Aquinas and the Jews

2. The Thirteenth-Century Context

2. The Thirteenth-Century Context By 1250, when Thomas Aquinas began his career as a mendicant in the Dominican Order, Jews had lived in western Europe time out of mind. Saint Paul wrote to Jewish Christians at Rome in the middle of the first century, and when Constantine died in 337 there was a Jewishsettlement at Cologne. Jews immigrated to Moslem Spain in the eighth and ninth centuries and came to England in the aftermath of the Norman Conquest. By the thirteenth century, they were a small but seemingly permanent demographic presence in western Europe. They were also highly visible, a fact reflected in the inordinate attention they receivedin chronicles,royaldocuments , and legal codes. Jews were conspicuous for one reason: aside from the Moslems in Christian Spain, they were the only tolerated infideles in western Europe. Jewish settlement in Europe was concentrated in the south, in Sicily, the Kingdom of Naples, and the Midi. In southern Italy in the thirteenth century there is evidence of at least two dozen Jewishcommunities, ranging in size from ten to one hundred households, and undoubtedly there were other communities whose records have been lost. Provence and Sicily also had significant Jewish populations. North of these regions, Jewish settlement was sparser.There were Jewish communities in major cities such as London and Paris, and regions such as Normandy, Anjou, and Maine also had a handful of settlements. In northern Europe, the Rhineland had the largest concentration of Jews.Worms, Speyer, and Cologne, each with Jewish communities of two to four hundred households, were the most important centers, and there were dozens of smaller Rhenish Jewries. Large parts of northern Europe, however, had no Jewish presence at all. At the time of the 1290 expulsion, for instance, there were only twenty-one communities in allof England. In the north the general picture is of a small, scattered, predominately urban population, while in southern Europe, Jewish settlement was relativelydenser and perhaps more rural.1 Despite their small numbers, European Jews played a vital role in the medieval economy, especially before noo. In sharp contrast to the Christian population, Jews as a group were literate and relatively cosmopoli- tan. European Jews frequently corresponded with relatives in Spain or the Middle East, and eminent rabbis received requests for their opinion on difficult legal matters from distant locals; Maimonides, living in Cairo in the 11905, received an inquiry from a convert in Provence. Literary skills and international contacts enabled Jews to carve out a vital social niche. Throughout Europe, bishops and wealthy laymen routinely consulted Jewish physicians. Jewish merchants played an important role in commerce, especially in the luxury trade, thanks largely to their contacts in Spain and the Middle East. Wealthy Jews also provided venture capital for trading voyages and occasionally loaned sizable sums to princes and monasteries. Eminent Jews were sometimes employed as clerks, tax collectors, or salaried officials in the emerging political bureaucracies, though this was more common in Spain than in France, England, or the Empire. But prior to noo, most European Jews were not bureaucrats, physicians, or international merchants. Nor were they farmers, though in Provence, southern Italy, and even northern Europe some Jews worked the land. Instead, the majority were artisans and shopkeepers. Here too their role wasvaluable. In an overwhelmingly agricultural economy, they provided some manufactured goods and helped expedite local trade. Jewish pawnbrokers also provided a source of small-scale consumer credit. As a tolerated but often resented minority, Jewish communities were heavily dependant on the good will of the political authorities. One of the few safe generalizations that can be made about medievalJewish history is that wherever Jews were protected and not burdened with oppressive taxation , they prospered. Despite some significant exceptions, most European Jews enjoyed such conditions until the late twelfth century. Jews everywhere were under the protection of the secular or ecclesiasticalauthorities. Crimes against Jews were tried in the courts of the king, prince, or bishop. The development in the first half of the thirteenth century of the legal doctrine that Jews were servi camerae, serfs of the chamber, merely formalized what had long been a social reality.Within their own communities, however , Jews were granted considerable autonomy. Local elders could punish crimes, collect tithes and taxes, control immigration, and expel troublemakers . In Germany, some communities were even allowed to confiscate the property of Jews who converted to Christianity. In exchange for protection and local autonomy, Jews were required to pay a variety of taxes. Most important was a...