Note 150 — Chapter XXV · A.D. 1400-1500. THE JEWS IN GERMANY AND ITALY.

Every reader will remember the noble passage in Ivanhoe, where Bois Guilbert taunts Rebecca with the degraded character of her countrymen, and she answers him by appealing to their former greatness. ‘Thou hast spoken of the Jew,’ she says, ‘as the persecution of such as thou has made him. Read the ancient history of the people of God, and tell me if those by whom Jehovah wrought such marvels among the nations were then a people of misers and usurers!’—Ivanhoe, chap. xvi.