In 1670 the Jews were banished from the Austrian dominions by the Emperor Leopold, a weak and narrow-minded prince, who was easily persuaded to adopt measures which he was as speedily obliged to modify or reverse. He had granted, only a short time before, Rabbi Zachariah permission to build a magnificent synagogue and schools for the revival of learning. But the synagogue had hardly been finished when it was turned into a Christian church by the Emperor, and the whole of the Jews exiled from his dominions. The reason of this is said to have been that the Empress attributed her barrenness to the displeasure of Heaven at the toleration shown to the Jews. But her death in her confinement, shortly afterwards, doubtless had a counter-effect on the mind of the Emperor; and we are not surprised to hear that the Jews were recalled, and re-established in their possessions.[182] It was upon this occasion that the Jews expelled from Vienna found a refuge in Berlin, where a thriving community grew up. In this century many learned Jews and Christian Hebrew scholars appeared, whose names are well known, even at the present day. Among these the most distinguished were Rabbi Menasseh, of whom we shall have occasion to speak presently, and the Christian writers Pocock, Surenhusius, and Vitringa. But the most renowned Christian Hebraists of this century were the two Buxtorfs. The elder, Johann, born at Westphalia in 1564, and dying in Basle in 1629, is the author of the famous Hebrew dictionary and grammar continually quoted by Hebrew scholars. His son, also called Johann, born 1599, and dying in 1664, finished the concordance which his father had commenced. FOOTNOTES: [180] It has already been observed that Martin Luther, though sometimes he speaks of the Jews rather with considerate compassion than anger, at other times, and especially later in his career, uses the very bitterest language respecting them, as, for instance, in his tract (published in 1543) on _The Jews and their Lies_, the title of which, it may be remarked, is quite in accordance with its contents. And again, in his exposition of Psalm xxii., written many years earlier, he thus writes: ‘Doubt not, beloved in Christ, that after the devil, you have no more bitter, venomous, violent enemy than the Jew.’ He also enjoins the sternest and most violent measures to be used against them. The great founder of Calvinism, again, though he is less fiery and vehement in his denunciation of them, cannot be said to regard them with any greater favour. He sees in them nothing but the virulent, determined enemies of Christ, whom it would be weakness, if not sin, to treat with any favour. [181] It may be added that the very existence of the Sadducees, as a sect, at this period of history, is an anachronism.