Jews in The Middle Ages - Church Laws in The Early Middle Ages

Church Laws in The Early Middle Ages

By the 10th century most of Europe was under the rule of Christian monarchs who made Christianity the religion of their realms. In the by then seriously diminished Roman or Byzantine Empire it had been a the state church since the 380 Edict of Thessalonica. This, however, left a privileged niche for Jews in the new order. The Church forbade Christians from charging interest to fellow Christians; therefore the only source of loans were non-Christians such as Jews. While this status did not always lead to peaceful conditions for the Jewish people, they were the most compatible non-Christians for the position due to their shared devotion to the same Abrahamic God that the Christians worshiped. While many Jews rose to prominence in these times, Judaism was mostly practiced in private to avoid persecution. This period was mostly one of insecurity and brutality against the Jewish people. The descendants of the survivors of this period, the Ashkenazi Jews, still commemorate some of the more memorable tragedies of this period in their liturgy, for example.

Their fate in each particular country depended on the changing political conditions. In Italy (see History of the Jews in Italy) they experienced dark days during the wars waged by the Heruli, Rugii, Ostrogoths, and Lombards. The severe laws of the Roman emperors were, in general, more mildly administered than elsewhere; the Arian confession, of which the Germanic conquerors of Italy were adherents, was characterized by its tolerance.

On the Iberian peninsula, Jews lived under the governments of first the Romans and subsequently the Germanic Visigoths where they at first thrived, being treated much the same as their non-Jewish neighbors. This status under the Visigoths came to a sudden end after the Visigothic king Reccared embraced Catholicism and his successors attempted to convert their subjects. Many Jews yielded to these forced conversions in secret hope that the severe measures would be of short duration. But they soon bitterly repented this hasty step; Visigothic legislation insisted with inexorable severity that those who had been baptized by force must remain true to the Christian faith. Consequently the Jews eagerly welcomed the Islamic forces when the latter conquered the peninsula in 711 (see Islam and Judaism).

In other parts of western Europe, Jews who wished to remain true to the faith of their fathers were protected by the Church itself from compulsory conversion. There was no change in this policy even later, when the Pope called for the support of the Carolingians in protecting his ideal kingdom with their temporal power. Charlemagne, moreover, was glad to use the Church for the purpose of welding together the loosely connected elements of his kingdom when he transformed part of the old Roman empire into a new Christian one, and united under the imperial crown all the German races at that time firmly settled (see History of the Jews in Germany). Years after his death, in 843, his empire fell apart, and the rulers of Italy, France, and Germany were more attentive to the Church's desires in the making of laws dealing with the Jews.