At about this time – in the second half of the eighth century – the Jews of Europe also emerged a little from the darkness which had covered them for centuries. Favored by the rulers, or at least neither ill-treated nor persecuted by them, they raised themselves to a certain degree of culture. Charlemagne, the founder of the empire of the Franks, to whom Europe owes its regeneration and partial emancipation from barbarism, also contributed to the spiritual and social advancement of the Jews in France and Germany. By the creation of the German-Frankish empire – which extended from the ocean to the further side of the Elbe, and from the Mediterranean to the North Sea – Charlemagne transferred the focus of history to Western Europe, whereas hitherto it had been at Constantinople, on the borderland between Eastern Europe and Asia. Although Charlemagne was a protector of the Church, and helped to found the supremacy of the papacy, and Hadrian, the contemporary Pope, was anything but friendly to the Jews, and repeatedly exhorted the Spanish bishops to prevent the Christians from associating with Jews and heathens (Arabs), Charlemagne was too far-seeing to share the prejudices of the clergy with respect to the Jews. In opposition to all the precepts of the Church and decisions of the councils, the first Frankish emperor favored the Jews of his empire, and turned to account the knowledge of a learned man of this race, who journeyed to Syria for him, and brought back to France the products of the East. While other monarchs punished the Jews for purchasing Church vessels or taking them as pledges from the clergy or the servants of the Church, Charlemagne adopted the opposite course; he inflicted heavy punishment on the sacrilegious ecclesiastics, and absolved the Jews from all penalties.
The Jews were at this period the principal representatives of the commerce of the world. While the nobles devoted themselves to the business of war, the commoners to trades, and the peasants and serfs to agriculture, the Jews, who were not liable to be called upon to perform military service, and possessed no feudal lands, turned their attention to the exportation and importation of goods and slaves, so that the favor extended to them by Charlemagne was, to a certain extent, a privilege accorded to a commercial company. They experienced only the restraint put upon all merchants in the corn and wine trade; the Emperor considered it dishonest to make a profit on the necessaries of life. This somewhat materialistic value set upon the Jews marks, however, great progress from the narrow-mindedness of the Merovingian monarchs, the Gunthrams and the Dagoberts, who saw nothing in the Jews but murderers of God. But Charlemagne also manifested deep interest in the spiritual advancement of the Jewish inhabitants of his empire. In the same way as he had cared for the education of the Germans and the French by inviting learned men from Italy, so also he earnestly desired to place a higher culture within the reach of the German and the French Jews. With this intention he removed a learned family, consisting of Kalonymos, his son Moses, and his nephew, from Lucca to Mayence (787), hoping besides to make the Jews independent of the academies of the Levant.
Charlemagne's embassy to the powerful Caliph Haroun Alrashid, to which was attached a Jew named Isaac, is familiar to every student of history (797). Although at first probably Isaac accompanied the two nobles, Landfried and Sigismund, only in the character of interpreter, he was nevertheless admitted into Charlemagne's diplomatic secrets. Thus, when the two principal ambassadors died on the journey, the Caliph's reply and the valuable presents which he had forwarded, fell into Isaac's sole charge, and he was received in solemn audience by the Emperor at Aix. The Emperor is also said to have requested the Caliph, through his embassy, to send him from Babylonia a learned Jew for his country, and Haroun is reported to have sent him a man answering his requirements. This man was a certain Machir, whom Charlemagne placed at the head of the Jewish congregation of Narbonne. Machir, who, like Kalonymos of Lucca, became the ancestor of a learned posterity, founded a Talmudical school at Narbonne.
Owing to their favorable position in the Frankish-German Empire, in which they held land, the Jews were permitted to undertake voyages and carry on business, and were harassed neither by the people nor by the really religious German ecclesiastics; they were also enabled to abandon themselves to their inclination for travel, and thus spread through many of the provinces of Germany. In the ninth century, numbers of them dwelt in the towns of Magdeburg, Merseburg, and Ratisbon. From these points, they penetrated further and further into the countries inhabited by the Slavonians on the further side of the Oder as far as Bohemia and Poland. Meanwhile, in spite of the favor which Charlemagne extended to them, he, like the best men of the Middle Ages, found it difficult to treat them on an entirely equal footing with the Christians. The chasm, which the Fathers of the Church had placed between Christianity and Judaism, and which had been widened by individual ecclesiastics and the synods, was far too deep to be overleapt by an emperor who was devotedly attached to the Church. Charlemagne himself maintained, on one point, a difference between Jew and Christian, and perpetuated it in the peculiar form of the oath which was imposed on the Jews who were witnesses against, or accusers of, a Christian. They were required, in taking an oath against a Christian, to surround themselves with thorns, to take the Torah in their right hand, and to call down upon themselves Naaman's leprosy and the punishment of Korah's faction in witness of the truth of their statement. If there was not a Hebrew copy of the Torah at hand, a Latin Bible was held to be sufficient. It is impossible not to admit, however, that to allow the Jews to testify against a Christian was in itself a deviation from the ordinances of the Church.
In the East, at the beginning of the ninth century, the Jews were also reminded, in a disagreeable manner, that they had to expect scorn and oppression even from the best rulers. The reigns of the Abassid Caliphs, Haroun Alrashid and his sons, are regarded as the most flourishing period of the Caliphate of the East, but it is at this very time that Jewish complaints of oppression rise loudest. It is possible that in re-enacting Omar's law against the Christians (807), Haroun also made it applicable to the Jews; for they were compelled to wear a distinctive badge of yellow on their dress, in the same way as the Christians were obliged to wear blue, and they had to use a rope instead of a girdle. When, after his death (809), his two sons, Mahomet Alemin and Abdallah Almamun, for whom their father had divided the Caliphate into two parts, engaged in a destructive civil war, throughout the whole extent of the great empire, the Jews, especially those in Palestine, experienced severe persecution. The Christians, however, were their companions in misfortune. During the four years (809–813) of this fratricidal struggle, robbery and massacre seem to have been the order of the day. The sufferings were so terrible, it seems, that a preacher of those times declared them to be a sign of the speedy coming of the Messiah. "Israel can only be redeemed by means of penitence, and true penitence can only be evoked by suffering, affliction, wandering, and want," declared this orator by way of consolation of his afflicted congregation. In the civil war raging between the two Caliphs, he fancied he saw the approaching destruction of the Ishmaelite rule and the approach of the Messianic empire. "Two brothers will finally rule over the Ishmaelites (Mahometans); there will then arise a descendant of David, and in the days of this king the Lord of Heaven will found a kingdom which shall never perish." "God will exterminate the sons of Esau (Byzantium), Israel's enemies, and also the sons of Ishmael, its adversaries." But these, like many others, were delusive hopes. The civil war, indeed, shook the Caliphate to its foundations, but