less several decades later, when Saint Francis established his new order. But when
Waldo went into the street and gave away his belongings, announcing, “I am not out
of my mind, as you think,”^22 he scandalized not only the bystanders but the church
as well. Refusing to retire to a monastery, Waldo and his followers, men and women
called Waldensians, lived in poverty and went about preaching, quoting the Gospel in
the vernacular so that everyone would understand them. But the papacy rejected
Waldo’s bid to preach freely; and the Waldensians—denounced, excommunicated,
and expelled from Lyon—wandered to Languedoc, Italy, northern Spain, and the
Mosel valley, just east of France.
European Aggression Within and Without
Jews, heretics, Muslims, Byzantines, and pagans: all felt the heavy hand of Christian
Europeans newly organized, powerful, and zealous. Meanwhile, even the undeniable
Catholicism of Ireland did not prevent its takeover by England.
THE JEWS
Prohibited from joining guilds, Jews increasingly were forced to take the one job
Christians could not have: lending on credit. Even with Christian moneylenders
available (for some existed despite official prohibitions), lords borrowed from Jews.
Then, relying on dormant anti-Jewish feeling, they sometimes “righteously” attacked
their creditors. This happened in 1190 at York, for example, where local nobles
orchestrated a brutal attack on the Jews of the city to rid themselves of their debts
and the men to whom they owed money. Kings claimed the Jews as their serfs and
Jewish property as their own. In England a special royal exchequer of the Jews was
created in 1194 to collect unpaid debts due after the death of Jewish creditors. In
France, Philip Augustus expelled the Jews from the Ile-de-France in 1182,
confiscating their houses, fields, and vineyards for himself. He allowed them to return
—minus their property—in 1198.
Attacks against Jews were inspired by more than resentment against Jewish
money or desire for power and control. They grew out of the codification of
Christian religious doctrine. The newly rigorous definition of the Eucharist as the true
body and blood of Christ meant to some that Christ, wounded and bleeding, lay upon
the altar. Miracle tales sometimes reported that the Eucharist bled. Reflecting
Christian anxieties about real flesh upon the altar, sensational stories, originating in
clerical circles but soon widely circulated, told of Jews who secretly sacrificed
