The city gates were also guarded with the
greatest caution: only confidential persons were admitted; and if
medicine or any other article, which might be supposed to be
poisonous, was found in the possession of a stranger--and it was
natural that some should have these things by them for their
private use--they were forced to swallow a portion of it. By this
trying state of privation, distrust, and suspicion, the hatred
against the supposed poisoners became greatly increased, and often
broke out in popular commotions, which only served still further
to infuriate the wildest passions. The noble and the mean
fearlessly bound themselves by an oath to extirpate the Jews by
fire and sword, and to snatch them from their protectors, of whom
the number was so small, that throughout all Germany but few
places can be mentioned where these unfortunate people were not
regarded as outlaws and martyred and burnt. Solemn summonses were
issued from Bern to the towns of Basle, Freyburg in the Breisgau,
and Strasburg, to pursue the Jews as poisoners. The burgomasters
and senators, indeed, opposed this requisition; but in Basle the
populace obliged them to bind themselves by an oath to burn the
Jews, and to forbid persons of that community from entering their
city for the space of two hundred years.
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