The closing decade of the fifteenth century, which opened up new continents and new horizons for humanity in general, produced in the narrower circle of the Jewish world a series of cataclysmic upheavals which convulsed the entire body of Israel with the agony of imminent extinction. This trumpet call of fate, though crushing the body, aroused the spirit from the lethargy of wretched smugness, veering it violently from the rut of a present, that led nowhere, into the unfamiliar road linking the past with the future. There arose the desire to examine into the forgotten nooks of the past while the eye seeking the future lost itself in the mystic vapors of a yet unborn sunrise. Thus historical interest and national mysticism came to the forefront of the Jewish consciousness.