On the issue of residential segregation: Jews voluntarily lived in separate
quarters or neighbourhoods, if possible, well-before 1215. (See, e.g. the
early 11thc charter in which the bishop offers the Jews a protected, walled
area--in Mainz, I think--given in Robert Chazan, *Church, State and Jew in
the Middle Ages*, which is not to hand.) Jews did so, because communal
institutions and prohibitions required proximity (synagogue, ritual bath,
etc., etc.); and, in human terms, because safety as well as community ethos
meant living together. But as a step on the way to the non-voluntary
ghetto, the Fourth Lateran, from the Christian perspective, encouraged the
segregation of Jews in all aspects--personal, economic, sexual, political,
even visual--i.e., their separation from the *populus Christianus*.
Gary Dickson
University of Edinburgh
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