The Jews of Toledo must have viewed with unpleasant apprehensions the re-establishment of the Catholic monarchy. Yet at first it seemed they had no cause for alarm. Alfonso VI., as we know, granted to them the liberal privileges by which the Muslims also benefited. But in the charter confirming the customs of the Mozarabes (1091) it was made plain that no penalty would be exacted of a Christian for the murder of a Jew or Muslim. The result might have been foreseen. Seventeen years after, the people rose in savage fury, broke into the synagogues and butchered the rabbis in their pulpits, burnt and pillaged every Jewish house, and slaughtered the luckless objects of their animosity without mercy. But it was the people, rather than the governing classes, who manifested this violent racial prejudice. As in every other land, in spite of persecution, the Chosen People grew in wealth and abated not their industry and commercial activity. It was they who brought to the grim Gothic city the choicest products of the East; they alone who could combat the ravages of disease; they alone who could supply the needy king and nobles with the coin for which in Italy men paid as much as one hundred and twenty per cent. interest. Spain hated the Jew, but could not as yet do without him. The rule of Alfonso VI.’s successors could not have been excessively harsh, for many Jewish families, hounded out of Southern Spain by an unusual manifestation of Mohammedan bigotry, took refuge within the walls of Toledo. Thanks to the influence of Fermosa, the Jewish mistress of Alfonso VIII., many of her race exercised important functions at the Court. But the fanatical temper of the populace attributed to the favour shown these unbelievers the disaster of Alarcos, and the beautiful favourite and her friends were murdered in the very presence of the king.