History of the Jews (Middle Ages)

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The term history of the Jews in the Middle Ages does not coincide with the otherwise customary time in Western historiography of the Middle Ages from the migration of the peoples to Columbus. The Judaist Kurt Schubert defines the Jewish Middle Ages as follows:

“If you want to give a reasonably themed dating of the Jewish Middle Ages, it was about 7-17-18. Century, from the Islamization of the Orient to the beginning of the emancipation movement in Europe, which can either begin with Baruch Spinoza or Moses Mendelssohn. "

The Judaist Karl Erich Grözinger sets a similar time frame:

“The modern age as an independent cultural epoch of Judaism has only gradually emerged in science. That is why the end of the Jewish Middle Ages in historiography was in some cases only shifted to the middle or the end of the 18th century. "

The Jews living as wards of the rulers isolated in their own residential areas surrounded by a hostile to them frequently by Christianity dominated population. Since the plague pandemic occurred in 1348/49, pogroms and displacement have overshadowed her life. Until the Reconquista , the Jews had a special situation in the areas of the Iberian Peninsula that were conquered by the Moors and shaped by Islam . It was here that Jewish science and art flourished. But here too - similar to the rest of the Muslim-dominated area - phases of more tolerant treatment of Jews than in the West alternated with phases of massive discrimination and persecution.

Iberian Peninsula

Prehistory under the Visigoths

In the course of the 1st millennium, the spiritual center of Judaism had gradually shifted from Mesopotamia to Europe, especially to the Iberian Peninsula and the northern French region. As early as the beginning of the 1st century AD, the first Jewish colonies had emerged in the Roman province of Hispania . In the upheavals and changes that the collapse of the Western Roman Empire brought with it, the Jews found themselves in distress wherever large groups of the population converted to Christianity. The Jews lived among the immigrant Visigoths in a largely free and undisturbed way as long as the Visigoths were followers of Arianism and the Lex Romana Visigothorum had little effect on everyday life together.

When the Visigoth kings converted to the Roman Catholic faith in the 6th century , there were forced baptisms and other discriminatory measures. At the beginning of the 8th century, just a few years before large parts of the Iberian Peninsula were conquered by the Moors in 711, the first anti-Jewish conspiracy theories emerged . Allegedly the Jews living under Visigothic rule planned together with the Jews of the Orient "actions" against the state and church of the Visigothic Empire .

It flourished after the Moorish conquest

The Arabic al-Andalus around 910

The Moorish conquest prevented a further escalation of the anti-Jewish mood. In fact, the first centuries of Moorish rule on the Iberian Peninsula brought a time of peace for the Jewish inhabitants, even though there were repeated Jewish and Judeo-Christian revolts against the Moors in the first few decades. At that time, almost half of all Jews lived on the Iberian Peninsula.

The 10th and 11th centuries saw Sephardic Judaism flourish in culture and science. One of the earliest centers of Jewish learning and Arabic culture emerged in Cordoba . The doctor and diplomat Chasdai ibn Shaprut (915–961) worked here. The first Jewish school of scholars in Spain was also founded in Córdoba, founded by Moses ben Chanoch, who was brought here from Sura as a slave. His student Josef ben Abitur translated the Mishnah into Spanish. The most famous Jewish philosopher of the Middle Ages, Maimonides , also came from Córdoba . In the kingdoms of Granada and Málaga, Samuel ha Nagid became the king's vizier, a position he held for almost 30 years. His contemporary was the Málaga poet Solomon ibn Gabirol (1021-1058), whose sacred works found their way into the liturgy and whose secular poems, mostly love poems, represent a high point of medieval Sephardic poetry. Under the pseudonym Avicebron , his posthumously published philosophical work Mekor Chajim ("Source of Life") exerted a great influence on the Christian authors of his time. Bachja ibn Pakuda , the founder of the Jewish moral philosophy, about whose life data nothing is known, wrote Chewot halewawot (" Duties of the Heart "), one of the most popular edification pamphlets on Jewish Talmudic piety for a long time. The Ibn Tibbon family of translators , based in Spain and southern France, translated important works of Arabic literature into Hebrew.

Persecutions in the 12th and 13th centuries

During the times of the Almoravids and Almohads , periods of relative peace and security for the Jews alternated with a series of persecutions by the Moorish rulers. Many of the persecuted and expelled Jews fled to the Christian part of Spain, Palestine or North Africa. The importance of Arab culture and the extensive assimilation of the Jewish population into it is also evident from the fact that Moses Maimonides initially wrote his More Nevuchim (“Leader of the Undecided”) in Arabic. But he too had to flee to North Africa with his family from the persecution by the Almohads. For the Jews who remained in Moorish Spain, the situation deteriorated to the extent that parts of the Iberian Peninsula were recaptured and Christianized during the Reconquista.

Sinagoga del Tránsito y Museo Sefardita
Former synagogue in Toledo, now a Sephardic Museum

In the Christianized area of ​​the Iberian Peninsula, Toledo was a center of Judeo-Christian culture in Europe in the 12th and 13th centuries. It is not clear whether Don Raimundo, then Archbishop of Toledo, was involved in the construction of the translation school, which consisted of Jews and Christians alike and played a key role in teaching ancient philosophy and Arab science in medieval Europe. Jewish scholars achieved high positions in the state and society. Josef ha Nasi ben Farrizueul, called Cidellus, became a personal physician in the service of the Castilian King Alfonso VI. After his death, however, there were major persecutions of the Jews in Castile. Barcelona became a center of Talmudic learning; The Kabbalah originated in the Spanish-Provencal border area . However, since the middle of the 13th century, the rather Jewish-friendly policies of the king and the nobility in Christian Spain faced an anti-Jewish attitude on the part of the church and citizens. Under the influence of the Council of Vienne (1311/12), the Spanish clergy demanded the removal of Jews from all state offices, the separation of Christian and Jewish areas of life, the abolition of the right to testify for Jews and their public identification through special clothing attributes, such as wearing a Jewish badge. On June 6, 1391, the mob, who had been roused from the pulpit by anti-Jewish propaganda for decades, stormed the Jewish quarter of Seville. If they did not find death, its inhabitants were sold as slaves or subjected to compulsory baptism , which had been carried out since the time of the Visigoths. The Jews who were forcibly baptized - called " conversos " or " Marranen " ("pigs") in Spanish , "christiani novi" in Latin, "annussim" in Hebrew ("forced") - were to be the target of bloody persecutions and massacres in the following decades.

Expulsion from Spain

1492 ended with the conquest of the emirate of Granada , known as the Reconquista , of the parts of the Iberian Peninsula conquered by the Moors by the neighboring Christian kingdoms. The Christian kingdoms of Portugal and Spain emerged on the soil of the areas Islamized under Moorish rule . The Alhambra Edict of 1492 gave Jews and Muslims the choice of either leaving Spain or being baptized. If they were unwilling to convert to Christianity, they either had to leave Spain or ended up at the stake. In addition, the Spanish Inquisition began in 1481 . This was used to track down Jewish and Muslim converts who secretly continued to practice their ancestral religion.

Central and Northern Europe

Jews as protected by emperors and estates

The schutzjude had since antiquity the sole privilege of the Roman emperor and his successor to the Roman-German kings and emperors passed. According to the provisions of the Golden Bull of Charles IV. From 1356 onwards, all electors of the Holy Roman Empire also had the Jewish shelf and thus the right to demand protection money and special taxes from the Jews. The Roman-German king and later emperor had often pledged or delegated the Jewish shelves to imperial cities , episcopal chambers or imperial princes . He viewed the unauthorized expulsion of Jews as an interference with his rights. Under Maximilian I it became common practice to buy permission to expel Jews from the emperor. So proceeded z. B. also Nuremberg, Ulm, Donauwörth, Oberrehnheim, Schwäbisch Gmünd, Colmar, Reutlingen, Nördlingen. As a result, the imperial cities avoided paying higher fines and other difficulties.

See also: Worms privilege , chamber bondage .

Cultural bloom

Despite manifold persecutions, medieval Judaism experienced a heyday in Central and Northern Europe, some of the consequences of which are still felt today. First of all, Rashi from Troyes (1040–1105) should be mentioned, rabbi and authoritative editor and commentator of the Talmud . The Talmud commentary that goes back to him is still considered one of the most important and is printed in most editions. Rashi's grandsons Rashbam and Rabbenu Tam studied with their grandfather and also became important commentators on the Bible and Talmud.

With the Carolingian rule in the 8th century, an epoch of imperial protection of Jews began, especially under Louis the Pious . His letters of privilege enabled Jews to engage in long-distance trade and to lead their lives according to the rabbinical halacha . Jews had the right to own slaves or have Christians run their fields or vineyards, and were allowed to live with Christians. In legal disputes, however, Christians had to provide three witnesses against Jews, whereas Jews had to provide four, seven or nine witnesses depending on the value of the property in dispute. Attacks on her life were punished with the highest fines. Jews paid ten percent of their income to the imperial court. It was not until the high Middle Ages that many cities were transformed into their own political corporations, which established themselves as free imperial cities and whose constitutions regarded the cities as Christian bodies on a guild basis, that fundamentally changed the status of the Jews. They now (like women, serfs, servants and travelers) became second-class citizens, as they neither belonged nor were allowed to belong to the Christian faith or a likewise exclusively Christian guild . The crisis, which lasted about 300 years and into which the early feudal world fell at the end of the 11th century, made their situation worse, both through external threats and the impoverishment of large sections of the nobility and the development of capitalist modes of production and central government.

Living and working

Frankfurt Judengasse

In the Middle Ages, the Roman Catholic Church and the state formed a unit. Since the High Middle Ages , Christians viewed Jews as belonging to a religion that was hostile to them . They met this religious minority with suspicion and growing hostility.

The Christians it was until the 15th century by the canon law prohibited money against interest rates to lend. Not so with the Jews. Since they were forbidden from practicing a trade in accordance with the guild and occupation with agriculture, they earned their living in trade , as pawnbrokers or in interest and bills of exchange .

After the Catholic Church's ban on interest was relaxed , the Jews lost their economic importance in the late Middle Ages . Increasingly, Christians - now tolerated by the Church - were active as merchants and moneylenders, including citizens and high clergy .

Chronology of the persecution of the Jews

Burning of Jews on the occasion of the plague in 1349

The Crusades were a temporary high point of Christian anti-Semitism . Until the beginning of the first crusade (1096), Jews lived relatively safely in medieval Europe. Before leaving for Jerusalem , the crusaders wanted to get rid of the "infidels" in their own country. On the way to the Holy Land , they murdered and looted in Jewish districts and villages, especially in the Rhineland, during the persecution of the Jews at the time of the First Crusade . The Jews were given the choice of “baptism or death”. Thousands of Jews who did not want to convert to Christianity were slain by the crusaders. Many fled to other regions of Germany and Eastern Europe. They took Yiddish as a language with them. During the capture of Jerusalem over 3,000 Muslims and Jews are said to have been killed by Christian crusaders in a single night.

In 1144 the first accusations of alleged ritual murder of Christians surfaced in Norwich, England .

In 1215 Pope Innocent III announced. a series of anti-Jewish measures at the 4th Lateran Council . As in the Arabic Omar Code, he also called for Jews to be identified in public by means of certain colors and clothing. Anti-Jewish laws, anchored in the canon law of the Catholic Church , ultimately led to the Talmud being banned and, in 1242, to its public burning in Paris. Although Innocent IV lifted the ban on the Talmud, he was unable to prevent or soften anti-Jewish tendencies and attitudes within the church.

In 1290 there were riots against Jews and expulsions in England and in 1306/1394 in France . In 1290 King Edward I of England drove all Jews out of his kingdom. In 1306 Philip IV of France followed suit . But in 1315 Louis X allowed the French Jews to return. On September 17, 1394, Charles VI expelled them . again. Under Charles VI. the Jews were then finally expelled.

In German-speaking countries, the first pogroms against the Jews began in the Franconian region between 1298 and 1303 under the leadership of "King Rintfleisch" and between 1336 and 1338 under the leadership of the robber baron "King Armleder" .

When the plague raged across Europe from 1348 to 1353 - it is estimated that 25 million people died in Western Europe during the various episodes in which the plague flared up again and again - the Jews were persecuted as the alleged perpetrators of the epidemic and of the well poisoning accused. The outbreak of the plague was associated with numerous pogroms .

In the Holy Roman Empire , Jews were expelled from most imperial cities and the sovereign territories in the east of the old empire in the 15th century . In a society that was hostile to the Jews and shaped by Christianity , religious hatred against those of different faiths grew, closely connected with their increasing economic insignificance. When combined, religious, socio-psychological, political and economic factors increasingly led to anti-Jewish actions. The result was the expulsion of Jews and pogroms , which only ended in the first half of the 16th century.

Eastern Europe

Khazars

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Presumably, Jews who came from Constantinople have lived in today's Ukraine since the end of the 7th century . Until the 10th century Judeo can Khazar settlements are traced. In the period between 786 and 809 AD, the entire upper class of the Khazars converted to Judaism. The Khazars are therefore sometimes called "the 13th tribe of Israel".

The number of converts was said to be about 4,000, so Jewish teaching penetrated the entire people. In the course of time, Jews and Turkic-speaking Khazars mixed. In the decades after the Russian invasion around 944 and due to internal disputes, the Khazar Empire finally collapsed. During the Kievan Rus , the Jews experienced another heyday (980-1015).

Poland-Lithuania

Numerous Jews emigrated to the Kingdom of Poland from the 12th to the 14th centuries . They first settled in cities and territories nearby in the Holy Roman Empire . Under Duke Mieszko III. and the following princes, Jews held the coin of Greater and Lesser Poland. In 1264 the Jews received extensive protection and privileges from the then ruler of Greater Poland , Duke Bolesław “the Pious” († 1279). The so-called Statute of Kalisch , which is closely based on the privileges that the Bohemian King Ottokar II granted the Moravian Jews, provided, among other things, that a legal dispute between a Jew and a Christian before the prince himself or his representative in the Province, the voivode . Legal disputes between Jews were placed under the jurisdiction of a Jewish judge . Also, according to § 32 of the statutes, " ritual murder " charges should be investigated by six "witnesses", three of whom should be Christians and three Jews. Thanks to this and other legislation positive for the Jews of Poland, the Jewish communities were able to develop relatively safely. This legal certainty was to the benefit of both sides, even if attempts were soon made to restrict these freedoms (Synods of Breslau 1267 and Ofen 1279). Because it was Jewish traders who opened or expanded important trade lines to the west and east and thus made a significant contribution to the orientation of Poland and Hungary to the west.

King Casimir "the Great" not only confirmed the statutes of the Kalischer Privilege of 1264 of his grandfather Bolesław, but also expanded or specified them in some points and extended their legal validity to the territory of the entire Kingdom of Poland. Jogaila , Grand Duke of Lithuania, married the crown heiress Jadwiga in 1386 . After his baptism he took over the Polish royal dignity. The pagan heartland of the Grand Duchy of Lithuania , which corresponded to the area of ​​today's Republic of Lithuania , was forced to become Christian . But Vytautas , a cousin of the Polish King and Grand Duke of Lithuania, who initially led the resistance against Jogaila and his policy of Christianization , granted the Jewish communities of Troki , Brest-Litowsk and Grodno far-reaching privileges in his sphere of influence , which ultimately resulted in equality with the other population equaled.

In 1399 the first known accusation of " host offenses " was made in Poznan . The rabbi of the congregation, as well as thirteen congregation elders and the woman who allegedly brought them consecrated wafers, were burned in public. The Poznan Jewish community was sentenced to pay an annual fine to the Dominicans. In 1407 the first known ritual murder lawsuit was brought in Krakow. From the pulpit of St. Barbara's Church, priest Budek announced to the community that the Jews had murdered a Christian child during the night and used his blood for ritual purposes. The mob stormed the Jewish houses and set them on fire. Many Jewish citizens were murdered or sought refuge in baptism. All children of the murdered were forcibly baptized .

See also

literature

  • Fritz Backhaus : The host desecration trials of Sternberg (1492) and Berlin (1510) and the expulsion of the Jews from Mecklenburg and the Mark Brandenburg. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. Volume 39 (1988). Pp. 7-26. ISSN  0447-2683 .
  • Alfred Haverkamp : Constitution, culture, way of life. Contributions to Italian, German and Jewish history in the European Middle Ages. Friedhelm Burgard, Alfred Heit, Michael Matheus (eds.). von Zabern, Trier 1997, ISBN 3-8053-2019-1 .
  • Julius Höxter : Source texts on Jewish history and literature. Marix, Wiesbaden 2009, ISBN 978-3-86539-198-8 (translated extracts from sources).
  • Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson : From the 7th to the 17th century. The middle age. In: Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson (ed.): History of the Jewish people. From the beginnings to the present, Vol. 2. Beck, Munich 1979, ISBN 3-406-07222-4 .
  • Michael Toch among others: Jews, -tum. In: Lexicon of the Middle Ages . Vol. 5, Col. 781–787 (special chapters on Jews in the various kingdoms can be found in the respective articles).
  • Michael Toch: The Jews in the Medieval Empire. Oldenbourg, Munich 2003, ISBN 3-486-55053-5 (= Encyclopedia of German History . Volume 44).
  • Michael Toch: Economic history of the medieval Jews. Questions and assessments . Oldenbourg, Munich 2008, ISBN 978-3-486-58670-1 ( full text as PDF )
  • Markus J. Wenninger : You no longer need Jews, the causes and backgrounds of their expulsion from the German imperial cities in the 15th century. Böhlau, Vienna / Cologne / Graz 1981, ISBN 3-205-07152-2 . (= Supplement to the Archive for Cultural History , Volume 14).

Web links

Remarks

  1. ↑ Kurt Schubert: Jüdische Geschichte , CH Beck, 7th edition, 2012, ISBN 978-3-406-44918-5 , pp. 31 and 32
  2. ↑ Karl Erich Grözinger: Jewish Thought - Theology - Philosophy - Mysticism, Volume III - From the Critique of Religion in the Renaissance to Orthodoxy and Reform in the 19th Century , Campus Verlag, Frankfurt a. M., ISBN 978-3-593-37514-4 , p. 21
  3. ↑ a b c d e Markus J. Wenninger : One no longer needs Jews [...]. P. 159 f. (see literature ).
  4. ↑ Markus J. Wenninger sees in this procedure a “connection with the emergence of the modern state that strives to control all activities of its subjects” (Markus J. Wenninger: You don't need Jews anymore […]. P. 159 f., see literature ).
  5. ↑ Micha Brumlik : Anti-Semitism. 100 pages. Reclam, Ditzingen 2020, p. 21 ff.
  6. ↑ Erich Fromm : The Jewish law. On the sociology of diaspora Judaism, dissertation from 1922. The situation of the Jews before emancipation, 1999, ISBN 3-453-09896-X , p. 99 f.
  7. ^ A b c d Fritz Backhaus: The host desecration processes of Sternberg (1492) and Berlin (1510) and the expulsion of the Jews from. In: Yearbook for Brandenburg State History. 39, pp. 7-26 (1988).
  8. ↑ Leo Trepp : The Jews. People, history, religion. Hamburg 1998, ISBN 3-499-60618-6 , p. 66 ff.
  9. ↑ Leo Trepp: The Jews; People, history, religion. Hamburg 1999, ISBN 3-499-60618-6 , p. 68.
  10. ↑ Archived copy ( Memento of the original dated August 31, 2007 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. Le mois de Eloul @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.modia.org
  11. ^ Monika Grübel: Crash Course Judaism. 5th edition. Cologne 2003, ISBN 3-8321-3496-4 , p. 71 f. (Section: Accusation of desecration of the host).
  12. ↑ a b Markus J. Wenninger: You no longer need Jews […]. P. 251. (see literature ).
  13. ↑ Markus J. Wenninger: You no longer need Jews [...]. P. 263 f. (see literature ).