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Comment by cheeki kea on June 15, 2022 at 7:38am

  Magna Carta’s reactionary clauses regarding Jews 

Magna Carta is often viewed as a radical or even revolutionary settlement. In many ways, however, it can be read as highly conservative, attempting a return to good laws situated in the dim and semi-mythical past. Several instances can be cited of clauses that were reactionary. Clauses 10 and 11, for example, attempt to limit the amount of money payable in interest on debts to the Jews. In an increasingly commercialized economy, the flow of credit was essential to prosperity. Yet the Church forbade Christians to lend money to one another at interest (‘usury’). This in turn derived from the laws of the Old Testament, which forbade Jews to charge for lending money to fellow Jews. Inter-faith loans, on the other hand, were exempted from such restrictions. As a result, money-lending became a significant Jewish enterprise, and the Jews themselves were positively encouraged to act as bankers, not least as a means of bringing further profit to the crown. In the summer of 1215, not only did Magna Carta attempt to put an end to such trade, but there was a deliberate pogrom against the Jewish population of rebel-held London. Here, baronial and popular discontent boiled over into violence, a far cry from what, we are taught, were Magna Carta’s essentially public-spirited or libertarian impulses.   ~~~ We've been warned about thieving jews for some time. I think I would even say from the beginning of time itself.