The Jewish Diaspora

Migration

Settlement of the Rhineland from Italy

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800–1000 CERome & Central Italy → Rhineland (Ashkenaz — the ShUM cities)

Why it happened

A later family tradition holds that a "King Charles" brought the Kalonymos family from Lombardy to Mainz; some versions name Charlemagne, but scholars regard that identification as a later emendation.11

The migration

Jews had lived in the Rhineland since Roman times—a 321 CE decree attests an organized community at Cologne2—and Roman Italy is regarded as the likeliest source of these earliest settlers.3 Mainz is among the oldest documented Jewish communities in Germany.4 A family tradition says the Kalonymos family came from Lombardy to Mainz1—a move some versions place under Charlemagne but that the cited encyclopedia instead associates with Charles the Bald in the later ninth century.1 Speyer, Worms, and Mainz later formed the leading ShUM communities,4 and rabbinic centers appeared in Mainz and Worms in the tenth century.5 The Rhineland became a major cultural nucleus of Jewry; a source reports roughly 6,000 Mainz Jews dying in the persecutions of 1349.4

Genetic corroboration

  • autosomalGenome-wide analysis estimated ancestry at roughly 53% European and 47% Middle Eastern,6 with Southern Europe—possibly Italy—the dominant European source.6 This supports an Italian contribution to Ashkenazi ethnogenesis but does not demonstrate a specific transfer from Lucca to Mainz.
  • mtDNACosta and colleagues estimated that more than 80% of lineages were assimilated within Europe,7 with the first major wave probably in Mediterranean Europe and most likely on the Italian peninsula.7 The result concerns maternal population history, not a documented migration route to the Rhineland.

Sources

  1. BEncyclopaedia Judaica. 2007. Kalonymus. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.), via Jewish Virtual Library link
  2. BEncyclopaedia Judaica. 2007. Cologne. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.), via Jewish Virtual Library link
  3. CWikipedia contributors. 2026. History of the Jews in Germany. Wikipedia link
  4. BEncyclopaedia Judaica. 2007. Mainz. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.), via Encyclopedia.com link
  5. BEncyclopaedia Judaica. 2007. Ashkenaz. Encyclopaedia Judaica (2nd ed.), via Encyclopedia.com link
  6. AXue J, Lencz T, Darvasi A, et al.. 2017. The time and place of European admixture in Ashkenazi Jewish history. PLoS Genetics 13 e1006644. doi:10.1371/journal.pgen.1006644
  7. ACosta MD, Pereira JB, Pala M, et al.. 2013. A substantial prehistoric European ancestry amongst Ashkenazi maternal lineages. Nature Communications 4 2543. doi:10.1038/ncomms3543