Money Matters Jews Christians and the Medieval Market

2020

Understanding a habitus that makes ones productive and financially well-off has been a widespread interest regardless of professions and places of living. Countless studies have sought the source of economic success in cultural, historical, and moral dimensions, but few studies could yield a specific character that can make a person rich because the question is profoundly individualistic. In The Protestant Ethic and the "Spirit" of Capitalism (1904), Max Weber famously explores the difference among religious denominations in seeking the historical reasons of economic stratification, while he claims at the same time that "religious allegiance is not a cause but to a certain degree a consequence of economic phenomena." 1 Despites this insight, much literature after Weber has discussed that religion plays a role of shaping a specific habit that leads to economic development. Economic history of medieval Latin West has been one of the most prominent examples that assign an "economic function" to a particular religious people, and within it, the Jewish moneylenders situated in the Christian majority often stand out as a precursor of profit-making and later capitalistic movements. However, the association of Jewish moneylending with the commercialization of the medieval society has offered a highly Christian-centric and occasionally anti-Judaic picture of European economic development. In observing this persistent stereotype, The Myth of the Medieval Jewish Moneylender (Volume I in 2017 and II in 2018) by Julie L. Mell critiques how much the traditional narratives on monetary economy in medieval Europe have been dependent on the image of Jewish usurious practice, which on the other hand Christian moral teaching had prohibited.

Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism, ed. by Steven Katz, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2022

The trope of the Jewish moneylender has taken different forms over the centuries: the Jewish "usurers" of medieval England and France, the "Shylocks" of Renaissance Italy, "Jud Süss" and the Court Jews of Central Europe, and the "Rothschilds" of 19th-century international banking. There is little empirical evidence for Jewish preeminence in moneylending. 1 Yet the association of Jews with money has been pervasive, figuring in anti-Jewish accusations from medieval expulsions to The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, from the Holocaust to Le Happy Merchant memes. This essay will trace the emergence of the stereotype in medieval Europe. The trope of the Jewish moneylender also has its philosemitic versions. For well over a century, liberal historians, sociologists, and political economists have described medieval Jews as modernizers fulfilling a special economic function: Jews provided creditthe ingredient necessary for economic developmentat a time when Christians could not or would not. Jews, in consequence, suffered a tragic antisemitic backlash. The liberal-economic narrative counters antisemitic economic stereotypes by inverting them, making the "Jewish predilection for moneymaking" a contribution to the nation. Antisemitic or philosemitic, the assumption of an association between Jews and money remains a dangerous trope, a stereotype disconnected from economic realities. Jews were neither medieval Europe's chief moneylenders nor the credit engine for emergent commercial capitalism. Jews did loan money, but the majority of professional moneylenders, money changers,

Religion and the Medieval and Early Modern Global Marketplace, 2021

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Palgrave, 2018

his book challenges a common historical narrative, which portrays medieval Jews as moneylenders who filled an essential economic role in Europe. Where Volume I traced the development of the narrative in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and refuted it with an in-depth study of English Jewry, Volume II explores the significance of dissolving the Jewish narrative for European history. It extends the study from England to northern France, the Mediterranean, and central Europe and deploys the methodologies of legal, cultural, and religious history alongside economic history. Each chapter offers a novel interpretation of key topics, such as the Christian usury campaign, the commercial revolution, and gift economy / profit economy, to demonstrate how the revision of Jewish history leads to new insights in European history.

Religion and Theology, 2012

European Review of History: Revue Européene D’Histoire, 2017

PALGRAVE STUDIES IN CULTURAL AND INTELLECTUAL HISTORY, 2017

This book challenges a common historical narrative, which portrays medieval Jews as moneylenders who filled an essential economic role in Europe. It traces how and why this narrative was constructed as a philosemitic narrative in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries in response to the rise of political antisemitism. This book also documents why it is a myth for medieval Europe, and illuminates how changes in Jewish history change our understanding of European history. Each chapter offers a novel interpretation of central topics, such as the usury debate, commercial contracts, and moral literature on money and value to demonstrate how the revision of Jewish history leads to new insights in European history.