titutes for teachers, which were managed in the
spirit that had prevailed under Nicholas I. And in 1878 the absurd blood
accusation, against which four popes, Innocent IV, Paul III, Gregory X,
and Clement XIV, issued their bulls, declaring it a baseless and wicked
superstition, and which not only the Polish kings Boreslav V, Casimir
III, Casimir IV, and Stephen Bathory, but also Alexander I (March 18,
1817), branded as a diabolic invention--that dreadful accusation which
even the commission of Nicholas, despite Durnovo's efforts, had
denounced as a disgrace and an abomination, was revived by the newspaper
Grazhdanin. The ghost of medievalism began to stalk abroad once more in
erstwhile enlightened Russia and under the aegis of the Liberator Czar.

As often before in Jewish history, the Jews helped not a little to
aggravate the untoward conditions. At the instigation of a number of
students of the Yeshibah Tree of Life, the doors of that noble
institution were closed (1879), to open again after two years of
untiring efforts on the part of its self-sacrificing dean, the renowned
Naphtali Zebi Judah Berlin. But at the worst this was the result of
mistaken zeal for the cause of Haskalah. What was more detrimental was
the disgrace brought upon the Jewish name by several converts to
Christianity. A certain Jacob Brafmann, having proved a failure in all
he undertook, tried at the last the business of Christianity, and
succeeded therein. He was appointed professor of Hebrew in the seminary
of Minsk, and the Holy Synod charged him with the duty of devising means
to promulgate Christianity among the Jews. Finding the times auspicious,
he devoted himself to writing libellous articles about his former
coreligionists, and wound up with a _Book on the Kahal_ (_Kniga Kahala_,
Vilna, 1869), in which he quoted forged "transactions," to the effect
that Judaism tolerates and even recommends illegality and immorality
among its adherents. In a conference of Jews and Gentiles convoked by
Governor-General Kaufman (1871), Barit proved the falsity and forgery of
Brafmann's documents. But, as usual, the defence was forgotten, the
charges remained.[24] A certain Lutostansky poisoned the public mind by
caricaturing the Jews, and aroused an anti-Semitic agitation among his
countrymen. The consequence was that even the liberals began to be
suspicious, and the prospect of better days was blighted by the hatred
which broke out in fiendish fury, in ligh