introduction and sources

The early Middle Ages saw the establishment of Jewish life in major parts of Europe. In this period the Mediterranean–Hellenistic Jewry of antiquity separated and developed into Byzantine–southern Italian, Roman, Catalan-southern French and Arabic–Sicilian branches. During the later part of the period Ashkenazic (north-western and northern European) and Sephardic (Iberian) Jewry came into being as distinctive entities very different from earlier patterns. There were (probably) also some Jews in eastern Europe, of which almost nothing is known but a vague association with Byzantium. Jews held to a common creed yet differed in language, religious custom and ritual, social organisation, occupations and legal standing, a fact that militates against easy historical inferences from an ostensibly fixed character. At different times and to differing degrees, they were under the influence of the centres of gravity – demographic, religious, intellectual – of Jewish life in the Middle East, especially Palestine and Babylonia. Compared to these, throughout most of the period under consideration, European Jews in numbers or intellectual creativity were yet barely remarkable. None the less, modern historians have usually accorded them a significance out of proportion. In this they faithfully followed medieval churchmen, to whom Jews presented a challenge far in excess of their actual presence and impact.

It is thus not by accident that our view is further hampered by an ambiguous and severely unbalanced source tradition. For the greater part of Europe there exists a considerable body of texts of ecclesiastical provenance – the Lives and miracles of saints, chronicles and histories, epistles, form letters, the decisions of synods, canonical collections, theological treatises – complemented by lawcodes, imperial or royal legislation and charters.