CHAPTER III JEWS BECOME EUROPEANS WE have seen how, by adoption of the main Jewish ideals by Christianity, the fundamental principles upon which both Jews and Christians were to guide their lives for nearly two thousand years became practically identical, though with divergencies in details the importance of which both sides tended to exaggerate. We have now to study the Jewish superstructure raised upon these principles on European soil during the Middle Ages, so as to ascertain how far the Jewish element in Europe became vitally incorporated with the rest in the European State system. There is much current misunderstanding on this point both among Jews and others. The mediæval Jews are regarded as an entirely alien element in Europe-of alien race (which is mainly true), of alien tongue (which is not true; they were merely bilingual), entirely outside the State organizations (which is only partly true), and untouched by the general European stream of culture. This last is so far from being true that they both shared in it and actually contributed to it largely, considering their numbers. It is true that Jews held a special status in mediæval Christendom and Islam, but it is forgotten how many dif ferent sections of society had an equally special status. To understand the position of the Jews in Europe, both in the Middle Ages and in contemporary Eastern Europe, one must get a clear idea of this status of the Jews about which the learned seem to be still at sea. The most usual view, among legal historians like Scherer, or Maitland and Pollock, is that the Jews were regarded as aliens in the different countries in which they lived; and that this explains their peculiar disabilities, for in the Middle Ages aliens had no rights. But against this lies the patent fact that the children of aliens have all the rights of the land of their birth, so that alienage is not a heritable quality, whereas 1 Die Verhaeltnisse der Juden in den deutsch-oesterreichischen Laendern, Leipzig, 1901. 2 History of English Law, vol. i, p. 451-8. 3 Heffter, Voelkerrecht, 8th edition, p. 108; quoting Wilda, Strafrecht der Germanen, 672. 115 Judaism in medieval times obviously was. It would be absurd, for example, to call Moses of Oxford, who sold the site of Merton College to Walter de Merton, an alien, since we could trace his ancestry in England for at least six generations back. Nor were they without rights, as is contended in an ingenious essay by Mr. Frank I. Schechter,' since they had rights especially conferred upon them by charters which we can trace from the time of Henry I onward. I am afraid I must equally withdraw my own explanation of the medieval Jewish status, which I put forward in my Jews of Angevin England, 1893. I there traced the civil disabilities of the medieval Jew to his enforced position as usurer, whose estate always escheated to the king, whether he was Jew or Gentile. Since the Jew could only be a usurer, as we shall see, his property would be, in this view, constructively the king's, even while he was living. Against this view Pollock and Maitland rightly urge that there was an essential difference between Jewish and Christian usury, inasmuch as the Jew could 1 "The Rightlessness of Medieval English Jewry," Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, vol. iv, pp. 121-151. Loc. cit., i, 471. VILIZATION usly was. It call Moses of erton College nce we could at least six ithout rights, rights espe d position as see, his prop that Jewry," Jewish -151. sue for his usurious debts in the king's courts the Christian could not. Nor can one subscribe to Prof. Jenks' that the special relation of Jew to king or peror was simply due to the fact that the mo was the natural protector of all classes of s who could find none other. As administrat the land regarded as the royal domain, he jurisdiction over widows, orphans, aliens, lunatics, and later the printing press.1 F law was, at any rate in the beginning, the la the fiefs, and those who did not belong to fiefs had to have their own law or that o king. Hence the Canon law for priests, an Merchant law for merchants; 2 and hence it v seem the law of the Jewish Exchequer for though Prof. Jenks does not say so. But again the existence of charters granted by and emperors to Jews is sufficient to show the special relations between them were no to the casualties of the common law but quasi-contractual compact between them, which, in many cases, we can find Jews p due consideration. 1 Jenks, loc. cit., p. 91. 2 Op. cit., p. 26. 117 The key to the situation lies in the political relations of Church and State from the time of Constantine onward. The Church had from the beginning, as we have seen, gone out of its way to emphasize the differences between the two creeds and to invent differences of practice (Sunday against Sabbath; Easter instead of Passover; Gospel lections instead of Haftarot, etc.). As soon as it approached State recognition, it proceeded further on the way to segregation of Jew and Christian. Thus the Council of Elvira, in 306, forbade Christians to marry Jews or even to eat with them; and the former barrier was emphasized in the Theodosian code, in 339, on penalty of death, it being declared a little later, in 388, that such intermarriage was equivalent to adultery. In the former year, 339, Jews were forbidden to purchase Christian slaves, and conversion from Christianity to Judaism was early forbidden (357) on pain of loss of property. Jews were, a little later, excluded from all public offices and dignities (418), and prevented from building new synagogues (423). Thus there is a distinct and deliberate attempt on the part of the Church, as soon as it got into power, to segregate and degrade Jews. |