Kingsley has told us how this Jewish magic arose.[197] “If each word [of the Scriptures] had a mysterious value, why not each letter? And how could they set limits to that mysterious value? Might not these words, even rearrangements of the letters of them, be useful in protecting them against the sorceries of the heathen, in driving away these evil spirits, or evoking those good spirits who, though seldom mentioned in their early records, had, after their return from Babylon, begun to form an important part of their unseen world?” Jewish Cabalism formed itself into a system at Alexandria. It was there, as Kingsley goes on to say, that the Jews learnt to become the magic-mongers which Claudius had to expel from Rome as pests to rational and moral society. According to the Jewish doctors, three angels preside over the art of medicine. Their names, according to Rabbi Elias, are Senoi, Sansenoi, and Sanmangelof.[198] In the Middle Ages the Jews rendered the greatest services to the healing art, and had a large share in the scientific work connected with the Arab domination in Spain. The great names of MOSES MAIMONIDES and IBN EZRA attest the dignity of Jewish intellectual life in the Dark Ages. The Golden Age of the modern Jews, as Milman[199] designates it, begins with the Caliphs and ends with Maimonides. The Hebrew literature was eminently acceptable to the kindred taste of the Saracens, and the sympathy between Arab and Jewish practitioners and students of medicine was fraught with the greatest benefit to the healing art. The Golden Age of the Jews was at its height in the time of Charlemagne, when kings could not write their names. Their intelligence and education fitted them to become the physicians and the ministers of nobles and monarchs. During the reign of Louis the Debonnaire the Jews were all-powerful at his court. His confidential adviser was the Jewish physician Zedekiah, who was a profound adept in magic. In an age when monkish historians could relate “with awe-struck sincerity,” as Milman describes it,[200] the tales of his swallowing a cartload of hay, horses and all, it is not difficult to understand that an acquaintance with the best knowledge of his time would account for the estimation in which a man of science was held. Maimonides lived at the court of the Sultan of Egypt as the royal physician, in the highest estimation. The Phœnicians were devoted to phallic-worship. The instrument of procreative power was the chief symbol of their religion. Astarte was their great goddess. Baal-Zebub, the Beelzebub of the Bible, was their god of medicine, and the arbiter of health and disease. The Cabiri, or Corybantes, considered by some authorities to be identical with the Titans, by others with the sons of Noah, were considered as the discoverers of the properties of the medicinal herbs, and the teachers of the art of healing to mortals.[201] CHAPTER III. THE MEDICINE OF CHALDÆA, BABYLONIA, AND ASSYRIA.