According to Elvira Roca Barea, the Spanish black legend is a variant of the antisemitic narratives which have been circulated in England, most of central Europe and Italy since the 13th century.[citation needed] The image of a fanatical, overly-Catholic Spain has little to do with medieval Spain, where cohabitation, relative tolerance, and frequent intermarriage was the norm. Muslims in Christian territory were, for the most part, allowed to keep their religion; Jews held high public office.[citation needed] Scholarly cooperation with Arabic and Jewish scholars was common since the 11th century, and Jewish professors reportedly taught at the University of Salamanca.[citation needed] In 1555, after the expulsion of the Spanish Jews, Pope Paul IV described Spaniards as "heretics, schismatics, accursed of God, the offspring of Jews and Moors, the very scum of the earth".[14] This climate would facilitate the transfer of antisemitic and anti-Muslim stereotypes to Spaniards as a new stereotype.[15] This is evidenced in texts of German Renaissance intellectuals, the existence of a black legend in pre-Columbian Europe, and the similarity of Jewish and Spanish stereotypes.[16]