Study of the Jews of medieval western Christendom must properly begin with the older Jewish communities of the south. By the year 1000, the Jewish settlements scattered throughout the Christian principalities along the northern littoral of the Mediterranean Sea were well established, although not particularly large. They could trace their origins far back into antiquity. With the extension of Roman rule into the eastern Mediterranean basin and the conquest of Judea toward the end of the first pre-Christian millennium, the way was clear for increasing numbers of Jews to move westward across the southern and northern shores of the “Roman lake,” and they did so, establishing Jewish enclaves that would last through antiquity, on into the Middle Ages, and – in some cases – down into modernity as well.

We shall treat first the Jewry of southern France, which by virtue of its more interior position was less exposed to the incursion of external forces. Part of a broad Mediterranean culture that stretched from Spain in the west through Italy in the east, southern France was from the beginning of our period through its end fully within the Christian orbit. The history of southern France thus has a somewhat linear quality to it. We shall next proceed to the Iberian peninsula, which at the beginning of our period lay largely under Muslim control.