Subject: Church History of Antisemitism - Part II
Date: Wed, 15 Apr 1998 00:35:34 +0000
To: "Hebraic Heritage Newsgroup"<heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
From: Luana Fabry <sos@fan.net.au>
To: Hebraic Roots <heb_roots_chr@geocities.com>
Subject: Antisemitism
Shalom All
I have finally put on my website the article on "The History of
Antisemitism in the Church". You will find it at:
http://www.fan.net.au/~sos/hist.htm
Below is Part 2 of 3 located at the Web page.
Luana
Beit Y'shua Australia
A History of Antisemitism Part 2: The Middle Ages
The traditions and foundations laid by the Fathers of the Church
continued into the Middle Ages and created great intolerance and
suspicion toward the Jews. The founders of the Church promulgated
a number of doctrines to theologically invalidate the Jews'
continuing existence. These doctrines were given the greatest
possible significance and divine authentication resulting in the
introduction to the world a concept that had never before been
present in humanity: theological slander against another
religious group. An example of such doctrine and theological
slander can be read in the writings of many of the Church
Fathers. John Chrysostom, possibly the early Church's most
powerful and influential orator stated:
The Jews have assassinated the Son of God! How dare you associate
with this nation of assassins and hangmen! The Jews are the most
worthless of all men. They are lecherous, greedy, rapacious. They
are perfidious murderers of Christ... The Jews are the odious
assassins of Christ and for killing God there is no expiation
possible, no indulgence or pardon. Christian may never cease
vengeance, and the Jews must live in servitude forever. God
always hated the Jews. It is incumbent upon all Christians to
hate the Jews.1
The result of such statements, which condemned Jews, all Jews for
all time to be the assassins of Christ and spawn of the devil,
caused intolerance and suspicion of Jews not only as individuals,
but as a race. We cannot say that Christian persecution during
the Middle Ages was constant in all countries and that Jewish
intolerance came from the Church alone. Neither can we say that
the Jews lived in peace until the birth of Christianity. Jews
were enslaved by the Egyptians for hundreds of years and were
battled by many empires. However, the Egyptians enslaved a people
who happened to be Jewish, not because they were Jewish.
By the eleventh century, the Church had converted to Christianity
virtually all the inhabitants of Europe. In 1215 AD, the Church's
Fourth Lateran Council settled the social destiny of the Jewish
people in Christian lands for many centuries. At this Council the
whole of western Christianity may have well been represented.
There were present 71 archbishops, 412 bishops, 800 abbots and a
host of other Church dignitaries and priests. 2 It was decided
that Jews were forbidden to walk in public on Christian feast
days and also had to wear a distinctive badge on their clothing.
They were to wander over the earth without rights, without a home
or security and treated at all times as if they were beings of an
inferior species. The Council's Canon 68 states:
Jews and Saracens of both sexes in every Christian province must
be distinguished from the Christian by a difference of dress.
Moreover, during the last three days before Easter and especially
on Good Friday, they shall not go forth in public at all... 3
Canon 3 was devoted specifically to the suppression of heresy.
Heretics found guilty were to be handed over to the secular arm
for punishment and feudal lords were expected to expel heretics
from their lands. Thus began a new era for the Jews as
hostilities against them intensified.
By the twelfth century, one of the main outcomes of Church
doctrine was the demonic stereotyping of the Jews. The popular
literature of the Middle Ages was almost entirely dominated by
the point of view of Christianity. Morality plays, stories,
legends, poems, sermons and songs all painted the Jew as the
fount of all evil, deliberately guilty of unspeakable crimes
against the founder of the Christian faith and Church. No sin was
beyond him - his intention was to destroy Christendom. Sunday
sermons portrayed the Jew as belonging to his father the Devil,
the incarnation of the antichrist. We find this concept in the
graphic arts of the time. One of the earliest dated sketches of a
medieval Jew, from the Forest Roll of Essex (1277), bears the
superscription Aaron fil diaboli, "Aaron, son of the devil". Such
was the Jew stereotyped, that in 1267, the Vienna Council decreed
that Jews must wear a horned hat. 4
Millions of Christians came to believe that the Jews were not
actually human beings, but creatures of the Devil, allies of
Satan and personifications of the Antichrist. Repeatedly during
the Middle Ages, Jews were accused of possessing attributes of
both the Devil and witches and that they emitted a foul odour as
punishment for their crime against Jesus. It was said that this
odour would only left them through baptism. Christian preachers
taught that the Jew was Satan's partner in all his financial
dealings, fleecing poor Christians without mercy. This image of
the Jews became part of Western culture and rendered plausible
every accusation against them. Therefore, when the ritual- murder
and blood-libel accusations were brought forth, as ridiculous as
they were, Christians did not question them. Motivated by the
belief in the demonic power of the Jewish people, a number of
clergymen encouraged the persecution of Jews.
The strange charges of ritual murder and host desecration were
based on the alleged profanation of the consecrated communion
wafer known as the Eucharist. The Catholic doctrine of
`transubstantiation', which claimed that the Eucharist was the
literal, physical body of Jesus, was first officially recognized
at the Fourth Lateran Council. 5 This official doctrine left the
Jews legally vulnerable to charges of host desecration. It was
imagined in Christian circles that the Jews, not content with
crucifying Christ once, continued to renew the agonies of his
suffering by stabbing, tormenting or burning the host. It was
said that such was the intensity of their hatred, that when the
host shed blood, emitted voices or took to flight, the Jews were
not deterred. (It was not considered, however, that Jewish law
forbids the eating of human flesh and drinking of blood).
The charge of host desecration was levelled against Jews over all
the Roman Catholic world, frequently bringing large scale
massacre. The first recorded case of alleged Host Desecration was
at Belitz near Berlin in 1243. The city's entire Jewish community
was burned alive for allegedly torturing a host. In Prague, in
1389, the Jewish community was collectively accused of attacking
a monk carrying a host. Large mobs of Christians surrounded the
Jewish neighbourhood, offering the Jews the choice of baptism or
death. Refusing to be baptized, 3,000 Jews were put to death. 6
The accusation of Host Desecration was so prevalent, that in 1267
the Council of Vienna decreed that Jews must withdraw to their
homes the instant they heard the bell ringing announcing that a
host was being carried through the streets. They were also to
lock their doors and windows.
The first distinct case of ritual murder or `blood libel' was in
1144 at Norwich. It was said that the Jews had bought a Christian
boy before Easter and tortured him with "all the tortures brought
upon our Lord" and then crucified him on Good Friday. Another
famous case was that of Hugh of Lincoln in 1255. When the body of
a boy was discovered laying in a cesspool, the Jews who were in
Lincoln attending a wedding, were accused of murdering the boy.
It was said that the child was first fattened for ten days with
white bread and milk, and then almost all the Jews in England
were invited to the crucifixion. 7 A Jew was forced to confess
that the boy was crucified, resulting in the hanging without
trial, of nineteen Jews. Ritual murder of Jewish children was
seen as token of Jewish eternal enmity toward Christendom. Since
Jews were unable to crucify Christ as their fathers did, they
expressed their hatred on innocent Christian children.
On the eve of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, there
occurred a blood libel case of the `Holy Child of La Guardia'.
Conversos were made to confess under torture that with the
knowledge of the chief Rabbi, they had abused and crucified a
Christian child. 8
The ritual murder accusations further reinforced the theological
stereotypes of the demonic Jew and the Synagogue being the
`Church of Satan'. Christians had no problem with imagining human
sacrifices taking place in the Synagogue for magical and demonic
purposes. Totally ignorant of Jewish law, the masses were easily
inflamed by anti-Jewish preachers. If the Jews were capable of
crucifying God, then they were capable of anything. It was also
believed that Jewish men menstruated and therefore required
Christian blood to replenish themselves, or alternatively, that
they needed to make up for the blood they lost through
circumcision. 9
By the fourteenth century the blood libel charge had become
associated with the Jewish holiday of Passover, the reason being,
that Jews used the blood of Christian children to make the
Passover bread and wine. The Inquisitor, John of Capistrano, went
throughout Europe leading a campaign against the Jewish
population and initiating a series of trials for ritual murder
which resulted in Jews being burned at the stake. 10 The
accusations of ritual murder followed the Jews throughout
Christendom for generations. Countless thousands of Jews were
tortured, massacred and dispersed because of this libel. The
accusations and massacres reached such high proportions, that the
Popes became alarmed and in numerous papal bulls forbade them.
Conspiracy theories were also levelled against the Jews. When the
disasters of plague and famine swept the 14th century, the Jews
found themselves vilified as well-poisoners and sorcerers. Rumors
of Jewish well poisoning began to circulate in Southern France
where, in May 1348, the Jews of a Provencal town were burned on
this charge. 11 This `poisoning' accusation had particularly
tragic results during the Black Death which also began in 1348.
The plague, which killed about one third of Europe's population,
was blamed on the Jews despite the fact that the plague also
killed Jews. The Jews were accused of poisoning Christian wells,
as they used separate wells for themselves. (The reason they used
separate wells because they were forbidden to use Christian
wells). Under torture, Jews confessed to spreading the Black
Death, which resulted in a verdict stating that "all Jews from
the age of seven cannot excuse themselves from this crime, since
all of them in their totality are guilty of the above actions."
12 Jewish children under the age of seven were then baptized and
raised as Christians after their families were murdered. To the
horrors of the plague itself were added the wholesale massacre of
thousands of Jews across Europe.
The negative projection of Jews continued for centuries. Even the
Reformation did not improve the situation of the Jews. At the
beginning, the great reformer, Martin Luther, expecting mass
conversions of the Jews, wrote to the Papacy condemning the
Catholic Church's persecution of them. However, when the mass
conversion of the Jews did not materialize, Luther felt betrayed
and his acceptance of the Jews turned into loathing. Luther
declared:
Therefore know, my dear Christian, that next to the devil you
have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement an enemy than
a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a Jew... Now what are we
going to do with these rejected, condemned, Jewish people? You
must refuse to let them own houses among us... You must take away
from them all their prayer books and Talmuds wherein such lying,
cursing and blasphemy is taught... You must prohibit their Rabbis
to teach... You shall not tolerate them but expel them.13
Luther also held the Jews accountable (as agents of the devil)
for virtually all problems. In The Jews and their lies, Luther
states:
...verily a hopeless wicked venomous and devilish thing is the
existence of these Jews, who for 1400 years have been and still
are our pest, torment and misfortune. They are just devils and
nothing more.
Luther may have divorced himself from Roman Catholic teaching,
but he did not sever himself from the anti-Jewish root and thus
took the lies with him into the Reformation.
Christendom's perception of the Jew left no alternative but to
isolate the Jew from the rest of society. This was initially done
by forcing Jews to wear distinctive clothing. Together with the
horned hat, depicting the demonic Jew, Jews had to wear a visible
badge on their clothing. Popes Gregory 1X and Innocent 1V,
repeatedly reminded rulers of Christian countries to pay strict
attention to the requirement and to allow no exceptions to the
wearing of the badge. Gradually, these "marks of Cain" became a
common sight in all of Europe, their wearers identifiable
everywhere at a distance. Jews were distinguishable from everyone
else and therefore subjected to abuse. In some places it was
regarded a privilege to pelt Jews with stones at Easter; in other
places, representatives of the Jewish community were made to
accept blows or slaps during this season.
Another form of isolation was the ghetto system introduced in
Venice by the Church in 1516. 14 The `ghetto' (from the Hebrew
word get, meaning `divorce'), was a segregated and enclosed
section of Venice for the complete isolation of the Jews from the
Christians. Ghettos were prevalent mostly in northern Italy, the
German speaking countries and a few Polish cities. The Jewish
quarter, which already existed, was different to that of the
ghetto as Christians and Jews were able to mingle together.
Christians often partook of Jewish life and learning. The
creation of the ghetto was not just to keep the Jews in, but to
keep the Christians out.
Finally, there was no other alternative but for the Jews to be
expelled. The Jews in the Middle Ages were expelled from most
countries in which they lived. Medieval Jewish history ended in
England in 1290, in France in 1306 and in Spain in 1492. By 1569,
Jews had been expelled from most of the Papal States. 15 However,
Christendom did not rid itself of the Jews without firstly
instigating the inquisitions.
The first of the Inquisitions began somewhere between 1227 and
1233 CE. The purpose of the Inquisition was to repress an
increasing flood of heresies that had been infiltrating the
Church and to root out the heretics. For the first two hundred
years, the Inquisitions were mostly directed toward Christians
who were regarded as heretics. It wasn't until 1478 that a
different form of Inquisition was founded by King Ferdinand and
Queen Isabella of Spain. The purpose of this Inquisition was to
examine the genuineness of Jewish conversos (recent converts to
Christianity) and marranos (meaning pig) who were suspect of
practising Judaism in secret. In 1483, the Inquisitorial powers
were assigned to Thomas de Torquemada by the Spanish Church. 16
Heretics were to be stamped out, first among the marranos and
conversos, and then wherever else found.
The procedure of the Inquisition began with a period of grace -
four months to convert or leave. Heretics were given the
opportunity to come forward or to denounce others known to them.
Jews were denounced for varied activities such as smiling at the
mention of the Virgin Mary, eating meat on a day of abstinence,
or being suspect of living as `hidden Jews'. (Many Jews which had
`converted', continued to keep the Sabbath and Festivals
secretly). For example, a woman was arrested on the grounds of
not eating pork and changing her linen just before Saturday. 17
Those who were suspected of being heretics and did not
voluntarily come forward, were tortured as a means of obtaining
confessions and finally, the death penalty was by auto de fe -
burning at the stake. Death came easily to those consigned to the
flames after weeks of excruciating torture. In this manner,
thousands of Jews lost their lives during the Spanish
Inquisitions and thus did the saga of the Jews in Spain end. In
1492, 300,000 Jews who refused to be baptized left Spain
penniless. Jews sold their property, fine houses and estates, for
a pittance; the rich Jews paid the expenses of the departure of
the poor so that they would not have to become converts.
Thousands of children were forcibly taken from their parents and
raised as Christians. Thousands swarmed over the border to
Portugal where they had temporary respite. However, in 1496, King
Manuel of Portugal ordered the Jews in his realm expelled. Those
who still remained in 1497 were subjected to atrocities and
forced baptisms, especially of children. 18
Doctrine upon doctrine, law upon law, accusation upon accusation
was levelled against the Jew, until only a dehumanized symbol of
a denigrated Jew remained. First he was given humiliating
clothing, then he was isolated to the ghetto. He could not own
land; he had to step aside when a Christian passed by. He could
not build Synagogues, he could not teach or strike up a
friendship with Christians. He could only engage in a restricted
number of professions and trades, and usually only that of
moneylender and financier, only because this activity, while
necessary for a prosperous economy, was viewed by the Church as
sinful and so the Jewish stereotype was perpetuated. The
Christians of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries did not know
the proud, learned Jew of other days, but only saw the strangely
dressed ghetto Jew with the ridiculous peaked hat representing
his demonic nature. The Jew was nothing more to the Christian
than an object of derision and scorn.
Yet, despite all of this, the medieval period was not a useless
experience in the history of the Jews. It educated them for the
Modern Age. Because the Jews were not part of the feudal system,
they were not tied to its institutions. The Jews became
cosmopolitan in their lives, speaking the languages of the world
and appreciating its cultures. They were outsiders with an
education, viewing societies objectively and thus assessing their
weaknesses and strengths. In spite of the limited range of ghetto
education, the Jews as a group remained the most educated in
Europe.
The early Church hoped to convert the Jews by convincing them of
the error of their ways. By declaring Judaism invalid and
superseded, the Church could not theologically tolerate the Jew.
The Church thus defined antisemitism's first characteristic -
"You have no right to live among us as Jews".
The Church of the Middle Ages went a step further and secured the
"Jewish Problem" for centuries to come. In portraying the Jew as
inhuman and demonic, Christendom could neither theologically nor
socially tolerate the Jew. Thus, by the fifteenth century,
antisemitism's second characteristic was defined - "You have no
right to live among us".
l. Prager, D. & Telushkin, J.Why the Jews, New York, Simon &
Schuster, 1985, p94
2.Burman, E. The Inquisition, Northamptonshire, Aquarian Press,
1984, p28,29
3.ibid
4.Trachtenberg, J. The Devil and the Jews, Philadelphia, The
Jewish Publication Society, 1983, pp12,13
5.ibid,p101
6.Prager, D & Telushkin, J. Op cit. p103
7.Keter Publishing House, Antisemitism, Jerusalem, 1974, p70
8.Trachtenburg, J. Op cit. pl30
9.Wistrich, R. Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred, Pantheon
Books, New York, 1991, p31
l0.Cohn-Sherbok, D. The Crucified Jew,
Harper Collins, London, 1992, p61
11.Trachtenburg, J. Op cit. pl03
12.Ben-Sasson,H. A History of the Jewish People, Cambridge,
Harvard Univer,sity7 Press, 1976, p244, 245
13.Keter, Op cit. p70
14.ibid p90
15.Dimont, M. Jews, God and History, Penguin, New
York, 1962, p255
16.Dimont, M. Op cit. p221,222 17.Burman, E. Op
cit. pl48 18.Wein, B. Herald of Destiny, Brooklyn, NY, Shaar
Press, 1993, p208, 209
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