JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

troversies between lenders and debtors. Philip II in France
tried in 1206 and 1218 to emulate the English example, as did
Alfonso IV of Aragon in 1333, and in a somewhat different
way Alfonso XI of Castile in 1348. But outside of England this
system broke down, apparently because neither lenders nor
debtors wished to comply. In any case, the Protestant clergy
of Hesse was not wrong when, in its memorandum of 1538
to the landgrave, it compared the role of Jewish moneylending
with that of a sponge, used by the rulers to suck up the
wealth of the population via usury ultimately to be squeezed
dry by the treasury.
Despite all opposition, Jewish moneylending was an imperative
necessity in many areas. Because of the prevailing
high rates of interest it also was a lucrative business. Emperor
Frederick II’s Sicilian constitution of Melfi of 1231 restricting
the permissible interest rate to 10% remained a dead letter even
in his own kingdom. Somewhat more effective were the maximum
rates of 20% set by certain Aragonese kings and Italian
republics. But for the most part the accepted rates ranged
between 33⅓ and 43⅓%, although sometimes they went up
to double and treble those percentages, or more. Upon their
readmission to France in 1359–60, Jews were specifically allowed
to charge up to 86⅔%. Even some Silesian princes are
recorded to have paid 54% to their Jewish moneylenders. In
the case of the innumerable small loans by petty pawnbrokers,
these high rates were justified by the lenders’ overhead
in receiving weekly interest payments, slow amortization, and
much bookkeeping. But the Lombards who, for the most part,
dealt in large credit transactions nevertheless likewise charged
what the trade could bear.
So long as the economy was on the upswing the resentment
against these high rates of interest was moderate. But
when the European economy entered a period of deceleration
in the late 13th century, further aggravated by recurrent
famines and pestilences, such exorbitant charges, though economically
doubly justified because of the increased risks,
created widespread hostility. They were an important factor
in the growing intolerance aimed at the English, French, and
German Jews. Of course, expelling the Jews from the country,
as England did in 1290 and France in 1306, merely meant replacing
one set of moneylenders by another. Christian creditors,
as a rule, charged even higher rates, partly to compensate
for the increased opprobrium and sinfulness connected with
their trade. As a result, Philip IV’s successor, Louis X, in 1315
revoked the decree of expulsion and called the Jews back to
the country as he claimed, in response to “the clamor of the
people.” Yet when the Jews returned under the royal pledge
that they would be tolerated for at least 12 years, the popular
outcry became so vehement that Philip the Tall broke his
predecessor’s promise and banished the Jews again in 1322.
At the same time in neighboring Italy, where the grandeur
of the Florentine and Genoese bankers was on the decline,
Jews began to be invited by various republics to settle in their
midst and to provide credit “to the needy population.” These
condottas, resembling formal treaties between the govern-
economic history
ments and groups of Jewish bankers, extended to the latter a
variety of privileges for specified periods of time, subject to
renewals. The city of Reggio (Emilia) went so far as to guarantee
to the incoming Jewish bankers that, if they ever were
to sustain losses from a popular riot, the city would fully indemnify
them. This significant chapter in Jewish economic
history, however, began drawing to a close in the latter part of
the 15th century on account of the emergence of the new, rivaling
institution of monti di pietà. These charitable loan banks
were supposed to extend credit to the poor without any interest
and thus make Jews wholly expendable. In itself this was a
laudable idea and spread quickly into countries such as France
from which Jews had long disappeared. At times the monti
were supported by Jewish bankers themselves (for instance,
by Isaac b. Jehiel of Pisa). But most of them assumed from the
outset a strongly antisemitic character. They were propagated
by outspoken anti-Jewish agitators and rabble rousers, especially
*Bernardino da Feltre. Only in Venice, which refused
admission to Da Feltre, did the Serenissima reach a compromise
with the Jews by persuading them to establish the socalled
banchi del ghetto which, financed entirely by Jews, were
to serve an exclusively Christian clientele at nominal rates of
interest. These institutions lasted until the emancipation era
when, upon the entry of the French army into Venice in 1797,
the Jewish community voluntarily transferred the assets of its
five banks to the new republic.
Connected in many ways with banking was Jewish public
service. As under Islam, the Christian rulers could not scrupulously
adhere to the demands of their religious leaders to
keep “infidels” out of any public office lest they exercise dominion
over the faithful. Governments often had to rely on
the religious minorities to provide fiscal experts whose specific
experiences as taxpayers as well as businessmen could be
put to good use by the treasuries for tax collection and necessary
cash advances. In his petition to Alfonso IV of Aragon
(before 1335), requesting the king’s assistance in the collection
of loans from Hospitalers, the Navarrese Jewish banker,
Ezmel b. Juceph de Ablitas, boasted that Alfonso “had never
received so great a service from either a Christian or a Jew as
you have received from me at a single stroke” (M. Kayserling,
“Das Handelshaus Ezmal in Tudela,” in: Jahrbuch fuer Israeliten,
1860, 40–44).
Most widespread was the Jewish contribution to tax
farming. The medieval regimes, as a rule, aided by only small,
inefficient, and unreliable bureaucracies, often preferred to
delegate tax collection to private entrepreneurs who, for a
specified lump sum they paid the treasury, were prepared to
exact the payments due from the taxpayers. Of course, the
risks of undercollection were, as a rule, more than made up by
considerable surpluses obtained, if need be, by ruthless methods.
So indispensable were the Spanish Jewish tax farmers that
the Catholic Monarchs signed such four-year contracts with
Jewish entrepreneurs as late as 1491, only a year before the expulsion.
Among their most prominent collectors was Abraham
Seneor, officially the “rabbi of the court” or chief rabbi
ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 6 113