Page 32 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

The Track of the Jew through the Ages

that the reader would be extremely childish. When the appearance
ofJewry produces everywhere the same results another reason must
be present than the enviousness of the local inhabitants.
But we need not have recourse to this theoretical insight
since the facts from all ages are, for the most part, so confirmed and
numerous that for the support of such an insight one may open any
good book and then one will rather have to deal with the great
number of these than search for them.
When the Jews, as reported above, moved into the cities of
the Spanish Basque lands, to boost trade following the will of Sancho
the Wise, they found it more comfortable there to lend the needy
peasants and city-dwellers money for their enterprises at interest.
Since the latter was high, the Basques had to pawn their possessions
and fell into increasingly great dependency.
Their feeling of independence was soon outraged at the
foreign immigrants intent only on usury, and the council of the city
of Viktoria sent a request for protection to the king, who then
announced an edict by which the Jews were forbidden to issue
debenture bonds "since, if it continues in this way, great harm would
come to the Christian citizens, indeed the city would be depopulated"
27
(1332).
In Persia, to which, as we saw, many foreigners were
attracted, "the Jews had through their methods and grasp exploited
and impoverished the native subjects to such a degree that the
clamour reached the ears of the Emperor himself, reports a
chronicle, and adds: "that the state minister thought long and hard
how he could be free of the Jews without offending the other
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foreigners".
In Constantinople, the Jews were settled in large numbers,
where they had similarly obtained enormous riches. "Most of the
money", reports Tavernier, "is in the hands of the Emperor and the
Jews; but I mean the Jews who stay in Constantinople. For, as regards
(hose in the provinces, these are miserable people, and more
miserable than the Christians since they do not farm the land, and

27
Kayserling, Geschichte derJuden inNavarra, Berlin, 1861, p. 119.
,s
Schudt, op.cit, Vol.1, p.27.
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