Even after Frankfurt adopted Lutheranism as the Protestant Reformation divided Christian Europe in the 16th Century, the Jews there remained outsiders within the city. Jewish merchants were among the many merchants of the city who participated in this financial market.Ī couple times during the Middle Ages, Frankfurt expelled its Jewish population, only to let them back in again in the mid-15th Century.

Coinage from across the Empire wound up there, and so there was a flourishing money-changing and banking sector. Standing smack dab in the middle of the Continent’s crossroads, Frankfurt evolved as a center of trade during the transition to modernity. This was the case in the free city of Frankfurt in the Holy Roman Empire. Yet, contrary to popular opinion, this did not allow them to grow exceedingly rich, as Jews were also subject to way, way higher taxes in return for that protection. As a result, they were protected by some rulers who depended on Jewish merchants for loans. Most famously, they were exempt from usury laws – they were allowed to charge interest when lending money. Medieval Jews were allowed to practice business and, as merchants, they were not subject to all of the same laws that Christians were. But we know these neighborhoods by the Italian word for “suburbs” – “borghettos” – or “ghettos” for short. In the towns where they lived, they would be secluded to a particular neighborhood – or “suburb” as it was called back then. They were often forced to wear clothing that made them stand out as Jews and, subsequently, get ordered around by non-Jews and generally harassed. As outsiders to that Church community, they faced every imaginable discrimination – legal and social. The Roman Catholic Church connected the many peoples of the Continent as the body of Christ in the world.īut from the earliest days, there was a minority group among them who did not fit into that body. But in that chaotic environment, the people of Europe remained united – in spirit, as it was believed – by the power of Christendom. Throughout the Middle Ages, Europe was fractured across a myriad of lands controlled by warriors bound by vassalage to different chiefs and monarchs.

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