What is it about?
An influential book published several decades ago by the historian Richard Emery, focusing on the Jews of later medieval Perpignan, suggested that in this period Jews frequently lent money to Christians but otherwise had few social or economic interactions with them. I used notarial records (contracts of many types) from the city of Marseille to demonstrate that Jews interacted with Christians in a much broader array of domains. This evidence does confirm that Jews were prominent moneylenders, but records of debt collection indicate that Jews went to court against their debtors in numbers roughly proportional to their percentage of the population. This finding can be explained if we assume that a substantial proportion of the overall volume of credit consisted not of loans but of structural debt (e.g. unpaid rents and taxes) dominated by Christians.
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Why is it important?
The article contributes to a body of scholarship which aims to demonstrate that relations between Jews and Christians were more complex and nuanced than hitherto appreciated.
Perspectives
Studies of the Jewish community of later medieval Provence are abundant but not widely known outside the world of Francophone scholarship. My hope is that this article will help attract more scholarly attention to this region.
Daniel Smail Smail
Harvard University
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This page is a summary of: Interactions between Jews and Christians in Later Medieval Provence, Medieval Encounters, December 2021, Brill,
DOI: 10.1163/15700674-12340114.
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