Martin Luther was born 1483 and died in 1546.
His life overlaps most of the expulsions, although the "big one" was in 1492, and he was just 11 years old.
By the time he was a young man there were few Jews around Western Europe that he could encounter.
This reminds me of the Ku Klux Klan in the Midwest in the 1920s. They were against Negroes, Catholics and Jews. For the most part there were few Negroes and fewer Jews in that part of the world ~ there were, though, plenty of Catholics. Still, your typical Ku Klux Klan member in those days reserved his invective for the Negroes and Jews.
I've often suspected that if they'd been equally noisy about the Catholics (who lived there in the millions), the Klan would have been shut down far sooner than was the ultimate case.
" Whatever Western Europeans thought about Jews, by the late 1400s there were remarkably few of them anywhere in Western Europe. "
Where'd they come from, then?
(* tries desperately to remember the end of Battlestar Galactica, the Original Series, otherwise known as "Jooooz in Spaaaace." Apologies to Mel Brooks. OK, since the Muppet Show reference is to "Pigs in Space," I probably should apologize all around; but anyone who remembers BSG:TOS would know why I make that reference.*)