History of the Jews in the Middle Ages

Jewish history in the Middle Ages covers the period from the 5th to the 15th century. During the course of this period, the Jewish population gradually shifted from the Mediterranean Basin to Eastern Europe.

Historically, Jews are believed to have originated from the Israelite tribes of the Land of Israel. Their first migration to Europe began when large numbers of them moved to Italy, France, and Germany in the early 4th century. Afterwards, due to various pogroms that took place during the early Middle Ages, they fled mostly to Poland and Lithuania, and from there spread over the rest of Eastern Europe. These European Jews later came to be known as Ashkenazi Jews.

A pseudo-historical fringe theory known as the Khazar theory, first advanced by French historian Ernest Renan, holds that the Alsatian Jews were originally a Turkic people who had migrated from Southern Russia and established themselves along the Middle and Upper Rhine.

By the 10th century, most of Europe was under the rule of Christian monarchs who made Christianity the official religion of their realms. In the seriously diminished Roman or Byzantine Empire, Christianity had been the state church since the 380 Edict of Thessalonica. This, however, left a privileged niche for Jews in the new order. The Church forbade Christians from charging interest to fellow Christians; therefore the only source of loans were non-Christians such as Jews. While this status did not always lead to peaceful conditions for the Jewish people, they were the most compatible non-Christians for the position due to their shared devotion to the same Abrahamic God that the Christians worshiped. While many Jews rose to prominence in these times, Judaism was mostly practiced in private to avoid persecution. This period was mostly one of insecurity and brutality against the Jewish people. The descendants of the survivors of this period, the Ashkenazi Jews, still commemorate some of the more memorable tragedies of this period in their liturgy.

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