As regards the history of the Talmuds, it is a singular fact that no notice is taken of either Mishna or Gemara by any of the Fathers belonging to the first four centuries of Church history, notwithstanding that they frequently handle the subject of Jewish tradition. Even Tertullian, when specially writing on this subject, while he speaks of the primal law given to Adam, and the laws of the Two Tables committed to Moses, makes no mention of the Mishna. Augustine, in the fifth century, does name the δευτέρωσις, or Second Law; but even he speaks of it as containing the _unwritten_ traditions of the Jews, transmitted from one generation to another by word of mouth. We can only suppose that, although the Mishna was indeed completed before the end of the second century, the knowledge of it was for a long time confined to the learned among the Jews, and for a still longer time to the Hebrew nation generally. The same was the case as regards the completed Jerusalem Talmud. There was, in fact, no recognition of the work by Christians until the time of the Emperor Justinian, who, about the middle of the sixth century, issued a Novella, or edict, against it. He allowed the reading of Scripture in the synagogues, but prohibited that of the Mishna, as being ‘the mere invention of earthly men, who had nothing of Heaven in them.’ From his time to the sixteenth century of Christianity, popes and kings have put forth one manifesto after another, warning men against its perusal, and ordering the book itself to be suppressed, and even publicly destroyed. In 1286 Pope Honorius IV. wrote to Archbishop Peckham, requiring him to forbid the perusal of the Talmud as a ‘liber damnabilis,’ from which all of manner of evil was certain to arise. Nor were the popes content with prescribing it. In 1230 Gregory IX., following the example of his predecessor Innocent, burned twenty cartloads of it. In 1553, during the Feast of Tabernacles, all the copies that could anywhere be found were committed to the flames by order of Julius III.; and a few years subsequently, 12,000 volumes underwent the same fate by command of Paul IV. During the last half of the sixteenth century the Talmud was in this manner brought to the stake no less than six times, and was burned, not by the single copy, but by the waggonload. The Hebrew copyists of those times must have laboured hard to prevent the total disappearance of the book. But the establishment of the printing presses, and the declaration of Reuchlin, early in the sixteenth century,[253] in its favour, in the course of a generation or two put an end to the attempts to root out all traces of it.