on. Benjamin of Tudela in the compilation of his travels in the
twelfth century gives a humiliating account of the few brethren who
still clung, in dire poverty and meanness, to their native land. In Tyre
he found 400 Jews, mostly glass-blowers. There were in Jerusalem only
200, almost all dyers of wool. Ascalon contained 153 Jews; Tiberias, the
seat of learning, and of the kingly patriarchate, but fifty. In the
Byzantine Empire the number of Jews had greatly diminished.

We pursue our dark progress to the West, where we find all orders
gradually arrayed in fierce and implacable animosity against the race of
Israel. Every passion was in arms against them. In that singular
structure, the feudal system, which rose like a pyramid from the
villeins, or slaves attached to the soil, to the monarch who crowned the
edifice, the, Jews alone found no proper place. In France and England
they were the actual property of the king, and there was nowhere any
tribunal to which they could appeal.

The Jew, often acquiring wealth in commerce, might become valuable
property of some feudatory lord. He was granted away, he was named in a
marriage settlement, he was pawned, he was sold, he was stolen. Even
Churchmen of the highest rank did not disdain such lucrative property.
Louis, King of Provence, granted to the Archbishop of Aries all the
possessions which his predecessors have held of former kings, including
the Jews. Philip the Fair bought of his brother, Charles of Valois, all
the Jews of his dominions and lordships.

The Jew, making money as he knew how to do by trade and industry, was a
valuable source of revenue, and was tolerated only as such, but he was a
valuable possession. Chivalry, the parent of so much good and evil, was
a source of unmitigated wretchedness to the Jew--for religious
fanaticism and chivalry were inseparable, the knight of the Middle Ages
being bound with his good sword to extirpate all the enemies of Christ
and His Virgin Mother. The power of the clergy tended greatly to
increase this general detestation against the unhappy Jew. And when
undisciplined fanatics of the lowest order, under the guidance of Peter
the Hermit and Walter the Penniless, were fired with the spirit of the
Crusades, fearful massacres of Jews were perpetrated in Treves, Metz,
Spiers, Worms, and Cologne. Everywhere the tracks of the Crusaders were
deeply marked with Jewish blood.

Half a century after the shocking massacres of Jews duri