BOOK: Rowan DORIN, No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe (Princeton, Princeton University Press 2023), ISBN: 9780691240923

 

(Image source: Stanford)

ABOUT THE BOOK

Beginning in the twelfth century, Jewish moneylenders increasingly found themselves in the crosshairs of European authorities, who denounced the evils of usury as they expelled Jews from their lands. Yet Jews were not alone in supplying coin and credit to needy borrowers. Across much of Western Europe, foreign Christians likewise engaged in professional moneylending, and they too faced repeated threats of expulsion from the communities in which they settled. No Return examines how mass expulsion became a pervasive feature of European law and politics—with tragic consequences that have reverberated down to the present.

Drawing on unpublished archival evidence ranging from fiscal ledgers and legal opinions to sermons and student notebooks, Rowan Dorin traces how an association between usury and expulsion entrenched itself in Latin Christendom from the twelfth century onward. Showing how ideas and practices of expulsion were imitated and repurposed in different contexts, he offers a provocative reconsideration of the dynamics of persecution in late medieval society.
Uncovering the protean and contagious nature of expulsion, No Return is a panoramic work of history that offers new perspectives on Jewish-Christian relations, the circulation of norms and ideas in the age before print, and the intersection of law, religion, and economic life in premodern Europe.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Rowan Dorin is Assistant Professor of History at Stanford University. He is i.a. the author of Corpus Synodalium, a prize-winning full-text database of late medieval local ecclesiastical legislation.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

PART I

1 Expulsion, Jews, and Usury: trajectories of christian thought and practice

2 Inventing Expulsion in England, 1154–1272

3 Inventing Expulsion in France, 1144–1270

PART II

4 Canonizing Expulsion: the second council of Lyon, 1274

5 Disseminating Expulsion: synods, summas, and sermons

PART III

6 Emulating Expulsion: England and France, 1274–1306

7 Ignoring Expulsion: episcopal evasion and papal inaction, 1274–1400

8 Expanding (and Impeding) Expulsion: Jews, usury, and canon law, 1300–1492

Conclusion

Acknowledgments

Appendix A: Timeline of Expulsions of Jews and Christian Usurers, 1100–ca. 135

Appendix B: Usury and Expulsion in Local Ecclesiastical Legislation, 1200-ca. 1400

THE TALK

The Stanford Center for Law and History organizes also an online talk on this book with the author on 15.02.2023, see here.