442 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
to instruct his people in Christianity and European habits. Two Dominicans accompanied the Polos on their return journey, Marco Polo being of the party. The missionaries did not reach their destination. Three years later Francis cans were sent. John of Monte Corvino, a Franciscan sent out by Nicholas IV., reached the court of the Great Khan at Cambaluc, and in 1303 was joined by Arnold, a Franciscan from Cologne. They translated the New Testament and the Psalms into the Tartar language, bought and trained one hundred and fifty boys, built two churches, one of them close to the palace and overtopping it, and baptized six thousand converts. In 1307 John was made archbishop of Pekin, archiepiscopus Cambalensis, and died 1330. The khans passed over to the Buddhist faith and in 1368 the Ming dynasty which raised itself to power abolished Christianity. It remained for the Jesuits three hundred years later to renew missionary operations in China.
§ 77. The Jeivs.
LITERATURE : The Works of PETER THE VENERABLE, and BERNARD, in MIGNE, and the English Chroniclers, WILLIAM OF NEWBURGH, WALTER OF COVENTRY, MATTHEW PARIS, etc., in the Rolls Series. — T. BASNAGE : Hist, des Juifs depuis Jesus Christ, 5 vols. Rotterdam, 1706. — D. BLOSSIUS TOVEY : Anglia Judaica or Hist. Antiquities of the Jews in Engl., Oxford, 1738. — DEPPING : Les Juifs dans le moyen age, Paris, 1834. — E. H. LINDO : Hist, of the Jews of Spain and Portugal, London, 1848. — TH. HALLEY : Les Juifs en France, etc., Paris, 1845. — M. MARGOLIOUTH : Hist, of the Jews in Great Britain, 3 vols. London, 1851. — H. H. MILMAN : Hist, of the Jews, 3 vols. London, 1863. — JOSE AMADOR DE LOS Rios : Historia social, politica, y religiosa de los Judios de Espana y Portugal, 3 vols. Madrid, 1875, 1876. — H. GRAETZ (Prof, at Breslau, d. 1891) : Gesch. der Juden von den (Kltesten Zeiten bis auf die Gegenwart, 3d ed., Leipzig, 1888-1894, 11 vols.; Engl. trans, by BELLA Lowv, London, 5 vols. 1891-1892.— J. JACOBS : The Jews of Angevin England. Documents and Records from Latin and Hebrew Sources, London, 1893. — I. ABRAHAMS: Jewish Life in the M. A., London, 1890. — E. RODOCANACHI : Le Saint Siege et les Juifs. Paris, 1891. — DOLLINGER : Die Juden in Europa in Akad. Vortrage, I. 208-241. — LEA : Chapters from the Eelig. Hist, of Spain, Phil., 1890, pp. 437-469 — UEKELE: IV.-VI. — LECKY : Hist, of Europ. Morals. — JANSSEN : Hist, of the German People, II. 73 sqq. The Lives of ST. BERNARD. — D. S. SCHAFF : The Treatment of the Jews in the Middle Ages, Bibliotheca Sacra, 1903, pp. 547-571.
§ 77. THE JEWS. 443
Would that it might be said of the mediaeval church that it felt in the well-being of the Jews, the children of Abraham according to the flesh, a tithe of the interest it manifested in the recovery of the holy places of their ancient land. But this cannot be said. Though popes, bishops, and princes, here and there, were inclined to treat them in the spirit of humanity, the predominant sentiment of Europe was the sentiment of hatred and disdain. The very nations which were draining their energies to send forth armaments to reconquer the Holy Sepulchre joined in persecuting the Jews.
Some explanation is afforded by the conduct of the Jews themselves. Their successful and often unscrupulous money dealings, the flaunting of their wealth, their exclusive social tendencies, their racial haughtiness, and their secretiveness, strained the forbearance of the Christian public to the ut most.1 The edicts of councils and civil edicts put it beyond reasonable question that, in an offensive way, they showed contempt for the rites and symbols of the Christian faith. The provocation was great, but it does not justify a treat ment of the Jewish people in all parts from Bohemia to the Atlantic which lacked the elements of common humanity. The active efforts that were made for their conversion seem to betray fully as much of the spirit of churchly arrogance as of the spirit of Christian charity. Peter the Venerable, in the prologue to his tract addressed to the Jews, said, " Out of the whole ancient world, you alone were not ig norant of Christ ; yea, all peoples have listened, and you alone do not hear. Every language has confessed him, and you alone deny. Others see him, hear him, apprehend him, and you alone remain blind, and deaf, and stony of heart."
The grounds upon which the Jews were persecuted were three : 1. Their fathers had crucified Christ, and the race,
1 William of Newburgh, Hamilton's ed., I. 282, says the tendency of the royal protection in England was to make them proud and stiffnecked against Christians. Green pronounces the attitude of the Jew in England one ** of proud and even insolent defiance." Hist, of Engl. People, bk. III. ch. IV.