ABSTRACT
Robert Chazan argues that medieval northern Europe became the breeding ground for the radicalisation and racialisation of traditionally negative Christian perceptions of Jews. He identifies a number of features of northern-European Jewish life that intensified anti-Jewish attitudes, including Jewish newness; Jewish religious otherness; Jewish ethnic otherness; the limited Jewish economic outlets in northern Europe; the new and problematic Jewish specialisation in moneylending; and the potent links between the Jews and their overlords. Together with the general social, political, and economic changes during the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, it was in this period that the new and more virulent imagery emerged.
