From Venosa to Mainz? Considerations about the Origins of Jewish Life North of the Alps

From Venosa to Mainz? Considerations about the origins of Jewish life north of the AlpsThe medieval story about good king Charles who brought the Kalonymos from Lucca to Mayence is well known and has often been discussed. Though the story did most probably not happen in the way it is told, it mirrors a process for which we find hints in Jewish and Christian sources throughout the 10^th and 11^th centuries: The migration of Jews from Rome and from Jewish centers such as Venosa or Oria along what we may call the “Via Appia Judaica” between Naples and Brindisi to the banks of the rivers Rhine, Danube, and Elbe. Based on the not less dubious account of the heroic rescue of emperor Otto II. from the battleground at Crotone/Calabria in 982 by a Jew, again with the name Kalonymos, in Thietmar’s of Merseburg chronicle (written before 1018), the paper will connect research undertaken on Southern Italy and early Ashkenas in recent decades and it aims at clarifying the political and social conditions for this spectacular move which substantially contributed to the shaping of the medieval Jewish culture of the north, Ashkenas.