the guilt and the penalty from a whole tribe to a single typical culprit.
Our ignorance of Gipsy Religion: barons certainly good Catholics: change of feeling towards the nomads.
13. But, it will be asked, what after all do we know of the religion of the gipsies? Their feudal overlords, under whose protection they lived, were of course noble Christians and special favourites of Emperor and Pope. In Corfu we have a succession of the Abitabuli and Goth families, the Antonius Eparchus (who corresponded with Melancthon) all in turn Barons of the Corfiot Gipsies. Not to multiply arguments in a case where no doubt is raised, we may refer to Lord Panuel's epitaph (1445) in a little convent of the Odenwald; he is called Duke in Little Egypt and Lord of Hirschhorn in the same country. Lord John, who died at Pfortzen in 1498, is styled Free Count out of Little Egypt. It is also likely that their serfs or vassals were at least nominal Christians and (as we saw above) acted and danced in mystery-plays. Friar Simeon (1322) speaks of them as Greek Catholics in Crete, but as converts to Islam in Grand Cairo and Alexandria; but being Danubians they must have been titular members of some Christian church before this apostasy. They were certainly accepted as welcome visitors and given free alms to the honour of God, as bona fide pilgrims, wearing pilgrim costume and insignia, carrying and using the cross as their chief symbol. When public opinion turned against them they found ready asylum in religious houses, e.g. 300 took refuge at Geneva in 1532 in an Augustine convent; in Santiago, Corpus Christi Day, 1584, others fled to the house of the Knights of St. James. It was not default in faith so much as rascally behaviour to their entertainers that set men against them: within fifty years of their exit from Hungary we see them 'exposed to the fury and prejudices of people whose good
