070211 UE Guided Reading Medieval History - Jewish economic activity in the Middle Ages (2024W)

This Guided Reading will introduce students to the various sources relating to the economic activities of the Jewish population and encourage them to interpret and critically analyse them independently, using the main research literature. This will enable students to understand the economic, social, religious and political aspects of the subject and to place them in the wider context of medieval history. The geographical focus will be on the territory of the Holy Roman Empire, but examples will also be drawn from Western, Southern and Eastern Europe.

The money and credit business was the best-known and most controversial field of activity for medieval Jewish businesspeople. Although lending money at interest was never the sole means of subsistence for the Jewish population, and conversely there was never a Jewish ''monopoly on interest'', the Christian debate on usury increasingly focused on the role played by Jewish men and women in this context. By familiarising themselves with the stereotypes that emerged as a result, students will be able to critically evaluate prejudices that are still widespread about the role of the Jewish population in the medieval economy and which, in the stereotypical association of 'Jews and money', are still part of the standard repertoire of anti-Jewish polemics. The analysis of the emergence and impact of these medieval stereotypes should therefore also sensitise students to their instrumentalisation in modern anti-Semitism.

Reading and analysing the current research literature, which increasingly focuses on other, less studied areas of Jewish activity, from crafts to agriculture, should also make students aware of the need to constantly question and redefine established research approaches.