French-Jewish World of Hurt Leading up to the king of Versailles, Louis XIV of Netflicks

Nadene Goldfoot                                         

Appearance of Medieval French Jews
Under law to wear distinctive clothing marking them as "Jews"

Netflix has a series on from 3 past seasons, Versailles.  Louis IV was responsible for building the beautiful structure named as such, that was his father's hunting Lodge originally.  Some hunting Lodge!  It's the most beautiful of structures and was palace and home to Louis IV.   His reign of 72 years and 110 days is the longest recorded of any monarch of a sovereign country in European history.
He reigned from 1643 to 1715.  His name meant "G-d given."  This monarch was the symbol of narcissism, and that himself appointed by G-d.  He followed the pattern of becoming a Louis because France had 18 of them and a lot were very cruel towards Jews who lived there.

LOUIS I (778–840)

King of Aquitaine (from the age of three), emperor of the West from 814. Of the Carolingian emperors, Louis was the best disposed toward the Jews. He retained several Jewish merchants at his court in the capacity of "merchants of the palace" who enjoyed extremely favorable privileges, part of which were no doubt also valid for all the Jews in the empire.                                                                              

LOUIS VI
King of France from 1108 to 1137.  In 1119 Louis ceded half his income from the Jews of Tours to the the Catholic Church; the Abbey of Saint-Martin there; and in 1122 he granted five houses belonging to Jews to Abbot Suger of Saint-Denis.  In other words he took the homes of the Jews and gave them to the church as well.  
                                                                           

LOUIS VII (called the Young)      

King of France from 1137 to 1180. In 1144, Louis banished from the kingdom those Jews who had been converted to Christianity and had later returned to Judaism.  These Jews were called Marranos, and today are called the Anusim.  This Louis was the leader of the 2nd Crusade to Jerusalem who in their zeal, killed Jews throughout Europe in leaving and also when they got to Palestine.  

LOUIS VIII                                  

King of France from 1223 to 1226. On Nov. 8, 1223, Louis published an edict on the Jews, which had strong fiscal motives .  The seal which had served to authenticate debts toward the Jews was abolished. Furthermore, Jews were no longer allowed to move from one seigniory to another. This edict had extremely serious consequences for the future legal position of the Jews.  The king evidently received a quota of the debts collected in this way, which explains why the fiscal income from the Jews increased to a total of 8,682 livres in 1226. 

LOUIS IX                                                    

King of France from 1226 to 1270.  He made money- lending as a business impossible for the Jews.  There is reason to believe that Louis took no measures to protect Jews persecuted by would-be crusaders in 1236 in several provinces.  When in 1239 Pope Gregory IX requested the kings of France and Portugal to order the seizure of Jewish books for examination, Louis was the promptest and most zealous to comply; 24 cartloads of Jewish books were burned in 1242.   In December 1254 Louis threatened with expulsion any Jew who kept copies of the Talmud or other banned books; at the same time he forbade them to engage in any kind of moneylending and ordered them to earn a livelihood in manual toil or any other lawful trade.  the king ordered the Jews to wear a distinctive badge and Jews were forced to listen to sermons about converting to Christianity.  "At a trial, initiated by King Louis IX and Pope Gregory IX, the defendant was not a person, but a work of literature - The Talmud, to be precise, which according to the Catholic Church holds messages of hatred towards all gentiles and disparagement of Jesus."

LOUIS X (called Le Hutin: "The Quarreler")

King of France from 1314 to 1316.Louis paved the way for the return of the Jews expelled from the kingdom of France in 1306. On April 1, 1315, he suspended the collection of the debts owed to them which were still outstanding from the time of the expulsion.He kept the Talmud from them in a return of property.  He prohibited them from moneylending against interest.

Jews were expulsed again in 1322 by Charles IV.  They had no time to take care

of their possessions; just had to leave.  

LOUIS XII

King of France from 1498 to 1515. Louis ordered the final expulsion of the Jews from Provence in 1501. In order to compensate for the loss to his revenues caused by the departure of the Jews from Provence, Louis introduced a tax in 1512 on the remaining Jews there, who had accepted baptism. Known as the "tax of the neophytes," it amounted to a total of 6,000 livres. Down to the 18^th century, a number of noble Provençal families were held in discredit because they were reputedly descended from these "neophytes."  They would be Marranos, caused in 1492 by the Spanish Inquisition against Jews.  The Pope's decree slowly seeped into all the countries.  

LOUIS XIII                                                           

King Louis 13th and wife Anne
with Louis 14th in middle as a child

King of France from 1610 to 1643 who ruled with his mother, Marie de Medici; till of age in 1614. "His godparents were Pope Paul V, and his maternal aunt, Eleonora de’ Medici, Duchess of Mantua." On April 23, 1615, Louis signed letters patent renewing the expulsion order "against not only Jews but also those who profess and practice Judaism-meaning Marranos." This order appears to have been directed especially against Marranos and possibly also against those Jews who had come to Paris with Concini (Maréchal d'Ancre), the young king's minister, and his wife, Leonora Galigai.  However, after the assassination of Concini at Louis' command, in 1617, Leonora Galigai was tried for sorcery and the charge of practicing Judaism was also brought against her. During Louis' reign, the Jews of Comtat Venaissin could bring action against defendants living in the kingdom of France and even win their cases. When Louis visited Metz in 1632, he granted the Jews letters patent which declared their presence in the town a necessity. 

Louis XIV  
Reign: 14 May 1643 – 1 September 1715 Subject of Netflix                                 

King Louis XIV, Subject on Netflix Show


Raphaël Lévy, a French Jew, was convicted, tortured, and executed for an act he did not commit, a fiction deriving from medieval anti-Jewish myth: the ritual murder of a Christian boy to obtain blood for satanic rituals. When Lévy was accused of the ritual murder, it was the first accusation of blood libel for a century. Lévy's trial, however, became a forum for anti-Jewish accusations, and although the Holy Roman Emperor and a representative of King Louis XIV both tried to intervene, they were ignored by the parliament of Metz.

LOUIS XVI                                        

Storming of the Bastille on July 14, 1789

King of France from 1774 to 1792. Under this king, Jews were seeing an improvement when the revolution broke out on May 5 1789 and lasted until November 9 1799.  

A most important man in Jewish History came from Troyes, France;  Rashi.  

Rashi

"The great Jewish figure which dominated the second half of the 11th century, as well as the whole rabbinical history of France, was Rashi (Rabbi Shlomo Yitzchaki) of Troyes (1040–1106). He personified the genius of northern French Judaism: its devoted attachment to tradition; its untroubled faith; its piety, ardent but free from mysticism. His works are distinguished by their clarity, directness, and are written in a simple, concise, unaffected style, suited to his subject. His commentary on the Talmud, which was the product of colossal labor, and which eclipsed the similar works of all his predecessors, by its clarity and soundness made easy the study of that vast compilation, and soon became its indispensable complement. Every edition of the Talmud that was ever published has this commentary printed on the same page of the Talmud itself. His commentary on the Bible (particularly on the Pentateuch), a sort of repertory of the Midrash, served for edification, but also advanced the taste for seeking the plain and true meaning of the bible. The school which he founded at Troyes, his birthplace, after having followed the teachings of those of Worms and Mainz, immediately became famous.... The school's Talmudic commentaries and interpretations are the basis and starting point for the Ashkenazic tradition of how to interpret and understand the Talmud's explanation of Biblical laws. In many cases these interpretations differ substantially from those of the Sephardim, which results in differences between how Ashkenazim and Sephardim hold what constitutes the practical application of the law. ... Thus the 11th century was a period of fruitful activity in literature. Thenceforth French Judaism became one of the poles within Judaism.

In those days, a genealogy of one's family was important to serve in the community and Rashi's went back to King David.  Rashi stood for:  Rabbi Solomon Yitzhak ben Isaac born 1040-d: 1105.  He studied in the Rhineland and then returned to Troyes and opened his own school there.  He's known for his comments on the Torah and Babylonian Talmud, as we have 2 of them, Palestinian and Babylonian.   

                                                        

Of this period, anti-Semitism has returned since the Holocaust to this day and age and one of the earliest killings of Jews happened in France on a Friday when people were preparing for Shabbat by shopping for such things as a Challah.  These 4 Jewish Frenchmen were attacked and killed in someone's anti-semitic rage in a shop.  

Resource:  https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/king-louis

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Revolution
Medici is also on Netflicks, an excellent choice to watch, too. 
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_Jews_in_France