as well. It was as if the end of imperial rule in Italy, marked by the fall of Frederick
II, ironically brought in its train the creation of local monarchs—the signori, who
maintained order at the price of repression. By 1300 the commune had almost
everywhere given way to the signoria (a state ruled by a signore), with one family
dominating the government.
Xenophobia
Urban discord was fairly successfully defused in Flanders, fairly well silenced in Italy.
In neither instance was pluralism valued. Europeans had no interest in hearing
multiple voices; rather, they were eager to purge and purify themselves of the
pollutants in their midst.
Driving the Jews from the Ile-de-France in the twelfth century (see p. 233) was a
dress rehearsal for the expulsions of the thirteenth. In England during the 1230s and
1250s, local lords and municipal governments expelled the Jews from many cities. At
the same time, King Henry III (r.1216–1272) imposed unusually harsh taxes on
them. (For the English kings of this period, see Genealogy 6.1 on p. 202.) By the end
of Henry’s reign, the Jews were impoverished and their numbers depleted. There
were perhaps 3,000 Jews in all of England when King Edward I (r.1272–1307) drew
up the Statute of the Jewry in 1275, stipulating that they end the one occupation that
had been left open to them: moneylending. They were expected to “live by lawful
trade and by their labor.”^4 But, as the Jews responded in turn, they would be forced
to buy and sell at higher prices than Christians, and thus would sell nothing. Fifteen
years later Edward expelled them from England entirely.
The story was similar in France. (For the French kings, see Genealogy 8.1 on p.
291.) King Louis IX (r.1226–1270), later canonized as Saint Louis, reportedly could
not bear to look at a Jew and worried that their “poison” might infect his kingdom. In
1242, he presided over the burning of two dozen cartloads of the ancient rabbinic
Bible commentaries known as the Talmud. Actively promoting the conversion and
baptism of Jews, Louis offered converts pensions, new names, and an end to special
restrictions. His grandson, Philip IV (“The Fair”) (r.1285–1314), gave up on
conversion and expelled the Jews from France in 1306. By contrast with England, the
French Jewish population had been large; after 1306, perhaps 125,000 French men,
women, and children became refugees in the Holy Roman Empire, Spain, and Italy.
The few who were later allowed to return were wiped out in popular uprisings in the
early 1320s.
