Early Middle Ages and Crusades
Philip Augustus cancels debts owed to the Jews in exchange for a fifth paid to the treasury, prelude to the expulsion of the following year
1181·France
The toll is reproduced exactly as the source states it — never rounded, never added to another. Tolls overlap from one event to the next.
Philippe Auguste, newly ascended to the throne, was in need of money. He annulled by ordinance the debts that the Christians of his domain owed to the Jews, requiring the debtors to pay the royal treasury one fifth of the sum from which they had been released.
The operation was twofold: it ruined the lenders and enriched the crown, while earning the king a reputation as a pious prince. It preceded by little the expulsion of the Jews from the royal domain of France, pronounced the following year, with confiscation of their properties.
This mechanism — cancelling debts, taking a share, then expelling and seizing — was subsequently employed by other sovereigns, in England as in France. It explains why medieval expulsions so often follow a period during which communities had been driven toward moneylending.
- Period :
- Early Middle Ages and Crusades
- Type :
- Expulsion
- Region :
- Western Europe
- Country :
- France
Rigord, Gesta Philippi Augusti ; ordonnances des rois de France.