good men among the Christians of the Middle Ages were wont to assail the Jews, had any reasonable justification or excuse. There were some men, as we have seen, with whom the prejudices of their brother Christians had little or no weight; who were capable of regarding the Jews as the children of their Father in heaven, and as such their brethren, though, doubtless, their erring brethren. They might rightly, in such men’s eyes, be the subjects of entreaty, warning, perhaps punishment, but never of hate or contempt. But they who were thus raised above the convictions of their age were very few. And there were others—men of the highest character, whose devotion to God’s service and love for their fellow-men cannot be questioned—men like Louis IX. of France, Peter of Clugny, Savonarola, Martin Luther, Cardinal Borromeo—who regarded the Jews with horror and detestation, as persons beyond the pale of charity, who were simply to be crushed and trampled out.[147] How are we to account for men like these so viewing them? Was the character of the Jews in the Middle Ages such as really to merit a condemnation so unqualified? Is the portraiture of the Jew given by our great dramatist[148] a true one? Shylock is depicted as sordid, vindictive, without mercy and without natural affection. Is he the genuine Hebrew of the sixteenth century, or the mere embodiment of blind and inveterate prejudice?