FIRST SIGNS OF A JEWISH PRESENCE

THE HISTORY of the Jews in the Low Countries during the Middle Ages, usually taken as spanning the period from the fifth to the sixteenth centuries, has no clear-cut beginning and must in many respects remain a story with numerous gaps and sudden leaps in time. These may be attributed largely to the scarcity of source material in general, which has left much of these centuries shrouded in darkness.

All the more does this apply to the history of the Jews, small groups who settled as a rule in a few places only and for limited periods of time. For these reasons an unbroken history of the Jews in the Middle Ages cannot be written, and our account must necessarily remain a summary of unconnected details.

As far as the earliest period is concerned, it can, however, be stated with some certainty that in the fifth century there were Jews living in a handful of important Roman cities: Cologne on the Rhine, Trier on the Moselle, and Mainz on the Main. It is possible that Jews from the Rhineland also visited Maastricht or Tongeren at that time, though there is no solid evidence of this.

The collapse of the West Roman empire in the fifth century undoubtedly had far-reaching consequences for the Jewish settlements in Cologne and elsewhere, but nothing is known of their fate. Not until some three centuries later, during the reign of the Carolingian dynasty, which had built a new society on the rubble of the Roman empire, did Jews once again emerge from anonymity. Charlemagne (768-814), and especially his son Louis the Pious (814-40), were remarkably well disposed towards them. Jews were allowed to practise their religion openly, to build synagogues, to own property, to trade—even in Christian slaves, and to hold public office. No doubt this tolerance was based largely on self-interest, since at the time the Jews were practically alone in maintaining links between the primitive and agrarian Carolingian society and the most important trading centres in the Middle East, India, and even China. In exchange for slaves, furs, and arms, they brought back spices, perfumes, precious cloth, jewels, and many other goods the West itself could not supply.