Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

And yet, despite pontifical anathemas and public opinion, things pursued their natural course, and usurers were to be found even among the tenants of ecclesiastical and monastic estates, until Gregory X., in 1274, issued a Bull forbidding the letting of lands or houses to the accursed tribe. But though the pious execrated the money-lender, the needy could not dispense with his services. The chief effect of the prohibition of money-lending, and of the superstitious disrepute in which it was held, was to force this important branch of economic life into the hands of the least respectable members of the community. Usury was by no means eschewed by the Christians, as Dante shows. But the masses of mediaeval Europe, especially in the north and centre, were too superstitious to brave the ban of the Church, too stupid and ignorant and thriftless to succeed in a business requiring dexterity, alertness, and economy. Thus trade in money, as most other kinds of European trade, fell from the very first into the hands of the Jews—the only people who had capital to lend and no caste to lose. Moreover, there was little else for the Jew to do in feudal Europe. The laws and the prejudices which in many countries forbade him to own land or to engage in various handicrafts and trades on one hand, and his own religious scruples on the other, narrowed his range of activity, and the current of energy and intelligence, compressed into one channel, ran with proportionately greater force. The reputation of the Jews for usury dates from the sixth century. But money-lending really became their characteristic pursuit since the commencement of the persecution already narrated. Then the Jews, by the periodical enactments of councils and the frequent publications of ecclesiastical edicts, were excluded from the markets, and thus, being unable to compete with the Christian merchants, were driven to deal only in second-hand articles, while others, possessed of some capital but forbidden to invest it in goods, were compelled to put it out to interest.

As has been seen, the money-lending transactions of the Jews had long continued to be carried on with the connivance of the Church and under the protection of the State, many princes being only too glad to avail themselves of the Jews’ skill in pecuniary dealings for the improvement of their own finances. Under mediaeval conditions of financial administration the Jew was literally indispensable to the State. The sovereigns of Europe, as yet unversed in the mysteries of systematic taxation, needed a class of men who would for their own sake collect money from the king’s subjects and keep it, as it were, in trust for the king’s treasury. At the worst, the Jews in a mediaeval country might be described as sponges which imbibed the wealth of the nation and then were squeezed for the benefit of the crown. At the best, they fulfilled the function of the clouds which collect the water in small drops and then yield it back to the earth in rich showers, the rainfall being only too often accelerated by artificial explosives. In either case it was the duty of a Jew to be wealthy.

The growing wealth of the Jews must have always excited the envy and the cupidity of their neighbours. But it was not until the awakening of religious bigotry by the Crusades and the Mendicant Orders that the dormant animosity declared itself in wholesale persecution. Nor is the violence of the popular feeling, apart from religious motives, quite inexplicable or inexcusable. The Jews from the earliest times evinced a fierce contempt for the Gentile. Despite the doctrine of universal love inculcated by certain Hebrew teachers, the bulk of the community clung to the older lesson. Jewish tolerance of outsiders, like Christian tolerance, was the glory and the property of the few. A Jehuda Halevi or a Maimonides might preach broad humanitarianism, but it would be unreasonable to suppose that their preaching was more effective on their co-religionists than the similar preaching of a Thomas Aquinas or a St. Bernard was on theirs. And it is important not to forget that in every-day life it is not the minds of the cultured few but the instincts of the masses that count. With the ordinary mediaeval Jew, as with the ordinary mediaeval Christian, charity not only began but ended at home. The tribal spirit of their religion made the Jews hard to the non-Jew and callous to his needs. Moses had already said: “Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother,” and Rabbinical law enforced the commandment; but the prohibition was accompanied by a significant permission: “Unto a stranger thou mayest lend upon usury,” an ominous distinction of which the Jews took full advantage, though Jewish moralists and Rabbis constantly opposed the extent to which reliance was placed upon it.

The racial and religious antagonism, in which the Jew found himself engaged from his earliest contact with the nations, widened the gulf. The grievous persecution to which he found himself periodically exposed since his advent in Europe further embittered his soul, and sore experience taught him that peace could only be purchased by gold. He had nothing but avarice to oppose to the fanaticism of those under whom he lived, and he strove to raise a wall of gold between himself and tyranny. He took shelter behind his shekels, and, naturally, endeavoured by all means, fair or foul, to make that shelter as effective as he could. Even supposing that the Jew omitted no opportunity of fleecing the Gentile, he was more than justified in doing so—he was compelled by the Gentile’s own treatment of him. It was the Gentile who taught the Jew the supreme virtue of money as a preservative against oppression, exile, and death; and he had no right to complain of the disciple’s wonderful quickness in learning his lesson and “bettering the instruction.” His hatred of the Gentile, thus combined with love of gain and love of life, rendered him impervious to compassion. The Gentile merited little mercy at the hands of the Jew, and he got no more than he merited. The exploitation of the Gentile, begun as a necessity and promoted as a means of self-defence, thus found an abiding place among the lower orders of the mediaeval Jews.

Besides, in the Middle Ages borrowing for commercial purposes was rare. As a rule, a loan was resorted to only on an emergency, and the interest was determined by the necessity of the borrower. Under the circumstances exorbitant rates were unavoidable. The discouragement of money-lending, coupled with the scarcity of capital, by limiting competition, would in any case have tended to raise the normal rate of interest to a distressing height,[64] in obedience to the law of demand and supply which now is one of the commonplaces of political economy. The uncertainty of recovery raised it to a greater height still. Like the Christian bankers in the Turkey of not long ago, the Jewish money-lenders of the Middle Ages must have lent their money at considerable risk, sometimes amounting to certainty of loss. The mediaeval baron, far more than the mediaeval burgess, was largely beholden to the Jew both in peace and in war. The pomp and pride of chivalry could not be maintained without money. For the pageant of a tournament, as for the more costly splendour of a campaign, the usurer’s purse was appealed to. But, if the baron found himself obliged to coax and flatter the Jew and to submit to exorbitant terms when he wanted a loan, he revenged himself when he had the Jew in his power. Such opportunities were not rare, and then the borrower repayed himself with interest. The conditions of the transaction were such as to tempt avarice, but not to encourage moderation. A loan to a mediaeval pasha was a speculation which might result either in wealth or in penury and death.

This a priori reasoning is amply confirmed by history. Among the Jews’ clients none were more conspicuous than the sovereigns of Christendom; and the devices to which these crowned robbers descended in their attempts to reconcile expediency with conscience would be highly amusing were they less tragic. ♦1169♦ King Louis VII. of France, though a Crusader, protected the Jews and disregarded the decree of the Lateran Council, which forbade them to employ Christian servants. His example was at first followed by his son Philip Augustus, who, however, gradually changed his attitude. Though nominally Lord Paramount of France, the French King in reality could call nothing but a small tract of the country his own; the royal domain being surrounded by the territories of the great feudatory Dukes and Counts. Philip wished to convert this theoretical suzerainty into actual possession, and to this end he needed money. The wealth of the Jews suggested to him a short-cut to the accomplishment of his desire. Though not the only usurers in the kingdom, the Jews were the most unpopular. He, therefore, caused a number of them to be cast into prison, and held them to ransom. ♦1180♦ On paying 1500 marks, they were set at liberty. The success of the experiment induced Philip to try operations on a larger scale. ♦1181♦ A few months later he conceived the happy thought of ridding himself of his sins and of his debts at once by cancelling the claims of the Jews, by compelling them to give up the pledges held by them, by confiscating their real property, and by expelling them from his Kingdom. ♦1198♦ Some years after, in consistency with the principle of expedience, he thought it advisable to mortify the Pope and to enrich himself by recalling the exiles, and forbidding them to leave his dominions.

Louis IX., as became a king and a saint of unquestionable respectability, released all his subjects of one-third of the money which they owed to the Jews “for the salvation of his own soul, and those of his ancestors,” and, in 1253, he sent from Palestine an order banishing all Jews, except those who would take to legitimate commerce and handicrafts.

Philip the Fair, whose cruel rapacity and vindictiveness were exemplified in the ruin of the Knights Templars, accompanied as it was by the torture and cremation of their persons and the confiscation of their treasures, showed the same tyrannical and predatory spirit towards the Jews. ♦1306♦ They had just concluded their severe fast on the Day of Lamentation in remembrance of the destruction of the Temple, when the King’s constables seized them, young and old, women and children, and dragged them all to prison, where they were told that they should quit the country within a month, under penalty of death. They were plundered of all their possessions, save the clothes which they wore and one day’s provisions, and were turned adrift—some hundred thousand souls—leaving to the King cartloads of gold, silver, and precious stones. A few embraced Christianity, and some who ventured to tarry after the prescribed date suffered death; but the majority chose to lose all, and quit the country in which their forefathers had lived from time immemorial, rather than be false to their faith. Their communal buildings and immoveable property were confiscated, and Philip the Fair made a present of a synagogue to his coachman.

Most of the exiles settled in the neighbourhood, waiting for a favourable opportunity of returning to their devastated homes. Nor had they to wait long. ♦1315♦ Financial necessity overcame fanaticism, and nine years later Philip’s successor, Louis X., was glad to have them back and to help them in the collection of the moneys due to them, on condition that two-thirds of the sums collected should be surrendered to the Royal Exchequer.

In Germany, also, the Emperors time and again performed their duty to the Church by cancelling their debts to the Jews. But it would be a mistake to suppose that piety was an indispensable cloak for plunder. A law enacted in France condemned Jewish converts to Christianity to loss of all their goods for the benefit of the King or their Lord Paramount; for it was felt that conversion would exempt the victims from extortion. Thus even the interests of religion were at times subordinated to rapacity.