 On occasion they would cooperate—as business partners but also, not least thanks to the pro-emancipation outlook of Simon Moritz von Bethmann, with the shared goal of enfranchising the Jews of Frankfurt.Ever since the discriminatory Decretals of Pope Gregory IX in the High Middle Ages, Jews in the Holy Roman Empire had led a precarious existence, condemned to a status of perpetual servitude by Church doctrine and imperial decree, confined to narrow, unhealthy ghettos, and threatened by outbreaks of mob violence when the Jews came in handy as scapegoats.At long last this began to change towards the end of the 18th century.