In all the medieval sources I've read (I'm studying medieval history at the moment) the Jews are presented only as the people that everyone beats up constantly when they're not fighting real wars. Crusaders, in particular, would generally make a point of raiding every Jewish community in their path to Jerusalem in order to 'recover' the wealth that the Jews had 'stolen' from good Christians. 'Jewish' seems to have been used to describe a set of attributes such as greed, cowardice, low cunning and a propensity for lying, such that, for example, the Greeks were accused of becoming 'too Jewish' in their manner as a justification for the Fourth Crusade sacking Constantinople.
My impression is that anti-Semitism was a pretty fundamental part of medieval Christianity (and the Muslims didn't like them either). It's genuinely puzzling how they managed to survive, actually - when every account is of Jewish villages getting massacred or having all their material wealth stolen, it's a wonder that there's always more (seemingly prosperous) Jewish villages for the next lot of itinerant thugs to smash to bits.
As far as fantasy literature, I would say that most authors probably just don't think of it. Given that the majority of medieval fantasy is based much more heavily on the established genre tropes than an understanding of the wider context of medieval history (and since fantasy publishers seem to be incredibly conservative), there's a lot of regurgitation, and the inclusion of Jews simply hasn't been established. That, and it would be quite hard to reconcile modern sensibilities about race with the actions of authentic medieval characters (without making the Jewish analogue one of those inherently evil non-human races that it's okay to oppress and still be heroic). The lack of Jews in England during the later medieval period is also definitely something to consider.
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My impression is that anti-Semitism was a pretty fundamental part of medieval Christianity (and the Muslims didn't like them either). It's genuinely puzzling how they managed to survive, actually - when every account is of Jewish villages getting massacred or having all their material wealth stolen, it's a wonder that there's always more (seemingly prosperous) Jewish villages for the next lot of itinerant thugs to smash to bits.
As far as fantasy literature, I would say that most authors probably just don't think of it. Given that the majority of medieval fantasy is based much more heavily on the established genre tropes than an understanding of the wider context of medieval history (and since fantasy publishers seem to be incredibly conservative), there's a lot of regurgitation, and the inclusion of Jews simply hasn't been established. That, and it would be quite hard to reconcile modern sensibilities about race with the actions of authentic medieval characters (without making the Jewish analogue one of those inherently evil non-human races that it's okay to oppress and still be heroic). The lack of Jews in England during the later medieval period is also definitely something to consider.