Chapter 9 - Germany

Summary

The study covers the period from the late-ninth to the early-sixteenth centuries. Within this period, the late-thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries marked the turning point, shaped more by attitudes and actions among the Christian majority than among Jewish agents. Our findings indicate intensified anti-Jewish tendencies, rooted in religious developments in Western Christendom. According to circumstances, however, these tendencies had a varying impact across time and space. The frequent religious and ecclesiastical reform movements of Western Europe offer cases in point. In the 'German' Empire north of the Alps the monastic reforms of Saint Maximin and Gorze were essential for shaping the historical circumstances in which the foundations of Ashkenazic Judaism were laid in the tenth and early-eleventh centuries. The concept of 'honor' was used by leading ecclesiastics such as bishop Rudiger of Speyer in 1084 to justify the settlement of Jews, but also by civic authorities later on. It is significant for the long-term tendency, therefore, that the late-medieval expulsions from cities like Trier, Cologne, and Regensburg were eventually also legitimized by reference to the idea of honor.