ABSTRACT
The empire was a Christian unity analogous to the body of Christ, indivisible and sacred. The commencement of an unwinding of this unity because of the emperor’s second marriage and the birth of a fourth son encouraged the resentful elder sons to dispute the arrangements and the authority of the father, alleging a disturbance of the sacred unity promulgated and sanctified by the Ordinatio of 817. Merchants, both Christian and Jewish, maintained a permanent presence at Aachen. The absence of a comprehensive code of law regarding Jews can be set against the limited number of capitularies proclaiming equality of treatment for Christian and Jewish merchants in regard to commercial negotiations. The pull to Judaism was to be found in the more educated circles of learned theologians and their biblical commentaries: a preoccupation to unravel the birth and origins of Christianity with regard to earlier Jewish texts.
