Leaving Palestine, Benjamin travelled through Greece, Constantinople, Italy, and Germany, in all of which the Jewish population was greatly less than we should have anticipated—due, it is to be feared, in a great measure, to the cruel and devouring sword of persecution, which had been at work with fatal effect for several generations past.
FOOTNOTES:
[113] Among his other accomplishments, he was, we are told, a skilful chess-player. The Jews were famous for their passion for and skill at that game. Among Aben Ezra’s writings was a poem on chess, which was rendered into Latin, and published at Oxford in 1694.
CHAPTER XVIII.
A.D. 1200-1300.
THE JEWS IN FRANCE AND GERMANY.
In France, during the first quarter of the thirteenth century, no persecutions of the Jews are recorded. In the south their condition appears to have been prosperous. They were protected by Raymond, the heretic but powerful Count of Toulouse. One of the bitterest charges made against him by Innocent III. was, that he employed and favoured Jews; and when, after his submission, he had to sign the conditions on which his offences would be overlooked, one of them was, that he should no longer employ Jewish officers.
In 1223, Philip Augustus died, and was succeeded by Louis VIII., called, it is to be presumed in mockery, Louis the Lion. During his short reign of three years, we hear that he passed a decree annulling all future interest on debts incurred to Jews, and ordering the payment of the capital, in three separate instalments, each after the interval of a year.
In 1226, Louis VIII. died, and his son, the renowned Louis IX., known to history as St. Louis, succeeded to the throne. He was at the time a minor, and France was under the Regency of Blanche of Castile for nearly ten years. Louis’s first act seems to have been the annulling of one third of all debts due to Jews, and an immunity from arrest or distraint for the two remaining portions. He also called a council at Melun on the Seine, which forbade Christian men, for the future, to borrow money from the Jews on any terms. He is said to have issued this order ‘for the good of his soul.’ How this could be does not clearly appear. Possibly he felt so strongly the power and the will of the Jews to use their money-lending facilities in an oppressive way that he sought in this way to prevent their injurious influence. Or he may have regarded the scriptural prohibitions addressed to the Jews, against lending their money on usury to their own countrymen, as applying to all loans on usury, though Scripture expressly asserts otherwise (Deut. xxiii. 20). That this was so seems evident from the fact that Louis’s enactment was levelled as much against the Lombards and Caorsini[114] usurers as against the Jews. It would seem that Louis wished to induce them to abandon usury for agriculture or handicraft, as was also the desire of his contemporary Edward I. of England. But both monarchs failed in the attempt.
In the state to which matters had now grown, it would have been next to impossible to abate the dislike of the people to them, so as to induce them to permit the Jews to engage in the work either of the artisan or the peasant. The hatred of the populace was in no way abated by the quiet of the last forty years. In 1239 there were riots in Paris and Orleans, and other great cities, on the old charge of crucifying boys at the Passover, in which property was wrecked and wholesale murders took place. At Ploermel, in Brittany, the duke of that country summoned an assembly of the nobles and bishops, at which it was declared that agriculture was ruined by the monstrous exactions of the Jews; and a series of laws were passed, which for injustice and cruelty exceed any ever put forth in any country. It was decreed that all debts to Jews should be cancelled; that all Jews should be banished from the country; that no person who should kill a Jew should be liable to prosecution for it; and that no judge or magistrate should take cognisance of any such offence. A petition was further addressed to the King of France, requesting him to carry out the same regulations throughout his dominions. The Council of Lyons, held in the ensuing year, required all Christian princes, on pain of excommunication, to force the Jews in their several territories to refund to the Crusaders the sums they had exacted from them. The Jews were forbidden to exact any debt from a Crusader’s family, until he himself returned from Palestine, or until satisfactory evidence of his death had been produced. Another Council prohibited them from practising as physicians, ‘because, being in direct league with Satan, if they did cure any one, it would probably be by their master’s aid!’ Whatever evils men experienced, for which they were unable to assign any special cause, were supposed to be due to the secret spells and diabolical influence of the Jews, much as in a succeeding generation the same evils were attributed to witchcraft. The main source and centre of their evil knowledge was supposed to be the mysterious and terrible Talmud. Edicts were issued for its destruction, and it was burned, we are told, by cartloads in the streets of Paris.
A considerable exodus seems to have followed on these measures; which was taken advantage of by the king, who seized on the goods of those who had taken flight, and thus raised money for the crusade on which he was about to enter. About the same time he ordered them to wear a special badge, called the rouelle—a piece of blue cloth worn both on the front and on the back of the Jewish gabardine.
Notwithstanding these severities, it is plain that Louis was actuated more by a desire of converting the Jews to Christ than of venting his horror and hate of them. We read of a solemn conference held in the year 1254 between Rabbi Jechiel and a convert from Judaism, named Nicolas, before Blanche, who acted as regent during her son’s absence. Both parties claimed the victory; neither, consequently, underwent any conversion. It was probably disappointment at this result which induced Louis to send home orders that they should now be banished from the realm, which, we are told, the queen-mother punctually executed.