their superiors, and maltreating and plundering him. In this manner the Jews became the outcasts of society; and all classes of men were willing enough to adopt the ignorant and rancorous intolerance of the clergy of the day, who (with some noble exceptions) inveighed against them as the enemies of Christ, finding in the odium thus cast on them an excuse for them own lawless rapacity and violence. Another reason for the general dislike in which they were held was their wealth, and the manner in which it had been amassed. They were, as has been already intimated, the only bankers, almost the only traders, of the day. They had become an absolute necessity of life to many classes of men. If the sovereign wished to negotiate a marriage, or embark in a foreign war, a large sum of money was required, which the Jews alone could supply. The same was the case with the nobles and land-owners of lesser rank; and even the Christian merchant could sometimes save his credit only by a timely loan, which was to be obtained from none but Hebrew coffers. It was affirmed that the usury exacted for these was inordinate; that the Jews took advantage of their opportunity to accumulate enormous gains, to the total ruin of their debtors. The rate of interest demanded was, as a general rule, extortionate. Yet it should be borne in mind that the monstrous injustice often shown them, when they were,—on any pretext, or on no pretext at all,—despoiled of their money, if it did not render the exaction of these terms necessary to secure to the lender, in the long run, his fair profit, it did offer a strong temptation for exaction, and gave him a ready excuse for offering only the hardest terms to the borrower.[102] Whatever value, however, this argument may possess, it was utterly disregarded by the enemies of the Jews in those days, who took into account only two facts—one, that the Jews demanded an enormous amount of usury, which brought them immense wealth, and the other, that its payment reduced themselves to poverty. These influences had been for a long time at work, causing the Jews to be regarded with ever-increasing disfavour. But it may be doubted whether they would ever have burst forth into the furious volcano of persecution which the next generation witnessed, if it had not been that the element of religious fanaticism was now added to those already at work. The cry that Christ was dishonoured through the profanation of the scenes of His birth and crucifixion by the unhallowed rites of the Infidels, and that it was the bounden duty of all faithful Christians to wrest the holy places from their grasp, now resounded through Christendom, and roused an enthusiasm of which the world had never before beheld the like.