History of European Jews in the Middle Ages

History of European Jews in the Middle Ages covers Jewish history in Europe in the period from the 5th to the 15th century. Jews had been present in Europe since antiquity and experienced during that time, as well as during the early Middle Ages, a gradual diaspora shifting from their motherland of the Levant to Europe. These Jewish individuals settled primarily in the regions of Central Europe dominated by the Holy Roman Empire and Southern Europe dominated by various Iberian kingdoms. As with Christianity, the Middle Ages were a period in which Judaism became mostly overshadowed by Islam in the Middle East, and an increasingly influential part of the socio-cultural and intellectual landscape of Europe.

The status of Jews in Christian Europe was defined by St Augustine's witness theology and Roman law. This allowed Jews to live relatively safely in a Christian society and even enjoy a certain degree of religious toleration up to the twelfth century. The Jews who immigrated to Iberia, and their descendants comprise the Sephardic Jews, while those who immigrated to the German Rhineland and France comprise the Ashkenazi Jews. The situation in Western Europe began to change at the end of the eleventh century with the start of the Crusades and the charge of Blood libel, which resulted often in progroms though Church authorities and rulers often issued protection letters such as Sicut Judaeis. By the thirteenth century, Augustine's witness theory had eroded so that Jewish presence was often not tolerated anymore and Jews were expelled from many lands. The later Middle Ages saw stronger persecutions and forced conversions during the Black Death. By the end of the Middle Ages, most of Western Europe had expelled all its Jews while Poland had become the heartland of the Ashkenaz Jews.

With the end of the medieval age, a similar phenomenon was to repeat itself in Spain and Portugal, the Italian peninsula, and throughout most German towns and principalities in German-speaking lands in the sixteenth century. As a result, many Jews migrated to Eastern Europe, with large Yiddish speaking populations expanding over the next several centuries. By the 17th century a trickle back process began, with reverse migration back to central and western Europe, following pogroms in Ukraine (1648–1649).