This is kind of an interesting one historically. My understanding is it goes back to minor scriptural differences with Christian practices. Essentially early Christians had a rule against usury or the practice of taking interest on lending. Jewish people of the same era had a similar rule, but it was interpreted at the time to only apply to lending within the faith.
Now with banking taking off as being a useful thing to have for business, Christians had a stigma against being lenders, so instead they legally enforced a code restricting Jewish people to essentially only being able to take those professions.
So a combination of preexisting antisemitism and cultural disdain for moneylending combined to force Jewish people to be the lenders, and then Christians grew to hate Jewish people more because of the situation they created.
It was also extremely convenient for European rules that if the debt load got away from them, they could always just expel the lenders or order a pogrom. Simple!
This is kind of an interesting one historically. My understanding is it goes back to minor scriptural differences with Christian practices. Essentially early Christians had a rule against usury or the practice of taking interest on lending. Jewish people of the same era had a similar rule, but it was interpreted at the time to only apply to lending within the faith.
Now with banking taking off as being a useful thing to have for business, Christians had a stigma against being lenders, so instead they legally enforced a code restricting Jewish people to essentially only being able to take those professions.
So a combination of preexisting antisemitism and cultural disdain for moneylending combined to force Jewish people to be the lenders, and then Christians grew to hate Jewish people more because of the situation they created.
It was also extremely convenient for European rules that if the debt load got away from them, they could always just expel the lenders or order a pogrom. Simple!