A.D. 1300-1400.
THE JEWS IN FRANCE.
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]
FOOTNOTES:
[131] It is noteworthy that this very scant and dubious measure
of justice is acknowledged by Rabbi Joshua in terms of great
thankfulness. ‘He allowed the Jews,’ says Joshua, ‘to live in his
kingdom, for they found favour in his eyes; and he accepted their
persons.’
[132] It may be doubted whether this was not a simple attempt to
celebrate the Feast of Purim—_the_ feast in which they took such
special delight. Possibly the supposed crucifix was the figure of
Haman on his gallows. See Appendix V.
[133] The supposed composition of the drugs in question shows an
amount of ignorance, grossness of thought, and irreverence, which
it would be difficult to match in all history: ‘Fiebant de sanguine
humano et urinâ cum tribus herbis. Ponebatur etiam Corpus Christi, et
cum essent omnia desiccata usque ad pulverem terebantur.’
[134] No formal decree for their restoration was subsequently made,
but it is at least doubtful whether the exclusion was rigidly
enforced, even in the ages immediately following the decree of
banishment. In some places—as for instance Metz—they do not seem to
have been meddled with.