The Jews are a Semitic people tracing descent to common ancestors from ancient Israel (known formerly as Canaan, then Judea, then Palestine, then Israel ) in Asia or, by another definition, adherents of a religion known as Judaism. Although they never established a political entity in Europe, the Jews have played a part in the history of all European nations from ancient times to the present.
ORIGINS
The Jews are a Semitic people, related to other Semites of the Middle East, such as Phoenicians and Arabs. According to tradition as related in the Bible the first Jews migrated to present-day Israel from Mesopotamia (part of present-day Iraq). Descendants perhaps spent time in Egypt before returning to found the kingdoms of Israel and Judah. Yet over the centuries many Jews began to live away from their homeland, their dispersion known as the Diaspora. The Jews who settled in Europe and elsewhere tended to assimilate economically but not culturally, continuing to practice their traditional religion and keep their community intact. Their descendants are thus believed to have a high percentage of Jewish ethnic ancestry Yet some modern Jews are descended from peoples in other lands who converted to Judaism. In reference to ancient peoples the names Hebrews and Israelites are used synonymously with Jews; the name Israelis refers to citizens of the modern-day nation of Israel. (The name Jews is derived from Judah, a kingdom; the Hebrew word for Judeans was yehudi, and the Greek ioudaios.)
LANGUAGE
The original language of the Israelites was Hebrew, part of the Canaanite branch of the Semitic family (which includes the extinct language of the Phoenicians). Other branches are Akkadian (which includes extinct Babylonian and Assyrian), Aramaic (languages of Syria), Arabic (of the Arab world), and Ethiopic (of Ethiopia). Hebrew survived the ages in its written form. The nation of Israel, founded in 1948, revived it as an official language. The Jews who settled in other countries spoke other languages. Jewish scriptures were translated into Greek and Latin. The extant Yiddish, which evolved from the German of the Middle Ages in Eastern Europe and spread elsewhere, includes many Hebrew and Aramaic words. Judezmo (or Ladino), a combination of Hebrew and Spanish, developed among Jews living on the Iberian Peninsula in the Middle Ages and was spoken by their descendants into the 20th century.
Legendary Wanderings
On the basis of tradition the Jews trace their lineage to the Israelite patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, and Jacob’s fourth son, Judah. Abraham supposedly traveled from Mesopotamia to present-day Israel, and for a time Jacob and his 12 sons lived in Egypt. Their descendants departed Egypt, led by Moses—as related in the biblical book of Exodus. After years of wandering in the Sinai Desert, according to their belief, God revealed to them the Ten Commandments, the basic rules and principles of Jewish life. Finally they returned to Canaan, which they called Eretz Israel (the land of Israel). They formed a tribal confederation, of which Saul reportedly became the first king. He eventually was defeated by Philistines, a non-Semitic people who migrated to Palestine from the Aegean (probably Crete) in the 12th century B. C.E., a time when the eastern Mediterranean region was experiencing devastating wars and other destructive forces that are poorly understood, leading to widespread depopulation of some areas and migration of peoples. The Philistines built cities and had a tight political organization that made them formidable foes of the people of Israel.
According to the Bible David was leader of the tribe of Judah who defeated the enemies of the Israelites. On the basis of other sources as well as the Bible he is believed to have ascended to power in at least a small kingdom in about 1000 B. C.E., with Jerusalem as his capital. His son, Solomon, succeeded him and ruled over a period of expansion and peace. After Solomon’s death in about 920 B. C.E. a period of disruption followed, and two kingdoms formed, the 10 tribes in the kingdom of Israel in the north, and two tribes in the Kingdom ofJudah in the south. In 722 B. C.E. the Assyrians under Sargon II conquered Israel and exiled most of the Israelites, the basis for the legend of the Lost Tribes of Israel. In 586 B. C.E. the Babylonians out of Mesopotamia conquered Judah and destroyed the Temple at Jerusalem. During the subsequent 50-year-long period of their rule known as the Babylonian Captivity many Jewish leaders were exiled. This and subsequent scattering of the Jews are known as the Diaspora. At this time large Jewish communities in Babylonia, Asia Minor, and Egypt developed. Some of them became centers of learning of Jewish history and culture. Without significant political power Jewish communities were increasingly led by scholars and rabbis.
The Persians gained control of Judah in about 540 B. C.E. and allowed Jews to return as well as granting a degree of self-government. Alexander the Great of the Macedonians conquered the region in 332 B. C.E., and afterward the various states of his surviving empire were ruled by monarchs, influenced by Hellenism, that is, based on traditions of the ancient Greeks. Yet Judah continued to have some autonomy. Jews traveled widely during the Hellenistic period and sought to add to their numbers through an active policy of conversion (the word proselyte originally referred to a Greek who had converted to Judaism). Some foreign communities used a Greek translation of the Hebrew Scriptures known as the Septuagint, and Judaism evolved to varying forms.
Because of later attempts to impose Greek religion on the Jews in their homeland in 167 B. C.E. they revolted under the leadership of a family known as the Maccabees—including Mattathias and his son, Judas Maccabeus—and successfully created an independent Jewish kingdom ruled by the Hasmonaean dynasty (after an ancestor, Hashmon) from 165 to 63
B. C.E.
In 63 B. C.E. the Romans under Pompey conquered Judah and established the province of
Ashkenazim (German Jews) pose for a photograph in 1876. (Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [LC-USZ62-100149])
Palestine, with Judea as the southern division. The Romans sometimes ruled through Jewish kings and sometimes through Roman military governors. Pontius Pilate, who repressed the sect of Judaism that evolved into Christianity and himself presided over the crucifixion of Jesus, was a military governor. The Temple of Jerusalem was once again destroyed in 70 c. e. During Roman occupation many Jews traveled to other parts of the Roman Empire, because of repression but also for economic opportunities. Some became citizens of other countries.
During the Roman period the Jews suffered varying degrees of repression. After a Jewish revolt led by Simon Bar Kokhba in 131-135 C. E. Jews were refused entrance to Jerusalem. Yet the polytheistic Romans were more concerned with political and economic domination than religious conversion. This condition changed when the Emperor Constantine made Christianity the official Roman religion in the early fourth century C. E., after which many Jews were persecuted for not accepting Jesus Christ as the son of God.
The Germanics, who seized control of much of the Western Roman Empire in the fifth century C. E., as well as the Byzantines, the rulers of the Eastern part of the divided empire, also made life hard for the Jews. After their conversion to Catholicism in the sixth century the Visigoths launched attacks on Jewish communities in Spain and southern Gaul. Meanwhile Jews in Byzantium were barred from holding public office, building new synagogues, or engaging in certain businesses.
The rise of Islam in the seventh century c. e. and the subsequent rise of the Franks led to a period of new opportunity for Jews in Europe. After the Moors occupied the Iberian Peninsula in 711 they allowed economic development among Jewish and Christian peoples, whom they taxed. Jews in Muslim Spain developed new centers of learning and in part because of creative interaction between Jewish and Islamic culture enjoyed what is considered a golden age of literature. Even in those regions that Christians recaptured over the centuries some Jews, because they had mastered Arabic, remained in positions of influence.
The Jews in Spain and Portugal became known as Sephardim, from the Hebrew word for Spain, Sefarad. They practiced Babylonian rather than Palestinian Jewish ritual traditions and later spoke Ladino.
The Franks meanwhile had encouraged Jewish settlement in Provence in present-day southern France and in the Rhineland, territory west of the Rhine River in present-day western Germany, to further the economic development of those regions. Since the Jews were not a military threat and depended directly on the rulers for protection, the Franks and later Holy Roman rulers could trust them not to attempt to expand territory.
The Jews of the Rhineland, along with their Jewish neighbors in France, became known as Ashkenazim, from the Hebrew word for Germany, Ashkenaz. They practiced their own synagogue traditions, known as German rites, and spoke Yiddish.
The Crusades, the military expeditions undertaken by European Christian powers from the late 11th century through the late 13th century to recover the Holy Land in the Near East from the Muslims, meant new hardship for the Jews as they, too, experienced religious hostility from crusading armies or local mobs, especially in the
Rhineland, where populations of entire villages were massacred and homes destroyed. Some of these peoples fled eastward into territory held by the Slavs, especially in present-day Poland, Lithuania, Ukraine, and Russia.
Expulsion and Inquisition
In many parts of Europe during and after the Crusades Jews were forbidden ownership of land and most occupations other than trading and moneylending. In some places Jews were even expelled—Naples in 1288; England in 1290; France in 1306; Spain, partially, in 1391; and Germany periodically in the 15th century. The Jews were blamed for the bubonic plague—by poisoning wells—in Europe in the 14th century, known as the Black Death, by some among European Christian society. Some Jews chose to convert rather than leave their home. A number converted in name only. Those in Spain who continued what was known as judaizing—that is, practicing Judaism—were called Marranos. In 1478 to ferret out this practice and other forms of heresy against the Catholic Church, the Spaniards launched the Spanish Inquisition, during which some Jews were executed.
In 1492 when King Ferdinand II and Queen Isabella I conquered the last Moorish kingdom in Spain they expelled the rest of the Jewish population. In the course of these expulsions many Ashkenazim joined earlier established Jewish communities in Poland. Some Sephardim from Spain went to other parts of Europe. Portugal was a place of refuge until 1497, when King Manuel I ordered the forced conversion of Jews. Sephardim spread throughout the Mediterranean world, many to lands in Europe and Asia controlled by the Islamic Ottoman TURKS. Some joined communities of Oriental Jews in North Africa and Asia (many of whom spoke Arabic) founded in ancient times. The expulsions of the 15th century were the last for the Jews until the 20th century.
Growing Tolerance and Opportunity
By the 16th century European Jews had developed thriving communities, typically urban, with increasing mobility among them. The Polish-Lithuanian Jewish community became a major center of scholarship in the 16th century. In the 17th century Jews began to return to western Europe. Holland, after gaining its independence from Spain in 1648, became a commercial center. The city of Hamburg in Germany drew a great number of migrants for its economic opportunities. England readmitted Jews in 1654. Economic opportunities grew, and Jews in the economic centers of western Europe gained prominence and wealth in businesses such as finance, importing and exporting, and shipbuilding.
During the cultural period of the 18th century known as the Enlightenment philosophers and writers developed the concept of human rights held by all peoples regardless of race or creed. In accordance with this principle during the French Revolution in 1789-99 French Jews were granted emancipation, in which legal restrictions and other inequities applied specially to Jews were abolished, Jews were recognized as equal to other citizens, and they were granted the rights and duties of citizenship. The Revolutions of 1848 led to the emancipation of the Jews in Germany and Austria as well. By 1871 every European country except Russia had emancipated its Jewish inhabitants.
In the meantime some Jews adopted the languages and clothing of the dominant cultures in a secularization movement countering the age-old religious tradition of cultural isolation, which for some Christian advocates of emancipation had been its main purpose, including the wearing of clothes that set them apart from other peoples. During the period from the mid-18th to late 19th century Jewish society became fragmented, and various sects formed throughout Europe, following different interpretations of Judaism.
Some European Jews had great success in business, such as the family banking dynasties, including the House of Rothschild in Germany Mayer Amschel Rothschild, the founder, began as a moneylender at Frankfurt am Main in the late 18th century and became an agent of the British in subsidizing European sovereigns in the wars against the French under Napoleon (see British: nationality; French: nationality).
Pogroms and Migration
Emancipation did not prevent persecution, however, as the liberalizing tendencies of the Enlightenment dissipated during the Napoleonic Wars and Europe became more politically conservative. Assimilated as well as unassimilated Jews proved easy targets for other groups, because they tended to marry among their own people and maintain their ancient religion. The growing political and economic power of Jews caused anxiety among adherents of the nationalistic movements that had arisen during the 19th century, particularly in Germany, where the French occupation under Napoleon caused both a backlash against the liberal measures established by the French and a movement glorifying German ethnicity and patriotism that fueled the backlash. In many countries members of the laboring and artisan classes who were suffering from the effects of the massive economic restructuring taking place as merchant capitalism replaced the economics of the ancien regime opposed the 1848 revolution because it was a product of the bourgeoisie (middle-class businessmen) who were bringing about this restructuring. Seeing Jews as prominent players in the creation of this new order, disaffected laborers took advantage of the turmoil during the revolution to attack them. In the late 19th century anti-Semitism became a political stance, as anti-Semites categorized Jews as a separate race from the supposed dominant Aryan race, and sought to segregate and disempower them.
Jews became scapegoats in many historical incidents, with authorities sometimes inciting anger against them. The assassination of the Russian czar Alexander II by revolutionaries in 1881 prompted the first pogrom—a Russian term for devastation referring to mob attacks on Jews and their property, condoned or even sponsored by authorities. After an attempted revolution in 1905 against the czar Jewish communities in some 600 cities and villages suffered attacks, with thousands killed. During the period of unrest after the Russian Revolution in 1917 numerous pogroms were carried out, especially in Ukraine. The antireligion policy of the Bolshevik government suppressed Jewish religion in the Soviet Union (see Russians: nationality). At this time more Jews migrated to Poland, which became a center of Jewish cultural activity.
In response to persecution and pogroms the Jewish movement of Zionism, founded in Basel, switzerland, in 1897, advocated the return of Jews to Palestine (the hill Zion, where the ancient Temple stood, is a holy site in Jerusalem), which some families chose to do. Many more migrated to the United States—an estimated 2.5 million from the time of the first pogrom to the start of World War I in 1914.
The Holocaust and the Founding of Israel
In 1933 the Nazis (National Socialists) gained power in Germany under Adolf Hitler, who used Jews as scapegoats for the economic depression in gaining support for his policies. He rescinded rights of Jews granted in the emancipation, purging the civil service and educational institutions of Jews and establishing boycotts of Jewish businesses. When in 1938 a German diplomat was killed by a Jew, the Nazis launched a pogrom known as the Kristallnacht (German for Night of Broken Glass), a night of violence against Jewish lives and property Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939 started World War II (1939-45). During the war the violence against the Jews turned horrific when the Nazi Germans (see Germans: nationality) and their collaborators used concentration camps to gather and exterminate Jews in Hitler’s “final solution.” Nearly 6 million Jews in Germany itself, Poland, Czechoslovakia, France, and elsewhere—almost two-thirds of all European Jews—lost their life in the episode of history known as the Holocaust. Moreover Jewish European subcultures were dispossessed, and great works of literature, especially in Yiddish, were lost.
After the war great numbers of Jews from Europe and elsewhere sought refuge in Palestine. David Ben-Gurion led the movement for independence, and in 1948 the state of Israel, with Judaism as its official religion, was established from part of ancient Palestine.
European Subgroups
In addition to Ashkenazim and Sephardim there are a number of Jewish subgroups who developed distinct cultural identities around the world, many still extant. Among those in Europe are the Khazars, a Turkic-speaking people, who created an empire centered on the Eurasian steppes to the northwest of the Caspian sea in present-day southwestern Russia and southeastern Kazakhstan in the eighth to 10th centuries. Many Khazars, including the nobility, were converted to Judaism when in the eighth century large numbers of Jews fled the Byzantine Empire, where repressive measures had been instituted against them. The Khazar leadership, which until now had practiced a form of shamanism, adopted a simplified form of Judaism differing from that practiced by most Jews, in which they erected a tent for a tabernacle and offered sacrifices. Khazars are believed by some scholars to have been the ancestors of many Eastern European Jews.
The Romaniotes, Greek-speaking Jews living in the Balkans from the Hellenistic era until modern times, have traditionally practiced Judaism. When numerous sephardim settled in Ottoman-controlled Greece, some of the Romaniotes were assimilated into their groups, but others preserved their language and identity. Those still in Greece live mainly in the region of loannina near the Albanian border.
Another group are the Juhurim, or Mountain Jews (also called Dagchufuts) of
Dagestan, a republic in the northern Caucasus region of southwestern Russia and surrounding regions. They settled in the highlands on the west coast of the Caspian Sea as early as the fifth century and eventually moved to the coastal lowlands. An agricultural people, they specialized in cultivating rice, tobacco, and vineyards and raising silkworms. Their wine became popular among other peoples. They spoke an Iranian dialect and lived and dressed similar to Indo-Iranian and Caucasic peoples (see Caucasians) around them. Although the Communist government attempted to assimilate them, they clung to their religion and now are active culturally, with theatricals and concerts celebrating their identity.
Krymchaks, or Crimean Jews, on the Crimean Peninsula of present-day Ukraine began forming a community and distinct identity in the 13th-14th centuries, Jews who perhaps had settled the region in ancient times. Over the centuries both Ashkenazim and Sephardim settled among them. In close contact with the Turkic Tatars they began to speak a dialect known as Crimean Tatar. They also developed their own rituals. They were nearly exterminated during World War II. Descendants now live mostly in Feodosiya, Kerch, and Sevastopol.
CULTURE
Government and Society Religious Foundations Judaism, or at least for secular Jews the history of Judaism, is central to Jewish identity The religion has been categorized as both the religion and the civilization of Jews. Even those Jews who have assimilated in other cultures have drawn on their religion and the idea of a covenant—a special relationship with God—in defining themselves as a people. The foundations of Judaism are the written law as found in the Bible’s Old Testament and the oral law as recorded in the Talmud, which, in their surviving written forms, date at least to the early centuries C. E. The first five books of the Old Testament, known as the Torah, contain the fundamental laws of moral and physical conduct, including the Ten Commandments supposed to have been handed down to Moses on Mt. Sinai (the term Torah is sometimes used to refer to all teachings of Judaism). The Talmud comprises 63 books of writings by ancient rabbis defining proper Jewish life. Its two divisions are the Mishna, the text of oral law, and the Gemara, the interpretation of that law The legal section is known as the Halakah; the laws relate to family, civil, and criminal matters; work; agriculture and food; clothing; festivals and fasts; and rituals. Poetical digressions in the text, including legends, parables, allegories, and anecdotes, are known as Haggada. In traditional Judaism spiritual leaders are known as rabbis, and places of worship are known as synagogues. In many synagogues a hazzan (cantor) leads the congregation in prayer and sings or chants liturgical music. Throughout the history of the Jews rabbis have also taken on political roles, and synagogues have served as communal centers.
Clothing and Personal Habits
Judaism, in its Orthodox form, calls on Jews to set themselves apart from other peoples by wearing certain hairstyles—peot (earlocks) for men and sheitels (wigs) for women—and certain clothing, such as garments with tzitzit (fringes) and yamilkes (skullcaps) for men. Food is supposed to be kosher, that is, sanctioned by Jewish law Circumcision is a rite performed on male infants as a sign of inclusion in the Jewish religious community Yet throughout history various branches of Judaism have reinterpreted ritual observances, allowing, for example, the wearing of the clothing of other peoples to prevent discrimination.
Religion
Literature Many different interpretations of Judaism have developed over the centuries. The Cabala is a form of Jewish mysticism, which holds that every word, letter, accent, and number of the Bible contains meaning. The earliest extant cabalist work, dating possibly to the sixth century C. E., is the Sefer Yezirah (Book of Creation). The Sefer ha-zohar, or Zohar (The Book of Splendor), was written in the 13 th century by Moses de Leon (although he attributed it to a second-century rabbi named Simeon ben Yohai).
Abraham ben Meir ibn Ezra, born in Toledo, Spain, traveled widely throughout Europe and North Africa, and Moses ben Maimon (Maimonides), born in Cordoba, Spain, attempted to reconcile rabbinic Judaism with Arabic and Greek teachings.
The German Jewish philosopher centered in Berlin Moses Mendelssohn (Moses Desau) sought a modern perspective on traditional texts and advocated tolerance and assimilation.
Religious Movements In addition to philosophies various sects formed in response to societal pressures. The Hasidim (or Assideans) formed between 300 and 175 b. c.e. to resist the growing Hellenism among Jews. Hellenistic leaders required them to sacrifice to the Greek gods and eat pork. The Hasidim played a part in the early stages of the Maccabean revolt, and many of them were killed.
An antirabbinical sect was founded in Persia in about 765 c. e. by Anan ben David, who wrote Sefer ha-mitzwot, which interpreted the Bible even more literally than presented in the Talmud. Followers of his beliefs came to be known as Karaites (or Caraite) and the movement as Karaism. Their written studies in both Hebrew and Arabic flourished in the 10th century. Although the movement declined in the 12th century, it survives in Israel and the Crimea. Members of this group, such as among the KARAIMS, refer to themselves as Karaites, not as Jews, and a Karaite spiritual leader is known as a hakham (wiseman), not a rabbi.
In the 17th century a messianic movement arose around Shabbetai Tzevi (Sabbatai Zebi). Born in Turkey he traveled throughout the Near East proclaiming himself the Messiah. Word spread and he gained adherents in North Africa and Europe as well. In 1666 he was arrested in Constantinople (modern Istanbul), whereupon he converted to Islam to save his life, and the movement died out.
In the 18th century Hasidism, as founded by the Ba’al Shem Tov (Israel Ben Eliezer) in the region of Podolia (part of modern Ukraine), taught that God could be reached not just through Talmudic study, as rabbinical Judaism maintained, but through purity of heart and joyous expression, such as in music and dance as well as in the everyday activities of working and eating. Although the Hasidim leaders, known as rebbes, aroused great opposition among traditional rabbis, the movement gained followers throughout eastern and central Europe, especially among the uneducated, and is still active today around the world.
In the 19th century along with the push toward emancipation there developed the Reform movement of Judaism. The movement started as the Haskalah, as had been proposed by Moses Mendelssohn and others, which encouraged the secularization of Jewish life and acculturation to modern societies while preserving the ethical content of Ashkenazic Judaism. The movement became generally known as Reform Judaism, and it is one of the main branches of contemporary Judaism, as an alternative to Orthodox Judaism. Another branch of Judaism, known as the Conservative movement, which evolved out of the theology known as positive-historical Judaism founded by Zacharias Frankel in the mid-19th century, can be viewed as a compromise between Orthodox and Reform Judaism. It has retained some traditional elements while discarding others; in recent times, for example, it has allowed the ordination of women as rabbis.
It is estimated that 2.4 million Jews of some 14 million worldwide live in Europe. Those nations with large Jewish populations include Belgium, France, Germany, Hungary, Russia, and Ukraine. The different interpretations and multiplicity of Jewish identities make it difficult to determine exact population figures. Some people consider themselves part of an ethnic and religious group; others define themselves as part of an ethnic group yet lack religious affiliation; others consider themselves Jewish because they practice Judaism; still others manifest a strict adherence to the ancient Jewish law that states that Jewishness is determined by female descent or the conversion to Judaism in accord with tradition. The state of Israel has a broader Law of Return, which holds that anyone who has a Jewish grandparent or who has converted to Judaism is Jewish. Despite the varying beliefs and ways of life in a broad sense Jews— whether “religious Jews” or “secular Jews”— represent a peoplehood.
Further Reading
Eli Barnavi, ed. A Historical Atlas of the Jewish People: From the Time of the Patriarchs to the Present (New York: Schocken, 2003).
Elena Romero Castello and Uriel MacIas Kapon. The Jews and Europe: 2,000 Years of History (New York: Henry Holt, 1994).
John Edward. The Jews in Christian Europe, 1400-1700 (London: Routledge, 1988).
Anna Foa. The Jews of Europe after the Black Death (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000).
Jane S. Gerber and Nicholas De Lange, eds. The Illustrated History of the Jewish People (New York: Harcourt, 1997).
Martin Gilbert. The Routledge Atlas of Jewish History (London: Routledge, 2003).
Malcolm Hay. Europe and the Jews: The Pressure of Christendom on the People of Israel for 1900 Years (Chicago: Academy Chicago, 1992).
Frances Malino and David Sorkin, eds. Profiles in Diversity: Jews in a Changing Europe, 1750-1870 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1998). Milton Meltzer. World of Our Fathers: The Jews of Eastern Europe (New York: Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1974).
Sixth century Jutish kingdom of Kent is first Anglo-Saxon polity ot rise to dominance.
Eighth century Jutes assimilated into English with other Anglo-Saxon tribes.
Brian Pullan. The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550-1670 (London: I. B. Tauris, 1998). David Vital. A People Apart: The Jews in Europe, 1789-1939 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999).
Jutes (Jutae; Eotan)
The Jutes, a Germanic tribe, originally occupied territory on the Jutland Peninsula in present-day Denmark, named for them. They, along with the Angles, Frisians, and Saxons, were among the Germanics who in the fifth and sixth centuries settled in Britain and eventually became known as Anglo-Saxons.
ORIGINS
In the middle of the second millennium b. c.e. Jutland became part of an important north-south trade route to the northern carpathian Mountain region and beyond; the most important Jutish trade product was amber. This far-ranging trade had relatively little impact on the Jutes, however, until the Romans expanded their empire north and east to the Rhine in the first centuries b. c.e. and c. E. Trading activities accordingly expanded far beyond anything that had been seen in the region before. The Romans had a great demand for slaves, on which their agricultural economy was based, and for leather to equip their armies, both of which the Jutes and the other Germanic tribes began to supply to them in great quantities. The Jutes, being the farthest from the Roman border, were least affected by the trade and seem to have preserved a more archaic barter economy with less social stratification than developed in the tribes to their south and west. But the Roman presence fostered the warrior elite in Jutish society, who would spearhead the migration of many Jutes to Britain in the fifth and sixth centuries C. E. The name Jutes is thought to be derived from the old Norse Iotar, originally applied to the tribe.
LANGUAGE
The now-extinct Jutish dialect of German is known as Jutic. It was similar to the Angle and
Saxon dialects, grouped with them in the Low German branch. After these tribes migrated to Britain, their dialects grew grammatically closer to one another; out of them English emerged.
HISTORY
According to a traditional story recorded by Gildas, a Briton, and Bede, an Anglo-Saxon, writing in the sixth century and afterward, Vortigern, a king of the Britons, invited the Saxons to Britain, along with the Angles and Jutes, to help fight the Picts. The time frame given for their arrival is 446-454 C. E., although Germanics had migrated there earlier after governance by the Romans ended in 410 and groups continued to arrive in the sixth century. The first Jutes to arrive, Hengist and Horsa, sons of one Wihtgils, reportedly landed at Ebbsfleet on the Isle of Thanet. After helping defeat the Picts the Jutes supposedly rebelled against the Britons, who were eventually driven west to Wales. Horsa was killed in battle in 455. Hengist ruled his people from Kent. The kings of Kent trace their direct descent from him and through his son, oeric (or oisc), after whom the Kentish royal house, oiscingas, is named. other tribal members settled in southern Hampshire and on the Isle of Wight. The tribe Eotan mentioned in the old English epic poem Beowulf, probably from the eighth century, is thought to refer to the Jutes.
The Jutes, Angles, Frisians, and Saxons collectively became known as the Anglo-Saxons as early as the seventh century. By the eighth century the name Jute was no longer used in Britain. Those Jutes in Jutland who did not migrate were later absorbed by the Vikings, who established the kingdom of Denmark, comprising most of the Jutland Peninsula.
CULTURE (see also Germanics)
Economy
In the Bronze Age Jutish amber was traded south along the Rhine and Upper Danube to the northern carpathian region, where there was a flourishing bronze industry. New forms of swords, spears, and other objects were introduced to Jutland by peoples of the carpathians. Jutish amber also found its way into the maritime trade routes of the Atlantic coastal zone.
At Drengsted in Jutland evidence of the effect of trade with the Romans has been found in the large scale of iron making carried out there in the third century C. E., far in excess of local needs. The Roman trade indirectly caused an increase in local trading as well, as wealth flowed into Jutland. Stocks of luxury goods such as glassware have been found. At the same time farmsteads began to differentiate in size, an indication of social stratification. Often a single farmstead in a locality would dominate the rest; such sites yield concentrations of Roman items such as Samian Ware, bronze vessels, and beads.
The Jutes of the first millennium C. E., as did other northern Germanic peoples, continued to live in longhouses little changed from those built from the beginning of the Neolithic Age thousands of years before. The roofs of these longhouses were supported on centrally placed rows of timbers, usually two rows on either side of the roof ridge. A fifth-century b. c.e. house at Gr0ntoft in Jutland had three aisles of supporting timbers.
Examples of Jutish Bronze Age clothing were recovered from a burial mound at Egtved in southern Jutland. The woman in the grave wore a short-sleeved woolen shirt, a string skirt, and a woven belt with a large disk-shaped bronze belt ornament with a central spike. She was laid on fur and wrapped in a coarse woolen blanket, with a birchbark cup. Her coffin was a single hollowed-out log.
A distinctive technique of bronze working based on casting was developed in Jutland in the mid-second millennium b. c.e. in response to new styles arriving there from the Carpathian region. Weapons were decorated with spirals, and women’s collars and large disk-shaped belt ornaments were made.
One of the finest examples of northern Germanic art consists of a pair of gold hornshaped objects unearthed in Gallehus in Jutland. Dating from about 400 C. E. they are among the largest gold artifacts ever found in Denmark. They bear runic inscriptions and numerous enigmatic figures, including warriors and other human figures hard to interpret, most notably a three-headed woman, horses, deer, and other unidentified mammals, snakes, fish, a centaurlike creature, and horned naked men. The style of decoration differs from the Celtic La Tene style predominant in much of contemporary Europe. The use and meaning of these horns have not been satisfactorily explained, although the runes give the name of their maker, one Hlewagastir.
Ritual Deposition in Bogs During the Iron Age in the second half of the first millennium b. c.e. people in Jutland followed the practice, similar to that of Celtic peoples during the same period, of depositing objects, animals, and human bodies in bogs. This was probably a religious ritual, an offering to the gods. A number of the human bodies had clearly been sacrificed. For example, “Tollund man,” named after the village near which he was found—so well preserved by the peat in which he had been buried that his stomach contained the remains of his last meal—had been fed a gruel of many different kinds of wild and domesticated vegetables and seeds, some of them rare and hard to find, growing only in the vicinity of the spring near his burial place, suggesting it was a ritual food, like the polyspermia (many-seeded soup) of the Greeks. After eating this gruel Tollund man was stripped naked except for a cap and belt and strangled with a leather rope, then buried in the bog. The composition of his gruel suggests that he was killed in late winter or early spring, since some of the ingredients would have been available only then. Thus his sacrifice may have been part of the Germanic festival of Eostre. Many similar bodies have been found in Jutland.
The Gundestrup Cauldron Among the most famous archaeological finds ever made in Jutland was from a ritual deposit in a bog: the second-century b. c.e. Gundestrup Cauldron, a large, elaborately decorated silver vessel. Instead of providing evidence of a distinctively Jutish culture, however, the Cauldron underscores the relative fluidity of cultural identity in the Iron Age, for its strongly Celtic character, in terms of motifs, shows it was probably made for a Celtic chieftain (see Celts). But the style of its ornamentation makes it nearly certain the maker was of the Thracians. And it depicts the Celtic god Cernunnos with knees bent in the yogic “lotus” position, perhaps reflecting the shamanic use of tantric yoga from India among the Thracians and the eastern Celts. It is thought to have reached Jutland as booty carried there by a member of the Germanic Cimbri, who had left the German Baltic coast in the second century B. C.E. and raided south as far as Thracian territory before returning to settle in Jutland.
Many of the Germanic tribes whose names have been recorded in written historical accounts seem to have had only a fleeting existence as distinct peoples. Their names are used for several centuries and then disappear. The Jutes are one of these, whose name had long been forgotten by the end of the first millennium C. E. This impression given by written records is largely illusory, of course. In the case of the Jutes people of Jutish descent continued to occupy Denmark and England down to the present, whatever they called themselves. The fact that so many Germanic tribal names come and go in history may point to the fact that tribal allegiances were relatively fluid, and cultural similarities among them predominated over the differences that separate names seem to imply.
Further Reading
Vera I. Evison, ed. Angles, Saxons and Jutes (Oxford: Clarendon, 1981).
John Edward Austin Jolliffe. Pre-Feudal England: The Jutes (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1933). Michael David Mirams. Ethelbert’s Kingdom: The Story of the Jutish and Saxon Kings of Kent (Rochester, U. K.: North Kent Books, 1981).
World History
