ABSTRACT
The Jews, in fact, prospered in early medieval Europe because of their positions as merchants and moneylenders in an agrarian society. Spread throughout the former Western Roman Empire as well as throughout the new Islamic world, the Jews functioned as a bridge between the credit systems of the ancient world and the development of a modem credit system in the West. During the second half of the first century, unsuccessful rebellions against the Romans had resulted in the destruction of the Jewish Temple in Palestine and accelerated development of larger communities outside the homeland, in what is described as the Diaspora. Although the Roman Empire fell, the Jewish communities throughout Western Europe continued to survive and, in some cases, even prosper. The Jewish role in credit was not to disappear, but it did decline during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.
