Where Jewish communities were found
Jews lived in parts of Europe long before the medieval period began, mostly in cities that had been part of the Roman world. Over the following centuries, communities grew in two broad regions that later tradition calls Sefarad (the Iberian Peninsula) and Ashkenaz (northern France and the Rhineland, later spreading east into German-speaking lands and Poland). A third world, Italy and the Byzantine lands, had its own long-established communities.
These were minorities, usually a very small share of any town’s population. Most Jews lived in towns, because Jewish life depended on having ten adult men for communal prayer, a ritual bath, a butcher who could prepare meat according to Jewish law, and a teacher. Being a minority with specific needs meant that Jews tended to cluster in particular streets, sometimes by choice and sometimes by order. The walled “ghetto” as a compulsory quarter is mostly a later development, though Jewish streets existed earlier.
Settlement was often tied to rulers’ invitations. Lords and bishops wanted trade and revenue for their towns, and a few early charters, such as those issued to Jews in Rhineland cities in the late eleventh century, granted rights of residence, worship and trade. Such privileges were valuable but depended on the ruler’s goodwill, which is a theme that runs through the whole story.
Life under Muslim and Christian rule
In the Iberian Peninsula, Jews lived for centuries under Muslim rulers. In what is often called Muslim Spain, Jews were a protected minority who paid special taxes but could take part in commerce, medicine, poetry and government service. Poets, grammarians and physicians flourished there, and the wider Islamic golden age gave Jewish scholars access to Arabic science and philosophy. That climate changed in some periods, particularly under strict dynasties that arrived from North Africa in the twelfth century, and many Jews moved north into Christian kingdoms or elsewhere. As the Reconquista advanced, Christian kings inherited large Jewish populations and generally treated them as useful, taxable subjects.
North of the Pyrenees, Jews lived under Christian kings, dukes and bishops. In the lands of the Holy Roman Empire, Jews came to be described in the thirteenth century as belonging to the emperor’s “chamber”, which in practice meant that the ruler claimed the right to tax them and, in theory, to protect them. In England and France the crown made similar claims. Protection was real in many years, but it could be sold, transferred to a local lord or simply withdrawn.
Self-government and law
Jewish communities ran much of their own internal life. A local council and a rabbinic court handled disputes among members, regulated markets, set community taxes, supported the poor and managed the synagogue and school. Scholars and rabbis from different towns wrote letters of legal opinion to each other, which kept communities connected across long distances. A widely accepted principle held that the law of the land, where fair, was binding on Jews in civil matters, which helped them operate under non-Jewish rulers.
Communities also paid collectively to their rulers. A town’s Jews might be assessed a lump sum, and the community had to divide it among households. This created internal tension and made individual wealth a community concern.
How Jews earned a living
Early on, Jews are found in long-distance trade, craft work, medicine and agriculture, including wine growing. Over time, their options narrowed in much of western Europe. Craft guilds and merchant associations often had Christian oaths and religious ceremonies that excluded Jews, and landholding that involved feudal oaths was difficult. At the same time the Church condemned lending at interest between Christians, while society still needed credit and money.
As a result, many Jewish families in northern Europe came to specialize in lending, often secured by pledges, from small loans to peasants and townspeople to larger sums for nobles and monasteries. This was never the only occupation, and most Jews were not wealthy, but the association shaped how both rulers and neighbors viewed them. Rulers, in turn, found lenders easy to tax. The financial side of this story, including how kings drew on it, is a separate subject, but it helps explain why debt and resentment so often got mixed together with religious prejudice.
Jews in the Mediterranean and in the Islamic world took part in wider commerce along well-known trade routes. Letters preserved from Cairo show merchants coordinating business across the sea, with Jewish and Muslim partners both involved.
Restrictions and rising pressure
From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the legal position of Jews in much of western Christendom became harder. A major Church council in 1215 ordered that Jews be distinguishable by dress, and over the following generations various rulers required badges. Local authorities banned some occupations, limited building of synagogues and sometimes ordered the burning of Talmud manuscripts. Preaching by the new friar orders sometimes included public debates in which Jews were pressed to defend their faith.
Relations between church and state also mattered. Popes repeatedly said that Jews should not be forcibly baptized or killed, yet the same Church supported restrictions and, at times, tolerated or encouraged the beliefs that fed violence. Popular accusations, such as the blood libel, spread from town to town and led to killings.
Violence and expulsions
Violence against Jews was frequent but uneven. Attacks in the Rhineland during the First Crusade, in 1096, were among the earliest large-scale massacres, and the broader wave of crusading enthusiasm repeatedly raised tension. In 1348 and 1349, as the Black Death spread, rumors that Jews had poisoned wells led to the killing of many communities, especially in German-speaking lands, even though some rulers and the pope spoke against the charge.
Expulsions followed. England expelled its Jews in 1290. France expelled them several times, most notably in 1306 under Philip the Fair, and allowed returns on payment. Many German cities and territories removed Jews in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. The largest was the expulsion from Spain in 1492, near the end of the medieval period by most definitions, with Portugal following within a few years.
What remained
Expelled communities did not disappear. Many families moved east, especially into Poland and Lithuania, where rulers welcomed settlers; others went to North Africa, the Ottoman lands or Italy. Jewish learning continued in all of these places. The scholarship, the legal traditions and the family and trade networks built in the medieval period shaped Jewish life for centuries afterward.
Because the sources were mostly written by rulers, clerics and sometimes hostile chroniclers, historians have to read them carefully. Jewish documents, such as legal opinions, letters, community records and chronicles, provide a different view, and they show a people who were far more than victims: scholars, merchants, physicians, craftspeople and neighbors in the towns of medieval Europe.