In No Return: Jews, Christian Usurers, and the Spread of Mass Expulsion in Medieval Europe, Rowan Dorin explicates the legal framework for what he terms the “usury-expulsion nexus” (231, 234), which shaped views in twelfth- and thirteenth-century England and France and then extended beyond to other parts of medieval Europe. It is an exceptionally learned study: as Ada Kuskowski notes in her own commentary here, the sheer range and number of sources that Dorin assembles to trace how ideas and practices around expulsion evolve in these centuries is extraordinary. And Dorin brings these together, as Marie Dejoux notes, in an engaging narrative that is written with brio — no mean feat when the subject is expulsion and the materials are judicial texts. Dorin parallels the multiplying layers of legal restrictions with discussion of the equally widening gap between prescription and practice. Laws did not enforce themselves, and in many instances civic and ecclesiastical authorities were not about to enforce them either. The paradox continued till at least the fourteenth century, when we see a growing determination around enforcement. I will defer to my colleagues in their understanding of the medieval setting for this work and instead concentrate on how Dorin’s work helps us better understand the motivations and mechanics around expulsion in a later period, highlighting some connections and possibly contrasts between how medieval and early modern people understood and practised expulsion. Dorin argues that twelfth-century expulsions were not related in the first instance to race or religion but more clearly to a form of economic activity that was thought to unravel the social fabric. Those whose actions weakened the social fabric of the res publica should be removed from it, regardless of status or religion. Redrawing the lines around activity and identity is a critical point that distinguishes these early expulsions from more familiar expressions of xenophobia or discrimination. Expulsion was a novel penalty for this economic activity, and it is this novelty that Dorin builds on, seeking to “trace how a phenomenon that was once exceptional in medieval Europe ultimately became routine” (228). The Fourth Lateran Council identified usurers with heretics and lepers. This made them both corrupting and contagious, and it legitimated their removal from the body politic as a real and present danger. Dorin aims to underscore that however many reasons medieval authorities cited for expelling Jews from cities and towns, usury was one that they could claim was distinct from Jews’ religious identity, since Christian usurers were also targeted. But that argument implied some deeper unity connecting Jews and Christians than authorities in either community would have tolerated, and it is through this tension that rationales for expulsion began gradually to shift from activity to identity. Jews based their defence against expulsion on precisely the religious difference, since lending at interest was not proscribed for them in either their own or Christian doctrines. On the contrary, it had long been the core justification for their continued presence in Christian communities. The unravelling of this legal conundrum over three centuries forms the substance of this study. And while Dorin does not seek to identify all the causes for particular expulsions in this volume, he explores how ideas and practices accumulated to the point where expulsion became more possible or likely. What emerges as critical is an amorphous but expanding category of “foreign-ness.” The usurer, whether Jewish or Christian, siphoned money out of the community and for that reason set himself outside of it as a foreigner, making him a greater threat. This paved the way for the subtle shift over the course of the thirteenth …
