FRANCE
Under Louis IX (1226-1270), a religious fanatic, the Jews were treated badly. In 1236 a mob of crusaders attacked them, and wrought great suffering among them. In 1240 Nicholas Donin, a converted Jew, brought charges against the Talmud as containing statements which were blasphemous to the Christian religion. Consequently all copies that could be found were seized and in cart-loads were publicly burnt at Paris in 1244. In 1254 the King decreed the expulsion of all the Jews from France, but the decree was repealed under Philip IV (1288-1314). All the Jews found in the kingdom were imprisoned and their property confiscated under Philip’s successor, Louis X.
They were recalled in 1315, but under Philip V suffered greatly from a fanatical mob, known as Shepherd Crusaders. After many vicissitudes their final expulsion was decreed in 1394. Only in the south of France, where the feudal barons still had sovereign rights, and in the Papal possessions at Carpentras and Avignon, a few isolated Jewish communities, with a ritual of their own, remained. Most of the Jews exiled from France went to the adjoining German territories of Alsace and Lorraine, and when these territories were annexed to France in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, the Jews were permitted to remain there. But they were not allowed to settle in France proper until 1791.