Interactions between Jews and Christians in Later Medieval Provence

This study uses an extensive body of archival evidence from Latin-Christian sources to explore economic and social interactions between Provençal Jews and Christians. Evidence discussed in section one indicates that the city’s Jewish and Christian communities interacted to a significant degree, and not just in the domain of moneylending. Data derived from a network analysis suggests that Jews were prominent in providing brokerage services. In the second section, analysis of a small sample of Jewish estate inventories indicates that the material profiles of Jewish and Christian families were very similar. In the third section, an analysis of a register of debt collection shows that Jews were involved in credit relations at a rate that was proportional to their population. Jewish moneylenders filled an economic niche by providing Christians with the liquidity to pay off structural debts generated by the political economy of rents and taxes.

Between Foreigners, Strangers and Jews: The Changing Perception of Parisian Jews on the Eve of the 1306 Expulsion

An unpublished document from late thirteenth-century Paris contains evidence of a Jewish-Christian public confrontation, on the one hand, and of Jewish-Christian economic criminal collaboration on the other. Using methods of micro-history, this article traces the story of Merot the Jew and his father-in-law, Benoait of St. Denis, who were caught attempting to smuggle merchandise by way of the River Seine. Their story is told in a verdict handed down by the parloir de Paris, the municipal judicial authority in charge of economic infractions. The parloir decreed the complete confiscation of Merot and Benoait’s merchandise on the grounds that “they were foreigners.” Taking this terminology as a point of departure, this paper tackles broader socio-economic aspects of belonging and foreignness among medieval Parisian Jews, and asks: in what ways were Jews considered “foreigners” in late thirteenth-century Paris? What were the implications of such a designation, and how did these perceptions change in the years leading up to the expulsion of 1306?

Pawned Horses: Risk and Liability in Fourteenth Century German Small-Credit Market

Many Jewish-Christian credit transactions relied on pawns as collateral, which presumably eliminated the risk in the case of debtors’ default. However, keeping and maintaining certain pawns involved particular risks that further complicated these transactions. This paper focuses on live pawns, specifically horses, where the safekeeping of the animal involved far greater difficulties and risks than with other valuable objects that were pawned with Jews. By tracing how legal norms and practices addressed some of the unique risks attached to receiving horses as pawns, this article will outline the expectations both Jews and Christians had when engaging in credit transaction secured by horses. Relying on responsa literature, urban legislation, and court cases from the late thirteenth to mid-fourteenth centuries, this analysis will discuss some of the complications relating to liability over live pawns, with the goal of demonstrating how a specific type of pawn, and its unique risks and benefits, reflects previous assumptions and expectations regarding risk and trust.

Bees in the Medieval Maghreb: Wax, Honey and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Western Mediterranean

Believed to originate in Paradise and set apart in their chastity, bees were potent religious symbols in medieval Christianity and Islam. This article explores how these beliefs drove an extensive trade in wax and honey, and examines the role of Jews, conversos, Christians, and Muslims in this trade. Further, it considers the environmental context and the extent to which religious prohibitions against trade between Christians and Muslims may have provided economic opportunities for Jewish merchants, while examining the economic and cultural relationships between members of the three Abrahamic religions.

Dismantling a Monopoly: Jews, Christians, and the Production of Shofarot in Fifteenth-Century Germany

This essay presents a case study from Erfurt (Germany) concerning the production of shofarot (i.e., animal horns blown for ritual purposes, primarily on the Jewish New Year). By the early 1420s, Jews from all over the Holy Roman Empire had been purchasing shofarot from one Christian workshop in Erfurt that produced these ritual Jewish objects in cooperation with an unnamed Jewish craftsman. At the same time, two Jews from Erfurt were training in this craft, and started to produce shofarot of their own making. One of these Jewish craftsmen claimed that the Christian workshop had been deceiving the Jews for decades by providing improper shofarot made with materials unsuitable for Jewish ritual use. The local rabbi, Yomtov Lipman, exposed this as a scandal, writing letters to the German Jewish communities about the Christian workshop’s fraud and urging them all to buy new shofarot from the new Jewish craftsmen in Erfurt instead. This article will first examine the fraud attributed to the Christian workshop. Then, after analyzing the historical context of Yomtov Lipman’s letter, it will explore the underlying motivations of this rabbi to expose the Christian workshop’s fraud throughout German Jewish communities at this time. I will argue that, while Yomtov Lipman uses halakhic explanations in his letter, his chief motivation in exposing this fraud was to discredit the Christian workshop, create an artificial demand for shofarot, and promote the new Jewish workshop in Erfurt, whose craftsmen the rabbi himself had likely trained in the art of shofar making.

The Archae System Revisited: The Records of Indebtedness to Medieval Jews

This article examines on document acknowledging debt to Maruna, a Jewish woman, to John of Kent that was deposited in a chest in Canterbury in 1264. Using this document, the article examines what can be learned about the archae system in thirteenth-century England from the perspective of the documents which were produced there. A series of chests (Lat. pl. archae) were established across England following the introduction of the Articles of the Jewry (1194), which regulated the production, use, and storage of the records generated by Jewish moneylending activities in medieval England. Additionally, the Articles of the Jewry required that more general business transactions, such as the sale and purchase of property, also be recorded at the archae. This paper considers not only the legal and administrative structures which governed the production of such records but also how these systems manifested themselves within the documents which produced at the archae. Finally, it will consider the role that ritual and gender had to play in such transactions and the documents which recorded them.