This book investigates the expulsion of Christian moneylenders as well as Jewish communities from later medieval Europe. Based on rich archival research, facilitated by the rise of digitized repositories online, it seeks to shift the explanatory frameworks for expulsion. Showing both secular and ecclesiastical involvement, Rowan Dorin argues that the paradigm that focuses on either the rise of a European “persecuting society” or, on the contrary, only on local context cannot explain the expulsions. The innovative comparative approach also allows the author to question explanatory frameworks for expulsion that are based on the study of Jewish expulsions alone, and therefore emphasize the role of the religious divide. Dorin charts the development of arguments from the twelfth century on to expel moneylenders, and shows that from the beginning of the thirteenth to the mid-fourteenth century, the expulsion of foreign usurers occurred in parallel with expulsions of Jews. In this way, he argues, during the high and later Middle Ages, mass expulsion, which used to be extremely rare, became characteristic of European politics.
The book includes a careful analysis of legal arguments about the expulsion of usurers, as well as case studies of expulsions especially from England and France. It demonstrates the cumulative effect of precedents and examines expulsion as a technique of government. Efforts by English and French kings to move Jews into larger urban settlements, suppressing small communities, could contribute to the development of the idea that expulsion was justified. Moreover, there was no linear emergence of the new practice: ideas were expressed, forgotten, then rediscovered and spread by students of law. Thus, a wide variety of events and legal thinking contributed to the normalization of expulsion.
At the same time, there were many false starts, as well as resistance to adopting the idea, and so local circumstances and decisions could lead to very different results. Indeed, even many ecclesiastics failed to act until external pressure forced them to expel usurers. Dorin does not turn to the easy explanation that moneylenders were too useful or lucrative, but digs deeper to show that while this may of course have been the case, many other possibilities should be considered. Some ecclesiastics may have seen a lesser danger in concentrating moneylending in the hands of a few foreigners, as a way to prevent locals from falling into sin (an attitude similar to that regarding prostitutes). Others found ways around the prohibition by granting citizenship rights or taking an oath from Lombards that they would not engage in moneylending.
Yet with the strengthening of the nexus between usury and expulsion, even traditional protections could wane; eventually, penalties for “foreign usurers” dictated by canon law could override protection granted to Jews when expelling all Jews from many late-medieval European realms. At the same time, the reasoning that both foreign usurers and Jews “siphoned off” the wealth of local communities only appeared after the practice of expulsion was already established; it was a justification for an existing practice, rather than contributing to its formation.
The insistence on the sinfulness of usury also raised various quandaries for the authorities. For example, would collecting tax from usurers make the authorities complicit and contaminate them with sin? At the same time, this reinforced the idea that rulers should expel foreign usurers and Jews: if they protected them, they, too, would be sinfully complicit. Whether they chose to act on this, however, completely, partially, or not at all, was ultimately up to the rulers themselves. This was facilitated by the flexible meaning of “usurer,” which, Dorin argues, was “an accusation about someone's identity, rather than a description of their actual deeds” (233).
Dorin suggests, however, that we should not see expulsion orders that are not carried out as failures. The in-depth analysis of cases where the theoretical right to expel and royal orders of expulsion were not necessarily carried out in practice, such as in 1240 by Henry III of England, demonstrates this. While the mass expulsion of “foreign usurers” was not implemented, it changed the conditions in England for Italian merchant-bankers, who were now in a precarious position, dependent on royal goodwill, and easier targets for financial extortion.
Dorin also reflects briefly on the relationship between mob violence and official expulsions: while mobs may demand such expulsions, authorities were unlikely to listen to their demands. Expulsions were based on political and administrative decisions, rather than popular demands. On the contrary, there was often violence in the wake of expulsions. A useful timeline of expulsions between 1100 and c. 1350, along with a list of local ecclesiastical legislation that threatened usurers with expulsion, complete the volume.
The book is especially rich and nuanced in the presentation of legal arguments, even picking up on how a scribal error could end up leading to legal change, when a “not” was replaced by “even,” expanding the target of the legislation to all usurers, not only foreign ones (134).
