The history of the Jews: From the war with Rome to the present time

The history of the Jews in France, in the thirteenth century, may be regarded as terminating with their second expulsion from that country by Philip the Fair. That king died in 1314, and was succeeded by Louis X., called in history Hutin, or Mutin (the Turbulent). One of the first acts of the new king was to recall the Jews, who not only consented to return to a land where for generations past they had experienced nothing but harsh and contemptuous usage, but even to pay a heavy price for the privilege. Nothing gives us a stronger idea of the utter helplessness and friendlessness of the Hebrew people at this period than the readiness with which they would accept any conditions whatever that seemed to promise them protection for the moment against violent or lawless outrage. A semblance of justice, indeed, was shown them: their synagogues were restored to them, and their worship again permitted; they recovered the privilege of burying their dead in their ancient graveyards. Nay, such debts as were still owing to them—the greater portion having been already paid over to the king, who had condescended to make himself their trustee—they were allowed to claim before the public tribunals, conditionally always on their paying two-thirds of it into the royal treasury.[131] In the reign of Philip the Long, a few years afterwards, something like fairness and even mercy seems to have been shown them, possibly as a set-off to the king’s exaction of 150,000 livres from them. They were allowed to lend on usury to certain persons and on certain conditions; they might acquire property in houses and land; and they were not required to wear their distinguishing badge while travelling from one town to another.

About this time (A.D. 1319) a novel charge was preferred against them, and which we might believe to have been at least founded on fact, if it did not seem impossible that the Jews of those times could have been guilty of such suicidal rashness. At Lunel they were accused of travestying the Saviour’s passion—not (as was the ordinary charge) by the crucifixion of a Christian boy—but by carrying a crucifix in a public procession, reviling it as they went, dragging it through mire and filth, and heaping reproaches upon it.[132] For this offence they were tried, convicted, and punished.

But in 1321 a far more serious calamity befell them. It has been recorded that during the captivity in the East of Louis IX. a multitude of peasants assembled, and declared themselves commissioned from on high to rescue their beloved sovereign from bondage, and they had evidenced their zeal in the cause of Heaven by acts of barbarity towards the Jews. There was no king to be rescued now; but the Holy Land itself was in bondage, and there were vague prophecies current among them that it could be reconquered only by the mean and lowly. They were headed by a degraded priest and mendicant friar, who affected special sanctity of life, and claimed to work miracles in proof of their sacred mission. They were followed by large multitudes, who ravaged the southern provinces of France, and especially Languedoc, everywhere breaking open the prisons, and swelling their ranks by enlisting the criminals whom they let loose. They spared their Christian fellow-subjects as much as they could, but displayed the most relentless barbarity towards the Jews, whom they everywhere pillaged, outraged, and murdered. The Jews appealed to the Pope and to the king. The former issued an anathema against the insurgents, but it was altogether disregarded; the latter sent a few horsemen to their aid, who, however, were utterly powerless to help them. They fled in despair to the shelter of any fortified places which would refuse admittance to the Shepherds. Five hundred found a refuge in a castle at Verdun, on the Garonne, which the governor allowed them to occupy. Their enemies followed and besieged them. After a stout and desperate defence, finding themselves unable to hold out any longer, they threw some of their children over the walls, and then (as at Masada and at York) slew each other to a man. When the besiegers broke in, they found no living enemy!

All over Languedoc, at Angouleme, and at Bordeaux, frightful massacres of Jews took place. The excuse alleged for them was, that the plunder of the Jews was necessary to the ‘armies of the Lord,’ in order to equip them properly for the recovery of Palestine. But, terrible as were their sufferings from the violence of the fanatics, what ensued was even more full of horror. The outbreak was followed, as might have been anticipated, by an epidemic pestilence—the natural result of the scarcity of wholesome food and the corruption of so many human carcases. But the people, possessed as they were by the worst form of religious mania, were easily persuaded by their leaders that the malady was caused by the poisoning of wells and rivers, which again was the work of the Jews. The Sieur de Parthenay wrote word to the king that ‘a great leper, seized on his land, had confessed to him that he had received from a rich Jew a consignment of drugs, which were to be enclosed in bags and thrown into the wells.’[133] The king returned in alarm from Poitou, which he had been visiting, and ordered that all lepers should be arrested and put to the question—that is, examined by torture. This mode of inquiry elicited the usual results. The unhappy sufferers in their agony confessed everything of which they had been suspected, however monstrous or incredible it might be. It appeared that there had been a conspiracy between the infidel kings of Tunis and Granada, the Jews, and the lepers, Satan himself presiding at the conference. Woe and misery were to be wrought on the Christians by the poisoning of the water which they drank. The lepers were straightway ordered to be burned, pregnant women alone being spared, and they only until the time of their delivery. In the instance of the Jews not even this mercy seems to have been shown: they were burned without distinction. At Chignon a great trench was dug, fires were kindled in it, and 160 Jews burned alive—men and women together. Many women, with their children in their arms, voluntarily threw themselves into the flames to escape baptism. In the royal prison at Vitry forty Jews, who were persuaded that no mercy would be shown them, resolved to die by their own hands rather than by those of the uncircumcised. They therefore fixed upon one of their own number, an aged man greatly honoured and beloved, and requested him to become their executioner. He consented to undertake the office, with the help of a youth whom he chose for the purpose. When all but these two had been slain, the old man ordered the youth to kill him also. He was obeyed; but the young man, lacking the resolution to take his own life, attempted to escape from the prison, when he was taken prisoner, and confessed what had taken place.

In the midst of these horrors Philip V. died (A.D. 1322), and his successor, Charles IV., was pleased to pardon the hapless survivors of this bloody persecution—conditionally, however, on the payment of a large subsidy. When this had been received, the Jews were permitted to leave their prisons, gather together what they could of their effects, and leave the kingdom. It is evident, however, that the whole Hebrew population could not have quitted the country; or, if they did, they soon began to return unnoticed to it, for in 1348, when a second visitation of the same terrible disease once more desolated the land, we find that the old calumny was renewed, and with the same merciless result, the sword of the law being let loose to slay those whom the pestilence had spared. Indeed, it is evident that, notwithstanding their multiplied miseries and wrongs, the Jews were still anxious to obtain the permission of their persecutors to reside among them, for we find them in 1360 bargaining with King John (who had been defeated and captured by the Black Prince) to supply him with the means of paying the ransom due from him, conditionally on their being permitted to dwell in France without molestation for the space of twenty years. A Jew named Manasseh (or Menecier, as he was styled) conducted the bargain on the part of the Jews. The fee for readmission to France was fixed at fourteen florins for each adult; for children and servants, one florin. Similarly, the annual fee for continued residence was seven florins and one florin. They were to be exempted from all taxes except land-tax. They were to be allowed to hold landed property, build synagogues, and possess cemeteries, and to be exempted from baronial jurisdiction, being placed directly under that of the king himself. They were also exempted from what had been always felt by them a heavy burden—the necessity of listening to controversial sermons, preached in the hope of converting them.

It was not without difficulty that the regent, afterwards Charles V., called the Wise, enforced the observance of these conditions, as he seems to have done in all good faith. Not long after his accession the clergy in Languedoc published a sentence of excommunication against all who should supply the Jews with fire or water, bread or wine. But, on receiving an appeal against this severity, the king issued his ordinance annulling the decree, as being alike unjust to the Jews and dishonourable to the Church. He twice renewed the compact with the Jews, once for six and once for ten years, receiving for the renewal 3000 gold livres. It is evident that during this interval of repose the wealth of the detested race had again accumulated. In 1378 they lent Charles 20,000 livres, and engaged to provide him with 200 more every week. But the usual result followed: the people began to clamour at the heavy burdens laid upon them, which they declared were imposed only for the purpose of ministering to the greed and luxury of the usurers. In the September of 1380 Charles V. died, and was succeeded by his son, a minor twelve years old. Soon after, a tumultuous outbreak took place in consequence of the regent, the Duke of Anjou, having confirmed the privilege granted to the Jews by the late king. All classes joined in it. The nobles, who, as usual, were deeply indebted to the Hebrew usurers, called out for their expulsion from the country, as the readiest mode of clearing themselves of their liabilities; the people, instigated probably by them, pillaged and destroyed the offices where the registers of debts were kept, and further gratified their enmity to the hateful race by plundering their houses of such valuables as they could lay their hands on, and by tearing their children from them and carrying them to the churches, where the clergy were always ready to baptize them. The regent endeavoured to suppress the disturbance; he issued a proclamation requiring all persons, on pain of death, to restore the spoil of which they had possessed themselves. But we are told that very few obeyed the order.

The regent persisted, however, in the policy he had adopted; and during the earlier years of Charles VI.’s reign the Jews were treated by the State with equity and mercy. But the evil lay too deep for any legislation to remedy. The distress of the country increased, and with it the difficulty of obtaining money. There was but one class from which money could be obtained, the Jews—and they unwisely abused the power thus put into their hands. Regardless of the angry passions which they were rousing, they continued their ruinous rates of usury until about fourteen years after the accession of Charles VI. Then the storm burst suddenly upon them, and they were once more commanded to quit the country. The step in question was taken in consequence of the condition into which the unfortunate young monarch had now sunk. His melancholy madness rendered him peculiarly liable to the influence of the clergy, who were for ever representing to him the guilt of standing between an accursed people and the vengeance of the God whom they had offended. The queen was won over to side with the persecuting party. The clergy, the nobles, and the people already belonged to it. Nothing for a long time had stood between the Jews and the sentence of banishment but the justice of the king. This barrier was now removed, and the blow fell heavily and suddenly. They were suffered to depart on milder terms than on previous occasions. Leave was given them to recover all debts due to them, and to sell their property as advantageously as they could. But they were allowed only one month in which to wind up their affairs, and then they crossed for the last time the frontiers of France.[134]