and Franciscans for examination, and if their judgment should corroborate the charges of Nicholas Donin, they were to burn the volumes of the Talmud (June 9, 1239).
In France Graetz goes on to relate that "the priest-ridden and weak-minded Louis IX"--that is to say, Saint Louis--pursued the same course. "The Talmud was put on its trial. Four distinguished Rabbis of North France were commanded by the King to hold a public disputation with Nicholas, either to refute the imputations levelled against the Talmud, or to make confession of the abuse against Christianity and the blasphemies against God that it contained."
It is impossible to imagine a fairer decision, and the queen-mother, Blanche de Castille, was careful to assure the first witness summoned that if the lives of the Rabbis were in danger she would protect them and that he was only required to answer the questions that would be asked of him. Now, there would have been nothing simpler than for the Rabbis to admit honestly that these offensive passages existed, that they had been written perhaps in moments of passion in a less enlightened age, that they recognized the indelicacy of insulting the religion of the country in which they lived, and that therefore such passages should henceforth be deleted. But instead of adopting this straightforward course, which might have put an end for ever to attacks on the book they held sacred, the Rabbis proceeded to deny the existence of the "alleged blasphemous and immoral expressions" and to declare that "the odious facts related in the