ABSTRACT
The history of the Jews in medieval France is inexorably linked to the efforts of the Capetian kings of France to expand their royal remit beyond the Île-de-France with Paris at its centre to the other areas which we now call France. The expansion of Capetian power did not just depend on the accretion of royal control over greater stretches of France, as for example when Philip Augustus gained Normandy for his crown from John of England in 1204. It also expressed itself through greater acceptance of the king’s overlordship in the course of the thirteenth century by the counts, dukes and princes who ruled the several principalities of France. And even in periods when Capetian authority was minimal in any practical sense of the word, the idea of kingship was kept alive through the existence of royal bishoprics and abbeys throughout France. Control over Jews and the income they delivered through taxation was one of the markers of the extent of royal authority. When Philip Augustus expelled the Jews from his kingdom in 1182, only the Jews of the Île-de-France were affected; when Philip IV did the same in 1306 Jews throughout France had to leave their homes. 1
