The Jewish Diaspora

Expulsion

Final expulsion from France

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1394Northern France (Champagne & Île-de-France) → Rhineland (Ashkenaz — the ShUM cities)

Why it happened

On 17 September 1394 Charles VI decreed 'that thenceforth no Jew should dwell in his domains,'1 citing the Jews' 'excesses and misdemeanors'2 and their breach of the royal compact;2 he signed, says the monk of Saint-Denis, at Queen Isabeau's insistence.3

The migration

A respite let the Jews sell property and pay debts before the provost escorted them 'to the frontier of the kingdom,' after which the crown released Christian debtors from their obligations to Jews.22 The exiles scattered into the borderlands beyond royal reach—the territories that had already absorbed the refugees of the 1306 expulsion: Lorraine, the county of Burgundy, Savoy, Dauphiné, Roussillon and a part of Provence, mostly lands of the Empire outside the French crown.4 Provence and the papal Comtat Venaissin likewise lay outside the kingdom, so the 1394 edict 'did not apply there.'4 This was the definitive medieval expulsion of the Jews from the French crown:5 no professing community existed in the royal domain until Jews 'began again to re-enter France' early in the 17th century,4 and Alsace's Jews came under French rule only with the 1648 annexation.4

Sources

  1. BKohn R. 1988. Les Juifs de la France du Nord dans la seconde moitié du XIVe siècle. Louvain–Paris: E. Peeters (Collection de la Revue des études juives)
  2. BSecousse D-F (ed.). 1745. Ordonnances des rois de France de la troisième race, recueillies par ordre chronologique. Paris: Imprimerie Royale VII 675.
  3. BPintoin M (Religieux de Saint-Denys). 1840. Chronique du Religieux de Saint-Denys, contenant le règne de Charles VI de 1380 à 1422. ed. and trans. L. Bellaguet, Paris: Imprimerie de Crapelet (Collection de documents inédits sur l'histoire de France) II 119.
  4. BBenbassa E. 1999. The Jews of France: A History from Antiquity to the Present. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press (trans. M. B. DeBevoise)
  5. BBarkey K, Katznelson I. 2011. States, regimes, and decisions: why Jews were expelled from Medieval England and France. Theory and Society 40 475–503. doi:10.1007/s11186-011-9150-8