The Protection of Jews in Medieval Ashkenaz: A Result of European Entanglements?

With the emergence of firmly-structured Jewish communities in the 11th c., the legal position of the Jewish people within Christian societies of Europe turned from a strictly theological to socially topical issue. Here it is particularly striking that the "Jewish rights" formulated between the 11th and 13th centuries sometimes in different geographical areas show a number of similarities. My lecture presents approaches to explaining these parallel developments of this law and the legal traditions. The focus of the paper is on the protection of Jews in the Empire, the roots of which can already be found in the 9th c. and which, unlike in England and France, became a legal tradition over the years: The protection of the Jewish people was consolidated in the 11th c. with the privilege of Henry IV. These in turn served as the basis or at least inspiration for the privileges formulated from the 13th c. onwards initially in the Empire and later in the Duchies of Austria, Bohemia, Moravia and Poland. First, I discuss the political, economic and social significance and functions of these letters, using the example of those privileges that actively led to a change in the protection of Jews. Secondly, I pursue the question of mutual interconnections of these provisions with other law texts mainly canonical collections of the time.