Antisemitism

[masterpanthera_t]

(07-17-2020, 11:52 AM)Dill Wrote: Well, I'd say everyone wanted to take everyone else's money in Middle Ages Europe. Except maybe some Franciscans.

You probably know that Christians were forbidden to lend money for interest, as Muslims still are to day. That practice was viewed as parasitical--as was much merchant activity which involved selling what one did not oneself make, then charging a middleman's fee. Because Jews were not forbidden lending at interest, they were valued as bankers, but treated also as parasites. 

Also, because of the ways religion intersected with the guild system, Jews were denied access to many sectors of Medieval town economy. E.g., they could be jewelers but not blacksmiths, merchants but not farmers. To protect Christianity from their influence, they were generally required to live in ghettos. They could not be rulers or court advisors, of course, nor military leaders.

Occasionally, a Medieval prince would impound a Jewish banker's wealth on some trumped up charge, but most Medieval rulers WANTED Jews because of their industry and economic talents, and protected them. Without that protection they could not have successfully immigrated in most places. E.g., when Spain was reconquered, every effort was made to keep Spanish Jews on the penninsula so they wouldn't retreat with the Muslims. (Until the Inquisition, when Jews were expelled or fled from Spain to enrich other European economic centers like Holland; but that's the early Modern period.) Rulers in backward northern Europe especially welcomed Jews, though local populations regarded them much as some Americans regard brown immigration.  (Public Medievalist has a good basic over view of this migration, if you are interested in the history of 4% of your genetic make up. https://www.publicmedievalist.com/arc-of-jewish-life/.)

Sometimes thriving Jewish communities aroused resentment to a level rulers couldn't ignore and they would be expelled from a principality. All, about 3,000, were expelled from England in 1290 (while it was still a French vassal). https://www.history.ox.ac.uk/::ognode-62416::/files/teaching-resources-expulsion-jews.

Really nasty persecutions, like the mass slaughter in some European cities which accompanied the First Crusade, were set off by social dislocations, economic depression, and natural disasters. (On the other hand, later Crusades were one of the main movers of Jewish migration to Catholic Europe--to the point where eventually Europe held the greatest portion of world Jewish population.) Tulsa-style massacres in Jewish ghettos followed the Bubonic Plague in the 14th century. The Protestant reformation heightened religious anxieties about "purity" in both the Catholic and Protestant camps, though the consequences fall out in the Modern, not Medieval period.

In short, Jewish persecution was mostly driven from the bottom up, by fear of the "Other" and of religious/cultural difference, and by jealousy and the incentive to plunder. Sometimes it could be used by rulers; most of the time it could not be controlled except by military force.

I'll piggyback on this history lesson, by just adding this blurb:
India is cited as another center of Jewish migration, although niether the volumes, nor the time period are known to me. They were welcomed and never persecuted at all to the point that IIRC, the Israeli constitution (not sure of the exact document, maybe it's something else) specifically mentions it and Bibi Netanyahu supposedly thanked the Indian head of state on his visit owing to the historical welcome given.