9. Whole Jewish communities were banished from countries throughout the Middle Ages
In England, the Jews were not blamed for the Black Death for the simple reason that there weren’t any left. King Edward I issued his Edict of Expulsion in 1290, banishing all the Jews from England. He’d been busily persecuting them for over a decade because the crown was in debt to Jewish moneylenders (and executing Jewish ‘criminals’ was an easy way to curry favour with his people), and expelling them meant he could steal their property, too. But England was only one of many European countries to expel its entire Jewish community on numerous occasions.
France expelled and recalled its Jewish population on numerous occasions. King Philip the Fair expelled them in 1306 because he needed money to fight the Flemish, which he raised by confiscating Jewish property. Sadly, many of the Jews expelled by Philip had only come to France after being banished from England in 1290. Philip’s successor recalled them 9 years later because the Christians who took over the money-lending industry recovered debts with intolerable cruelty. Many individual cities as well as countries followed suit, either when debts to Jewish moneylenders soared too high or antisemitic feeling couldn’t be contained.
