Antisemitism in the Middle Ages
by Antisemitism is a virulent, specific hatred of Jews that was, until modern times, commonly found among Christians rather than Muslims, though it was known to Islam as well. In the Middle Ages, antisemitism was state policy in Spain, Turkey, Poland, Russia, the Holy Roman Empire, and the Berber states.
It usually took the form of proscriptions on the occupations Jews might enter and restrictions on where they could live. Jews were forced into ghettos as early as 1280 in Moorish-Berber North Africa. From the early 13th century anti-Jewish legislation became commonplace in Europe. In 1235 the Church Council that met in Arles, France, ordered all Jews to wear a yellow patch, four fingers wide, over their heart. In most cities in Europe Jews were confined to ghettos known as ”Jewish Quarters.” In 1290, England expelled its small Jewish community. In 1306 France expelled many Jews. In both countries, Jews returned and resettled in later decades. The Catholic Church stepped up persecution of Jews across Europe with founding of the Medieval Inquisition in 1232. In Castile, it was forbidden for anyone to convert from Islam to Judaism or from Judaism to Islam. In 1255 it was made illegal for Christians to apostatize. This new aggressiveness toward Jews (and Muslims) was paralleled by a more intolerant attitude toward Christian heretics and other religious dissenters. In southern France an all-out ”holy war” against the Albigensian heresy aimed at eradicating the Cathars, against whom the Medieval Inquisition was originally targeted.
Throughout Christendom, but most notably in the Swiss lands and in Germany, Jews were blamed for the spread of the Black Death. There were ferocious outbreaks of anti-Semitism and massacres of Jews by German Christians in 1349, with thousands more killed by crowds stirred to religious frenzy by the flagellants. This had happened before, when Crusaders detoured into Jewish villages or ghettos to commit murder for Christ; it would happen again in Germany during the Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648). In each case, Jews became victims of religious zeal run amok and of scapegoating by local elites eager to deflect blame for all the social, economic, and military turmoil that coursed over Germany and Europe in the mid-14th and again in the mid-17th centuries. Everywhere, Jews were blamed by superstitious, ignorant Christians-who also ferreted out supposed ”witches” and ”demonworshipers” for persecution and death-during episodes of natural calamity or wartime suffering.
Such Christians neglected to recall the persecution of their own founding generations, who were blamed for natural disasters or misfortune in war by distraught pagans of the Roman Empire. The culminating act of anti-Semitism in the Middle Ages was the expulsion of the Jews from Spain in 1492. Many who left were welcomed to settle inside the Ottoman Empire. Those Jews who formally converted to Catholicism in order to remain in Iberia after 1492 (”conversos”) were the main target of the Spanish Inquisition over the next 150 years. Even longtime, loyal ”converso” families were persecuted and expelled, including from Portugal after it was annexed to Spain in 1580.
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