Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 62.djvu/343

Rh century furnishes the first notable example. Later in the fourteenth century this movement was further stimulated by the historical privileges secured for the Jews through the influence of Esther of Opoeno, the Jewess favorite of Kasimir the Great. It is here also that the conception of the civil status of the Jew under Medieval Roman law received its fullest development, determining in a great measure the part which the Jew has played in the economic history of eastern Europe and still surviving as an important factor in the Jewish problem there to-day.

In the Germanic Roman Empire of the middle ages civil rights in a christian state were only for the orthodox Christian. An infidel or a heretic was an anomaly that was not supposed to exist. But, owing to their connection with the Roman empire and the relation of their faith to Christianity, the Jews and the Jewish worship received special recognition and were tolerated within certain prescribed limits. In theory the Jews were regarded as being under the personal protection of the king, who accorded them their privileges by virtue of his being the legitimate successor and representative of the Emperor Titus.

In accordance with this status the Jews spread over the Polish kingdom as an alien nation, having a complete organization, a central authority, a system of jurisprudence and a language of their own, owing but a qualified allegiance to Poland and receiving their privileges and the laws determining their relations with the Polish people through bargains with the Polish king.

Moreover, as individuals they brought into eastern Europe, among a people not yet emerged from barbarism, intellects sharpened by centuries of mental training, habits and customs which had stood the test of two thousand years of civilization, and arts for which their race has been famous since the days of Jacob. Tales of their persecution, mingled with the clamoring and complaints of the Poles, are early in evidence. It is needless to undertake a recital of the results that have followed, for they have been no different from what might be imagined and, though superficially the story is one of racial prejudice and religious persecution, the underlying economic problem is always discernible.

In the meantime the Jews have shared the political vicissitudes of the Polish and Lithuanian kingdom, their ancient civil status has been modified, their former privileges abridged or readjusted and repeated attempts have been made to limit their opportunities for coming into competition with the thriftless slow-witted Slav; yet at the end of the nineteenth century we find the Russian government still claiming that the Jews prosper, like our trusts, to the detriment