o were obliged to live beyond the gates, in the great,
selfish, grasping, wicked world. Those inside the Ghetto were the
Chosen People of God; those outside were the Children of the Devil.

No matter who built the wall, it is a fact that the Government of
Venice, which was Christian and under the immediate jurisdiction of the
Church, kept guards at the gates and allowed no Jew to leave after a
certain early hour of the evening, nor on Sundays or holidays, or when
the Emperor visited the city. The only exception to this was on Holy
Cross Day, which occurred once a year. On this day all adult Jews were
ordered out and marched by the soldiers to some Christian Church, where
they were compelled to listen to the service and repeat the Apostles'
Creed. Robert Browning says that they were rounded up all right, but
when it came to saying the Creed they twiddled their thumbs and said Ben
Ezra's Prayer. It is also quite probable that they crossed their
fingers, for the Jews are a stubborn sort, given to contumacy and
contravention.

On all other days, any Jew who went out into the city had to wear a big
yellow O on his breast, and a yellow hat on his head. The Jewish women
wore the O and also a veil across which were yellow stripes.

These chromatic signs were changed a few times in the course of the
three hundred years that the Ghetto existed, and so were the hours in
which the Jews were allowed to come and go, but five o'clock in the
evening and seven in the morning were the regular closing and opening
times. The watchmen at the gates and the guards who rowed round and
round in their barcas were paid out of a special tax collected from the
Jews. It was argued that it was all a sort of beneficent police
protection, devised by kindly persons who loved their enemies, and did
good to those who despitefully used them.

The man who can not make a good argument for the Ghetto lacks
imagination.

Gibbon, who was a deist or monotheist and really liked the Jews,
intimates that it was lucky for the Christians that Constantine didn't
embrace Judaism instead of Christianity, for, if he had, the Jews would
have treated the Christians exactly as the Christians have since treated
the Jews. Of course, nobody claims that Christianity is the religion of
Christ--it is the religious rule of pagan Rome, with the Jewish Christ
as a convenient label. Just why Christians should worship a Jew, and
pray to a Jewess, and yet despise Jews, is a matter