A Short History of Medieval Christianity by G. R. Evans

Author:G. R. Evans [Evans, G. R.]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History
ISBN: 9781786732231
Google: vGKJDwAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 29598881
Publisher: I.B. Tauris
Published: 2017-04-30T01:48:49+00:00

Fig. 18: A miniature from the Grandes Chroniques de France of Jews being expelled from France in 1182

This all reflected – and heightened – a popular Christian suspicion of the Jews which both Church and state reinforced in various ways in the West during the high Middle Ages. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran Council decreed that Jews should wear distinctive clothing (a badge or a pointed skull cap, the pileum cornutum) so that they could be distinguished at a glance from Christians. This requirement was further enforced in Vienna in 1267. In 1229, King Henry III of England imposed a tax on half the property owned by Jews. They were also required to worship very quietly in their synagogues so that the sound would not upset passing Christians, and were not allowed to employ Christians as servants.

Louis IX (1214–70) expelled the Jews from France, as did Philip IV (1268–1314) and Charles IV (1294–1328). In 1290, Edward I expelled the Jews from England. Many set off for France but some were thrown overboard by ship’s captains on the way. Medieval kings were not averse to seizing the property of the Jews when they wanted to raise money. During the Black Death of 1346–53, Jews in France and Spain were accused of causing the pestilence by persuading lepers to poison the wells with their disease. Pope Clement VI tried to intervene by issuing two Bulls during 1348 insisting that this rumour was the work of the Devil, but many Jewish communities across Europe were disrupted by popular revenge. In 1385 the German emperor Wenceslaus arrested Jews living in Swabia, seizing their books, and expelled the Jews from Strassburg after a ‘community’ or popular debate. In 1391 the Archdeacon of Ecija began a campaign which – it was said – led to the death of 10,000 Jews as it spread across much of Spain, wiping out whole Jewish communities. Synagogues were taken over and turned into churches. A moratorium was attempted by Pope Martin V in 1422 when he issued a Bull to stop the Friars inciting Christians to hostility against Jews, but he withdrew it only a year later.

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