The Jewish community in Rome is the oldest in Europe, the only one to have existed continuously for over 2,000 years. This detailed study of the Jewish banking community in Italy is therefore of special value and interest. Poliakov's classic account of the rise and fall of the Jewish bankers is at the same time the story of medieval finance in general, its decline, and the birth of 'modern' finance. The author traces the economic and theological implication of each stage in the ambiguous relationship that developed between the Jewish money trade and the Holy See. He shows that the protection enjoyed by the Jews from the Holy See had not only theological, but also economic roots. The study ends with an account of the introduction of modern, 'capitalist' techniques and of the consequent inevitable decline of the Jewish money trade.


This detailed account is one of few so far published on the financial connections between the Jewish money-lenders and the Holy See.

Professor Poliakov writes that "faith in the divine destiny of the Jews has been an important influence on their truly strange fate", and in this study he traces their varying fortunes in the Islamic countries and in Spain and Portugal. The book also includes two appendices - one on the Jews in the Holy See and one on the Moors and their expulsion fron Spain.

In the years between 1700 and 1870, the fateful theory of modern racialist anti-Semitism was developed, and this theory forms the main theme of this volume. Drawing on the works of both prominent and obscure writers, Poliakov plots the changing image of the Jew in this period.

This volume covers the period 1870-1933. Anti-Semitic propaganda in the years after the emancipation of the Jews drew upon an exaggerated belief in their financial, political, or intellectual successes and had as its principal theme the domination, imminent if not already achieved, of the Christian by the Jewish world. Europeans showed an increasing tendency to give a sinister interpretation to all kinds of Jewish activity, to the extent of seeing every social cataclysm, especially war and revolution, as the result of Semitic machinations.

History of Anti-Semitism

by Leon Poliakov

Published 1 February 1974