No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe

Speaker: Rowan Dorin (Stanford University)

Beginning in the twelfth century, Jewish moneylenders increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities, who denounced the evils of usury as they expelled Jews from their lands. Yet Jews were not alone in supplying coin and credit to needy borrowers. Across much of Western Europe, foreign Christians likewise engaged in professional moneylending, and they too faced repeated threats of expulsion from the communities in which they settled. In showing how an association between usury and expulsion emerged and spread across Latin Christendom, this talk offers a provocative reconsideration of the dynamics of persecution in late medieval society.