Subject: JUICE History 9 - Jews in Christian Europe
Date:    Fri, 29 May 1998 02:52:57 +0000
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From:          JUICE Administration <juice@wzo.org.il>
To:            history@wzo.org.il
Subject:       JUICE History 9

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                  World Zionist Organization
                Jewish University in CyberspacE
          juice@wzo.org.il         birnbaum@wzo.org.il 
                     http://www.wzo.org.il 
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Course: Medieval Jewish History
Lecture: 9/12
Lecturer: Prof. Howard Adelman

IX. The Jews in Christian Europe, 300-1096

Very little evidence exists documenting the Jewish presence and activities
in Europe during the first three centuries of the Common Era. In the
Germanic lands, the Jews followed the Romans, serving their colonizing
activities in various capacities, including as soldiers, as seen in several
first century tombstones in Mainz.  In Cologne during the fourth century
Constantine forced Jews to hold curial office, the Decurion, from which they
once had been exempted, which, as mentioned already, involved great personal
financial burdens (Cod. Theod. 16:8:3). Rabbis, however, continued to be
exempt  (CTh 16:8:2). An account from Metz in 350, more reflective of
Christian aspirations than historical events, reported that a converted Jew,
Simon, had became a bishop.  


A. Gaul (French Territory)

Some legends place the Jews in Gaul at the beginning of the first
millennium.  According to Josephus, the Romans exiled to Gaul two of the
early Jewish officials in Palestine, Archelaus and Herod Antipas, sons of
Herod. Other legends tell about the Romans sending crewless boatloads of
Jews to Gaul after the destruction of the Second Temple.  The limited
archaeological evidence from these early centuries include a few Hebrew
words, likely--but not necessarily-- Jewish symbols such as the menorah
(seven branched candelabra), lulav (palm branch), shofar (ram's horn), and
names like Sabatius, a romanization of the word for the Sabbath. References
to Jews appear in The Chronicles of Gregory of Tours, the Life of Hilary of
Potiers--he never accepted food from a heretic or a Jew (d. 397), and the
History of the Life of Hilary of Arles (d. 450)--Jews wailed in Hebrew at
his funeral.  In 427 a Jewish merchant appeared in Clermont.  The
politician, writer, bishop, and later saint, Apollinaris Sidonius, mentioned
contacts with Jews, describing  them as honest. During the fifth century the
Salian Franks, still pagans, left the Germanic lands to conquer Gaul from
the Visigoths, whose kingdom, under Alaric II (484-507), author of the
famous Breviarum law code, was concentrated in the Southwest part. The
Franks, who adhered to Arianism, non-Roman Catholic theology which denied
the divinity of Jesus, gradually conquered their way south, tried not to
upset the local Catholic clergy, a policy which culminated in 496, when
Clovis, the king of the Franks and the first of the Merovingian kings, whose
kingdom was concentrated in the northeast, converted to Roman Catholicism.
As was the case at the time of the Islamic conquests, so too were the Jews
accused of betraying Visigothic cities, such as Arles, to the Franks as well
as noted for defending their cities alongside their Visigothic neighbors.
Thus, Jews still fought with arms; Jewish loyalty was suspect; and Jews
might have tried to anticipate a change of status by aiding a new ruler.

In 506 the Roman Catholics convened the Church Council of Agde, on the
Mediterranean coast in what was still the Arian Visigothic territory of
Alaric II.  Two--possibly three-- provisions from this council concerned the
Jews. The first, taken from the Council of Vannes in Brittany in 465,
(Robert Chazan, Church, State, and the Jews in the Middle Ages, p. 24 XIV
and p. 25 XCIII), advocated Catholics avoiding social relations with Jews,
because Jews were perceived as not associating with Christians and rejecting
their food while Christians persisted in consuming the food of Jews. The
Church was defensive in its concern to protect its honor against the social
and religious affronts of the Jews.  From such a law it can be surmised that
there was little reluctance on the part of Christians to eat and socialize
with Jews.  The second edict harshly refers to Jewish converts to
Catholicism who reverted to Judaism "whose perfidy often leads back to their
vomit."  The law therefore required that before converting to Christianity
Jews must serve a probationary period of eight months.  Again, here
Christians were frustrated because of what they perceived as Jewish affronts
to Christian honor.  The allure of Judaism was too strong and it had to be
vilified. Here as elsewhere, Christian hostility was a reaction to Jewish
strength and the attractiveness of Judaism.  Another canon from Agde
prohibited Christians from eating on the Saturdays of Lent, possible
evidence of Christians celebrating a Jewish festival at the expense of a
Christian one (James Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue,
321-330).
        
Subsequent Church councils at Orleans, Claremont, Macon, Paris, and Clichy,
in Gaul tried to limit social relations between Jews and Christians (Parks
385-5, 323). The edicts, usually endorsed by the king, involved attempts to
stop intermarriage between Jews and Christians, to prevent Jews from serving
as public officials such as judges and administrators, to keep Jews confined
on Easter, to stop Christians from eating and celebrating the Sabbath and
Jewish holidays with Jews,  and to give Christians the option to redeem
slaves from Jews (Chazan p. 22, XVIII; p. 28, I).  Most of these edicts, as
well as the fact that they were regularly repeated, show positive social
relations between Jews and Christians.  The edict against mixing together on
Easter might have been motivated by fears that Jews might suffer abuse at
such highly charged religious celebrations or that the Jewish presence on
Easter, especially in cases where Jews mocked Christian belief, was an
affront to Christian honor. The need to legislate against such public
appearances by Jews may mean that Jews and perhaps Christians thought
nothing of Jews being present with Christians on Easter.  Gregory of Tours
reported several attempts during the period by kings and bishops to  convert
Jews forcibly, resorting to such measures as forcing disputations,
destroying synagogues, as well as outright physical coercion.  He also
reported violent Jewish attacks on converts, showing that Jews were equally
capable of resorting to force.  In an influential  departure from the
polemical give and take between Jews and Christians, in 576 the Bishop of
Claremont made the first reference to a peculiar Jewish odor, a charge
against the Jewish body that would become a common assumption among
Christians during the middle ages.

Very little is known about the Jews in Gaul for the next several hundred
years.  Some historians suggest that they still held powerful positions and
that the laws against them were not enforced.

In 751 in Gaul with the coronation of Pepin, the son of Charles Martel, the
Carolingian dynasty replaced the Merovingians.  In 759 in Narbonne, Pepin
confirmed the previous privileges that the Jews received under Alaric II and
were even granted new rights, including the authorization to have authority
over Christians. It was at this time, as we mentioned earlier, that the
Jews, for their economic contributions, were receiving favorable treatment
from the Muslims.  Pepin, too, probably wanted to retain their services,
especially as merchants who were able to traverse the Mediterranean Sea,
which had become, in the words of the historian Henri Pierenne, "an Islamic
lagoon."  As we mentioned earlier, one group of Jewish merchants, known as
Rhadanites, traveled from Iberia to China over many routes and spoke many
languages.  
        
>From 768 to 814, Pepin's son Charlemagne ruled as king of the Franks,
gradually gained control over Germanic and Italian lands, and was crowned by
Pope Leo III as Roman Emperor in the west in 800. Charlemagne had regular
contact with Jews as merchants, emissaries and offered them very favorable
treatment.  He sent a Jew, Isaac, to confer with the Abbasid Calif Harun
al-Rashid (786-809). Isaac brought back Jewish scholars from Babylonia, the
keys to the Church of the Holy Sepulcher in Jerusalem, and an elephant.  An
anecdote from this period shows Charlemagne delighting in a story about a
Jewish merchant who sold the bishop of Mainz a perfumed mouse, claiming that
it was an exotic beast from Palestine.  In another report Charlemagne was
standing on a boat dock betting with members of his entourage whether a
distant ship was owned by Muslims, Jews, British, or Vikings, demonstrating
the likelihood that any ship appearing on the horizon could have been owned
by Jews.  According to some accounts he employed Jewish garrisons in Ausona
in northern Spain.  As part of his attempt to build up the commerce and
culture of Mainz, Charlemagne encouraged Rabbi Kalonymos of Lucca to settle
there. In his legislation concerning the Jews,  they were not allowed to
witness against Christians, Christians were not allowed to rest on Saturday,
and Jews had to take a special Jewish oath, the more judaico, were not
allowed to buy church properties, and could not take Christians as a pledge
(Parkes 337-344, 371-376). These restrictive laws constitute evidence of
close commercial relations between Jews and Christians that Charlemagne
tried to limit but not eliminate.

Louis the Pious (814-840), one of Charlemagne's sons, ruled much of Gaul,
the Germanic lands, and the north of the Italian peninsula and issued at
least three charters, merchant formularies, for the Jews.  According to
these, Jews,  called "merchants of the palace," received the emperor's
protection and enjoyed autonomy.  The kingdom employed a magister Judaeorum,
a magistrate of the Jews (not necessarily Jewish), for cases that arose
between Jews and Christians.  In a major symbolic concession to the Jews, he
allowed them  to have Muslim or pagan slaves, convert them to Judaism, and
protected their ownership of slaves by not allowing them to attain freedom
by converting to Christianity. Also as a symbolic victory for Jewish honor,
perhaps at the expense of the Christians, Jews could build new synagogues,
employ Christians, but not on Sundays or holidays, hold positions in which
they had authority over Christians, give testimony in court, were exempt
from trials by ordeal, and out of respect for the sabbath, no markets at all
were to be held on Saturday. Despite, or really perhaps because of, this
extremely favorable legislative treatment by the king, anti-Jewish agitation
accelerated in France.  In 822 Agobard, the bishop of Lyons, wrote the first
extant specifically anti-Jewish pamphlet, De insolentia judaeorum, the
Insolence of the Jews. Agobard based his views on old Church laws against
intimacy between Jews and Christians, including Jewish ownership of slaves,
converting slaves to Judaism, and employment of Christians.  Agobard thus
tried to baptize slaves owned by Jews.  Not only were his views not
accepted, but strong opposition arose against him, including Louis, whose
treatment he found humiliating and against whom he then revolted, for which
he was exiled.
        
In 839, Bodo, a churchman, nobleman, and friend of Louis the Pious,
offended by the dogmatic strife and low moral standards of the papal court
in Rome, converted to Judaism, married a Jewish woman, and fled to the
Jewish town of Ausona on the Iberian peninsula.  There, according to his
critics, he sought to win Christian converts to Islam and Judaism, sold
Christians slaves to Muslims, and waged a war against Christianity.  Bodo
represented Catholicism's worst nightmare: Judaism as a powerful force
challenging the faith and loyalty of Christians.
        
Deeply distressed by Bodo's activity, Amulo, Agobard's successor (841-852),
continued Agobard's anti-Jewish activities.  Under his leadership the French
clergy advocated a strong campaign  against the privileges granted to Jews:
Jews may not build new synagogues, hold office, socialize or marry with
Christians, sell slaves, or control mints. At the council of Meaux in 845
Amulo and the bishops compiled all the restrictive statements against Jews
from the Theodosian code until the present and presented them in writing for
the new king, Charles the Bald, to ratify, which he refused to do so.

The other major center of Jewish life under Christiandom at this time was
Byzantium, which included sections of the Italian peninsula.  During the
early ninth century under Michael II (820-829), Jewish culture developed in
the southern part of the Italian peninsula: Venosa, Oria, Taranto, Bari, and
Sicily.  These Jewish communities, involved with extensive trade, maintained
contact with Babylonia.  In 874 Basil I (867-886), to prove his loyalty to
the Church and to eliminate what he perceived as Jewish influence on
iconoclasm, a movement against the physical representation of religious
figures, pursued an anti-Jewish policy of forced conversions and
disputations until it was reversed by his successor, Leon VI (886-912), and
then adopted again by Romanus (919-944).  It was during this time, as we
have seen, that the Jewish vizier in Islamic Spain, Hasdai ibn Shaprut,
tried to intervene in Byzantine Jewish life and that some Jews tried to
settle in the kingdom of the Jewish Khazars in Eastern Europe.

B. The Iberian Peninsula

Although very little information about the Jews of the Iberian peninsula
remains from the first few centuries other than references to them in law
codes, it seems that they were numerous.  The decrees of the Council of
Elvira (discussed earlier) in about the year 300 show the struggling Church
authorities combating what they thought were dangerously close social
relationships between Jews and Christians in matters of food, sex, and
religion. With the conquest of Gaul by the Franks, the Visigoths headed
south to the Iberian peninsula  (Marcus, no. 19). Thus, the people of the
Iberian peninsula were Catholic but their rulers were Arian.  Such a
combination of a minority trying to control a majority, as we have seen
under Islam, usually boded well for the Jews.  This balance changed in 587
when Reccared, joined by the rest of the nobility, converted to Catholicism.
Here, as in Gaul, converting to Catholicism seemed to have been the way for
foreign kings to win support from the Catholic clergy and the masses.  From
589 until 711 under the Catholic kings of the Iberian peninsula a series of
Church councils were convened, but it is very difficult to reconstruct the
position of the Jews in Visigothic Spain based on the often conflicting
edicts of the kings and the Church councils.  In addition, sudden reversals
of policy were often made with little explanation.  

At the third council of Toledo in 589 it was ruled that Jews could not own
Christian slaves.  If a Jew circumcised a slave the slave would be forfeited
without any compensation (Chazan 21, XIV; Parkes 347, 382, 384; Marcus, no.
4). In 613 Sisebut (612-620), ruled against Jews owning Christian slaves,
employing Christian domestics, and conversions to Judaism, likely
indications that these practices were taking place.  He attacked the Jews
for opposing Church law and because of rumors that they had betrayed the
Christians to the Persians in Antioch and Jerusalem.  Without the approval
of the Church council he ordered the Jews to either leave Visigothic Spain
or to convert to Christianity, a compulsion that was opposed by Isadore of
Seville, one of the last church fathers in the west, further support for the
view that anti-Jewish policy was not an inherent aspect of Christianity but
a response to the needs of some Christian leaders to situations in which
they felt the interests or the honor of the Church was at risk.  This was
the first such decree of expulsion and many Jews converted; others were able
to remain Jews because of poor administration of the policy or their bribery
of officials (Parkes 355ff, 382).  Sisebut's successor, Swintila (621-631),
reversed the policy of forced conversion and soon recalled the Jews, many of
whom reverted to Judaism and even received government positions. Swintila's
successor, Sisinanth (631-636), reversed his policy and in the Fifth Toledan
council passed edicts against conversion to Judaism under pain of loss of
ones children or slaves, evidence that Christian converts from Judaism were
still judaizing and circumcising their children (Chazan p. 25). In addition,
Sisinanth placed limits on the freedom of converted Jews and "those who came
from Jews,"  Jews, baptized and not baptized.  Such laws violated Catholic
law which held that the sacrament of baptism was permanent and in Christ all
Christians were supposed to be equal.  This was the first of several
significant instances of such discrimination and suspicion against converts
to Christianity in Spain. 

Sisinath's anti-Jewish policy may have been motivated by the Islamic
conquests that had begun at the time of the death of Mohammed in 632 because
the unification of the Muslims caused a panic among Christians around the
world. If in Visigothic Spain an edict had been passed forbidding Catholic
bishops to negotiate with foreign powers, surely Jews were considered
equally if not more likely to try to strike a favorable deal with possible
foreign conquerors. At the same time, the Byzantine Emperor Heraclius
ordered a forced conversion of the Jews; Pope Honorius was concerned with
false converts to Christianity in Visigothic Spain; and in Gaul King
Dagobert also issued an edict for conversion or exile of the Jews.

In Visigothic Spain concern continued to mount concerning judaizing
converts. In 638 under Chintila (636-640), at the sixth Toledan council
rules were enacted to stop Christians from using Jewish doctors, eating the
unleavened bread of Jews, or bathing with Jews (Chazan, p. 24). Converts
promised the king to be more vigilant against relapses. Under Chindaswinth
(641-649), converts were allowed to relapse to Judaism and Jews could return
from exile.  It is significant that then, as well as after many other
periods of persecution throughout Jewish history, the refugees wanted to
return home. Nevertheless, the seventh Toledan council soon decreed death
for Christians who practiced circumcision, a policy that may have referred
to Christians who Judaized or to Jewish converts to Christianity who still
practiced Judaism  (Parkes 358, 382). In 654 Recceswinth, (649-672),
presided over  the eighth Toledan council which ordered a ban on all Jewish
rites, the forcible conversion of all Jews, and the execution of anyone who
practiced Judaism.  They continued the Visigothic obsession with the
descendants of Jews, "Jews baptized and unbaptized," ruling they could not
give evidence against Christians.  Thus some Jews must have not baptized
their children and continued to practice circumcision.  In 655, the ninth
Toledan council ruled that baptized Jews had to spend both Jewish and
Christian holidays with bishops so that their behavior could be monitored
(Parkes 359-62, 383, 384, Appendix III).  From this time period, in a
declaration of faith,  former Jews swore that they no longer practiced
Judaism, had nothing to do with unbaptized Jews, disavowed Judaism, and
affirmed Christianity, but asked not be exiled  because they abstained from
pork out of habit (Marcus no. 4). 

King Wamba (673-680), pursued a gradually pro-Jewish policy, even though
they had been involved in a coup against him in Narbonne (Parkes 362), a
policy  reversed by his successor Erwig (680-687), when the twelfth Toledan
council decreed exile or death for the Jews in 671, and ruled against
Christian clerics who helped them. The law required Jewish converts to
obtain travel permits from priests and to spend holidays under clerical
supervision, a policy that although it failed (Parkes 362-6, 383-4), was
continued by Egica (687-702). Every business deal between Jews, converted
Jews, and their descendants had to begin with a recitation of the Lord's
prayer and the eating of pork.  Nevertheless, bishops took bribes and not
all the rules were enforced (Parkes 366-370, 383). In 693 the sixteenth
Toledan council turned over all property of the Jews to the king.  Jews were
no allowed to visit the ports or to do business with non-Jews.
Nevertheless, they sent others to do business on their behalf.  To win
support, the king tried to sell Jewish property to nobles and clergymen at
low rates.  In 694 at the seventeenth Toledan council fears of a Jewish
conspiracy against the king and suspicions against the loyalty of Jewish
converts to Catholicism were raised. During this period the expression
Servitus Judeorum first appeared, establishing a long medieval tradition
which referred to the status of the Jews as servants or slaves to the
various kings or to the Church.  All Jewish children over the age of seven
years old were taken from their parents to be educated in Catholic homes and
married to proper Christian families and all Jewish property was confiscated
(Parkes 384).

Witizia (702-710) may have followed a pro-Jewish policy, however, in 711 the
Muslims as well as the Byzantines launched attacks on Visigothic Spain.  The
Jews may have served as garrisons to the Muslims.  In Byzantium, from 721 to
722, Leo II the Isaurian also launched a series of persecutions and forced
conversions of Jews. In 732 at the Battle of Tours Charles Martel, as
mentioned earlier, whose son founded the Merovingian dynasty in Gaul,
defeated the Muslim invaders of France.

C. Italian Peninsula

Regarding the Italian peninsula there are no extant edicts concerning the
Jews until the middle of the sixth century.  In general they received little
legislative attention from emperors, kings, and popes. The peninsula was
very fragmented politically and the Jews were too numerous and influential.
Usually the limitations on Jews were ignored and the privileges enforced.
One of the main voices concerning the Jews was Pope Gregory I, Gregory the
Great (590-604), whose views became the official attitude of the papacy
towards the Jews for many centuries.  Although only about twenty-five of his
800 letters dealt with Jews from around the world, in  the Iberian and
Italian peninsulas and in Gaul (Chazan 19-23, 28, 29; Parkes, 210-223;
Marcus, no. 22), some of the key aspects of Gregory's views include the
following: 1. He asserted that the Jews were entitled to the rights that had
been granted to them by the Romans and his predecessors. 2.  He opposed the
forced conversion of Jews, but he refused to let those forcibly converted
revert to Judaism. 3. Perhaps the most significant aspect of his approach to
the Jews was that conversion must be by gentle means, including financial
incentives, so that even if the converts were not particularly devout, the
next generation to be raised as loyal Catholics. 4. He tried to stop Jews
from owning Christian slaves (except during periods of transport), and
allowed freedom to any slave who expressed the desire to convert to
Christianity, but he did allow Jews to hire Christians. 5. He did not allow
Jews to build new synagogues, but old ones could be maintained, unless they
were too close to a church, in which case they had to be moved. In cases in
which synagogues had been taken from the Jews, he ordered them to be
restored at Christian expense.  6. Christians should not keep the Sabbath on
Saturday. 7. Jews should not buy Christian religious vessels. In Gregory's
theological writings he used terms of great loathing for corrupt and
stultified Judaism such as Iudaica Perditio and Iudaeorum Stultia. Such
theological negativity of Church leaders towards the Jews reflected the
positive social relations between Jews and Christians and the blurring of
religious boundaries between Judaism and Christianity..  Further, Gregory
did not advance any new positions that previous Church councils had not
already offered.  His position was basically protective of the Jews,
granting them their legal rights and papal protection.  In fact one of
Gregory's letters about the Jews to the Bishop of Palermo opening with the
words "Sicut Iudaeis non . . . " established the standard medieval formula
for papal bulls protecting the Jews, first employed much later, beginning in
1120.

D.  Summary and Revision

The following trends can be noted during the first millennium of Jewish life
in Christian Europe:    -This was not a completely halcyon period.  Synagogues
were destroyed and Jews were attacked.  -The Church played an important role
in European affairs.  It was, however, not absolute in Jewish affairs.  The
state's interests often conflicted with those of the Church, including in
matters involving the Jews.     -The kings of Europe often needed the Jews to
colonize new territories and to serve their economies and it was necessary
to protect the Jews in order to maintain order in their realms.         -Judaism as
a religion continued to be popular and Jews enjoyed social relations with
Catholics.      -Persecution of Jews was based as much on the success of Judaism
as the contempt which Catholic leaders tried to generate. -Nevertheless,
persecution was not the dominant theme in Jewish life.

According to Bernard Bachrach's revisionist book, Early Medieval Jewish
Policy in Western Europe, very few rulers actually imposed anti-Jewish
legislation.  He offered the following statistics:  Out of eight Ostrogothic
rulers in the Italian peninsula from 493 till 554, none conducted
anti-Jewish policies.  Out of twenty-one Lombard Kings from 596 till 774 in
the Italian peninsula, only one promulgated an anti-Jewish policy.  Of
twenty-eight Visigothic rulers in Gaul and Spain from 484-711, six pursued
anti-Jewish policies.  Of thirty-one kings of Merovingian Gaul from 481 till
751, three had anti-Jewish policies.  No Carolingian kings from 751 till 877
accepted anti-Jewish policies.  Very few popes dealt with the Jews at all
and only a few issued anti-Jewish proclamations.  The great leaders, such as
Theoderic the Great, Charles the Great, Gregory the Great, Reccared, Pepin,
Charlegmagne, Louis the Pious, and Charles the Bald, all followed pro-Jewish
policies.

The Jews brought many strengths with them to Europe: languages, sources of
wealth, commercial contacts, medical skills, diplomatic abilities, and even
military expertise.  Contrary to some writers (Parkes), the Jews were
perceived as real and were treated as such (Simon).   By means of attractive
preachers and ceremonies, including Sabbath and holidays, they converted
pagans and Christians. Christians who were leery of Jewish influence and
Christian judaizing were not paranoid and did not persecute imaginary chimeras. 

Jewish culture was putting down strong roots in Christian Europe.  At first
there were many contacts between Babylonian Jewish centers and Europe both
through merchants and through written communications.  Gradually, by the
tenth century, centers of rabbinic scholarship and Hebrew culture developed
in Gaul, the Germanic lands, the Italian and Iberian peninsulas.

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