Protected by the disdain which they inspired, caring little, moreover, for the railleries of the men of the world, the Jews of the Trastevere led a very active religious and social life. They had some schools of _hakamin_: nowhere was the ritual and ceremonial of the law observed more scrupulously: the organization of the synagogue was the most complete ever known. The titles of "father and mother" of the synagogues were much prized. Some rich converts took biblical names; they brought their slaves into the church with them, they had the Scriptures explained by the doctors, built places of prayer, and manifested their pride of the consideration which they enjoyed in this little world. The poor Jew found the means, while begging with a trembling voice, to whisper in the ear of the great Roman lady some words of the law, and frequently won over the matron who opened to him her hand full of small coin. To observe the sabbath and the Jewish feasts was to Horace the trait which classed a man in the crowd of weak minds. The universal benevolence, the happiness of reposing with the just, the assistance of the poor, the purity of manners, the gentle acceptance of death considered as a sleep, are some of the sentiments which are found in the Jewish inscriptions, with that particular accent of touching unction, of certain hope, which characterizes the Christian inscriptions. There have been many rich and powerful Jews in the world, such as Tiberius Alexander, who arrived at the greatest honors of the empire, who exercised two or three times the strongest influence upon public affairs, and even had, to the great grief of the Romans, his statue in the Forum; but those were not good Jews. The Herods, though practising their worship at Rome with much show, were also far from being true Israelites, even if their only sins were their relations with the Pagans. A world of ideas was thus set in motion on the vulgar quay where the merchandise of the whole world was piled up; but all that would be lost in a great city like Paris. Undoubtedly the proud patricians, who, in their promenades on the Aventine, cast their eyes upon the other side of the Tiber, did not imagine the future that was forming itself in that little cluster of poor houses at the foot of Janiculum. Near the port was a sort of lodging-house well known to the people and the soldiers under the name of _Taberna Meritoria_. In order to attract the loungers, a pretended spring of oil coming out of a rock was shown there. From a very early time this spring of oil was considered by the Christians as symbolic: it was pretended that its appearance was coincident with the birth of Jesus. It seems that later the _Taberna_ became a church. Under Alexander Severus we find the Christians and the inn-keepers in a contest over a place which formerly had been public: that good emperor gave it to the Christians. This is probably the origin of the Church of the Santa Maria of the Trastevere.