Pius V., 1566, a man of austere and sombre character, revived in a great measure the harshness of Paul IV. He banished the Jews from all the cities in his domains, except Rome and Ancona, and revived most of the severities with which Pius IV. had dispensed. He seems to have tolerated the presence of the Jews at all, only because by that time it had come to be generally understood that to expel them from any country was to destroy its commercial prosperity. There was little change in their treatment when Gregory XIII. followed, A.D. 1572. He promulgated a bull, which he caused to be fixed at the entrance of the Ghetto, which prohibited the reading of the Talmud, and required all Jews who were more than twelve years of age to appear periodically, for the purpose of listening to sermons preached for their special conversion. What effect these had in producing the desired result, we are not informed. In 1585, however, Sixtus V. assumed the pontificate—a man of far higher character and more commanding mind than any of his predecessors during the present century. His mode of dealing with the Jews was at once humane and statesmanlike. He swept away with a stroke of his pen the vexatious and frivolous restrictions which had been imposed on them; he gave them free access to, and unrestrained residence in, all the cities of his dominions; he allowed them to carry on whatever trade they might prefer; he ordered the full toleration of their religion; subjected them to the same civil tribunals and the same taxes as their Christian fellow-subjects. He also limited the amount of usury which they were permitted to exact to eighteen per cent. After his death, in 1590, there was a succession of Popes who vacated the papal chair almost immediately after occupying it.[167] Clement VIII., who was elected in 1592, confirmed the bull of Pius V., by which they were banished out of all the papal cities except Rome and Ancona; but to these he added Avignon, where they have since resided, with full liberty of holding their religious belief and maintaining their form of worship.