Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

The condition of Israel across the Pyrenees must now engage our attention.

♦768–814♦

Charlemagne, the great founder of the Frankish Empire, in spite of his enthusiasm for the advancement of the Catholic faith and in defiance of the decrees of a Church which he adored, and by which he was afterwards honoured as a saint, considered it his duty to contribute to the progress of the Jewish colonies in France and Germany. If the Churchman saw in the Jews the enemies of Christ, the statesman saw in them useful subjects, through whose international connections the interests of his Empire might be served. Among other liberties, he allowed them to act as intermediaries in the slave trade. Exempt from the burdens as well as from the honours of chivalry on one hand, and from the degradation of the peasantry on the other, the Jews at this period devoted all their energies to commerce. But Charlemagne was more than an imperial shopkeeper. The spiritual needs of his subjects, Jewish no less than Christian, received as much attention from him as their material welfare. Though his own learning was of very late and limited growth, this great soldier was keenly alive to the value of scholarship, and he endeavoured to diffuse education by encouraging learned men of both creeds to bring their lights from Italy to the dark regions of the North. Under his long reign the Jews prospered and spread over many parts of Germany. In the ninth century great Jewish colonies were to be found in Magdeburg, Mersburg, and Ratisbon, whence they penetrated into the Slavonic lands of Bohemia and Poland. But even Charlemagne could not quite overlook the chasm which separated the Jew from the Christian. In deposing against a Christian, the Jewish witness was obliged to stand within a circle of thorns, to hold the Torah in his right hand, and to call down upon himself frightful curses if he spoke not the truth. The Jews were also forbidden to buy or sell sacred church vessels, to receive Christian hostages for debt, and to trade in wine and cereals.

♦814–840♦

The favourable condition of Israel in Western Europe, with the exception of the above prohibitions, lasted under Charlemagne’s successor Louis, who, a pious Catholic though he was, did not refrain from bestowing benefits upon the Jews and from defending them against popular prejudice and ecclesiastical oppression. Influenced partly by the principles of enlightened statesmanship which he had inherited from his father, and partly by the philo-judaism of his second wife Judith, he showered many favours upon the Jews. The works of the Jewish writers, Josephus and Philo, were assiduously studied at Court. Jews and Jewesses were received and petted in royal circles, and their co-religionists were held in high esteem by the nobility. They were exempt from the barbarous punishment of the scourge and from the ordeals of fire and water. They were permitted to employ Christian workmen and to own Christian slaves, to settle their disputes in their own courts of justice, to build new synagogues, to farm the revenues of the realm, and to carry on trade freely. For their sake the market-day was changed from the Sabbath to Sunday. In return for all these privileges they had to pay a tax to the treasury, which exercised a supervision over their incomes.

But this very toleration excited the resentment of strict Catholics, who could not see without disgust the canons of the Church disregarded and her enemies honoured. The clerical party, under the leadership of St. Agobard, Bishop of Lyons, wished to reduce the Jews to the position which they occupied under the bigoted Merovingian dynasty. An opportunity for the expression of these feelings offered itself in an incident such as has often proved the immediate cause of bloodshed between the faithful and unbelievers in the Ottoman Empire. A female slave of a rich Jew of Lyons ran away from her master and sought freedom in baptism. The Jews demanded the restoration of the slave. The Bishop refused to comply. The Court supported the Jews, the clerical party the Bishop. The Emperor endeavoured to restore peace by summoning a council wherein the bishops and the heads of the Jewish community might settle their differences by argument. The adversaries met and “roared rather than spoke” to each other. The council broke up, and the feud continued to rage. The Bishop preached to his flock sermons hostile to the Jews. ♦828♦ The friends of the latter intrigued in the Imperial Court on their behalf, and prevailed upon the Emperor to command St. Agobard to desist from his oratorical exercises, and the Governor of Lyons to lend his assistance to the Jews.

The bellicose saint paid no heed to the Imperial mandate, and the Emperor was obliged to send two courtiers to enforce respect for his orders; but they failed. The bishop then appealed to his brother prelates, entreating them to bring home to Louis his sinful conduct. His appeal met with hearty response. It was generally felt that the question was a test of the relative strength of Church and Court, and the supporters of the one were as determined to uphold their cause as were the partisans of the other. A number of prelates met at Lyons and held a consultation as to the best means of humbling the Jews and bringing the Emperor to the path of orthodoxy. ♦829♦ The fruit of this meeting was a joint letter of protest “concerning the superstitions of the Jews,” addressed to Louis. The manifesto produced no result, and in the following year the Bishop of Lyons joined the conspiracy of the Emperor’s sons against their father, was worsted, and paid for his treason by temporary exile to Italy, whence, however, he soon returned on condition, it seems, that he should leave the Jews alone.

The struggle only served to demonstrate the Emperor’s power and determination to protect his material interests in the teeth of ecclesiastical opposition. ♦838♦ Nor did Louis the “Pious” withdraw his countenance from the Jews even after the scandalous apostasy of his favourite Bishop Bodo to Judaism—an event which produced an enormous shock through Frankish Christendom, especially as it occurred directly after the bishop’s visit to Rome.[48] It is probable that a closer inspection of the Holy See accelerated Bodo’s resolution, though contemporary indignation traced it to the direct agency of Satan.

♦843♦

The golden age of Franko-Jewish history continued under Charles the Bald, son of Louis and Judith, who numbered amongst his closest friends the Jewish physician Zedekiah and another Jew called Judah. But the same causes brought about similar effects. The favour shown to the Jews by Louis’s successor excited the enmity of the pious, who found a leader in Agobard’s successor and other bishops, and held several councils with the object of inventing means for the curtailment of imperial power, the exaltation of ecclesiastical authority, and the suppression of the Jews. Again letters were addressed to the Emperor, in which he was recommended to enforce towards the murderers of Christ the measures which had been originated by Constantine the Great and Theodosius the Younger, adopted by the Spanish Visigoths and the Merovingian Kings of France, and sanctioned by the unanimous intolerance of so many Synods in the East and West. But these new enemies of the Jews proved no more successful than their predecessors. ♦877♦ Charles the Bald contented himself with extorting one-tenth of their earnings from the Jews, while his Christian subjects paid one-eleventh. Thanks to their commercial enterprise and integrity the “murderers of Christ” continued to prosper under the judicious fleecing of the Carlovingians, until the partition of the empire into a number of small states, the wane of the secular and the growth of the spiritual power brought about a change.