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fandomhigh2006-03-28 05:45 pm
prof-methos.livejournal.com) wrote in fandomhigh2006-03-28 05:45 pm
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History of Western Civilisation - Tuesday 7th Period: Lecture 11: Jews in Medieval Europe
Between the years AD 1000 and 1500, western Christendom absorbed by conquest and attracted through immigration a growing number of Jews. This community was to make a valuable contribution to rapidly developing European civilisation. Possibly the most important of these was that many of the immigrants spoke Arabic as well as learning the language of their adoptive country or Latin for legal purposes, and thus could carry and transmit both Islamic ideas and texts from Greece and Rome that had been lost in Western Europe but preserved in the East.
However, they were not equal citizens by any means. They were only allowed to live in specific areas of towns and cities -- the Jewish Ghetto. They were not allowed to own land, which pretty much ensured that they would live in cities, because their only possible source of income was working in town. They were not allowed to become apprentices to a craftsman, so they could not learn a trade.
Because Christians were forbidden by religious law to lend money and demand an interest rate, the Jewish Moneylender became a cliche. Often the magistrate or lord of the area would "forgive" Christians of the need to pay back those loans -- easy for them to do when they weren't losing the money. Which meant that the moneylenders had to raise interest rates to stay in business, which meant that they were hated for charging murderously high interest rates -- say, equal to your average MasterCard when you've missed a few payments -- which meant that they were attacked. Often. Any instability in an area could lead to panicked Christians storming the Jewish quarter, burning buildings and murdering anyone they saw who seemed to live there. The Jews endured the Holocaust for a thousand years; Hitler was just the most efficient and cold-blooded about it.
Cutting open the human body was also forbidden to Christians, so Jews often were doctors -- specifically surgeons. This lead to them being accused of Satanic rituals. Kidnapping children to sacrifice in a parody of the Mass and poisoning wells -- which, incidentally, is what the passage that was translated as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" was actually referring to; poisoning a well in a desert land could murder hundreds. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, it was believed that they were responsible for the Black Death, and many, many Jews were murdered in retaliation for that plague.
As the aristocracy became less a fighting force and more concerned with land stewardship, a Christian middle class arose, taking the place of some of the careers Jews had been working in. To eliminate the competition, many countries in Europe expelled Jews if they refused to convert to Christianity. One of the last countries to do so -- and one to put the most effort into conversion -- was Spain, a union of two countries under Ferdinand and Isabella and, after 1491, the annexation of Arabic southern Iberian peninsula. To stay in their homes, many Jews outwardly converted to Christianity while retaining their religion privately at home.
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However, they were not equal citizens by any means. They were only allowed to live in specific areas of towns and cities -- the Jewish Ghetto. They were not allowed to own land, which pretty much ensured that they would live in cities, because their only possible source of income was working in town. They were not allowed to become apprentices to a craftsman, so they could not learn a trade.
Because Christians were forbidden by religious law to lend money and demand an interest rate, the Jewish Moneylender became a cliche. Often the magistrate or lord of the area would "forgive" Christians of the need to pay back those loans -- easy for them to do when they weren't losing the money. Which meant that the moneylenders had to raise interest rates to stay in business, which meant that they were hated for charging murderously high interest rates -- say, equal to your average MasterCard when you've missed a few payments -- which meant that they were attacked. Often. Any instability in an area could lead to panicked Christians storming the Jewish quarter, burning buildings and murdering anyone they saw who seemed to live there. The Jews endured the Holocaust for a thousand years; Hitler was just the most efficient and cold-blooded about it.
Cutting open the human body was also forbidden to Christians, so Jews often were doctors -- specifically surgeons. This lead to them being accused of Satanic rituals. Kidnapping children to sacrifice in a parody of the Mass and poisoning wells -- which, incidentally, is what the passage that was translated as "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live" was actually referring to; poisoning a well in a desert land could murder hundreds. Ahem. Back to the topic at hand, it was believed that they were responsible for the Black Death, and many, many Jews were murdered in retaliation for that plague.
As the aristocracy became less a fighting force and more concerned with land stewardship, a Christian middle class arose, taking the place of some of the careers Jews had been working in. To eliminate the competition, many countries in Europe expelled Jews if they refused to convert to Christianity. One of the last countries to do so -- and one to put the most effort into conversion -- was Spain, a union of two countries under Ferdinand and Isabella and, after 1491, the annexation of Arabic southern Iberian peninsula. To stay in their homes, many Jews outwardly converted to Christianity while retaining their religion privately at home.
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