The Early Church and Anti-Judaism
Following New Testament teaching, the early Church Fathers developed an Adversos Judaeos tradition that flourished from the second to the sixth centuries. This malevolent polemic against the Jews is found in treatises, sermons and discourses as well as other types of literature which seek to illustrate that the Jews were rejected by God. Such hostility was always based on the now familiar claim that the Jews had refused to accept Jesus as Messiah and Saviour. For the Church Fathers, this was not an act of apostasy; instead the Jews had always been an apostate nation. Abraham, Isaac and Jacob-as ancestors of the Church--were righteous individuals. However, with the Egyptian sojourn the ancient Hebrews engaged in various types of evil acts. The aim of Mosaic legislation was to curtail such depravity. Hence, all the crimes in Scripture are said by Christian commentators to mirror the Israelites' corrupt lifestyle.
In early Christian sources, the Jews were also accused of blaspheming against God's nature, resisting his spirit, and engaging in sensual excess. In Eight Orations Against the Jews, the 4th century theologian and preacher John Chrysostom linked such behaviour with the rejection of God. As an animal when it has been fattened by getting all it wants to eat, he wrote, grows stubborn and hard to manage, so it was with the Jewish people. They were reduced by gluttony and drunkenness to a state of utter depravity. In such a condition, they would not accept Christ. In contrast with Christian asceticism, Jews indulged in vices of the flesh. For the 4th century writer Ephrem the synagogue was personified as a harlot. According to the fourth-century Syrian Church Father Aphrahat in his Demonstrations Against the Jews, Jerusalem was equated with Sodom and Gemorrah. The eighth century Greek Father John Damascene proclaimed in On the Sabbath, against the Jews, that the Sabbath was given to the Jews because of their grossness and propensity for material possessions.
Further, a number of polemicists stated that the Jews were guilty of infanticide. John Chrysostom, for example, portrayed the ancient Hebrews as debauchers and idolators who sacrificed their sons and daughters to demons and ate their own children. In the previous century in his Expository Treatise against the Jews, the Roman ecclesiastical writer Hippolytus summarised their fall from grace. Why was the Temple made desolate, he asked. Was it because of their worship of the Golden Calf? Was it because of their idolatry? Was it because of the Jewish people's adultery and fornication? These were not the reasons, he stated, because pardon was always open to them. Rather it was because they killed the Son who is coeternal with the Father.
According to the early Church Fathers, prophetic denunciations in Scripture against iniquity applied to the Jewish people; however, all future promises relate to adherents of the true Church. Given this interpretation, Scripture bears witness to a catalogue of Jewish sins.
Medieval Anti-Judaism
On the basis of claims for Jewish depravity and perfidy made by the Church Fathers in the early history of Christianity, Christians in the Middle Ages continued to vilify Jews and Judaism. On this basis church councils promulgated decrees governing contact between Christians and Jews. Such degrees as the Codex Theodosianus, promulgated in 438, and the Justinian Code issued in 529 denied Jews various rights. According to church officials, Christians were to be careful to avoid the pernicious influence of Jewry.
In the ninth century Archbishop Agobard of Lyons penned a number of anti-Jewish epistles in which he expressed alarm about contact with Jews. No matter how kindly, we treat them, he wrote, we do not succeed in drawing them to the true faith. Rather, he continued, when Christians share food with them, they are often seduced by the Jewish faith. Some ignorant Christians claim that the Jews preach better than priests; others cerebrate the Sabbath with them. Labourers and peasants are thereby inveigled into a
sea of errors and regard the Jews as the only people of God.
Yet, despite the vehemence of such protests, Christians had not at this stage accused the Jews of diabolical acts including profaning the Host, ritual murder and poisoning wells. However, after the year 1000 rumours began to circulate about the 'prince of Babylon,' who at the instigation of the Jews, had destroyed the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, persecuted Christians in the Holy Land and caused the patriarch of Jerusalem to be beheaded. As a result, princes, bishops and townsfolk sought revenge. In Rouen, Orleans, Limoges, Mainz and elsewhere Jews were converted by force, massacred, or expelled. At the end of the century, Pope Urban II at the Council of Clermont-Ferrand preached the First Crusade. As Christian knights, monks and commoners set out for the Holy Land, they launched an onslaught against Jewish infidels living in Christian lands.
In the Rhineland, where Jews were gathered in large communities, the most horrific massacre took place. On 3 May 1096
the first pogrom occurred at Speyer; when news of this event reached Worms Jews sought refuge in the palace of Bishop Adalbert or remained in their own homes. According to the chronicler Solomon bar Simeon, Jews caught hiding in the episcopal palace were put to the sword. Dying as martyrs, mothers killed their children, then fathers slaughtered their sons. All accepted the divine verdict, assured of reward in the hereafter. Several days later the Jews of Mainz were similarly attacked. According to the Christian chronicler, Albert of Aix, about seven hundred Jews died in this massacre.
In 1236 when a further Crusade was proposed, fuelled by religious fervour, massacres took place in western France, England and Spain. In the next century such fanaticism led to uprisings in an abortive Crusade of 1309 in Cologne, the Low Countries and Brabant. This was followed by the Shepherds' Crusade in the Midi in 1320 which provoked outbreaks of anti-Jewish violence in Bordeaux, Toulouse, Albi and Spain. In general such assaults followed the same pattern--looting of Jewish
property, flight, failure to protect Jewish citizens by local princes, fortresses taken by assault, mass suicide of the innocent Jewish victims
The Crusades and their aftermath thus brought into focus Christian contempt for those Jews who stubbornly clung to their ancient faith. In Christian eyes, they were villainous figures, descendants of the perfidious Jews depicted in the New Testament, the people castigated by the Church Fathers. Their only salvation was in renouncing Judaism and embracing Christianity, either willingly or through forced conversion. The Middle Ages also witnessed the emergence of accusations of ritual murder. In 1171 at Blois, thirty-eight Jews were burned at the stake after a trial. In 1191 at Bray-sur-Seine, the number of victims reached a hundred. In the thirteenth century, numerous cases occurred. Eventually the emperor Frederick II convened a group of dignitaries to determine the truth of this allegation. Priests and prelates found the issue so
vexing that they were unable to reach a decision, and the emperor then turned to converted Jews for a response. Converts from the cities of the empire travelled to his court and pronounced that there was nothing in the Hebrew Bible or the Talmud to support the claim that Jews used blood for such purposes. As a result of this investigation, the emperor acquitted Jewry of this charge. Yet despite such a pronouncement, accusations of ritual murder and the profanation of the Host continued to circulate. In 1370 in Brussels the Jewish community was accused of profaning the Host, and about twenty Jews perished at the stake. Similarly, in 1473 a case of ritual murder was reported at Trent in the Tyrol, and nine Jews were arrested, tortured, and executed. Subsequently trials of Jews took place in Austria and Italy, resulting in expulsions and autos-da-fe.
The Continuing Medieval Assault
In the face of increasing hostility toward Jewry, the Church issued two important decrees regarding the status of the Jewish population. In 1215 the Fourth Lateran
Council declared that Jews of both sexes must be distinguished from other peoples by their garments. Moreover, Jews were forbidden to show themselves in public during Holy Week. Those who violated these laws would be punished by the secular powers. Enforcement of these provisions varied from country to county.
In France, a circular badge of yellow cloth was worn, possibly the form of a coin, a symbol of the Jews' perceived eagerness for money. The aim was to provide a humiliating and visible means of differentiating Jew from gentile. Between 1215 and 1370 twelve councils and nine royal decrees insisted on strict observance of the law. In Germany a special kind of hat was worn rather than the badge. In Poland Jews had to wear a pointed green hat. In England they wore a series of strips of cloth sewn across the chest, often in the shape of the Tablets of the Law. In Spain and Italy a badge was ordered to be worn. These various forms of garment impressed on the minds of gentiles the differences between Christians and Jews, encouraging them to view Jews as a different species.
Throughout this period antipathy towards the Jewish population was a central feature of Christian literary and artistic compositions. In all literary genres, including satires, legends, and ballads, Jews were ridiculed and portrayed in the most hideous manner. In these works they were often conceived as possessing the the attributes of the Devil. Depicted as having horns, tails and the beard of a goat, Jews were said to emit a terrible odour. Further, they were perceived as possessing extraordinary powers, while at the same time they were depicted as weak and sickly, suffering from overwhelming afflictions that only Christian blood could cure. Further, they were seen as born misshapen and hemorrhoidal. In short, for the masses the Jew was understood as less than human, possessing all the attributes of evil. Dabbling in the occult, they were associated with Satan and the demonic realm.
In this spirit, Christians viewed Jews as sorcerers, able to cast spells against their enemies. Since the Devil was perceived as the source of such power, Jews were viewed
as his earthly associates. As a result, the Christian masses attacked the Jewish population, believing that Jews were able to work magic against them. In the mind of Christians, every Jewish act was conceived as a demoniac device for working magic against gentiles. A further charge levelled against Jewry was that sorcery was practised in connection with the Eucharist. The Christian doctrine of transubstantiation meant that the mutilation of the Host was conceived as a heinous crime. According to various accounts, Jews attacked the Host in various ways. In addition, some reports related that Jews created an image of Christ from wax, and through their magic art transmitted various tortures to both Jesus and his followers. It was alleged that such sympathetic magic was also used to inflict suffering on Church leaders.
The accusation of ritual murder was also linked to Jewish sorcery. During the Middle Ages a wide range of occult remedies specified the use of human flesh, blood, entrails, and and fingers. In addition, menstrual blood was considered especially efficacious. In the light of such practices,
the Jews were accused of using Christian blood for magical purposes. This crime, along with numerous others served as the background to the charges levelled against Jews during this period. The Jewish nation was alien, strange, mysterious, and a danger to Christian civilisation. In numerous sources, Jews were depicted as predators who sought to destroy the entire life of the gentile communities in which they lived. Hated by their neighbours, they turned inwards and formed their own closed worlds.
Jew-Hatred in Western Europe
In France the expulsion of the Jewish population during the fourteenth century ensured the removal of Jewry from most French territory. Nonetheless, at the beginning of the sixteenth century groups of Marranos--Jews who had converted to Christianity but secretly practised Judaism-were found in Bayonne, Rouen, Nantes, and Bordeaux. Yet, even though Jews had largely disappeared from French life, the negative image of the Jew persisted in society. As in medieval times, Jews were
viewed as rapacious usurers, anxious to gain money by shading dealings, and the figure of Judas in the New Testament was associated in the public mind with deviousness and treachery.
These stereotypes were sustained and strengthened within the home where children were initiated into the Christian faith. There they were taught of the alien people who had infected French society, and were guilty of committing the most heinous crime: the murder of Christ. In parish schools the catechism was taught; in it Jews were presented as wicked and deceitful. Within this context, Judas was conceived as symbolic of the Jewish people, and Jews were viewed as agents of Satan. Moreover, in the lives of Jesus and the saints, as well as in accounts of pilgrimages, Jewry was presented in the most terrible manner. In a typical depiction of the life of Christ from the fifteenth century, Jews are portrayed as malicious torturers of Christ. During this period the medieval accusations of blood libel and desecration of the Host were also current, and in various texts Jews were presented as inhuman in character. They
were depicted as a monstrous people, having no home.
Turning to England, the Jewish community was expelled in 1290 but there is evidence that non-baptised Jews entered London illegally in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. In 1498 Henry VII took an oath not to allow Jews into his dominions, a decision that was observed by his successors who regarded Jewry with contempt. As was the case in England, in post-medieval Germany Jews were similarly detested. Thus in 1477 a burger, Peter Schwartz, explained in terms reminiscent of previous centuries why they suffered persecution throughout the country. The Jews, he stated, have been punished severely from time to time. But they do not suffer innocently. The suffer because of their wickedness, because they cheat people and ruin whole countries by their usury and secret murders. That is why they are so persecuted. There is no people more wicked, more cunning, more avaricious, more impudent, more troublesome, more venomous, more wrathful, more deceptive, and more ignominious.
Echoing such hostility, the scholar Johann Reuchlin criticised the Jews in more traditional Christian terms. Every day, he wrote, they outrage, blaspheme, and sully God, in the person of his Son, the true Messiah Jesus Christ. They call him a sinner, a sorcerer, a criminal. They treat the sainted Virgin Mary as a witch and fury. They call the apostles and disciples heretics. They regard us Christians as stupid pagans.
During this period a converted Jew, Johannes Pfefferkorn, composed a pamphlet, Der Judenspiegel, demanding the suppression of the Talmud, and obtained consent from Emperor Maximilian to seize and destroy all copies of this work. Even though he was critical of Jewry, Reuchlin defended Jewish sources and sought to show that the Talmud and kabbalistic texts support the truths of Christianity. This conflict led to a widespread debate between Christian humanists and others, and all European men of letters sided with Reuchlin.
Paradoxically, however, their condemnation of Pfefferkorn was couched in anti-Semitic terms. As one of Reuchlin's supporters, Ulrich von Hutten stated that Germany could not have produced such a monster [Pfefferkorn]. His parents are Jews, and he remains such, even if he plunged his unworthy body into the baptism of Christ. According to the Dutch scholar Erasmus, Pfefferkorn is revealed to be a true Jew--he appears typical of his race. His ancestors attacked Christ only, whereas he has attacked many worthy and eminent men. He could render no better service to his coreligionists than by betraying Christendom, hypocritically claiming to have become a Christian. This half-Jew, he concluded, has done more harm to Christendom than all the Jews together.
Martin Luther and the Jews
The legacy of Jew-hatred in the Middle Ages and is continuation in the early modern period served as the background to Luther's attitude toward the Jewish people. In the post-Medieval period, there were few gentiles who championed the Jews. Martin
Luther was a notable exception. Initially he condemned the persecution of Jewry and instead encouraged tolerance. Concerning the controversy between the Christian scholar Johann Reuchlin who defended Jewish sources and the converted Jew Johannes Pfefferkorn who demanded the suppression of the Talmud, he was critical of the confiscation of the Talmud and rabbinic sources. In a pamphlet, That Christ Was Born a Jew, he expressed sympathy for Judaism and the Jewish people. However, when his early missionary efforts failed to draw Jews to Christ, he grew increasingly hostile, and in 1542 he published a tract, Against the Jews and Their Lies, in which he attacked the Jewish nation for their mercenary nature. The Jews, he stated, being foreigners should possess nothing, and what they do possess should be ours. They keep our money and our goods and have become our masters in our own country and in the dispersion. For Luther, the Jews are an unwanted pestilence and were for this reason repeatedly expelled from the countries in which they lived. No one wants them, he
wrote. The countryside and the roads are open to them. They may return to their country when they wish, and we shall gladly give them presents to get rid of them. The Jews are a heavy burden, a scourge, a pestilence and a misfortune; they are the most contemptible of all peoples. Repeating previous religion-based allegations against the Jews, Luther stressed that aside from the Devil, there is no enemy more venomous, more desperate, more bitter than a true Jew. On a practical level, Luther proposed a number of measures against Jewry. Their synagogues, he wrote, should be set on fire, and whatever does not burn should be covered or spread over with dirt so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder of stone of it. All this should be accomplished for the sake of the faith. Fearful of the pernicious influence of the Jewish community and the Jewish tradition, Luther argued that Jews should be denied their homes and religious literature and instruction. In addition, Luther was also concerned with Jewish livelihoods. Passport and travelling privileges should be
absolutely forbidden, he declared. Further, they should be stopped from usury.
Several months later, Luther published Vom Schem Haephoras in which he attacked the Jews for their unwillingness to embrace Christ. Repeating medieval charges about the nature of Jewry, he wrote that it is as easy to convert the Jew as to convert the Devil. A Jewish heart, he stated, is as hard as stone, as iron, as the Devil himself. In short, Jews are children of the Devil, condemned to the flames of hell.
For Luther, it was justifiable to inveigh against this despicable nation given their satanic character. Perhaps, he wrote, some merciful and holy soul among the Christian community would be of the opinion that he was too rough with the poor and pitiable Jews, mocking and deriding them. But, he declared that he was too feeble to mock such devils. He would have done so, but they are much stronger in raillery. They have a God who is a past master in this art. He is called the Devil and the wicked spirit.
Reflecting on the reasons why Jews are so skilful, Luther used imagery drawn from the New Testament to indicate their perfidious nature. I cannot understand, he wrote, how they manage to be so skilful unless I think that when Judas Iscariot hanged himself, his guts burst and emptied. Perhaps the Jews sent their servants with plates of silver and post of gold to gather up Juda's' piss and other treasures, and then they ate and drank his offal, and thereby acquired eyes so piercing that they discover in the Scriptures commentaries that neither Matthew nor Isaiah himself found there, not to mention the rest of us cursed goyim.
Repeatedly. Luther argued that Jews are in league with the Devil, and should therefore be despised. I cannot understand it, he declared, except by admitting that they have transformed God into the Devil, or rather into a servant of the Devil, accomplishing all the evil the Devil desires, corrupting unhappy souls and raging against himself. In short, he said, the Jews are worse that the devils.
The Legacy of Luther's Anti-Judaism
In his diatribes against Jews and Judaism, Luther saw himself as engaged in a struggle with Satan. In this light, Luther's hostility has little in common with the racist antisemitism of later centuries. Nonetheless, the Judeophobia of the Reformation period and the racist policies of the Nazis exist on the same historical continuum. For the Nazis, Luther was perceived as a great antiSemite, and his fame was exploited for their nefarious purposes. In 1938, for example, a German bishop justified mass violence against German Jews by invoking Luther's writings. And after the Second World War, a number of historians traced the essentials of Nazi racism back to Luther.
Viewed from this perspective, it cannot be denied that there are important parallels between Luther's stance and the policies of the Nazis. When he asked what was to be done with Jews living in German Lands. Luther replied that their synagogues should be set on fire, and that whatever does not burn should be covered or spread over so that no one may ever be able to see a cinder or stone of it. During the Holocaust, such a
policy was repeatedly put into practice by the Germans, not for religious but for racial reasons. During Kristallnacht in 1938 in Leipzig, for example, the American Consul David Buffum reported that the synagogues in Leipzig were fired simultaneously by incendiary bombs and all sacred objects and records desecrated or destroyed, in most cases hurled through the windows and burned in the streets.
Continuing his diatribe against Jewry, Luther declared that the homes of Jews should likewise be destroyed. During the Nazi regime such a policy became a central feature of the assault against the Jewish nation. Again, during Kristallnacht Jewish property and homes were devastated. Not only did Luther advocate the destruction of Jewish property and places of worship, he recommend that Jews be deprived of their religious sources. Repeatedly during the Nazi campaign, German troops denigrated Jewish objects of worship. During the attack against Poland, for example, Jews were compelled to treat Jewish ritual objects with a lack of respect. Frequently German troops
forced Jews to scrub lavatories with their prayer shawls.
Concluding his attack, Luther called upon princes to rid their lands of a Jewish presence. For Luther, the aim was to eliminate this demonic element from their midst, and in propounding such a solution he believed he was acting in the best interest of the Christian population. The Jews--as deniers of Christ--were an embarrassment and nuisance. Despite his valiant efforts, this stiff-necked people refused to convert to the true faith.
Like Luther, Hitler viewed the presence of the Jew as a pernicious influence in society. Yet Hitler was not motivated by Christian principles. Instead, he considered that the Jews polluted society because of their racial character. The only solution to this racial problem was extermination. In a speech given to the Reichstag in 1939, Hitler declared:
Today I will once more be a prophet!
If the international Jewish financiers inside and outside Europe should
succeed in plunging the nations once more in a world war, the result will not be the Bolshevizing of the earth, and thus the victory of Jewry, but the annihilation of the Jewish race in Europe.
The links, then, between Luther and Hitler and not tenuous--despite their differences, they regarded Jewry as an undesirable pestilence in Europe society. Both sought to rid Germany of their presence. Hence, Luther's influence of the course of history in the twentieth century is unmistakable. while Hitler and his executioners acted out of racial rather than religious motives, the image of the Jew--which had evolved throughout Christian history and was promulgated by Luther--served as the framework for Nazi demonology.
Bibliography
Beller, Steven, Antisemitism: Antisemitism: A Very Short Introduction[Oxford, 2007]
Davies, A. T. (ed), Antisemitism and the Foundations of Christianity [New York, 1979
Gager, John, The Origins of Antisemitism: Attitudes towards Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity [Oxford, 1985]
Gritsch, Eric, Martin Luther's AntiSemitism: Against His Better Judgment [Grand Rapids, Michigan, 2011]
Isaac, Jules, The Teaching of Contempt: Christian Roots of Anti-Semitism [New York, 1964]
Lindemann, Albert, Anti-Semitism before the Holocaust [New York, 2000]
Littell, Franklin, Crucifixion of the Jews [New York, 1975]
Poliakov, Leon, This History of AntiSemitism, vol 1 [London, 1974], vol 2 [London, 1974], vol 3 [London, 1975], vol 4 [Oxford, 1985]
Praeger, Dennis, Why the Jews: The Reason for Anti-Semitism [New York, 2004]
Probst, Christopher, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany [Bloomington, Indiana, 2012]
Wistrich, Robert, Antisemitism: The Longest Hatred [London, 1991]
Discussion
1. In what ways was Luther's hatred of Jews and Judaism rooted in the New Testament and the writings of the Church Fathers?
2. To what extent did the Nazis echo Luther's condemnation of Jewry?
