from the tyranny of their masters, and even to pay the price which will redeem them from captivity. It is needless to add that these injunctions had but little effect. Neither clergy nor laity have, in any age, except that of the Apostles, been thus ready to part with their money for the benefit of any unhappy sufferer who might appeal to them. Gregory the Great, who succeeded to the Papal chair A.D. 590, was very earnest in his efforts to put down a traffic which he regarded as abominable. His letters, addressed to kings and bishops and others in authority, evince the warmth of his zeal and the nobility of his nature; but they show also that all efforts, up to that time, to eradicate the evil had proved abortive. The condition of the Italian Jews at this period seems to have been unusually prosperous. They were protected by Theodoric, who several times—at Rome, at Milan, at Genoa—interfered to chastise those who had wrecked and plundered Jewish synagogues, and directed that due reparation should be made. The Bishops of Rome, throughout the century, and especially Gregory, towards its close, treated them with justice and clemency, and, though filled with an earnest desire for their conversion, repressed all violence or imprudent zeal. But it was different in other parts of the world about this time. The attempts at proselytizing, which had hitherto erred on the side of holding out worldly inducements to bribe men to embrace the Gospel, were now exchanged for the still worse method of violent compulsion. Chilperic, the youngest son of Clotaire I., a monster of lust and cruelty, appears to have been the first who practised this. Believing, perhaps, that his own misdeeds might be atoned for by what he regarded as zeal in the cause of Christ, he forcibly compelled all the Jews in his dominions to receive baptism on pain of instant death. They appear to have complied—nothing more than the mere performance of the ceremony having been required of them—but to have carried on their own form of worship exactly as before.