Chapter 29 - The Ghetto (2)

Summary

We must not forget how much of this had sprung originally from the Jew's own pride in his creed, and the tenacity with which he had held to the exclusivist principle “Outside the Covenant, no salvation”. We must bear in mind the offence given by a minority of these pariahs in their wealth and ostentation, and their sacrilegious holding of Church vessels and ornaments to pledge. Far-seeing statesmen, also, must have foreseen what Pollock and Maitland point out in their survey: “Many an ancient tie between men—the tie of kinship, the tie of homage—is being dissolved or transmuted by the touch of Jewish gold; land is being brought to market and feudal rights are being capitalized.” The modern historian may welcome that change; but we cannot blame our ancestors for seeing it with other eyes. But this influence was only indirect; we must not accept the legend that the Jew ordinarily exercised secret and immediate political power in the Middle Ages. As Dr J. W. Parkes has pointed out, Kipling rests upon a misapprehension of the actual facts in his story of the Jews who decided that Magna Carta should be signed. For money (as he points out) means power only when its owner either can give or withhold it at his own choice; but, as the Jew had no power to withhold, he could exercise no power by giving.