, so as to get rid of the unclean
part.[228]

These ideas received a fresh impetus from the publication of the Zohar,
which, a Jewish writer tells us, "from the fourteenth century held
almost unbroken sway over the minds of the majority of the Jews. In it
the Talmudic legends concerning the existence and activity of the
_shedhim_ (demons) are repeated and amplified, and a hierarchy of demons
was established corresponding to the heavenly hierarchy.... Manasseh
[ben Israel]'s _Nishmat Hayim_ is full of information concerning belief
in demons.... Even the scholarly and learned Rabbis of the seventeenth
century clung to the belief."[229]

Here, then, it is not a case of ignorant peasants evolving fantastic
visions from their own scared imaginations, but of the Rabbis, the
acknowledged leaders of a race claiming civilized traditions and a high
order of intelligence, deliberately inculcating in their disciples the
perpetual fear of demoniacal influences. How much of this fear
communicated itself to the Gentile population? It is at any rate a
curious coincidence to notice the resemblances between so-called popular
superstitions and the writings of the Rabbis. For example, the vile
confessions made both by Scotch and French peasant women accused of
witchcraft concerning the nocturnal visits paid them by male devils[230]
find an exact counterpart in passages of the Cabala, where it is said
that "the demons are both male and female, and they also endeavour to
consort with human beings--a conception from which arises the belief in
_incubi_ and _succubae_."[231] Thus, on Jewish authority, we learn the
Judaic origin of this strange delusion.

It is clearly to the same source that we may trace the magical formulae
for the healing of diseases current at the same period. From the
earliest times the Jews had specialized in medicine, and many royal
personages insisted on employing Jewish doctors,[232] some of whom may
have acquired medical knowledge of a high order. The Jewish writer
Margoliouth dwells on this fact with some complacency, and goes on to
contrast the scientific methods of the Hebrew doctors with the
quackeries of the monks:

In spite of the reports circulated by the monks, that the Jews were
sorcerers (in consequence of their superior medical skill),
Christian patients would frequent the houses of the Jewish
physicians in preference to the monasteries, where cures were
pretended to have been e