Philip II Augustus's Support Of The Jews Of France
“Long the objects of Christian polemic, hated as moneylenders by ordinary people, and feared by the clergy as successful competitors with Christianity, Jews became easy scapegoats for rulers who wished to exploit fear and prejudice. In 1182, Philip II Augustus, eyeing the wealthy Jews of Paris, ordered all nonconverting Jews out of France and confiscated their property and possessions,” (248). It was very harsh to banish an entire group of people based on their religion but Phillip the King had motivations to order all non-converting Jews out of France. They did this because the Jews living in France had become so rich and claimed almost half of the city, they began to have Christians work as servant in their households. This then causes
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His act may have worked as planned, but, it was extremely harsh because the Jewish people did nothing wrong. The Jews were always working hard and became rich enough to own almost half of the whole city. The king stripped the Jews of their worth because he did not accept them into his society. I also think Phillip the King had other motivations behind his action. I feel like he felt threatened by the increasing power of the Jews. Therefore, he eliminated the threat to the monarchy by forcing their exile. Another big reason was that he wanted to take the wealth and property from the Jews. He did this when he took a fifth of the debt he freed the Christians from when Jews were forced to abandon the land. I think the writer of the article is sympathetic toward Phillips because he seems to always be describing his motivation for saving the Christians, and does not necessarily discuss any other reasons. The writer describes the Jews who did not convert and instead stuck by their religion as “faithless and infidel”. The Jews reaction to Phillip’s order was for the most part, strong minded. The Jews had no choice but to sell their goods and they either chose to leave the king’s land or convert to Christianity. I am not surprised by either action because I can see reasons for both. If you are unable to leave you home, or are too scared to, I can understand why conversion was the best option. However, I can also understand why some people just left, because if you cannot freely practice your own religion somewhere, why would you want to live
His act may have worked as planned, but, it was extremely harsh because the Jewish people did nothing wrong. The Jews were always working hard and became rich enough to own almost half of the whole city. The king stripped the Jews of their worth because he did not accept them into his society. I also think Phillip the King had other motivations behind his action. I feel like he felt threatened by the increasing power of the Jews. Therefore, he eliminated the threat to the monarchy by forcing their exile. Another big reason was that he wanted to take the wealth and property from the Jews. He did this when he took a fifth of the debt he freed the Christians from when Jews were forced to abandon the land. I think the writer of the article is sympathetic toward Phillips because he seems to always be describing his motivation for saving the Christians, and does not necessarily discuss any other reasons. The writer describes the Jews who did not convert and instead stuck by their religion as “faithless and infidel”. The Jews reaction to Phillip’s order was for the most part, strong minded. The Jews had no choice but to sell their goods and they either chose to leave the king’s land or convert to Christianity. I am not surprised by either action because I can see reasons for both. If you are unable to leave you home, or are too scared to, I can understand why conversion was the best option. However, I can also understand why some people just left, because if you cannot freely practice your own religion somewhere, why would you want to live