important, the leaders of the Jewish community were given the right to
“adjudicate any quarrel that might arise among or against” the Jews. Six
years later, the Holy Roman Emperor gave his Jewish subjects an expanded
version of this charter.
It is useful to note a contrast between the charter of Rudiger of Speyer and
the Pact of Umar, the legal template for Jews in Islamic lands. The latter
imposed a series of restrictions on a broad array of implied occupational and
residential privileges; Jews in the Islamic world were generally more inte-
grated into the mainstream economy and allowed to reside with minimal
impediment outside the Arabian Peninsula. By contrast, Christian charters
granted a series of privileges atop a broad array of implied restrictions.
Though the relationship between Jews and their Christian rulers was lop-
sided in favor of the latter, it was still contractual: sovereigns needed the
revenue from Jews as much as Jews needed protection. In an age when war was
endless, sovereigns had a chronic need for liquid capital to pay and provision
their armies. Jews were rare among taxable subjects in that they had liquid cap-
ital. Peasants often fulfilled their tax obligation in kind or through some form
of labor. Nobles and church leaders, though they had capital, were tax-exempt.
As a result, kings, bishops, noblemen, and town councils at times vied with one
another to be the one who gave Jews their charter and collected tax revenue
from them, partly for economic reasons but also as a measure of hegemony.
In general, Jews preferred to obtain charters from the highest possible
authority. Hannah Arendt, commenting on this situation in the twentieth
century, referred to this political strategy as the “royal alliance.” Jews
described this strategy in more poetic terms. The fourteenth-century Spanish
Jew Bahya Ibn Asher, commenting on Deuteronomy 28:10, noted, “He who
is a servant to a vassal of the king is not in as favorable position as he who is
himself a servant of the king.” A century later, Isaac ben Moses Arama echoed
this sentiment: “We are the servants of kings, and not the servants of ser-
vants.” This political outlook was not unique to Jews: a common aim of most
subjects in the Middle Ages was to have as direct a relationship as possible
with the highest possible authority.
Alongside this standardized political status emerged an overarching
occupational profile: the concentration of Jews in commerce and money-
lending. This economic trend resulted not, as some would later argue, from
any Jewish affinity for these occupations; rather, it came about because of
larger economic developments in the Christian world. A religious-based
stigma discouraged Christians from doing business or lending money at
interest. In addition, agriculture and artisanship were becoming more
Christianized, involving a Christian oath with increasing frequency. Finally,
dealing in liquid capital, like all specialized occupations, carried a certain
power with it. Sovereigns did not want something as potentially powerful
as the amassing of liquid capital to fall into the hands of someone who
The Jews of medieval Christendom 77