History of European Jews in the Middle Ages

History of European Jews in the Middle Ages covers Jewish history in the period from the 5th to the 15th century. During the course of this period, the Jewish population gradually started shifting from the Levant to Europe, primarily Central Europe dominated by the Holy Roman Empire or Southern Europe dominated by the Iberian kingdoms. As with Christianity, the Middle Ages were the period when Judaism became mostly insignificant in the Middle East, and a front-of-mind part of Europe.

Jewish tradition traces the origins of the Jews to the 12 Israelite tribes, however most Jewish traditions state that modern Jews descend from Judah, Benjamin and Levi. As early as the Babylonian exile Jews, through exile under military constraint or otherwise, came to live in many other Middle Eastern countries, and later formed communities throughout the eastern Mediterranean lands, constituting collectively a Jewish diaspora. Their presence is attested in Greece from the fourth century BCE onwards in places as varied as Chios, Aegina, Attica and Rhodes and in Italy as early as the 2nd century BCE.

After the Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE), hundreds of thousands of Jews were taken as slaves to Rome, where they later immigrated to other European lands. 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. A significant depletion in their numbers in Western Europe began to take place with the rise of the Crusades, which brought about many pogroms and successive expulsion orders, in England (1290), France (14th century) and Spain (1492). With the end of the medieval age, a similar phenomenon was to repeat itself in 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 rising there over these same 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).