CHAPTER I
earliest times to the second
MASSACRE
As early as the period of the destruction of the Temple in the Holy Land, it may be assumed, individual Jews, in the wake of the Roman armies, had found their way to Germany. Certainly in the days of the Romans Jews had reached the lands along the Rhine, and inhabited Cologne, Mayence, Speyer, Worms, and Treves. For this reason it seems at first glance surprising that Frankfort—a town of some note under the Carolingians—harbored no Jewish community until well into the twelfth century. Although it was the capital of the East Frankish Empire as early as 876 , it lay apart from the world trade routes of the time, agriculture and stock-farming being its only important industries. Therefore there was nothing to induce the Jews, who, under the Saxon and Franconian rulers, were the chief wholesale traders of the time, to settle in Frankfort permanently. About the middle of the twelfth century the name Frankfort first appears in a Jewish source, from which we learn that there was a small number of Jews there. They were so well off that neither alms nor a charitable organization was needed. Christian sources first mention a permanent settlement of Jews in Frankfort about the end of the twelfth century. By the beginning of the thirteenth century the Frankfort community made quite a respectable showing. Thus, at that time, one of the
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