The ancestors of the Kalonymos family are said to have left
Judea after the
Siege of Jerusalem (70 CE) and fled to southern Italy. This was told by early members of the family and has not been corroborated outside of Oral Tradition. Traces of the family in Italy may be found as early as the second half of the eighth century. As to the date of the settlement of its members in Germany, the opinions of modern scholars are divided, owing to the conflicting statements of the Jewish sources. Rapoport,
Leopold Zunz, and many others place the settlement in 876, believing the King Charles, mentioned in the sources as having induced the Kalonymides to emigrate to Germany, to have been
Charles the Bald, who was in Italy in that year; Luzzatto and others think that it took place under
Charlemagne, in approximately 800 CE, alleging that the desire to attract scholars to the empire was more in keeping with the character of that monarch. The following table, compiled from the accounts of
Eleazar of Worms and
Solomon Luria, gives the Italian and German heads of the family, which produced for nearly five centuries the most notable scholars of Germany and northern
France, such as Samuel he-Hasid and his son
Judah he-Hasid. Although all of them are mentioned as having been important scholars, the nature of the activity of only a few of them is known. ==Family members to 1080==