Page 34 - The Track Of The Jew Through The Ages - Alfred Rosenberg

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The Track of the Jew through the Ages

"were on equal footing with the other citizens, and indeed enjoyed
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the privileges of infanzones, so usury did not come about as a
result of hostility to Jews but, as elsewhere too, the hostility ofmany
chroniclers to Jews as a result of usury.
"Where was there, during the Middle Ages, a better-attended
market than in Tudela?" 35 exclaims Kayserling proudly, and
continues: "The slave-trade was, from earliest times, conducted by
Jews; here it acquired in scope and significance more than in the
other kingdoms of the peninsula and maintained itself also here for
the longest time unimpaired until the total besiegement ofthe Moors
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or, if you will, until the expulsion of the Jews". This slave-trade
then helped Tudela to reach "the status of an important trading city".
But especially interesting does the entire trade become through the
fact that it was almost only Moors who derived the benefit of slave-
trade, thus indeed the descendants of men whom the Jews had
treacherously called into the country centuries before. But destiny
fulfilled itself, for, as Heman reports in the mentioned work, just
when the last Moorish empire was overthrown the expulsion of the
Jews was decided upon.
In Rome, a city which had been a centre of political and
religious battles through all the centuries, which more than one
plunderer had strode over and where civil wars were the order of
the day, the life of the Jews was naturally not formed very visibly.
Even there emperors and popes had to constantly deal with the Jewish
question. Either their rights and freedoms had to be strengthened
or, as for example in the Fourth Lateran Council of 12 1 5, regulations
were adopted, or the Jews were forced to pay the avoided tithe,
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forbidden to attack clerics, their statutes subjected to a court, etc.
The Jews were already early on wealthy property owners, but not to
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[In Aragon, infanzones were descendants of cadets of the king who did not
inherit the throne].
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[Tudela is a Basque city close to Pamplona.]
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In all the countries of Europe, slave-trade was abolished in the course of the 1
century.
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Vogelstein-Rieger, Geschichte der Juden in Rom, Berlin 1895-1896, Vol.1, p.230.
That, at the council, the usury ofthe Christians was also protested against whenever
it appeared proves that the priests did not at all blame the Jews through blind
hatred but allowed themselves to be directed by factual reasons.
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