6: Excerpt, Francesca Trivellato’s "The Promise and Peril of Credit," 2019, and painting, Auguste Charpentier’s "The Jewish Money Lender," 1842.

6: Excerpt, Francesca Trivellato’s "The Promise and Peril of Credit," 2019, and painting, Auguste Charpentier’s "The Jewish Money Lender," 1842.

Why was Shylock a moneylender? The association of Jews with “usury”—an exploitative form of moneylending—was a major stereotype throughout the medieval period. This short excerpt from a major work by the historian Francesca Trivellato discusses the dynamics of that stereotype as it began in the thirteenth century. Auguste Chapentier’s portrait of a Jewish moneylender is from a much later period, and gives a sense of the way such figures were visualized, as well as how enduring this image was. 
 
Suggested Activity: Ask students where they or their families would go if they needed a loan. Who lends money in their community, and how are those people perceived? Is it a good thing to lend money? What if you charge interest? Is it sometimes less acceptable to do so? Show the students the excerpt and painting, and ask them to consider how the stereotype about Jews as moneylenders arose, and the different ways that stereotype might have helped or hurt the Jews throughout history—would it be a good thing or a bad thing to be known as the person to turn to when you need money? Why? 

Sources: Francesca Trivellato, The Promise and Peril of Credit: What a Forgotten Legend about Jews and Finance Tells Us about the Making of European Commercial Society (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2019), 16-17.

Auguste Charpentier, “The Jewish Money Lender,” 1842, oil on canvas, 40.94 in. x 32.05 in., MutualArt, https://www.mutualart.com/Artwork/The-Jewish-money-lender/18B76CC6074F714B.