Problems of the Meat Market of Béziers, 1240-1247. A Question of Anti-Semitism

Abstract

This paper discusses the history of ecclesiastical statutes forbidding Christians and Jews from engaging in commercial intercourse. It suggests that in the particular case of the meat trade, despite prevailing taboos against Jews in the 13th century, these prohibitions were not effective. This was true even where the ecclesiastical prohibi¬ tions could draw additional propaganda from already existing dissatisfaction with the specific trade and/or merchants involved in the condemned practices. Thus, for this paper, popular ideas about butchers — although they were very negative — were unable to disturb the customary sale to Christians of those cuts of Jewish livestock regarded by the Jews as ritually unsuitable for their personal consumption. The mutual interdependency of Christians and Jews is vividly illustrated during periods of dearth — as, for example, in the 1240's in the Béziers farming region of southern France when the Jewish-Christian retail meat trade apparently reached a peak. Yet the very intensity of this activity alarmed churchmen and caused them to seek support for their decrees from lay authorities. This paper, therefore, also examines the character of the intervention (in 1247) of the king of France in the Jewish-Christian retail meat trade in Béziers and his role in bringing it to an end.