By the 10th century, most of Europe was under the rule of Christian monarchs who made Christianity the official religion of their realms. In the seriously diminished Roman or Byzantine Empire, Christianity had been the state church since the 380 Edict of Thessalonica. A privileged niche for Jews in the new order nonetheless remained. The Church forbade Christians from charging interest to fellow Christians; therefore the only source of loans were non-Christians such as Jews. While this status did not always lead to peaceful conditions for the Jewish people, they were the most compatible non-Christians for the position due to their shared devotion to the same Abrahamic God that the Christians worshiped. While many Jews rose to prominence in these times, Judaism was mostly practiced in private to avoid persecution. The descendants of the survivors of this period, the Ashkenazi Jews, still commemorate some of the more memorable tragedies of this period in their liturgy.
