The time has come to attempt a composite picture of the Jewish experience in medieval western Christendom, in both material and spiritual terms. The preceding surveys of the diverse Jewish communities that constituted medieval Jewry in Latin Christendom suggest that such a composite picture must necessarily blur some of the idiosyncrasies of the specific communities in favor of a more generalized portrait, but such blurring is unavoidable. On the material plane, the core of this more generalized portrait involves identification of the obstacles that threatened to obstruct – and in some instances did obstruct – successful Jewish acceptance into the European environment and delineation of the Jewish responses to those obstacles. On the spiritual plane, the core of this more generalized portrait involves the pressures brought to bear on Jewish identity and the Jewish efforts to meet and surmount these pressures.

The Jewish experience upon which we have focused has been judged by some a success and by others a failure. Ultimately, however, the Jewish effort to establish a presence in medieval western Christendom while maintaining fidelity to Jewish tradition cannot be simplistically judged either a success or a failure. This Jewish effort involved both successes and failures, and the combination of achievement and shortcoming must be presented in all its complexity.

Historical experience, of course, flows unbounded. While we have isolated a period in the history of western Christendom and designated it “medieval,” in fact there was unbroken continuity between 1499 and 1501, between the fourteenth century and the sixteenth century, between medieval and modern Jewish experience in Europe.