Undoing Historical Revisionism

Expulsions of European Jewry, 1290-1492

by Austin Walsh

Part II:  France: Holy Mother’s Eldest Daughter

What have the voices of Jewry to say about their ancestors’ expulsion (one of several) from France in 1394? The Jewish Virtual Library is peculiarly reticent:

Between 1338-1347, 25 Jewish communities in Alsace were victims of terror. Massacres in response to the Black Plague (1348-49) struck Jewish communities throughout the east and southeast. The Jews of Avignon and Comtat Venaissin were spared similar fates because of intervention from the pope. Further bloodshed spread to Paris and Nantes in 1380. The culmination of all the persecution and bloodshed was the definitive expulsion of Jews from France in 1394.

This is odd: a single sentence alone describes the entire event, appended like an afterthought to a lengthy list of grievances. What gives? Where is litany of suffering, or accusations of Catholic Frenchmen inflicting undue cruelty for no reason whatsoever? Perhaps that censorious journal of philo-semitism known as Wikipedia will disclose more, in the article on the History of Jews in France, in the section on the Expulsion of 1394:

On 17 September 1394, Charles VI suddenly published an ordinance in which he declared, in substance, that for a long time he had been taking note of the many complaints provoked by the excesses and misdemeanors which the Jews committed against Christians; and that the prosecutors, having made several investigations, had discovered many violations by the Jews of the agreement they had made with him. Therefore, he decreed as an irrevocable law and statute that thenceforth no Jew should dwell in his domains (“Ordonnances”, vii. 675). According to the Religieux de St. Denis, the king signed this decree at the insistence of the queen (“Chron. de Charles VI.” ii. 119). The decree was not immediately enforced, a respite being granted to the Jews in order that they might sell their property and pay their debts. Those indebted to them were enjoined to redeem their obligations within a set time; otherwise their pledges held in pawn were to be sold by the Jews. The provost was to escort the Jews to the frontier of the kingdom. Subsequently, the king released the Christians from their debts. 

This is more of what is to be expected: the sudden ordinance of King Charles VI arising, as it were, out of the blue.  Note well that here in France, as with England in 1290, a grace period was granted for Jews in France to get their affairs in order. This is contrary to what contemporary Catholics are conditioned to believe about their ancestors, being programmed by Jewish historiography and Jewish media. Where are the accounts of squadrons of gendarmes chasing every last (harmless and innocent) Jew to every corner of the kingdom in a surprise massacre? Even more noteworthy is that French Catholics in debt to the Jews were commanded, under a deadline, to repay their Jewish usurers, lest the collateral be sold by said Jews. Even a Jew-friendly source like Wikipedia, with paid editors working from Tel Aviv, contradicts what may justly be termed the Comic Book Historical Narrative, by citing all the measures taken to mitigate discomfort of Jews on the verge of expulsion.

Charging Interest on Interest While Debauching Coin of the Realm

What account is given by Hervé Ryssen in History of Antisemitism? Usury, pushed beyond all reason and sense of proportion, sets the stage in 1380, when riots broke out in Paris:

The common people, enraged by the usury of the Jews, practised with impunity, pillaged Jewish property and wounded or killed several inhabitants; but the Jewish community always managed to arrange compensation. For example, they argued that precious objects left with them as collateral – gold, silver, precious stones, jewelry, etc. – had been stolen in the riots, and that as a result they could no longer return these objects to their owners. They were thus dispensed from returning them without even having to compel the government to reimburse them.

Would that Catholics today understand their financial enslavement and their own progeny’s peril as did the fourteenth century French! Interesting is that which can be inferred of the above passage indicating that in the aftermath of pogroms, the Jews in France seemed to have recourse to the King for the redress of grievances by way of compensation and reimbursement. Not only ought such a fact disabuse Catholics of their philo-semitic programming in comic book historiography, but also inquire as to cause. From whence would such Jewish privilege have arisen? Ryssen supplies a clue:

We see, through the public documents of the time, that they never ceased supplying the King with bribe money, for wars and other expenses. In 1388, they extorted the right to demand four pennies per livre in interest, an exorbitant rate. But the kings always prohibited the cumulation of rents with capital, and charging interest on interest, which was called, in the language of the time, faire des montes montes [making mountains of mountains]. The Jews had never before been allowed to push usury to this point.

Here is what E. Michael Jones, quoting the lawyer, St. John of Capistrano, refers to as Jewish privilege. France’s Jews, both relentless and rapacious, used the lucre stolen in the unnatural act of breeding money by lending at compound interest, to bribe the King. French patriots alert to the problem, brought legal charges against the Jews and thus sought to end the chaos:

The king’s prosecutors and other judicial officers then filed charges against the guilty usurers. In fear that the authorities might discover transactions capable of bringing down a new tempest upon their heads, the Jews hastened to advance the king a large sum of money. They then complained that the officers of the law were molesting them, and begged the King to protect them from these “persecutions”. The monarch in this case was weak enough to impose perpetual silence upon his own prosecutor, and to protect the Jews from any prosecution for 10 years. The unfortunate borrowers, for their part, probably paid 10 times what it cost the Jews to obtain this concession. The King was weak enough to prohibit his own prosecutor from accusing them of any abuses whatever. He was also ordered to avoid disturbing them in any way and to allow them to enjoy their privileges to the fullest, so that the fortunes of private persons were placed at the discretion of the usurers for 10 years. Never since the reign of Louis the Pious had the Jews obtained so much power.

Now the historical picture takes on a much clearer perspective: the absurd presupposition of the Jewish Virtual Library that innocent Jews were banished from their homes with neither warning nor cause- can be discarded. As outrageous as may be the events detailed above, for the beleaguered French at the close of the fourteenth century, the Jews kept right on pushing. The forthright Ryssen continues:

With an insane king and a government undermined by factions, the Jews speculated in public misery, enriching themselves rapidly, and, as usual, pushing their audacity to ever greater extremes. In this case, they asked the king to stop issuing creditors with the letters of respite which were obtained to prevent prosecution by the creditors of anyone who enjoyed credit at the royal court. It cost them 10,000 francs.

Would that monetary gangster tactics were the only misery inflicted on the French of the fourteenth century.

Ritual Child Murder in France

The scene repeated itself over and over throughout Christendom, time after time. Unsuspecting inhabitants of an ordinary town or village were confronted with a grisly discovery: the body of the child of one of their neighbors. Adding to the pain and horror were wounds and mutilations suggestive not only of murder, but blood-curdling occurrences surrounding the death of an innocent. Often such discoveries occurred -as in the cases of Sts. William, Hugh and Simon around Holy Week. Once eyewitness accounts and other evidence led public suspicion to fall upon area Jews, arrest and prosecution led to detailed confessions fitting the gruesome facts torn into the body of a Christian child. Toaff provides detail of these legal facts contained in the historical record

The most famous, and most frequently studied, ritual homicide of which Jews in French territory were accused during this period is certainly that reported in 1171 in Blois, a central location on the main route from Tours to Orleans, on the banks of the Loire. Here, the Jews of that community, suspected of killing a Christian child and then dumping the body in the waters of the Loire, were condemned to death, and thirty-two of them met death at the stake after a summary trial.

The Expulsion of the Jews from France in 1394

The Royal Monarch had been bought. Interest upon interest and outrage upon outrage: Jews at court removed from debtors the legal protection from prosecution by lenders. Thus the power of the lender was joined to the power of the state to extract interest and, when the borrower failed to repay, to incarcerate. In France, as in England, Jewish privilege was quite real and very menacing to Catholics. Sporadic outbreaks in both city and countryside found murdered and dismembered Catholic children, often drained of their blood before dying. In sharper relief can be seen how Jewish behavior corroded the very foundations of the societies in which Jews resided. Ryssen quotes prominent Jewish historian Heinrich Graetz:

“The Jews collected great sums in interest and had their borrowers imprisoned when they didn’t wish to pay”, thus arousing popular enmity. “The people hated the Jews”, writes Graetz. Their incessant raillery against the Catholic religion, the receiving of stolen goods, their usury, pederasty, pimping, ritual murders, racketeering and swindling of all kinds, had aroused the disgust and hatred of the Christians against the members of this sect. On 17 September 1394, the day of the Great Pardon, the King finally took the decision to expel the Jews from the kingdom.

This concludes Part II of the Series.

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FOOTNOTES:

12 Ryssen, op. cit., p. 60.

13  Regarding Wikipedia, there is an Israeli term known as Hasbara, or propaganda. Israel recruits volunteers to edit Wikipedia to alter its content in favor of Jewish historiography.  Their influence is huge, due to the number of young readers who rely on Wikipedia as a source. It is explained in a two-minute video.

14 Ibid., p. 212.

15 Ibid..

16 Ibid., p. 213.

17 Ibid..

18 Toaff, op. cit., 172.

19 Ryssen, op. cit., 214.

CREDITS: For the Featured Image, see credits to Part I.

FromRome.Info wishes to thank Mr. Walsh for his research and contribution of this series.