On the 10th of March 1499, driven from their homes amid the curses of the Christians, the Jews left Nuremberg with groans and lamentations, never to dwell there again till 1850. Maximilian sold their houses to the Council. Their churchyard was built over, their tombstones used for building the Corn Exchange--(die Waage). But no persecution, no repression, no laws forbidding commercial transactions between Christian and Jew, could ever subdue that despised but indomitable race. Most of them found refuge in Frankfort; but some years later, with the encouragement of the Markgrafs of Brandenburg, many of them settled at Fürth, which speedily became a serious commercial rival to Nuremberg, and remains to this day as prosperous as her neighbour. One curious and interesting result this expulsion had. In order to supply the place of the money-lenders the Emperor ordered a Leihaus or State Pawnshop to be built, where money was to be advanced at a moderate percentage on property to people in difficulties. It was to be run at cost price, or, if there were any surplus, it was to go to the State. This was an imitation of the Italian system (Monte di Pietà) already in vogue at Augsburg--a system not without interest to the Englishman of to-day. During the Thirty Years War, the Jews in Fürth, oppressed by the Imperial troops, asked to be received back into Nuremberg. Some of the Council were ready to comply, on the receipt of a large payment, but the majority refused to have the "damaging rascals" within their walls. So long did the hostility towards the Jews survive here that it was not till 1800 that the regulation was done away with by which, in order to stop a day in Nuremberg, a Jew had to pay a personal tax of 45 kreuzer, and, in addition, had to be accompanied by a guard, for he was not allowed to walk in the streets alone. This guard was usually an old woman, who followed her Jew everywhere for the consideration of 15 kreuzer. CHAPTER III _Nuremberg and the Reformation_ "Trading Staple of the German World in old days, Toyshop of the German World in these new, Albert Dürer's and Hans Sachs' City."--CARLYLE. We have watched the dawning sun of Nuremberg's greatness rise over the forest till now it has reached the _Mittags_-quarter. We have seen, to change the metaphor, the little foundling of the swamps grow year by year till at last she has arrived at the full strength and beauty of womanhood. For it was under Maximilian that Nuremberg reached her prime: it was under him and his successors that the greatest of her sons flourished. She was lavish as a princess in the adornment of her person. Once in 1447, and again in 1491, for instance, we find her voting some 500 florins to gild the Beautiful Fountain (Schöner Brunnen), which had been placed in the Hauptmarkt 1385.[16] She was already adorned with those churches which in her old age are still her brightest jewels.