Chapter II: Part 2

For the Jews could no longer support the Crown in times of financial difficulty as they had been able to do in previous reigns. The contraction of their business that was the result of their exclusion from many towns, and the losses that they had suffered through the extortions of Henry III. and the plundering attacks of the barons, had very greatly diminished their revenue-paying capacities, and the legislation of 1270 must have affected them still more deeply. At the end of the twelfth century they had probably paid to the Treasury about £3,000 a year, or one-twelfth of the whole royal income,[98] and for some parts of the thirteenth century the average collection of tallage has been estimated at £5,000;[99] but in 1271--by which time the royal income had probably grown to something like the £65,000 a year which the Edwards are said to have enjoyed in time of peace[100]--Henry III., when pledging to Richard of Cornwall the revenue from the Jewry, estimated its annual value, apart from what was yielded by escheats and other special claims, at no more than 2,000 marks.[101] And while the resources of the Jews had fallen off, the needs of the Crown had increased. Not only must Edward have conducted his foreign enterprises at a much greater cost than did his predecessors, under whom the English knighthood had been accustomed to serve without serious opposition, but, in addition, he had to make the best of a vast heritage of debt that his father had left him.[102] He had to seek richer supporters than the Jews, and such were not wanting.

The Italian banking companies were the only organisations in Europe that could supply him with such sums of money as he needed. From all the greatest cities of Italy--from Florence, Rome, Milan, Pisa, Lucca, Siena, and Asti--they had spread to many of the chief countries of Europe, to France, England, Brabant, Switzerland, and Ireland.[103] They were merchants, money-lenders, money-changers, and international bankers, and in this last occupation their supremacy over all rivals was secured by the great advantage which the wide extent of their dealings enabled them to enjoy, of being able to save, by the use of letters of credit on their colleagues and countrymen, the cost of the transport of money from country to country.[104] They were thus the greatest financial agents of the time. They transacted the business of the Pope. At the Court of Rome ambassadors had to borrow from them.[105] In France their position was established by a regular diplomatic agreement between the head of their corporation and Philip III.[106] In England they had in their hands the greater part of the trade in corn and wool;[107] and the protection and favour of English kings was often besought by the Popes on their behalf in special bulls.[108]

Edward began his reign in financial dependence on the Italians. His father had in the earliest period of his personal government incurred obligations to them which he himself, as heir apparent, had to increase considerably at the time of his Crusade.[109] When in later years he needed money to pay his army, he borrowed it from them; when he diverted to his own use the tenth that was voted for his intended second Crusade, they gave security for repayment.[110] So great were the amounts that they advanced to him, that between 1298 and 1308 the Friscobaldi Bianchi alone, one of the thirty-four companies that he employed,[111] received in repayment nearly £100,000.[112] He was compelled to favour them, although he attempted to stop their usury. He gave them a charter of privileges.[113] He presented them with large sums of money. He bestowed on the head of one of their firms high office in Gascony. At various times he placed under their charge the collection of the Customs in many of the chief ports in England.[114]

Edward’s close connection with a body of financiers so rich and powerful made the Jews unnecessary to him. If he was not to disobey the decree of the Council of Lyons he must either withdraw his protection from them or else forbid them any longer to be usurers. To withdraw his protection from them would be to expose them to the popular hatred, the danger from which had been the justification of the relations that had been established between Crown and Jewry after 1190, and still existed. He chose the second alternative. In 1275 he issued a statute, in which he absolutely forbade the Jews, as he had just forbidden Christians,[115] to practise usury in the future. He gave warning that usurious contracts would no longer be enforced by the king’s officers, and he declared the making of them to be an offence for which henceforth both parties were liable to punishment. To ensure that all those contracts already existing should come to an end as quickly as possible, he ordered that all movables that were in pledge on account of loans were to be redeemed before the coming Easter.[116]

VII.--EDWARD’S POLICY: THE JEWS AND TRADE.

Thus the Jews, already shut out from the feudal and municipal organisation of the country, were forbidden by one act of legislation to follow the pursuit in which the kings of England had encouraged them for two hundred years.

However, for the hardships imposed by the Christian Church there was an approved Christian remedy. Thomas Aquinas, the greatest authority on morals in Europe in the thirteenth century, had written: “If rulers think they harm their souls by taking money from usurers, let them remember that they are themselves to blame. They ought to see that the Jews are compelled to labour as they do in some parts of Italy.”[117] A Christian king, and one whom Edward revered as his old leader in arms and as a model of piety, had already acted in accordance with the teaching of Thomas Aquinas. In 1253 St. Louis sent from the Holy Land an order that all Jews should leave France for ever, except those who should become traders and workers with their hands.[118] And now, when Edward was forbidding the Jews of England to practise usury, he naturally dealt with them in the fashion recommended by the great teacher of his time and adopted by the saintly king. “The King also grants,” said the Statute of 1275, “that the Jews may practise merchandise, or live by their labour, and for those purposes freely converse with Christians. Excepting that, upon any pretence whatever, they shall not be levant or couchant amongst them; nor on account of their merchandise be in scots, lots, or talliage with the other inhabitants of those cities or boroughs where they remain; seeing they are talliable to the King as his own serfs, and not otherwise.... And further the King grants, that such as are unskilful in merchandise, and cannot labour, may take lands to farm, for any term not exceeding ten years, provided no homage, fealty, or any such kind of service, or advowson to Holy Church, be belonging to them. Provided also that this power to farm lands, shall continue in force for ten years from the making of this Act, and no longer.”[119]

The 16,000[120] Jews of England were thus called upon to change at once their old occupation for a new one, and the task was imposed upon them under conditions which made it all but impossible of fulfilment. They were forbidden to become burgesses of towns; and the effect of the prohibition was to make it impossible for them, in most parts of England, to become traders, for it practically excluded them from the Gild Merchant. It is true that some towns professed that their Gild was open to all the inhabitants, whether burgesses or not, so long as they took the oath to preserve the liberties of the town and the king’s peace.[121] But most of the Gilds were exclusive bodies, to which all non-burgesses would find it hard to gain admission,[122] and Jewish non-burgesses, though not as a rule kept out by a disqualifying religious formula,[123] would on account of the unpopularity of their race and religion, find it trebly hard.[124] As non-Gildsmen, they would be at a disadvantage both in buying goods and in selling them. They would find it hard to buy, because, in some towns at any rate, the Gildsmen were accustomed to “oppress the people coming to the town with vendible wares, so that no man could sell his wares to anyone except to a member of the society.”[125] They would find it in all towns hard to sell, in some impossible. In some towns non-Gildsmen were forbidden to deal in certain articles of common use, such as wool, hides, grain, untanned leather, and unfulled cloth; in others, as in Southampton, they might not buy anything in the town to sell again there, or keep a wine tavern, or sell cloth by retail except on market day and fair day, or keep more than five quarters of corn in a granary to sell by retail. There were even towns where the municipal statutes altogether forbade non-Gildsmen to keep shops or to sell by retail.[126]

It was almost as difficult for Jews to become agriculturists or artisans, as to become traders. They were allowed by the statute to farm land, but for ten years only, and they were far too ignorant of agriculture to be able to take advantage of the permission. They could not work on the land of others as villeins, because, even if a Christian lord had been willing to receive them, they would have been prevented by their religion from taking the oath of fealty.[127]

Only under exceptional conditions could they work at handicrafts. A Jew who possessed manual dexterity might, as was sometimes done in the thirteenth century, have worked for himself at a cottage industry, and might, though the task would have been a hard one, have gained a connection among Christians, and induced them to trust him with materials.[128] But many crafts were at the time coming under the regulations of craft-gilds. Certainly as early as the beginning of the fourteenth century, there were in London fully-organised gilds of Lorimers, Weavers, Tapicers, Cap-makers, Saddlers, Joiners, Girdlers, and Cutlers.[129] In Hereford there were Gilds for nearly thirty trades.[130] It was probably very often the case, as it was with the Weavers’ Gild in London, that a craft-gild existing in any town could forbid the practice of the craft in the town to all who had not been elected to membership, or earned it by serving the apprenticeship that the Gild’s statute required.[131] The period required by the Lorimers’ statute was ten years, by the Weavers’, seven, and in some cases certainly, and probably in all, the apprenticeship had to be served under a freeman of the city.[132] The apprentice who had served his time, was still, in some towns and industries, unable to practise his craft, unless he became a citizen and entered the frank pledge.[133] It was difficult for a Jewish boy to become an apprentice, since the Church threatened to excommunicate any Christian who received into his house, as an apprentice would naturally be received, a Jew or Jewess; it was impossible for a Jewish man to become a citizen, for the king forbade his Jewish “serfs” to be in scot and lot with the other inhabitants of the cities in which they lived.

Excluded from the trades and handicrafts of the towns, the Jew might try other means of earning a livelihood. He might attempt to travel with wares or with produce, from one part of England to another, or he might be an importer or an exporter. But wholesale trade of this kind would be open to those alone who had command of a large capital. And this was not the only difficulty in the way. If the Jew went about the country with his goods from fair to fair, or from city to city, he would do so at very great risk. He would have to travel over the high roads, the perils of which made necessary the Statute of Winchester, and are recounted in the words of its preamble, _de jour en jour roberies, homicides, arsons, plus sovenerement sont fetes que avaunt ne soleyent_.[134] If he survived the dangers of the road and reached a fair, he would find there an assemblage made up in part of “daring persons,” such as those, who, in spite of the orderly traders and citizens, had caused the massacre at Lynn in 1190,[135] or those who at Boston killed the merchants and plundered their goods, until “the streets ran with silver and gold,”[136] or those citizens of Winchester who, in the reign of Henry III., carried on for a time a successful conspiracy to rob all itinerant merchants who passed through the country.[137] With his foreign face and striking badge, he would be the first mark for the hatred of the riotous crowd. And if he escaped violence and robbery, he had still to fear the officials of the lord of the fair, who exercised for the time unlimited and irresponsible power, and who, according to the regulations of some fairs, could destroy the goods of any trader if their quality did not please them.[138] When he had managed to escape from the mob and the officials, his difficulties were not over. He might make his bargains, but there was no court of justice to which he could appeal to enforce the completion of any transaction that required a longer time than that of the duration of the fair. Redress for any injustice committed at a fair, or for the failure to carry out an agreement made there, could be obtained only through application made by the municipality of the complainant to that of the wrong-doer.[139] The Jew had no municipality to present his claims. If those with whom he had transactions deceived him, or refused to pay him, he was helpless. There was no power to which he could appeal.

If instead of going to a fair he tried to sell, in a town, produce from another country or from a different part of England, he was in a position of even greater difficulty. In a strange town he was as much an alien as in a strange country, and there was scarcely any limit to the vexations and sufferings that on that account he would have to endure. In London, for example, alien merchants were forbidden to remain in the city for more than forty consecutive days. While they were there they might not sell anything by retail, nor have any business dealings at all with any but citizens. There was a long list of articles that they were altogether forbidden to buy. They might not stow their goods in houses or cellars; they had to sell within forty days all that they had brought with them; they were allowed neither to sell anything after that time, nor to take anything back with them. They were continually annoyed by the officers of the city.[140] All these disadvantages the Jew would have to endure to the full while competing with many powerful organisations which were engaged in foreign trade, and had, after long struggles, secured from the king special charters of privilege. Such were the companies of the merchants of Germany, who had their steelyard in London and their settlements at Boston and Lynn; the Flemings, who had their Hanse in London; the Gascons who enjoyed a charter; the Spaniards and Portuguese; the Florentines, most powerful of all, and the Venetians, whose enterprise was, at the beginning of the fourteenth century at any rate, carried on under the auspices of the Republic.[141]

The last opportunity for the Jews was to take part in the export of English produce. English wool was the most important article of international trade in Western Europe. It was brought from monasteries and landholders chiefly by the rich and powerful companies of Flemish and Italian merchants, and sent to Flanders and Italy to be woven and dyed.[142] The Jews had, apparently, long taken some slight part in wholesale trade,[143] but the amount of capital that it required, and the power of the rivals who held the field, made it impossible for many of them to take to it immediately as a substitute for money-lending. Still it was the only form of enterprise in which they would not be at a hopeless disadvantage; and some Jews, those probably who had a large capital and were able to recall it from the borrowers, followed the example of the Italians, and made to landholders advances of money to be repaid in corn and wool.[144]

VIII.--THE TEMPTATIONS OF THE JEWS.

But even for those Jews who were rich enough to take part in wholesale trade, there was still a great temptation to transgress the prohibition against usury. All the legal machinery that was necessary for the due execution and validity of agreements between Jews and Christians--the chest in which the deeds were deposited, and the staffs of officers by whom they were registered and supervised--were still maintained in some towns, since they were necessary alike for the recovery, by the ordinary process, of the old debts (many of which, in spite of the order for summary repayment in the Statute of 1275, still remained outstanding)[145] and for the registration of any new agreements that might be made for the delivery of corn and wool, or for the repayment of money lent ostensibly without interest. There was no lack of would-be borrowers to co-operate with the Jews in using this machinery in order to make agreements on which, in spite of the prohibition of usury, money might profitably be lent. The demand for loans was great, far too great to be satisfied, as the Church thought it reasonable to expect,[146] by money advanced without interest; and owing to the progress of the change from payment of rents in kind or service to payment in cash,[147] it was steadily growing. It had been met by the money of the Italian bankers, of the Jews, of English citizens, and, as is freely hinted by writers of the time, of great English barons, who secretly shared in the transactions and the profits of the Jewish and foreign usurers.[148] The supply had suddenly been checked by the simultaneous prohibition of all usury whether of Jews or of Christians. Now a Jew who wished, by collusion with a borrower, to evade the law against usury, had only to study the methods that had been followed by the Caursines, and those that were still followed by the Italians and acquiesced in by the heads of the religious houses with whom they had dealings. The Caursines, for example, sometimes avoided the appearance of usury by lending 100 marks and receiving in return a bond, acknowledging a loan of £100.[149] Sometimes they lent money for a definite period, on an agreement that they were to get a “gift,” in return for their kindness in making the loan, and “compensation” in case it were not repaid in time.[150] Sometimes by a still more elaborate device, the Italians combined their two professions of money-lenders and merchants, by inducing a monastery which had borrowed money, to acknowledge the receipt, not only of the sum actually received, but also of the price of certain sacks of wool which it bound itself in due time to supply.[151] The Jews, no doubt, followed the example of the Caursines and of the Italians. In official registers, which are still extant, there are mentioned bonds which secured to Jewish creditors a large payment in money together with a small payment in kind, and which doubtless represent collusive transactions, in which the offence of usury was to be avoided by the substitution of a recompense in kind for interest in money. Other bonds for repayment of money alone are mentioned in the same registers as having been executed after 1275, and every one of the kind that was executed between that date and the date of the amendment of the Statute against usury may be safely considered to represent a transaction which was an offence, either veiled or open, against the prohibition.[152]

The temptation to transgress the Statute of 1275 could appeal only to Jews with capital, but on the poorer Jews other temptations acted with even more strength and even worse results.

The only reputable careers known to have been open to the poorer Jews were to become servants in the houses of their rich co-religionists,[153] or else to imitate in a humble way their financial transactions, either by keeping pawnshops,[154] or by carrying on, in towns where there was no recognised Jewry, business of the same kind as that of the rich money-lenders in the larger Jewish settlements. To follow these pursuits was now impossible, in consequence, not only of the prohibition of usury, but also of the strictness with which Edward enforced the old legislation against the residence of Jews in towns where there did not exist a chest for the deposit of Jewish debts, and a staff of clerks to witness and register them.[155] There was thus nothing to which the poorer Jews could turn. Crowded as unwelcome intruders into a small and decreasing number of towns,[156] without legal standing or industrial skill, hated by the people and declared accursed by the Church, they were bidden to support themselves under conditions which made the task impossible unless they could take by storm the citadel of municipal privilege which bade defiance to the “greatest of the Plantagenets” throughout his reign.

Under such conditions degeneration was inevitable. Some of the Jews are said to have taken to highway robbery and burglary;[157] some went into the House of Converts, where they got 1½d. a day and free lodging.[158] But to the dishonest there was open a far more profitable form of dishonesty than either of those already mentioned, viz., clipping the coin.

The offence had long been prevalent. In 1248 such mischief had been done that, according to Matthew Paris “no foreigner, let alone an Englishman, could look on an English coin with dry eyes and unbroken heart.”[159] It was in vain that Henry III. issued a new coinage, so stamped that the device and the lettering extended to the edge of the piece,[160] and caused it to be proclaimed in every town, village, market-place, and fair that none but the new pieces with their shapes unaltered should be given or taken in exchange.[161] The opportunity for dishonesty was too tempting. The coins that actually circulated in the country were of many different issues,[162] they were not milled at the edges,[163] they were so liable to damage and mutilation of all kinds that their deficiency of weight had to be recognised and allowed for.[164] Hence anyone who had many coins passing through his hands could secure an easy profit by clipping off a piece from each one before he passed it again into circulation. In the early part of the reign of Edward I., such was the deficiency in the weight of genuine coins (an annalist of the period estimates it at 50 per cent.),[165] and such the amount of false coin in circulation, that the price of commodities rose to an alarming height, foreign merchants were driven away, trade became completely disorganised, shopkeepers refused the money tendered to them, and the necessities of life were withdrawn from the markets.[166] The King had to promise to issue a new coinage, but the announcement of his intention only increased the general disturbance. The Archbishop of Canterbury complained that in consequence of the disturbance of circulation, he could not find anyone, except the professional usurers, from whom he could borrow money on which to live during the interval before the revenues of his see began to come in.[167] When the King at this period of his reign went to a priory to ask for money, the first and most cogent of the excuses that he heard was that “the House was impoverished by the change in the coinage of the realm.”[168] Public opinion ascribed to the Jews the greatest share in the injuries to the coinage. “They are notoriously forgers and clippers of the coin,” says Matthew Paris.[169] And that the suspicion was not absolutely without justification is shown by the fact, that early in Henry III.’s reign, the community made a payment to the King in order to secure as a concession the expulsion from England of such of its members as might be convicted of the crime.[170] When inquiries were ordered into the causes of the debasement, in 1248, it was generally considered that the guilt would be found to rest with the Jews.[171] The official verdict included them with the Caursines and the Flemish wool-merchants in its condemnation.[172]

It was not unnatural that Edward, when the evil reappeared in his reign, should share the general suspicion against the Jews, seeing that they had only recently begun to give up dealing in money, while many of the poorer among them must have become, since 1275, desperate enough to be ready to take to any tempting form of dishonesty. The King’s indignation at the suffering that had been caused by the injury done to the old coinage, and at the expense that was involved in the preparation of the new issue which had become necessary, prompted him to act on his suspicions, and to take a measure of terrible severity in order to make sure of the apprehension of the most probable culprits. When, in 1278, he was making preparations for an inquiry into the whole subject of the coinage, he caused all the Jews of England to be imprisoned in one night, their property to be seized, and their houses to be searched. At the same time the goldsmiths, and many others against whom information was given by the Jews, were treated in the same way.[173]

The prisoners were tried before a bench of judges and royal officers. There can be no doubt that many innocent men were accused, even if they were not condemned. At a time when all the Jews in England were imprisoned, there was a great temptation for Christians to bring false accusations against those among them whom they disliked on personal or religious grounds, especially as there was a good chance of extorting hush-money from the accused, or, in case of condemnation, of concealing from the escheators some of their property.[174] The Jews and the King recognised the danger. One Manser of London, for example, was wise enough to sue that an investigation might be held into the ownership of tools for clipping that were found on the roof of his house.[175] The King, anxious that punishment should fall only on the guilty, issued a general writ, in which the various motives for false accusation were recited, and it was ordered that any Jew against whom no charge had been brought by a certain date might secure himself altogether by paying a fine.[176] Nevertheless, a large number both of Jews and Christians were found guilty. Of the Christians only three were condemned to death, though many others were heavily fined. For the Jews, however, there was no mercy. Two hundred and ninety-three of them were hanged and drawn in London, and all their property escheated to the King. A few more had been condemned, but saved their lives by conversion to Christianity.[177]

The activity with which Jews took part, or were supposed to take part, in the debasement of the coinage, and in the prohibited practice of usury,[178] must have aroused in the mind of the King some misgivings on the subject of his new policy. Nevertheless, he did not as yet despair of its ultimate success. The crimes of the Jews were no greater than those of the Christians around them, though they called forth heavier punishment. Christians clipped and coined; Christians still lent money on usury.[179] And a certain amount of crime among Jews could not but be looked for as a natural result of the terrible difficulties in the way of the social revolution that had been demanded of them. Edward saw that he had been trying to do too much at once. The Jews could not change their occupation as suddenly as he had wished. The country could not do without money-lenders. By making the lending of money at interest a penal offence, and thus encouraging debtors and creditors to keep their transactions secret, Edward had weakened the supervision that had been exercised by the Treasury, since 1194, over the business and property of the Jews, and thus he had increased the chance of fraud in the collection of tallages, and in the apportionment of the share of each estate that had long been claimed by the Crown as the succession due on Jewish property.[180] But he had not stamped out usury, though the Statute of 1275 had forbidden it. He had not even secured the redemption of all pledges of Christians from the hands of the Jews, though the Statute of 1275 had demanded it. And, therefore, in order that he might not keep on the Statute Book a law of which the effective administration was impossible, he mitigated the severity of the provisions of 1275, and issued, probably a few years later, a new Statute, in which he prescribed certain conditions under which usury was to be permitted. He allowed loans to be made under contract for the payment of interest at the rate of half a mark in the pound yearly, but for three years only; and, in order to reduce the temptation to conclude secret transactions, restored legal recognition to all debts of the value of £20 or upwards that were made under the prescribed conditions, and were registered before the chirographer and clerk, and threatened heavy penalties against all who should lend up to that amount without registration.[181]

Edward was wise in thus substituting for his earlier, harassing measure, one that allowed for gradual change, and that attempted to control the evil of which the immediate suppression was impossible. But the few years’ experience that he had already had ought to have made him go farther still. It ought to have shown him that it was hopeless to expect the Jews to give up usury so long as the greater part of them were practically excluded from all other pursuits, and that, if ever he was to bring to a successful issue the policy that he had inaugurated, he would have to find some means of enabling them to work side by side with Christians, and to compete with them on equal conditions.

Such a task would have been full of difficulties, the greatest of which resulted from the active hostility with which the rulers and teachers of the Christian Church in the thirteenth century, unlike their predecessors, regarded the Jews. The growth and nature of this hostility must now be considered.

IX.--THE JEWS IN RELATION TO THE CHURCH OF THE THIRTEENTH CENTURY.

The Popes of the earlier part of the Middle Ages had found enough employment for their energies in the effort to maintain their own position in Christendom; and they had neither the wish nor the power to seek a conflict with a race that remained wholly outside the Church. In the twelfth century there was no other general Church Law directed against the Jews than that which forbade them to live in the same houses with Christians, and to have Christian servants.[182] In England especially, Churchmen of the twelfth century showed towards the Jews a tolerant spirit, and made no effort to augment their unpopularity or to diminish their privileges. The examples of Anselm, and of his contemporary, Gilbert of Westminster, show that in the attempts made at that time by men of high position in the Church to convert the Jews, no method was employed except that of reasonable persuasion.[183] Churches and monasteries took charge, at times of danger, of the money, and even of the families, of Jews. Such friendly intercourse as existed between Jews and Christians was allowed to go on without any attempt at ecclesiastical interference.[184]

The accession of Innocent the Third to the pontificate brought about a rapid change in the attitude of the Church towards the Jews. Innocent was the first to advance, on behalf of the Papacy, the claim that the Lord gave Peter not only the whole Church, but the whole world to rule,[185] and he endeavoured with a merciless enthusiasm, from which all unbelievers and heretics in Christian countries had to suffer, to make good his claim, and to establish in Europe one united Catholic Church. He took his stand on the doctrine, which his predecessors had held[186] in a modified form, and without ever acting on it, that the Jews were condemned to perpetual slavery on account of the wickedness of their ancestors in crucifying Christ; and he thought that they ought to be made to feel, and their neighbours likewise, that it was only out of Christian pity that their presence was endured in Christian countries.

The position of the Jews at the time of Innocent’s accession to the pontificate was very far from being such as his theory required. They had magnificent synagogues, they employed Christian servants, they married, or were said to marry, Christian wives; they refused, in what some Christians regarded as a spirit of outrageous insolence, to eat the same meat and to drink the same wine as the Gentiles, and they made no secret of their disbelief in the sacred history of Christianity. Moreover, they were suspected of exercising a considerable influence on the growth of the heresies which it was the chief work of Innocent’s life to combat. The Vaudois, the Cathari, and the Albigenses, all kept up Jewish observances, and were said to have learnt from the Jews their heretical dogmas; the Albigenses, indeed, were accused of maintaining that the law of the Jews was better than the law of the Christians. And, nevertheless, Christian kings supported the Jews in every way. They countenanced their usury, they refused (so, at least, Innocent said) to allow evidence against them on any charge to be given by Christian witnesses, and they even employed them in high offices of State. In view of these facts, Innocent thought that a great effort of repression should be made, and he wrote to the King of France, the Duke of Burgundy, and other monarchs, asking for their assistance in the work of reducing the Jews to that condition of slavery which was their due. He decreed in his general Church Council that Jews should be excluded in future from public offices, and that they should wear a badge to distinguish them from Christians; and he renewed the old regulation of the Church, which required them to dismiss Christian servants from their houses. In order to ensure that the last provision should be observed, he decided that any Christians having any intercourse with Jews that transgressed it should be subject to excommunication. For the enforcement of his other anti-Jewish measures he relied on the help of the temporal power in all Christian countries.[187]

The declaration of war made by Innocent III. was a terrible calamity for the Jews; but though it affected at once the whole of Christian Europe, still its evil results might have passed away in time. Popes were but men and politicians; and just as Innocent had, by the publication of his wishes and decrees concerning the Jews, set himself in opposition to his predecessors, so might his successors, in their turn, moved by different feelings or taking a different view of the interests and duties of the Church, set themselves in opposition to him, and go back to the old lenient opinions and practice. But within a few years of the death of Innocent, the work of attacking the Jews ceased to be in the hands of any one man, and passed over to a body of men habitually influenced not by personal or political considerations, but only by what they conceived to be the interest of religion, and filled with a hatred of the Jews more fierce and fanatical and steadfast than that of the Popes could ever have been.

The Dominican order was formally constituted in 1223, and from the earliest years of its existence devoted itself to the task of rooting out unbelief from the Christian world. The work that its members at first professed to regard as peculiarly their own was that of preaching, but on the Jews their preaching had no effect. With an ingenuity and determination worthy of the order that in a later century was to provide the Inquisition with its chief ministers, the Dominicans devised and carried out another plan of action. Assisted by converted Jews who had joined them, they undertook the study of Hebrew, and their master, Raymundus de Peñaforte, induced the King of Spain to build and endow seminaries for the purpose.[188] Armed with this new knowledge, they were able to attack first, what they represented as the foolish and pernicious contents of such Jewish books as the Talmud, and secondly, the stubbornness of the Jews who refused to accept the doctrines of Christianity, the truth of which the Dominicans professed to be able to demonstrate from the Old Testament. Two incidents which must at the time have been famous throughout Europe illustrate their method of warfare. In 1239 Nicolas Donin, a converted Jew who had become a Dominican friar, laid before Gregory IX. a series of statements concerning the Talmud. Helped, no doubt, by all the influence of his order, he induced the Pope to issue bulls to the Kings of France, England, and Spain, and the bishops in those countries, ordering that all copies of the Talmud should be seized, and that public inquiry should be held concerning the charges brought against the book. In England and Spain nothing seems to have been done, but in Paris the Pope’s instructions were carried out, and, at the instigation of the leading Dominicans, St. Louis ordered that all copies of the Talmud that could be found in France should be confiscated, and that four Rabbis should, on behalf of the Jews, hold a public debate with Donin, in order to meet, if they could, the charges that he was prepared to maintain. In the course of the debate, which was held in the precincts of the Court and in the presence of members of the Royal family and great dignitaries of the Church, Donin asserted that the Talmud encouraged the Jews to despise, deceive, rob, and even murder Christians, that it contained blasphemous falsehoods concerning Christ, superstitions and puerilities of all kinds, and passages disrespectful to God and inconsistent with morality. The Rabbis answered as best they could, but the court of Inquisitors decided that the charges had been substantiated, and ordered that all the confiscated copies of the Talmud should be burnt. After a delay of about two years the _Auto-da-fe_ took place, and fourteen cartloads of the Talmud were sacrificed.[189] The other famous incident of the kind took place in Spain. Pablo Christiano, a converted Jew, who, like Donin, had joined the Dominicans, challenged the Jews of Aragon to a discussion on the differences between Judaism and Christianity, and induced James I. to compel them to take up the challenge. The famous Nachmanides came forward as the representative of his co-religionists. Pablo undertook to show that the Old Testament, and other books recognised by the Jews, taught that the Messiah had come, that he was “very God and very man,” that he suffered and died for the salvation of mankind, and that with his advent the ceremonial law ceased to be of any effect. Nachmanides denied that any of these propositions could be substantiated from the Jewish sacred books. For four days the disputation was carried on in the presence of the king and many great personages of Church and State. Of course the verdict was that the Christian disputant had beaten the Jew.[190]

The method of conducting these two controversies showed that the Dominicans were determined to use every possible weapon against the Jews. The Talmud, a huge, heterogeneous and unedited compilation, contains passages which are trivial and foolish, and others, written by men who had memories of persecution fresh in their minds, which express bitter hatred towards the “Gentiles,” that is, the Romans who had taken Jerusalem, and had destroyed the nationality of the Jewish race. It was easy for an opponent to pick out such passages, to assert that what was said against the “Gentiles” expressed, not the feelings of the victims of persecution against the Romans of the second century, but the feelings of all Jews towards all non-Jews, at every time and at every place, and to convince an uncritical audience that those who held in honour the book that contained such passages were enemies of religion, against whose influence it behoved all Christian powers to guard the faithful. Similarly, by compelling the Jews to take part in a discussion concerning the prophecies of the Old Testament, the Dominicans imposed on them the choice between the two alternatives of betraying their religion by acquiescing in what they believed to be a false interpretation of their scripture, or else of proclaiming publicly their disbelief in doctrines which were at the very foundation of Christianity. The effect on the ruling classes in Europe of the two discussions just mentioned must have been very great. And the Dominicans were continually carrying on the same work, though, of course, seldom before audiences so distinguished. Pablo, for example, travelled about Spain and Provence, compelling the Jews, by virtue of a royal edict that had been issued in his favour, to hold disputes with him on matters of religion.[191] Many other members of the order devoted their lives to the same pursuit,[192] and thus did their best to fill the rulers of the Church with a dread of the terrible consequences that the existence of Judaism threatened to the Christian religion.

And, unfortunately for the Jews, their religion began to be feared at the same time as cruel and powerful fanatics like Innocent and the Dominicans were doing their best to cause it to be hated. There is good reason to believe, though detailed evidence is not abundant, that towards the end of the Middle Ages Judaism exercised over the superstitions of other faiths the same fascination as in the first century of the Roman Empire. Thomas Aquinas believed that unrestricted intercourse between Jews and Christians was likely to result in the conversion of Christians to Judaism, and for that reason he thought it right, in spite of the general liberality of his opinions concerning the Jews, that intercourse with them should be allowed to such Christians alone as were strong in the faith, and were more likely to convert them than to be converted by them.[193] “It happens sometimes,” wrote a Pope of the thirteenth century, “that Christians, when they are visited by the Lord with sickness and tribulation, go astray, and have recourse to the vain help of the Jewish rite. They hold in the synagogues of the Jews torches and lighted candles, and make offerings there. Likewise they keep vigils (especially on the Sabbath), in the hope that the sick may be restored to health, that those at sea may reach harbour, that those in childbirth may be safely delivered, and that the barren may become fruitful and rejoice in offspring. For the accomplishment of these and other wishes, they implore the help of the said rite, and in idolatrous fashion show open signs of devotion and reverence to a scroll, not without much harm to the orthodox faith, contumely to our Creator, and opprobrium and shame to the Universal Church.”[194]

The anti-Jewish feeling that grew up from the causes that have just been described called into existence new institutions and measures designed for the purpose of humbling the Jews and checking the growth of Judaism. In compliance with the cruel request of Innocent, most of the monarchs of Europe compelled their Jewish subjects to wear a badge.[195] Local church councils, which hitherto had contented themselves with the attempt to enforce the old prohibition against the employment by Jews of Christian servants and nurses, now went further, and forbade Christians to allow the presence of Jews in their houses and taverns, to feast or dance with them, to be present at the celebration of their marriages, their new moons, and their festivals, and to employ their services as doctors.[196] The Popes of the latter part of the thirteenth century appointed Dominicans in various countries of Europe to perform the duty of preaching to the Jews, and of holding inquisitions into their heresies, in the hope that with the help of the secular power they might stamp them out.[197]

In England the relation of the Jews to the Christians underwent somewhat the same changes as in Continental Europe. Before the thirteenth century the Jews in England had, as has been said above, been free from molestation by the Church,[198] and their chief danger had been from the brutality and greed of the disorderly populace, of desperate outcasts, and of marauding Crusaders.[199] The first great attack made on them by any constituted power came from Stephen Langton, who, not content with passing at his Provincial Synod a decree which, in accordance with the regulations of Innocent, enforced the use of the badge and prohibited the erection of new synagogues, went so far as to issue orders that no one in his diocese should presume, under pain of excommunication, to have any intercourse with Jews, or should sell them any of the necessaries of life. The Bishops of Lincoln and Norwich issued the same orders in their dioceses.[200] Many other bishops in the reign of Henry III. did their best, partly by legislation in their diocesan synods and partly by the use of their personal and spiritual influence, to check intercourse between Jews and Christians.[201] Of course the king’s guardians, in the interest of the royal income, a considerable part of which was derived from the Jewry, interfered to prevent the measures of Langton and his colleagues from being carried into effect. And Henry, when he took into his own hands the work of government, while, on the one hand, he showed his sympathy with the fears of the Church by building a house for the reception of Jewish converts,[202] and by lending the sanction of the civil power to the decree that ordered the use of the badge,[203] nevertheless followed the example that his guardians had set, and protected the Jews against the aggression of the Church.

There were many reasons which might have caused Edward to sympathise more strongly than his father had done, with the anti-Jewish feelings of the Church. He was a pious man and a pious king, filled with a sense of his kingly duty towards “the living God who takes to himself the souls of Princes.”[204] He was a Crusader, though the great crusading age was over, a founder of monasteries, a pilgrim to holy places; and through his confessors he was in close connection with, and under the influence of, the Dominican order.[205] Some of his bishops were determined enemies of the Jews. John of Peckham, for example, the Archbishop of Canterbury, insisted at one time on the demolition of all the small private synagogues in London, at which the Jews were in the habit of worshipping after the confiscation of their great public synagogues at the end of the reign of Henry III.; at another time he demanded from the king the help of the temporal power against Jews who having once been converted to Christianity, wished to go back to their old faith; on another occasion he took the bold step of writing to the Queen concerning her business transactions with the Jews, solemnly warning her that unless she gave them up she could never be absolved from her sins, “nay, not though an angel should assert the contrary.”[206] At Hereford, Bishop Swinfield was so determined to prevent intercourse with Jews that, when he heard that certain Christians intended to be present at a marriage feast to be given by some rich Jews of the city, he issued a proclamation threatening with excommunication any who should carry out their intention, and, when his proclamation was disregarded, he carried out his threat.[207]

Certain events that happened, or were said to have happened, in England in Edward’s lifetime, some, indeed, under his own observation, may well have seemed to him to justify the attitude of the Church. In 1275 a Dominican friar was converted to Judaism.[208] In 1268, while Edward was in Oxford, the Chancellor, masters and scholars of the University, and the Parochial Clergy, were going in procession to visit the shrine of St. Friedswide when, according to a story that gained general credence, a Jew of the city snatched from the bearer a cross that was being carried at their head and trod it under foot.[209] At Norwich, early in Edward’s reign, a Jew was burnt for blasphemy.[210] At Nottingham, in 1278, a Jewess was charged with abusing in scandalous terms all the Christian bystanders in the market-place.[211]

Edward’s conduct could not but be influenced by the general tone of opinion in the Church, by the strong anti-Jewish feeling of some of his bishops, and by the follies, real or supposed, of the Jews themselves. In continuation of his father’s policy he made, throughout his reign, such contributions as, with his scanty means, he could afford, to the support of the House of Converts.[212] He renewed the edict concerning the wearing of the badge, and extended it to Jewesses, whereas it had formerly applied only to Jews.[213] In order that the Dominicans might be able to carry on in England the same efforts at conversion as they were already pursuing in France, Spain and Germany, he issued to all the sheriffs and bailiffs in England writs bidding them do their best to induce all the Jews in the counties and towns under their charge to assemble and hear the word of God preached by the friars.[214] To meet the danger to religion that might arise from the blasphemous utterances of Jews, he ordered that proclamation should be made throughout England that any Jew found guilty (after an enquiry conducted by Christians) of having spoken disrespectfully of Christ, the Virgin Mary, or the Catholic faith, should be liable to the loss of life or limbs.[215]

Thus far, and no farther, was Edward prepared to go with measures for the suppression of Judaism as a religion. He believed that the Jews, so long as they remain Jews, lived in ignorance and sin, and he did what he could to help the friars in the effort to convert them. He believed that some among them were likely to make blasphemous attacks on Christianity, and he did what he could to keep them in check. But he believed that it was possible for them to live in peace and quietness, carrying on trades and handicrafts, among Christian neighbours in Christian towns. And it was to enable them to do so that he adopted the policy of 1275, and bade the Jews renounce usury, giving them at the same time permission “to practise trade, to live by their labour, and, for those purposes, freely to converse with Christians.” But, as we have seen, there were imposed on the Jews who attempted to avail themselves of this permission, legal disadvantages which wholly unfitted them for industrial competition with non-Jews, and compelled them to continue the practice of usury. That Edward recognised this fact is shown by the issue of the revised Statute of Usurers some years after 1275; but that measure was inconclusive and inconsistent with the rest of his policy. Sooner or later the conclusion would have forced itself on him that until the Jews were, by the acquisition of the right to become burgesses and gildsmen, enabled to enter into industrial competition on equal terms with Christians, all his efforts to make them traders instead of usurers would be wasted. He would then have had before him two alternatives. He might, on the one hand, have declined to sacrifice his seignorial rights over the Jews, whom he had described in the Statute of 1275 as “talliable to the king as his own serfs, and not otherwise,” and in that case he would have had to recognise that his whole Jewish policy was an impossible one. Or he might, on the other hand, have revoked the provision in the statute which forbade the Jews to be in “scots, lots, or talliage with the other inhabitants of those cities or burgesses where they remained.” Such a measure would have been a step in the only direction which could possibly lead to the success of his policy. But it would not by itself have been enough to secure success; for, when the legal difficulties of the Jews had been removed, there would still have remained the social difficulties which proceeded from the dislike in which they were held by the Church and the people; and, unless these difficulties also could be removed, so that the Jews might be in a position of social equality, as well as legal equality, with Christians, and associate with them in friendly intercourse, the king’s policy would be as far from success as ever. Which alternative Edward would have decided to adopt is, of course, a question we have no means of answering; but the decision was taken out of his hands by the interference, for the first and last time in English history, of the head of the Catholic Church in the relations between the Jews and the king.