reported that the race was accursed because the founder forged the nails for the Cross: no doubt the double attitude depends on the varying character of the race, as pious pilgrims or detestable thieves and cheats. In any case they were connected, like the wandering Jew or Cartaphilus, (in Georgian Karthli), with the life of our Lord: indeed, if we can believe Leo Wiener's hypothesis (Jl. G. Lore Soc. April 1910) Charles the Great was already in 789 trying to secure for them the benefits of Christian pilgrims to the Holy Places—which if proved would be the first historic reference.
Their Patronage a valuable Fief: at the same time Persecuted and Protected.
11. The medieval gipsies constituted a sort of moveable fief, 'a system,' says MacRitchie, 'and not merely a race … an organization recognized by all secular and religious powers.' They clearly availed themselves of privileges accorded to pilgrims and crusaders, with whom they may have been confused since the time of Charlemagne: specially, it would seem, did they claim to represent Templars and Hospitallers, and the Lord Emaus, entertained with his troupe at Kronstadt (1416), derived his title from the latter Order's 'commandery' at the biblical Emmaus. They were entitled to travel about and live at free quarters wherever they went, on the strength of being pilgrims: when in 1528 the Duke of Savoy attempted to charge for his hospitality, the Grand Master of the Hospitallers appealed with success to Pope and Emperor. The gipsies would seem to be on the same level as the
earliest known with the smaller number is a copper of Byzantine workmanship of c. 1200, when (as Groome suggests) Byzantine gipsies possessed a 'metallurgical monopoly.' The change may be then a gipsy protest against the calumny which attributes the forging of the nails to a gipsy craftsman (Gipsy Folk Tales, xxx).
