the following Lent, when the Jews would be in their synagogues, all their books should be seized and delivered to the Mendicant Friars. A report of the examination which ensued in Paris has been preserved, and shows that there was no difficulty in finding in the Jewish writings abundant matter offensive to pious ears, though the Rabbis who ventured to appear in their defence endeavored to explain away the blasphemous allusions to the Christian Messiah, the Virgin, and the saints. The proceedings dragged on for years, and sentence was not finally rendered until May 13, 1248, after which Paris was edified with the spectacle of the burning of fourteen wagon-loads at one time and of six at another. Like the luz or os coccygis, which the Rabbis held to be indestructible, the Talmud could not be wiped out of existence, and, in 1255, St. Louis, in his instructions to his seneschals in the Narbonnais, again orders all copies to be burned, together with all other books containing blasphemies; while in 1267 Clement IV. (Gui Foucoix) instructed the Archbishop of Tarragona to coerce by excommunication the King of Aragon and his nobles to force the Jews to deliver up their Talmuds and other books to the inquisitors for examination, when, if they contain no blasphemies, they may be returned, but if otherwise they are to be sealed up and securely kept. Alonso the Wise of Castile was wiser, if, as reported, he caused the Talmud to be translated, in order that its errors might be exposed to the public. The passive resistance of the faithful was not to be overcome, and in 1299 Philippe le Bel felt obliged to denounce the persistent multiplication of the Talmud, and to order his judges to aid the Inquisition in its extermination. Ten years later, in 1309, we hear of three large wagon-loads of Jewish books publicly burned in Paris. How fruitless were all these efforts is seen in a formal sentence recited by Bernard Gui in the auto de fé of 1319. Under the impulsion of the Inquisition the royal officials had again made diligent perquisition and had collected all the copies of the Talmud on which they could lay their hands. Experts in the Hebrew tongue had then been employed to examine them carefully, and after mature counsel between the inquisitors and the jurists called in to assist, the books were condemned to be carried in two carts through the streets of Toulouse, while the royal officers proclaimed in loud voice that their fate was due to their blasphemies against the Lord Jesus
