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178 it was added that at the feast of the Passover the Jews slew Christian children to use their blood in the night sacrifice.

Therefore on this festival the Jews, hated for their wealth, their religion, and the debts due to them, were entirely in the hands of their enemies, who could easily bring about their destruction by spreading the report of such a child-murder, and then secretly putting a bloody infant's corpse in the house of a Jew thus accused. Then there would be an attack by night on the Jews at their prayers, where there was murder, plunder, and baptism; and great miracles wrought by the dead child aforesaid, whom the Church eventually canonised. Saint Werner is one of these holy beings, and in his honour the magnificent abbey of Oberwesel was founded. It is now one of the most beautiful ruins on the Rhine, and which, with the Gothic grandeur of its long ogival windows, proudly high-shooting pillars, and marvellous stone-carving, so strangely enchants us when we wander by it on some gay, green summer's day, and do not know what was its origin. In honour of this saint three other great churches were built on the Rhine, and innumerable Jews murdered or maltreated. All this happened in the year 1287; and in Bacharach, where one of these Saint Werner's churches stood, the Jews suffered much misery and persecution. However, they remained for two centuries after, protected from