450 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
attention of the mediaeval synods as usury.1 Alexander III., at the Third Lateran, 1179, went so far as to declare usury forbidden by the Old Testament as well as by the New Testament. Clement V. put the capstone on this sort of legislation by declaring, at the council of Vienne, 1311, null and void all state and municipal laws allowing usury and pronouncing it heresy to deny that usury is sin. No dis tinction was made between rates of interest. All interest was usurious. The wonder is that, with such legislation on the Church's statute-books, any borrower should have felt bound by a debt to a Jew.
Eugenius III. offered all enlisting in the Second Crusade exemption from interest due Jewish creditors. Gregory IX. made the same offer to later Crusaders.
The charge was frequently repeated against the Jews that they were guilty of the murder of Christian children for ritualistic purposes, especially at the time of the Passover. This almost incredible crime again and again stirred the Christian population into a frenzy of excitement which issued in some of the direst miseries the Jewish people were called upon to endure.2
In France, Philip Augustus, using as a pretext the alleged crucifixion of a Christian child, in 1182, expelled the Jews from his realm and confiscated their goods. The decree of expulsion was repeated by Louis IX. in the year before he set out on his last crusade, by Philip the Fair in 1306 and 1311, and by other French moriarchs, but it was never so strictly enforced as in Spain. Louis IX. also ordered all copies of the Targum destroyed. In 1239 Gregory IX. issued a letter to the archbishops of France, Castile, Aragon, Por tugal, and England, commanding the same thing.3
1 See index in Hefele under Wucher. On the whole subject of Usury see Jacobson, art. Wucher, in Herzog, 2d ed., XVII. 341-349. In 1228 the king of Spain restricted Jewish money lenders to the rate of 20 %. Hefele, V. 986. In 1368 the city of Frankfurt paid Jewish brokers 52 % on a loan of 1000 florins. In Augsburg, Vienna, and other cities the interest was often as high as 86 § %. See Janssen, II. 74.
2 Lea, in his Hist, of Spain, 437-409. cites a large number of cases down to recent times. 3 Graetz, VII. 401-106.
§ 77. THE JEWS. 451
In Germany, from the First Crusade on, the Jews were subjected to constant outbreaks, but usually enjoyed the protection of the emperors against popular fury. In the fifteenth century, they were expelled from Saxony 1432, Spires and Zurich 1435, Mainz 1438, and other localities.
In England the so-called Jewries of London, Lincoln, Oxford, and three or four other cities represented special tribunals and modes of organization, with which the usual courts of the land had nothing to do.1 From the reign of Henry II., 1133-1189, when the detailed statements of Jewish life in England begin, bishops, priests, and convents were ready to borrow from the Jews. Nine Cistercian convents were mortgaged to the famous Aaron of Lincoln, who died 1187. He boasted that his money had built St. Albans, a boast which Freeman uses to prove the intolerable arro gance of the Jews. The arm of St. Oswald of Peterboro was held by a Jew in pawn. The usual interest charged was two pence a week on the pound, or forty-three per cent a year. And it went as high as eighty per cent. The promissory note is preserved which Herbert, pastor of Wissenden, gave to Aaron of Lincoln for 120 marks at two pence a week.2 The Jews were tallaged by the king at pleasure. They belonged to him, as did the forests.3 The frequency and exorbitance of the exactions under John and Henry III. are notorious. At the time of the levy of 1210 many left the kingdom. It was at that time that the famous case occurred of the Jew of Bristol, already referred to, whose teeth John ordered pulled out, one each day, till he should make over to the royal treasury ten thousand marks. The description that Matthew Paris gives is highly
1 It is possible the first Jews came to England with William the Conqueror. Jacobs, p. 3. A law of Edward the Confessor, however, has a reference to Jews.
2 Jacobs, p. 67, 308. The mortgages were called cartce debitorum, M. Paris, Luard's ed., II. 358, etc. Jacobs, p. 381, estimates the number of Jews in England in 1200 at 2000. London had 100 families, Lincoln 82, Norwich 42, etc. Peter the Venerable also bears witness to the money dealings of convents with Jews, de razmc., II. 15; Migne, 189, 927.
8Stubbs, Const. Hist., II. 530 sqq.