"And therefore they (the Jews) must practise usury, and this is their living; but the usury of the Christians is not their living, in them it is only greed and heinous wickedness," wrote the Town Recorder of Eisenach, John Purgoldt. Stobbe, The Jews in the Middle Ages, p. 108. From the reign of king Wenceslaus on, the Jews were treated like a moneybag that is emptied as soon as the contents were believed to be worth the consideration.

And this was the only protection on which this unhappy people could rely, for just as in Schaffhausen (1401) and Budweis (1504) all the Jewish inhabitants had been burnt, there were negotiations about it in Frankfort as well (1516), until the ambassador of Fulda interfered and remarked that such burning would injure the treasury of his master.

The Bishop of Augsburg solicited the Emperor Charles IV. for the privilege "to receive and harbour Jews" of course, not from love of the Jews but for using them as a sponge. On the solicitation of the Archbishop Gerlach of Mayence, Charles IV., in the Reichstag of Nuremberg (November 1356), granted to all the Electors, in the "Golden Bull", the privilege besides the royal prerogative for ore and salt-mines - of keeping Jews, i. e. he ceded them this source of riches as well as the other one, the ore and saltmines.

When the Jews asked Henry III. to spare them, as they had no more to give, he replied: "You must not be astonished if I ask for money, but it is horrible to think of my debts. I must get money, no matter from what source."

Under the date of 1180, a chronicler of Philip Augustus, the King of France, writes: "The Jews were taken prisoners on the Sabbath, though they had done nothing to offend the king, and not till they had paid a ransom of 15000 gold-marks were they set free and could breathe again". Philip le Bel had picked out the 22nd of July, the day of Mary Magdalen, which that year concided with the ninth of Ab, to confiscate all the possessions and money of the Jews.

On the 19th of May, 1479, the Bohemian King Wladislaw published an edict concerning the Jews together with a privilege of usury (Palacky, History of Bohemia V, I, p. 445). The king

The Jews and the Economic Life in the Middle Ages

161

justifies his granting a higher rate of interest to the Jews, as

follows:

(1) The Jew must first do his duty towards us;

(2) he must pay the lord to whose protection he has trusted himself;

(3) he must pay the interest as well;

(4) there hardly is an office which he makes use of that lets him off gratis, and lastly, he must have something in order to be able to live with his wife and children.

VI. Christian Usury in the Middle Ages.

He who goes to documentary evidence for a History of Usury will hear no end of complaints about the Christian usury being far more cruel that that practised by Jews.

When, in the year 1146, St. Bernard of Clairvaux, during the second crusade, counseled against persecuting the Jews, he insisted that the Christian userers who, properly speaking, could not be called Christians, were far worse than the Jews. (Hahn, History of the Heretics, III p. 16; Neumann, History of Usury p. 292 ff.)

The same thing was said repeatedly by the barons. (Depping, Les Juifs au moyen âge, p. 124.)

The theory of Lamprecht that in Germany money-lending was practised until the 12th century by the clergy, in the 13th by citizens and noblemen, in the 14th by the Jews, may be inaccurate as to the dates, but it is correct in that the Jews were only one agent, among many, serving the same purpose.

The Bishop Hermann of Bamberg was charged by his clergy before the Pope of engaging, more and more eagerly, in the practice of money-lending and usury which he had learned in his youth. The same applies to the nobles. Commerce and money transactions, it is true, were, in the Middle Ages, considered beneath a nobleman. All the same the nobles utilized their capital and the surplus of their estates for their own benefit and for exploiting the economically weaker classes, in particular the yeomen and, for a time, also the rising towns.

11 Bloch, Israel and the Nations.

The Paris Synod of 829 A. D. complains that the landed nobility oppress the small holders by extortion and usury to such a degree that nothing of their vineyards is left to them. "They take advantage of their distress and purchase their country produce at the third part of its real value”.

And the citizens, too, had a large share in the money business. Convents and chapters, when in need, apply to town capitalists. Bishops and archbishops have recourse to them when they need money for their elections, for warlike expeditions, or for their journeys to Rome. The borrowing student is not absent from the picture. High gains were realized in these transactions. But in all these cases, frequent as the loans were, no regular and professional business was done. This was practised by the bankers, Lombards and Jews.

And yet, whenever there is the question of money lending and usury during the Middle Ages, one generally mentions the Jews and their trade. This is due to the fact that only the Jews practised their moneylending business openly, that they were freely permitted to pocket their legally fixed interest, while the other money-lenders were compelled, through the ecclesiastic legislation which punished the taking of interest severely, to cover up their dealings in order to circumvent in every possible way the economically untenable prohibition.

After the great plague in the middle of the 14th century, when, in Germany and Switzerland, the Jews were accused of well poisoning, and consequently were robbed and murdered, the inhabitants of Pisa, as a suitable means of enhancing trade and increasing the population of the city, invited Jews, to whom they granted many privileges. Thus, for instance, the great council of the commonwealth of Pisa, by the decree of the 28th June of 1354, granted the Jews complete exemption from all burdens, taxes and personal services. They were not to be oppressed or vexed by officials and were to enjoy complete liberty.

When, in the year 1399, Pisa came under the rule of the duke Galeazzo, Viscount of Milan, his governor, the Bishop of Veltre, made an agreement with recently immigrated Jewish money

lenders. Among other things, undisturbed Sabbath observance was promised them; they were relieved from wearing the Jewish badge, and able to acquire the status of citizens; 212 percent a month was fixed as the maximum rate of interest. The Jews in Perugia and Siena were granted similar privileges. It was not a rare phenomenon for Christian money-lenders and money-changers to lend money at a rate of interest of 32 to 108 percent, or to be found guilty of the abuse of pushing up prices. They bought up grain and wheat in order to bring about an advance in prices. In the 14th century, regular societies for this trade, in which Jews had no share, were formed. One lent money before the harvest and the vintage in order to get the fruit cheaper at harvest time. Even the clergy took part in these transactions.

Roscher attributes to the Jews a threefold service in quickening the economic development in the Middle Ages. "To them is due the introduction and frankly consistent carrying out of interest on capital without which there would be no credit, no formation of capital, and no division of labour. It was to their business methods that the protection of the bona-fide possession of fairly acquired property was granted. And they share with others the merit of having introduced and propagated the bill of exchange."

Trade and commerce, on the contrary, were fatally prejudiced and the whole prosperity of nations undermined by the nonJewish Societies for buying and pushing up prices, the Höchstetters in Augsburg who in the year 1529 failed for a sum of 800 000 gulden; of George Neumayer who, in the year 1572, cheated his creditors of 200 000 gulden; the brothers Manlich who, two years later, declared themselves bankrupt with liabilities of 700 000 gulden; of the "Thuringian Pepper Trade Society in Leipsic" whose silent partners were the Elector August of Saxonia as well as the kings Sebastian and Henry of Portugal, and whose extortionate exploitation brought unspeakable misery on Central Germany, &c. The list of these non-Jewish companies of exploiters might easily be increased by dozens of

names.

As for the island of Sicily, from which the Jews were expelled, Mrs. Jessie Willario, an English authoress, writes: Since the bigot Ferdinand expelled the Jews from the island, to the regret of the whole population which was neither exploited nor oppressed by them, the poor island has been consumed by Christian harpies who with unparalleled insolence fleeced prosperous people as well as poor workmen.

In a similar vein, the preacher George Scherer who lived about the end of the 16th century and was a member of the order of Jesuits, in one of his sermons (reprinted in Jannsen's History of the German Nation VIII) tells his Christian audience:

We tear and bite, and flay and shave, and press and squeeze one another that it is a shame and disgrace. One sets upon the other with usury as the hounds do the game; the Jews are much more merciful and compassionate towards each other than we Christians who boast of baptism and the true knowledge of the Holy Gospels. Through damnable usury we cheat our fellow-Christian out of hearth and home, of everything he possesses; the usurers are trained to it. I know a usurer who takes for one gulden five pence a week, that makes not more than 105 a year. Out upon him! Another lends one 1000 gulden, but he only gives 500 gulden ready money, and this in such coins that the borrower must lose by them; the rest he gives in spoiled goods appraised at their dearest, in cloth spoiled by lying about, in dubious bills, in sour wine, in lame horses, &c. All this he adds to the principal sum, and reckons 8 or 10 per cent in the price. Is not that an un-Christian and fiendish usury? They do it openly and without fear and under the eyes of the great princes and gentlemen, they sit in high offices and wear gold chains. These great thieves have the little thieves hanged, just as if only petty theft were forbidden, and not much more so public robbery and usury. By severe statues the Jews have been forbidden to take usury, but the Christians surpass the Jews in money-lending and usury, and prick people more strongly with the Jewish pike than the Jews themselves who, years ago, were compelled to wear yellow badges.

Another Catholic preacher, in the year 1585, said:

But with the Christians, as many philosophers would have it, one is to deal softly when usury and usurious parasites and contracts are mentioned; only the Jews are to be defamed, trampled upon, they are to be overwhelmed by misfortunes,and spat upon as enemies of God and mankind. By your leave, Mr. Neighbour and Christian usurer, in my opinion the baptised Jews are much worse and deserve severer punishment than the unbaptized ones; and the wicked vice of usury which