JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

economic history
gitimate merchants in other laws. Yet Jewish traders were in
the vanguard of those clamoring for redress. Ultimately, this
provision, which German antisemites often denounced as a
Hehlerecht (privilege for “fences”), became a widely accepted
principle in most modern mercantile laws.
Despite these and other legal safeguards, the general insecurity
of Jewish life affected the Jewish merchants as well. A
remarkable illustration is offered by the business ledgers kept
during the years 1300–18 by the important mercantile firm
of Héliot (Elijah) of Vesoul in Franche-Comté. These extant
ledgers reveal both the firm’s effective method of bookkeeping
and its far-flung business interests. Principally a banking
establishment endowed with vast resources, it also bought
and sold merchandise of all kinds either through commenda
agreements with Christian or Jewish traders, or by direct shipment
of its own. It dealt in cloth, linen, and wine produced in
its own vineyards. Héliot also served as a tax collector for the
government. Characteristically, the ledgers also include entries
relating to horses and carriages used by members of the firm
for business travel as far as Germany and Flanders. Héliot was
also very precise in delivering the ecclesiastical tithes to the
churches, notwithstanding scruples he may have had in thus
contributing to the upkeep of non-Jewish religious institutions.
His career was cut short, however, when in 1322 Philip
the Tall extended his decree of expulsion of the Jews from
France to Burgundy as well. Two years later Héliot’s house was
given away to a lady-in-waiting of the queen.
In spite of all these difficulties Jewish commerce, particularly
in the more friendly Mediterranean lands, frequently
flourished and became another mainstay of the Jewish economy.
In the 12th century a German rabbi, Eliezer b. Nathan,
could assert that “nowadays we are living on commerce only”
(Sefer Even ha-Ezer (Prague, 1610), 53d no. 295).
Commerce included money trade in its various ramifications,
particularly moneylending. Because of their general
insecurity and frequently enforced mobility, Jews under Christendom
were not good risks for deposits. Unlike the Jews under
Islam, they could not compete with the stability of deposits
in churches or such major banks as the Banco di San Giorgio
in 12th-century Genoa. Their rabbis, therefore, fell back
on the talmudic regulation that treasures should be buried in
the soil, which was not always feasible in the crowded Jewish
quarters. Burying them out of town subjected the owner to
the risk of some stranger accidentally discovering the place
of burial and appropriating the treasure trove. Moreover,
even accumulations of savings by Jewish communal bodies
were subject to seizure by unfriendly rulers. In 1336 King
John of Bohemia not only confiscated the communal “treasure
trove” kept in the old synagogue of Prague but also fined
the Bohemian elders for concealing its presence from him.
Minting could occasionally help support a Jewish individual,
especially in backward areas. But generally the manufacture
of coins was a governmental enterprise, even if exercised by
some local baron or city council (there were, indeed, many
kinds of coins and even scrip circulated by such local rulers).
On the other hand, coin clipping, whether for the purpose of
reminting or for that of using the gold or silver in the fabrication
of some industrial objects, was considered a major crime
if indulged in by private individuals, although it was accepted
as a perfectly legitimate performance on the part of governments.
One such accusation of coin clipping, real or alleged,
supposedly resulted in 1278–79 in the execution of 293 English
Jews and was partially responsible for the decree of expulsion
of 1290 (H.G. Richardson, English Jewry, 218ff.). Finally, notwithstanding
the great variety of coins in circulation, money
changing likewise seems to have been only a minor sideline
of Jewish banking, if we are to judge from the paucity of references
thereto in the extant sources.
Moneylending, however, increasingly became the lifeblood
of the Jewish economy at large. It was abetted by the
increasing Christian prohibition on usury which was broadly
defined by Richard, son of Nigel, as “receiving, like the Jews,
more than we have lent of the same substance by virtue of a
contract” (Dialogus de Scaccario, trans. by C. Johnson, 99f.).
It was an uphill struggle for the Church because, down to the
12th century, the clergy themselves often indulged in moneylending
on interest, a practice surreptitiously pursued by
some priests even later. Jews also encountered stiff competition
from Lombards and Cahorsins, often styled the papal
usurers for their major services in transferring ecclesiastical
dues to Rome. However, Jews had the advantage of being
able openly to engage in this legally obnoxious business; as a
matter of fact they did it as a rule with considerable governmental
support.
In fact, kings considered Jewish gains via moneylending
as an increase of their own resources. This was basically the
meaning of “belong to the imperial chamber,” a stereotype
phrase referring to Jews found in many imperial privileges in
German, implying that the Jews were the “king’s treasure,” as
they were designated in Spanish decrees. When in 1253 Elias
of Chippenham left England and took along his own bonds,
Henry III prosecuted him because he had “thievishly carried
off Our proper chattels.” This nexus did not escape the attention
of hostile observers who often blamed the princes for
the excesses of their Jewish usurers. In his letter of 1208 to the
count of Nevers the powerful Pope Innocent III complained
that while certain princes “themselves are ashamed to exact
usury, they receive Jews into their hamlets [villis] and towns
and appoint them their agents for the collection of usury” (S.
Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the 13th Century, 126f.). Although
in a special pamphlet De regimine judaeorum Thomas
Aquinas tried to appease the conscience of Princess Aleyde (or
Margaret) of Brabant for deriving benefits from Jewish taxation
largely originating from usurious income, one of his most
distinguished commentators, Cardinal Tommaso Vio Cajetan,
sweepingly declared that “the gain accruing to a prince from
a usurer’s revenue makes him an accessory to the crime.” The
better to control Jewish revenues, the English administration
introduced in 1194 the system of public chests (*archae) into
which all bonds had to be deposited, supposedly to avoid con-
112 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6