It may surprise us, not that this feeling should have been awakened, but that it should not have been awakened _before_. Three hundred and fifty years had elapsed since the conquest of Jerusalem by the Saracens; and ever since then it had been in the occupation of the unbelievers. Why was the possession of the Holy City by them a greater outrage on the feelings of Christian men in one generation than in another? Or are we to suppose that men were more zealous for God’s honour in the eleventh than they had been in the seventh century? No, not so. The causes which provoked the Crusades were different from these, and they are of importance to us, because they throw a light on the feeling which simultaneously arose against the Jews also. During the first two centuries of the occupation of the Holy City by the Saracens, the latter had been ruled by the Ommiad or Abasside Caliphs—men who, for the most part, governed equitably, and were courteous and tolerant in their dealings with strangers. The number of pilgrims who visited Palestine was small, and they were uniformly received with friendliness. But in the tenth century, when the idea was widely entertained throughout Western Europe that the world was on the very point of coming to an end, and further, that all who died in the Holy Land would certainly be saved, the number of those who travelled thither was greatly multiplied. Those who returned brought back with them tales of outrage and unprovoked insult, which everywhere roused indignation. Jerusalem had passed into the hands of the Turks, a fierce and uncultured race, who had adopted Islamism in its most fanatic spirit. The murder of men, and the outrages offered to women, were good deeds in their eyes; and where they abstained from this extremity of violence, it was only to display their hate and scorn under some other form. The resentment which these wrongs called forth had spread through all European countries. The air was, as it were, everywhere charged with inflammable vapour, and it needed only the torch which Peter the Hermit had lighted to cause it to burst forth in one consuming flame. ‘Death to the Infidels. It is the will of God!’ was the cry that rang throughout Europe. All men hastened to obey the call. From the king on his throne to the journeyman in his workshop, they bound the cross on their shoulders, and went forth to rescue the Holy Land from the profane grasp of the unbelievers. This is the age of the five celebrated Talmudists, called ‘the Five Isaacs,’ all of them bearing that name. They are distinguished as Isaac of Cordova, of Lucena, of Barcelona, of Pumbeditha, and of Fez. The Spanish Poet Halevi was born towards the close of this period. From the middle of the eleventh century, Spain was for four hundred years the chief seat of Rabbinical learning. The great schools were at Barcelona, Granada, and Toledo.