Accusations of usury and profiteering[edit]
Main articles:
Usury and
Dolchstosslegende
In the
Middle Ages, Jews were ostracized from most professions by the
Christian Church and the
guilds and were pushed into marginal occupations considered socially inferior, such as tax and
rent collecting and
moneylending. At the same time,
Church law and rulings prohibited Christians from charging interest. For instance, the
Third Council of the Lateran of 1179 threatened excommunication for any Christian lending money at interest. People who wanted or needed to borrow money thus often turned to Jews. This was said to show Jews were insolent, greedy usurers. Natural tensions between creditors and debtors were added to social, political, religious, and economic strains.
... financial oppression of Jews tended to occur in areas where they were most disliked, and if Jews reacted by concentrating on moneylending to gentiles, the unpopularity – and so, of course, the pressure – would increase. Thus the Jews became an element in a vicious circle. The Christians, on the basis of the Biblical rulings, condemned interest-taking absolutely, and from 1179 those who practised it were
excommunicated. But the Christians also imposed the harshest financial burdens on the Jews. The Jews reacted by engaging in the one business where Christian laws actually discriminated in their favour, and so became identified with the hated trade of moneylending.
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Peasants who were forced to pay their taxes to Jews could personify them as the people taking their earnings while remaining loyal to the lords on whose behalf the Jews worked. Gentile debtors may have been quick to lay charges of usury against Jewish moneylenders charging even nominal interest or fees. Thus, historically attacks on usury have often been linked to
antisemitism.
In England, the departing
Crusaders were joined by crowds of debtors in the
massacres of Jews at London and York in 1189–1190. In 1275,
Edward I of England passed the
Statute of Jewry which made usury illegal and linked it to
blasphemy, in order to seize the assets of the violators. Scores of English Jews were arrested, 300 hanged and their property went to
the Crown. In 1290, all Jews were expelled from England, allowed to take only what they could carry, the rest of their property became the Crown's. The usury was cited as the official reason for the
Edict of Expulsion. According to
Walter Laqueur,
"The issue at stake was not really whether the Jews had entered it out of greed (as antisemites claimed) or because most other professions were barred to them... In countries where other professions were open to them, such as
Al-Andalus and the
Ottoman Empire, one finds more Jewish blacksmiths than Jewish money lenders. The high tide of Jewish usury was before the fifteenth century; as cities grew in power and affluence, the Jews were squeezed out from money lending with the
development of banking."
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