Ch ris tian Pe rs e cu tio n o f Je w s o ve r th e Ce n tu rie s

Ge rard S. Slo yan

Pro fe s s o r Em e ritu s o f Re ligio n , Te m p le U n ive rs ity

It is alm ost as painful to read or write of the m utual antipathy between Christians and J ews as it is to
learn of the horrible events of the Nazi period sixty years and an ocean’s distance away. Man y in this
country have childhood m em ories of those horrors. Others who were not in Europe have relatives who
were put to death there. There are, m oreover, not a few escapees livin g am on g us who were never in
death cam ps but who m ade their way here via Switzerland, the Low Countries or En gland, in som e cases
all three. Am ericans in their seventies and upwards, gentiles and J ews alike, have the uncom fortable role
of being guilty bystanders. What did they [we] know, if anything? What did they [we] do about it, if
anythin g?

Probin g the root causes of the irrational hatred that led to the death of m illions is terribly im portant, if
only to give som e sm all assurance that nothin g like it can happen again . An open wound can be
cauterized. A hidden , festerin g one cannot be healed.

Many of today’s J ews are convinced that the horror of Hitler’s days was sim ply the culm ination of
centuries of J udenhass (“J ew Hate”). They m ay be right but the question needs exam inin g. Books appear
regularly that explain the Endlösung, the “final solution” worked out at Wannsee, Berlin in 1942 and
referred to as a plan for the total liquidation of European J ewry. The “final solution” is understood by
m any to be the result of the contem pt for J ews that had been taught for centuries an d taken root in
Austria, Germ any, France, Poland, and Lithuan ia. But is this what happened? Were the baptized
Christians of Europe ripe for the pagan nationalism of Hitler, Rosen berg, Görin g, Him m ler, and the rest?
Were they eager to be rid of their J ewish m erchant, artist and professional neighbors, finally and forever?
If not, were they willin g to rid them selves of J ews as threats to their econom ic wellbeing in the Europe
that followed Versailles?

Volum es have been written on all these questions. The m ost one can hope to do here is provide a distillate
of the history leadin g up to those horrible days.

Te n s io n U p To a n d Fo llo w in g th e S ack o f J e ru s ale m

A place to begin is the position J ews held in the ancient worlds of Greece and Rom e. J ews were thought
to be people that dressed differently and, in Palestine, spoke in a strange ton gue; although outside
Palestine, they spoke Greek like the rest. They were labeled atheists because they did not believe in any of
the Graeco-Rom an gods or goddesses. Worse still, they were called “enem ies of the hum an race” because
they did not eat the foods that others did or m ingle with them in gym nastics, the theater, race courses, or
sim ilar social pursuits. These accusations left them despised and at the sam e tim e grudgin gly adm ired for
their love of learn in g, their sagacity and, in the case of a few, their skills in the art of m edicine. A
sprin kling of pagan philosophers com m ended them for their belief in one God.

In its political wisdom , the Em pire exem pted J ews from arm y service and several other burdens laid on its
subject peoples. Despite these adm inistrative concessions the Galilean historian J osephus, the
Alexandrian J ewish thin ker Philo, and the Christian historian Eusebius all report that there were
m assacres of J ews in that Nile delta city culm inating in riots in 66 of the Com m on Era and a bloody revolt
in 115-17. The unsuccessful bids for freedom J ews m ade in 67-70 and 135 in Palestine are well known to
J ews and non-J ewish students of history.

The J ews of Palestine (the Rom an nam e for the land of Israel) who believed that God had raised J esus
from the dead, were viewed as a J ewish sect when they first em erged. At this tim e there was relatively
high tolerance for difference. With the destruction of the Tem ple by the Rom ans in 70 and the
consequent em ergence of the Rabbis, who supplanted in authority both the priests and the Herodian
house (puppet J ewish kin gs), all that began to chan ge. It then becam e im portant to ask the question of
who was a J ew and, “Are there any J ews am ong us who m ight betray us further into gentile hands?” The
claim of J esus’ followers that their Master was the sole authentic interpreter of Mosaic Law was not
unusual. His teaching that the intention counted for the deed as well as his com passion for the
downtrodden and the disenfranchised was not new. What set his followers apart was the claim that God
had raised him up from the dead. Most J ews could hear this with am usem ent and, in the early days,
without any violent reaction. As Pharisee-oriented J ews knew, the resurrection of the just would occur on
the Last Day once it was heralded by Elijah’s return . There was no m ention of the resurrection of on e
individual well before Elijah’s an nouncem ent. The J esus J ews were con vinced that their people’s
Scriptures had foretold it. Most J ews were not.

Very shortly a J ew of Tarsus (in m odern Turkey) nam ed Saul/ Paul--he would have had both nam es from
infancy--reports various violent reactions to his teaching that J esus was the Christ (i.e., Messiah). He
writes of having five tim es received thirty-n ine lashes, the punishm ent decreed in Deuteronom y 25. Paul
catalogues his m any indignities suffered from gentiles, as well. The book called “Acts of the Apostles”,
written at second hand, explains Paul’s pun ishm ent by both J ews and gentiles as a result of the rioting he
fom ented am ong J ews in all the cities he visited. Paul’s confrontational style surely had as m uch to do
with the reaction as did his m essage. The m ajor part of the controversy was the claim that gentiles could
be of the religion of Israel on a par with J ews without fulfilling the conditions of the proselyte m ovem ent:
circum cision and the observance of written and oral Torah.

The J esus-believing J ews from the start faulted fellow J ews for not believing that the crucified and risen
J esus was the Christ, God’s Messiah. The sole written testim onies to the tensions over J esus in various
J ewish com m unities are the writin gs in Greek by ethn ic J ews com piled around 135, later called the New
Testam ent. They were written at a tim e when the lan guage of the gentiles that had produced so m uch
J ewish post-biblical writing was bein g disavowed by the newly authoritative Rabbis. The Christian
writin gs were produced roughly between 50 and 125 and cam e to be called by what they were believed to
have given witness to: nam ely, a “new” or, better, “renewed” covenant (in Latin, but a not quite accurate
translation of B’rith: N ovum Testam entum ). The seven letters of Paul that are indisputably his contain
phrases like the one that deplores those am ong his fellow-circum cised who are J ews outwardly but not by
a genuine circum cision of the heart. Although this was a good rabbin ic sentim ent, it had a tragic,
unforeseen outcom e. In two of his letters, Paul accuses his fellow J ews of substitutin g their own
“justness”, resultin g from Mosaic observance, for the only true justness: the on e that com es from faith in
what God had done in Christ. By “faith” he m eans perfect trust in God as the On e who raised J esus from
the dead. Paul in effect accuses of bad faith any J ews who have heard his m essage and not accepted it.

Sim ilar and even harsher lan guage is directed at “the J ews” in the Gospel accordin g to J ohn. Th is late
first-century writin g features bitter internal J ewish argum entation . The offense of those “J ews” the writer
has in m ind is the failure to believe as he and his com m unity do about the preexistent Word of God born
as J esus. They have added to this refusal the harassm ent and expulsion from the com m unity (term ed “the
synagogue”) of any who profess faith in J esus as Messiah. Whatever resistance J esus m ay have m et as a
teacher in his lifetim e is now couched in term s of the rancor over who is a J ew, and what are the lim its of
com m itm ent to the faith of Israel. Uncircum cised gentiles and even the despised Sam aritan s are now
thought capable of professin g Israel’s faith. Hard fighting and harsh words were no strangers to religious
strife am on g post-70 J ews. There was about this exchan ge, however, one tragic detail. Within a century
one of the two litigants ceased to be ethnically J ewish. That changed everythin g. Not even the ban leveled
by the Rabbis on the Sam aritans in Mishnah and Talm ud could m atch it for the bitter antagon ism it both
described and led to. The fact was that m any J udean J ews knew little of J esus; and m ost J ews in the
diaspora n ever heard of the m ovem ent until m ore than one hundred years had passed. This did not keep
the new, largely gentile proclaim ers of the Gospel from assum ing that they understood the J ewish lack of
response as a failure to acknowledge what they should have known from their Scriptures.
Ge n tile Pre d o m in a n ce in a N e w ly Em e rgin g Re ligio n

Ignatius of Antioch was an early Syrian bishop who, in correspondence from shipboard on his way to
m artyrdom in Rom e around 110 , distinguished between “J udaism ” and “Christian ism ”. He further wrote
that Christians should not retain any J ewish practices, which m ust have m eant they were doing so. J ustin
was a Palestinian gentile who cam e to Rom e in the m id-second century and there wrote a Defense of his
new Christian faith. He stated in it that J esus was crucified by the J ews (chapter 35). He later qualified
this by declarin g that “Herod [Antipas], the kin g of the J ews, and the J ews them selves and Pilate” had
conspired against Christ (ch. 40 ) as Psalm 2:2 had prophesied. In a later written, reconstructed Dialogue
with Trypho, a learned J ew, J ustin asserted that the ritual precepts of the Mosaic books were im posed on
the J ews because of their sins and hardness of heart (18). There followed the theory that circum cision was
given to the J ews by God’s foreknowledge so that the Rom ans would not recognize them and grant them
reentry to J erusalem , “the capital of their desolate land ruined by fire “ (16; ch. 19). Som ething that
cannot be cross-checked is J ustin’s charge that “you dishonor and curse in your synagogues all who
believe in Christ… [and] as often as you could you did em ploy force against us” (16; cf. 96). Further, he
speaks of “certain picked m en dispatched from J erusalem to ever land to report the godless heresy of the
Christians” (17). Num erous texts in that longer treatise m ake the undiluted accusation that the J ews were
responsible for J esus’ crucifixion. (32, 67,72).

The extensive treatise of Irenaeus of Lyon , a m an of the East who had lived in southern Gaul before
com ing to Rom e around 177, was entitled Against the Heresies, m ean ing the teachin gs of various gnostic
sects. When he spoke of the J ewish people it was not with the bitterness of a J ustin but in stock phrases
that sounded as if they had becom e catechetical form ulas. Thus, in a passage acknowledgin g the God who
is Father above any dem iurge—the lesser deity who, the gnostics said, created a world of m atter--Irenaeus
inserts alm ost as a m atter of course the charge that the J erusalem m ob was “slayers of the Lord”
(111.12.6).

So m e Lan d m a rk Th e o lo gical An ti-J e w is h W ritin gs

A long poem by Melito of Sardes written som e tim e around 190 proved m ore lasting as Christian anti-
J ewishness by its very beauty than any accusations in prose. It is known as his “Easter Hom ily” and is a
sustained piece of typology, that is, its discovery of the fulfillm ent of types from Israel’s history in the
antitype of J esus’ sufferings and death. A portion of the hom ily reads:

O Israel, why have you com m itted this unheard-of crim e? You have
dishonored him who honored you... you have put to death him who gave
you life… Was it not for you that it was written: “You shall not shed
innocent blood, lest you die a wretched death…

"He had to suffer"

but not at your hands...
" He had to be hanged [crucified]"
but not by you!...

You gave a drin k of gall to a noble m outh that had fed you with life
and you put your Savior to death durin g the great feast!

Very probably this poem with its rich im agery from the two Christian Testam en ts, set in the fram ework of
Micah 6:3-5, served as the m odel for the anonym ous 9 th to 11th century im properia (“Reproaches”) in the
Good Friday worship service. The Catholic Church elim inated them som e thirty years ago. Set to a
hauntin g m elody, these verses told any Christians who heard good preaching that they were “m y people”
who had crucified their Lord by their sins. But m any clerics who had an im perfect theological education
could be counted on to interpret the reproofs as spoken to un grateful Israel in the spirit in which they
were written . That spirit was a reproach for havin g crucified J esus.
Two third-century writers took up the tale of Christian anti- J udaism , one a Latin speaker of North Africa,
the other a writer in Greek from Alexandria who ended his days in Palestine. Tertullian (d. ca. 225) was
the first of these, Origen (d. ca. 254) the second. Tertullian n ever m issed an opportunity to speak ill of the
J ews of the Hebrew Bible or the gospels, although there is no evidence that he was in contact with any
J ews in his native Carthage. A Christian heretic nam ed Marcion ( d. ca. 160 ) saw no good in the biblical
record of Israel’s history and concluded that the wrathful God of the First Testam ent could not be the
sam e as the com passionate Father of J esus Christ. Tertullian had a dilem m a when trying to answer him :
he had to prove to Marcion’s followers that the Mosaic Teachin g (Torah) which Marcion thought base and
inferior was the work of the true God. Tertullian was convinced that the crucifixion of J esus, which
Marcion den ied, was real and that it was the work of the J ews. H is way out of the dilem m a was to
m aintain that since God’s Law and cult could not be laid to any inferiority on God’s part, the need to
replace both m ust be accounted for by the inferiority of the people with whom God was working.
Tertullian’s anti-J ewishness was literally the conclusion to a theological syllogism . Th e God of the Bible
was by defin ition blam eless; therefore, the people were blam eworthy.

Origen of Alexandria was a Greek writer who cast as long a shadow as Tertullian. He m ade a m ove to
Caesarea in Palestin e after 20 0 , where he encountered J ews. Not m any J ews lived in Alexandria because
they had been decim ated in the war of rebellion (115-17). H e began to study with “m y Hebrew teacher”, as
he called him , with scholarly intent. Origen above all wished to m aster J ewish techniques of
interpretation, am on g them the use of allegory. He favored the J ew Philo’s pattern of parallelism or
typology but then regularly charged J ews with a “carnal” understanding of their sacred writin gs. He
m eant that they viewed their narratives as literal history. Despite his m astery of the J ewish Scriptures,
Origen used his learn ing not only to defend Christian ity against the pagans but also to charge the J ews
severely with their failure to believe in J esus as the Christ. Origen was capable of critical history, as his
num erous com m entaries on books of the Hebrew Bible show. This talent was nowhere in evidence,
however, as he took the four gospels and the Acts of the Apostles to be detailed accounts of the last days of
J esus. These narratives tell of the pressure on the Rom an prefect Pilate to be rid of J esus by a sm all
num ber of J erusalem J ews, chiefly the Tem ple priesthood and the Great Council. Origen m akes no
distinctions and considers all the J ews of that city to be the prim ary agents of J esus’ crucifixion.

He goes further. He derives from this false assum ption the dam nin g conclusion that, since the
crucifixion , J ews have been subjects of a providential punishm ent: the destruction of the Tem ple and their
city, not once but twice. Som e Christians before Origen had tied J erusalem ’s destruction to J esus’ death.
But the sober learnin g of Origen m ade later writers take for granted this theory of the inherited guilt of all
for the actions of a few.

Th e Alte re d Balan ce o f Po p u latio n an d In flu e n ce

Constantine and Licinius, co-em perors of the East and West, gave Christians the freedom to practice their
religion without harassm ent in the winter of 312-13. Their supposed “Edict of Milan” was not an edict and
it did not com e from Milan, nor was this the “Constantinian settlem ent” that chan ged everythin g, as on e
often reads in otherwise dependable histories. That em peror prom ulgated four surviving laws that
applied to J ews, two of them threaten in g pun ishm ent for attackers of J ewish converts to Christianity. Th e
drastic change cam e in 380 . At this tim e Theodosius I decreed Christianity to be the official state
religion. By then, the earlier im balance of population of J ews over Christians was a m atter of distant
m em ory, even if pagans in the em pire still far outnum bered the favored n ewcom er. But the J ewish
position becam e precarious with this declaration. The victors thought, as the pagans had not, that they
had a divine m andate to oppose the J ews. Political m easures against the J ews did not im m ediately follow,
but the circum stance did not bode well for J udaism or any religion other than Christian ity.

The popularly elected Am brose, bishop of Mediolanum , opposed the efforts of Theodosius to acknowledge
the civil rights of J ews, pagans, and heretics as equal to those of Christians. The opposition was part of a
struggle between throne and altar. Am brose chose to argue it on theological grounds. In the wake of the
burning of a synagogue by a m ob in Callin icum on the Euphrates, he sided with the local bishop who,
despite the em peror’s com m and, resisted rebuilding it. For Am brose, who had previously been the
im perial consul of Liguria and Aem ilia in northern Italy, the Mesopotam ian synagogue was “a site of
unbelief”. He wrote that there should not continue in existence a place where Christ was denied. On e of
his letters has an om inously m odern ring in accusin g J ews of insinuating them selves in the highest
councils where they disturb the ears of judges and other public figures. But, he continued, that had been
their way as far back as their betrayal of the innocent J esus. In a public confrontation in his cathedral,
Am brose m ade the em peror back down . He asked rhetorically in one of his epistles (40 ): “Whom do [the
J ews] have to aven ge the synagogue? Christ whom they have killed, whom they have denied? Or will God
the Father aven ge them , whom they do not acknowledge as Father since they do not acknowledge the
Son?” This kind of writin g typifies the shape the Christian argum ent had taken over the course of two
centuries.

Am ong the fathers of the Church J ohn of Antioch has the J ews as the m ost evident target. When he was
m ade Patriarch of Constantinople, he becam e known as Chrysostom (the “golden m outh”). In 386, n ew in
the office of priest at Antioch, he launched on a series of serm ons against the Arian heretics. He
interrupted those serm ons with two additional serm ons against the J ews on Rosh Hashanah and Yom
Kippur. These were triggered by the widespread local phenom enon of the participation of Christians in
the J ewish festivals. Chrysostom ’s series of eight serm ons indicate that he considered this participation
an apostasy. Not leavin g well enough alone--for J ews would have thought becom ing Christian the sam e
sin--he got carried away by rhetorical excess. The special dam age was done not by his fam iliar argum ents
but by the violence of his lan guage. The young cleric learn ed he could hold his con gregation transfixed by
his colorful in vective. “Not only the synagogue but also the souls of the J ews” were the dwellin g places of
dem ons (Serm . 4). In the sam e discourse, he pleaded with Christians to rescue their fellow believers from
the clutches of the Christ-killers (Christóktonon, possibly a word of his coinage).

Chrysostom had evidently heard from som e of his Catholics that J ews were holy and that oaths taken in
synagogues were especially sacred. He could not let either view stand. “Is it not folly for those who
worship the crucified to celebrate festivals with those who crucified him ?” (Serm . 5). “They killed the son
of your LORD, and yet you dare to gather with them in the sam e place?” (Serm . 7). Th ere is m ore than
this totally false accusation; he further charged J ews with drun kenn ess and other m oral im proprieties.
Chrysostom ’s eight years of solitude in the desert before he return ed to Antioch had evidently not taught
him m uch. The theological conviction of the succession of J udaism by Christian ity was already firm ly
fixed and his serm ons added to it an obloquy and a coarsen ess in order to fire the im agination of his
hearers. These words, J ews have long rem em bered.

The North African bishop and rhetorician Augustin e (d. 430 ) would em ploy his skills against J udaism in
an equally m em orable fashion . Paradoxically, although his view was as an ti-J ewish as those already
cited, he is better recalled by J ews for his caution that J ews have a place in Christian society. His writings
dealt extensively with J ews and J udaism , always in the traditional antagon istic fashion. In a serm on
delivered within the last five years of his 75-year span he acknowledged that, on his own principles, the
J ews m ust first believe in order to understand. What Christians m ust do, he said in Serm on 43, is preach
to J ews in love, not insultingly but exultingly. It n ever occurred to him that J ews considered being
preached at an in sult. The paradox of J udaism ’s m em ory of Augustine was that, although in his Serm on
Against the J ews, he could say harshly, “You killed Christ in your ancestors” (8 .11), in the sam e writing he
could quote Psalm 59 [58]: 11 [12] whose Latin translation he knew: “Slay them not, lest m y people
forget”. Although it continued with, “Scatter them by your power and bring them down ,” Augustine
concentrated on the first phrase that com m anded Christians to do no harm to the J ews in their m idst.
This was to becom e a standardized rem inder that J ews have a place in Christian society.

Pe ace fu l Co e xis te n ce , An im u s , an d P ap al In te rve n tio n

There is no popular writin g extant to tell us how the ordinary Christians of Europe, the Middle East, and
North Africa thought of J ews and acted toward them in Christian ity's first six hundred years. We have
only the writin gs of the educated, chiefly churchm en and rhetoricians. It was a feudal society, however,
and the rural peasantry and urban artisans alike took their cue from the im perial authorities and the
clergy. We have no rem nants of village preachin g from that era, but the hom ilies of the bishop preachers
were repeated endlessly by a not too well educated lower clergy. It m ust have fixed in the popular m ind
the conviction that the J ews had crucified J esus and that their descendents bore hereditary guilt for the
deed because they had never repudiated it. A fair presum ption is that J ews and Christians got on fairly
peacefully at the neighborhood level knowing that pagan idolatry was the com m on enem y; m uch as J ews,
Christians, and Muslim s got along in pre-Zion ist Palestine in the face of first Turkish, then British
adm inistration.

The correspondence of Gregory I tells us som ething about attem pts at the forced con version of the J ews.
Som e thirty of his eight hundred letters deal with the J ewish people. H e favors their becom in g Christians,
unsurprisin gly, but dem ands justice in their regard under the term s of Rom an Law. Gregory takes a
strong line against duress, which m eans that cases of subm ittin g J ews to baptism have been reported to
him . From his letters we learn a few thin gs about J ews in the em pire toward the year 60 0 : that som e were
deeply involved in the slave trade; that J ews lived untroubled lives am ong Christians in certain regions
and were dealt with cruelly in others; and that close living brought irritations in its wake because of over-
vigorous chantin g in adjacent synagogues and churches. Gregory was both pious and judicious in office
but this did not keep him from em ployin g the standard, form ulaic clauses that spoke of J ews with
theological an im us. In those passages the term s “superstition ”, “vom it”, “perfidia (faithlessn ess)”, and
“enem ies of Christ” occur. The venom of these words is shocking. At the sam e tim e, Tel Aviv historian
Shlom o Sim onsohn can write in his eight-volum e collection of papal docum ents: “[Gregory’s] practical
treatm ent of problem s connected with the presence of J ews in Christian society laid the foundations of
papal J ewry policy in the Middle Ages” (The Apostolic See and the J ews: H istory, Studies and Texts 10 9
[Toronto, 1991], 10 ). The papal correspondence was, by and large, protective of J ewish

Such was not the case in the century that followed Gregory’s papacy. The Eastern em peror Heraclius
(d.642), having lost J erusalem to the Persians, forbade all practice of the religion of Israel in the em pire
because of charges of J ewish conspiracy with the Persian s against the Byzantines. At the sam e tim e the
expulsion of J ews was beginn in g in Europe; from France under Kin g Dagobert (626) and under the
Spanish m onarchy—with church collusion —when in 694 the J ews were required to choose between
baptism and slavery. These m oves appear to be based on religion but history has shown that all such
expulsions and persecutions are dependent on other factors such as politics, xenophobia, and
scapegoating. The un ique factor was that the Christians arrived early at the erroneous conclusion that the
J ews were being divinely punished for not having com e over to their way of belief. Even when religious
difference had little or nothin g to do with specific Christian antagon ism s to J ews, it could always be
alleged as the root rationale for Christian behavior.

The rem arkable Sim onsohn achievem ent is a winnowing of the papal archives from the tim e of Gelasius I
(496) to Leo X (1521), providing all texts pertinent to relations with J ews. It is im portant for people today
to realize that the bishops of Rom e had nothing like the control over the bishops of Christendom
associated with the m odern papacy. Papal influence over the Christian East cam e to an abrupt halt with
the m id-eleventh century breach that divided Catholics and Orthodox. It experienced a m easurable
slowdown in northern Europe with the em ergence of the fifteenth and sixteenth-century Reform ation
churches. Despite all this, the Rom an bishopric continued throughout Western history to be the m ost
influential of spiritual offices. The relation of any given pope to world J ewry was unique. The world’s
J ews considered the pope to be the spokesm an for Christian ity and looked to him as adjudicator of their
grievances. In the years 50 0 -150 0 the J ews, as a religious and a cultural m inority, were often preyed
upon by the Christian m ajority in a fam iliar sociological pattern . The papal record is consistently m ixed.
Harsh infrin gem ents of J ewish rights are censured at the sam e tim e that restrictions are im posed on their
full participation in society. The vocabulary of guilt for J esus’ crucifixion and charges of stubbornness
and blindn ess recur. However, they do not seem to be directly related to the particular inhibitions of
J ewish religious or econom ic freedom . The accusations were of lon g standin g, however, and had just as
long a history of justifying the social settlem ents—even though the relation m ay have gon e un expressed.

Still, as m any historians of J udaism have observed, these infringem ents of civil and social liberty never
approached the point of the elim ination of the J ewish people entirely—a terrifying first from the Nazi era.
Me d ie val Actio n s Aga in s t Eu ro p e ’s Je w s : Mas s Exp u ls io n s

The closest to which this m urderous decision cam e was the successive expulsions of the J ews in the
Middle Ages: first from France in the early thirteenth century, then En gland in 1290 . In the continental
case, the J ews were allowed to return several tim es on the paym ent of large sum s but they were withheld
from En gland for several centuries. Their situation in Spain , under Muslim rule of long standing, was
reversed in the thirteenth century with the Christian reconquest of large parts of the peninsula. Although
J ews and Christians had heavy taxes im posed on them by the sultans, the J ews were protected against
forced conversion in their ghettoized condition. They began to experience expulsion in 1265 with the
introduction of the In quisition, which m ade it its chief business to determ ine which Christians of J ewish
stock professed Christianity publicly, while privately practiced J udaism. The In quisition was reactivated
two centuries later under the united kingdom s of Aragón and Castilla. Often the grandchildren of those
baptized by force had becom e com m itted Christians, som e of them priests, m onks, nuns, and friars; as in
the Nazi period, this afforded them little protection from the In quisition’s long arm . A decree of 1492 said
that all J ews were to be baptized and those who refused, along with the Muslim s, should be deported.

To return to m edieval origins, after a few centuries of freedom from harassm ent durin g the Carolin gian
period (80 0 -10 0 0 ), the J ews of western Europe began to suffer new indign ities as the crusades cam e on.
The Muslim s were the “infidel” targets in the attem pted recapture of the holy places in Palestine.
However, the pillage and slaughter com m itted by Christian m obs against J ews on the way lin ger long in
J ewish m em ory. It is questionable whether these hoodlum s were m uch influenced by serm ons about the
com plicity of the J ews in the death of J esus, although they had surely heard the charge in the street, if not
in church. They grew up hearin g m yths about J ewish wealth from m oney-lendin g and the pawn ing of
possessions. These were activities into which Christians had driven J ews by blocking them out of the
trades and professions. At the sam e tim e, the church legislated against interest-taking by Christians from
other Christians (at the Third Council of the Lateran, 1197), sim ilar to the biblical prohibition of J ews
doing the sam e with J ews.

A conflicting current all through the m iddle ages was the phenom enon of debates in the m arket square
between a rabbi and a m endicant friar. There the J ew’s argum ents were invariably branded insufficient to
show why all J ews should not becom e Christians. At the sam e tim e, the popes were issuin g largely
ineffectual edicts against their baptism under duress at the hands of bishops and princes.

The J ews of Germ any were subjected to m any indignities after the crusades including accusations of
poison ing of the wells and ritual m urder. In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, these slanderous
charges often led to m assacres. Many Germ an J ews fled eastward, bringing with them a particular dialect
(Jüdisch, hence Yiddish), possibly of Bavarian origin. The J ewish situation was not notably im proved by
the hum ane studies that m arked the Renaissance, even though sm all num bers of Christians in that period
began the study of biblical Hebrew. Chief am ong them were Nicholas of Lyra, a Franciscan friar (d. ca.
1350 ) who was steeped in the Hebrew Bible and com m entaries by Rashi (Rabbi Shelom o ben Yitzak of
Troyes, d. 110 5) and others, and J ohan n Reuchlin (d. 1522), a scholar who produced two gram m ars of the
Hebrew tongue and at his death had succeeded at least in turnin g the tide of Catholic hum an ism in a
Hebraic direction .

Je w s in Po lan d , Ru s s ia, Ge rm an y

Several Polish noblem en of the m iddle ages showed special favor to J ews who im m igrated because of
persecution in Germ any, coupled with a Polish desire for J ewish expertise in com m erce. Autonom ous
system s of J ewish com m unity govern m ent (the kahal) flourished in Poland, while the lower or grade
school (heder) and Talm udic academ y (y eshiva) were found everywhere. A deterioration of J ewish life set
in durin g the long reign of Sigism und III (at the turn of the seventeenth century), partly as a result of
m easures taken in the Catholic Counter-Reform ation . The previous centuries were certainly the high
point of J ewish intellectual life in Europe, a fact that m ade m ore recent Polish anti-J udaism the m ore
tragic.
The lon g reign of Germ an-born em press Catherin e the Great (d. 1796) saw the influx of perhaps a m illion
J ews into Russia and was m arked by her givin g them their first political rights in Europe. She settled
them on land, however, as a device to keep them out of econom ic occupations and the professions. Th e
early nin eteenth-century tsars Alexander I and Nicholas I pressed 12-year old J ewish boys into m ilitary
service for up to twenty-five years. The Orthodox Church subjected them to conversionary serm ons,
leading to riots and slaughter later in the century. Many an older U.S. J ew has heard vivid tales from
grandparents of repressive m easures in the old country, includin g the need to lock oneself in one’s house
on Good Friday against m arauding ruffians.

In 190 5 a certain Serge Nilus who had a position at court wrote an account of a supposed conspiracy of
“elders of Zion” under twenty-four headings (“Protocols”) in which all Christian society, education, and
the press would be corrupted and brought low by J ewish econom ic power. Nicholas II, no m ean anti-J ew
him self, discovered them to be a forgery but nothing prevented their diffusion as a docum ent taken
seriously on the eve of the Russian revolution in Germ an, French and En glish translation .

Returning to Germ any, we find Martin Luther in his early days naively im agining that the J ews, to whom
he was attracted by his studies, would flock to the Church in his reform ed version. When nothing of the
sort happened he denounced them in a set of pam phlets written in vituperative fury. He had produced
the early, favorable “That Christ Was Born a J ew” in 1523 but after he turn ed on this so-called “dam ned,
rejected race,” he wrote Again st the Sabbatarians (1538) and On the J ews and Their Lies (1543). Luther
learned nothing new or true about the J ewish people but reverted to the popular scapegoatin g in which he
had been reared. The last-nam ed of these writings recalls the m edieval burning of Talm udic scrolls in the
public square. The pam phlet said that rabbis should not be allowed to teach or to travel; ban king and
com m erce should be professions closed to J ews; and, to settle the m atter finally, this people ought to be
expelled from Germ an lands as France, Spain, and Bohem ia had done.

Luther’s 1543 treatise accepted as fact the slander that J ews had been responsible for the deaths of m any
Christian children . This “blood libel” was the charge in the m iddle ages that J ews slaughtered Christian
babies to m ix their blood with m atzoth at Passover tim e. A well-kn own instance was the legend of the boy
Hugh, supposedly m artyred in 1255 and buried in the cathedral in Lincoln. The Prioress’s Tale in
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales (1386 and following) gives a graphic sim ulation of the supposed happening
which kept it alive in literary m em ory.

Th e Situ atio n o f J e w s in Sp a in

The Visigothic Kin gs of Spain , Arian heretics in their Christianity, forced the J ews in the seventh century
to be baptized under threat of banishm ent. After the Muslim arm y conquered Toledo in 711, a sym biotic
relation between Muslim s and J ews began that peaked in the 90 0 s when J ews occupied im portant
positions in the courts of Córdoba and Granada. Under the new freedom s ensured by the caliphs of
Córdoba, J ewish philosophy, poetry, and religious writing flourished. J udah ibn Gabirol (Avicebron, d.
10 50 ) gained em inence in the first of these fields and the twelfth-century J udah ben Sam uel ha-Levi the
second. Moses ben Maim on (d. 120 4) produced the Mishn eh Torah, a clear sum m ary of all Talm udic
teachin g, and the better known Guide to the Perplexed which set philosophy in harm ony with religion.
When Christian sovereigns in the early fourteenth century recon quered all of Spain, the situation of the
J ews in Granada began to deteriorate, culm inating in the enforced baptism of m any in 1412. This led to a
J ewish com m unity that openly professed Catholic faith but whose m em bers were com m itted in their
hearts to the ancient religion. These were the conversos (called opprobriously along with Muslim s
m arranos, “pigs”, by the larger population). Their Christianity was a sim ple protection for their
com m itm ent to J udaism . There was at the sam e tim e a considerable num ber of ethnic J ews whose
fam ilies had been com m itted Catholics for centuries.

By the late fourteenth century m any J ews of the Iberian peninsula who practiced their religion openly
were integrated into Spanish culture. A wave of anti-J ewish sentim ent erupted in 1391 that was the result
of resentm ent at the prosperity of this population that thought itself thoroughly integrated. The
antagonism led to the m assacre of an estim ated 50 ,0 0 0 and the enforced baptism of another bloc of
perhaps 20 ,0 0 0 .

A decree of Pope Lucius III in 1184 against the heretics in Europe led to Pope Innocent IV’s setting up the
Rom an Inquisition in 1252. It was not concern ed with J ews. The better known Spanish Inquisition was
introduced in that sam e century with Dom inican and Franciscan friars em powered to interrogate
Catholics suspect as to their orthodoxy and, if they found them wantin g, to hand them over to the secular
arm . This subm ission of J ews (and Muslim s) to Church authority could only happen because m edieval
Spanish Catholics thought J udaism and Islam to be heresies— departures from right faith about J esus
Christ. After a period of relative dorm ancy, the In quisition was reactivated in 1480 and culm inated in the
ejection after 1492 of Moors and J ews from the territories of Ferdinand and Isabella, united by the
m arriage of these two cousin s. The papal decree that set up the In quisition in Spain had been preceded by
two centuries of various harassm ents, both of the n ew Christians who were sincere in the profession of
Catholic faith and those suspected of bein g crypto-J ews. With all avenues of society open to the conversos
by their baptism , m any had then risen to positions of influence and im portance in the law, the arm y, the
civil service, and the Church. Som e cam e, in a word, to dom inate Spanish life, not only because of their
skills but through interm arriage with the nobility. Mean while, m any stayed in touch with Spain’s openly
J ewish com m unity which had lived at peace there for a thousand years. This m ade life hard for the latter
because the resentm ent of the Spanish gentiles against the religiously interm ediate population spilled
over onto the J ews. Their persecution in a country where J ewish intellectual and cultural life had peaked
in the eleventh through the thirteenth century was for that reason doubly deplorable.

The in quisition in Spain, so well and so brutally organ ized, continued for the next three hundred years to
have as its target the country’s Catholic subjects whom it deem ed heretical, nam ely the conversos or their
descendents. Most of the J ewish exiles of 1492 fled to Portugal and were adm itted by paying a poll tax.
However, in 1497 Kin g Manoel reversed him self because he was an gry with Queen Isabella. Then , he
em barked on the fanatical forced baptism of all his new J ews aged four to fourteen . Many parents killed
their children and them selves rather than subm it. Som e 20 ,0 0 0 adults who did not take this extrem e
m easure were herded together and em barked from Lisbon in a new diaspora: to Morocco or Egypt, to the
Ottom an Turkish em pire or Greece—where Salon ika shortly had 30 ,0 0 0 flourishing J ews—to Italy, the
Low Countries, France, Germ any, and England. All around the Mediterran ean they brought their Span ish
tongue which, in its fifteenth-century form , becam e known as Ladino. These southern exiles were soon at
hom e in m any lands, becom in g the Sephardim (from the Hebrew word for Spain). In Muslim Turkey they
were received best of all; som e becom in g “Court J ews” serving the sultans. As a result m any J ews were
able to return to Spain in the 150 0 s, am ong them the great Kabbalist Isaac Luria and J oseph Caro.

Po lan d Again

Any recall of the high point of J ewish life in Poland m ust feature the honor in which Talm udic learning
was held: the scholar was a hero, every town of any size had its rabbin ic academ y. These pursuits m eant a
self-im posed isolation of the J ewish com m un ities from the larger population, a developm ent that was to
have tragic results. Poland was a very large territory in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Th e Kin g
placed the total adm inistration of the J ewish population in the hands of a Council that was, in effect, an
independent state. Under this arrangem ent the J ews m anaged their own fiscal affairs. A rebellion in
1648 of the Ukrain ian Cossacks--Orthodox rather than Catholic in religion --against the Polish hegem ony
included am ong its targets those J ews who acted as the regim es adm inistrators, chiefly of finance. Th e
revolt went on for three years and included successive m assacres on an unprecedented scale. Poles and
J ews alike were slaughtered. Of the latter, an estim ated m ore than 20 0 ,0 0 0 were m urdered. Sweden and
Russia m oved in to battle over and dism em ber Poland, renderin g the central govern m ent incapable of
continuing the protection it had long afforded J ews. There followed a J ewish persecution inspired by
churchm en that repeated papal protests could not stem . In addition, the Polish m iddle class becam e
resentful of J ewish com m ercial and financial success. Dark days for Polish J ewry followed these events.
Poland’s partition by neighborin g powers went on for a century and a half until 1919 when a Minorities
Treaty in the independent state, now one year old, guaranteed civil rights to, am on g others, three and on e
half m illion J ews. Despite this guarantee on paper there were m any anti-J ewish m an ifestations in the
post-war period. Various extrem ist elem ents of the Catholic Church had a part in them , includin g som e
popular religious publications edited by the clergy.

Eu ro p e an An tis e m itis m Sin ce 18 0 0

The antipathies of Poles, Germ ans, Russians and others against J ews are often explained as if they were
religiously based in the patristic and m edieval m ann er: Christians infuriated by the m ythological J udaism
they them selves had devised and propagated. From the early 19 th century on, however, anti-J ewish
sentim ent of Catholic and Protestant Europe, itself increasingly secularized, had other roots no less
m ythical. The proper term for it is Anti-Sem itism (som etim es spelled antisem itism ). Its target was
J ewish ethnicity. It was prim arily politically and econom ically m otivated. Dem agogues, however, were
only too happy to put the ancient Christian rhetoric of anti-J udaism in its service. Th e Church began to
lose its advantage in the so-called Catholic countries, first with Napoleon in France and then through the
risorgim ento in Italy. In achieving the un ification of Germ any, Bism arck was no m ore friendly to
Prussian Protestantism . Concurrently with these developm ents, the civil rights of J ews were being
affirm ed. The popes, beginn in g with Pius IX, began to deplore this widespread secularizin g trend as
“liberalism ”.

French Catholic publicists argued that Freem asonry was under the in fluence of J ews, even though there is
no evidence whatever for Masons and J ews m aking com m on cause. In Germ any, J ews had been
identified with liberalism . This happen ed because of Bism arck’s enlistm ent of som e prom inent liberal
J ews in his govern m ent’s protested attem pts to establish religiously n eutral public schools, secularized
public hospitals, and liberal m arriage and divorce laws. The targets of these protests were the
Freem asons, freethinkers, and all those of liberal political bent.

In twentieth century Poland there was a steady coupling of liberalism , Freem asonry, and influential Polish
J ewry which was understood by ordinary Poles as a cry of their leadership for the political, cultural, and
ethnic cleansing of the region. It encom passed an antisem itism far m ore refin ed thatn the physical
attacks on the shtetls on Passover or the High Holy Days because it was presented as a plea for
safeguardin g Polish, that is, Catholic culture. In effect, throughout Europe, there arose societal
antagonism to J ews with a tenuous religious basis.

J ewish integration into the national life m ade its greatest progress in France. After the Napoleonic
conquests it began to progress everywhere. As J ews acquired wealth and political power in France, anti-
J ewish sentim ent inevitably followed. A new com plication arose with the racial theory of the diplom at
J oseph Gobin eau. His 1854 four-volum e work on the inequality of the races gave currency to the m yth of
the superiority of the Nordic peoples. He was referrin g to the Germ anic strain found in En gland,
Belgium , and northern France rather than Germ any itself. In later writings he elim inated J ews from the
“white race” where he had first placed them . Shortly before Gobin eau’s death in 18 82 Edouard Drum ont
published La France J uive, which m ade him a chief contributor to a popular fear and loathing of the
J ewish people. France badly n eeded a scapegoat in the wake of the Third Republic’s defeat in the Franco-
Prussian War of 1870 -71. They found it in the J ews.

With Bism arck’s un ification of Germ any in 1871, J ewish em ancipation becam e a settled m atter. But
certain events in his long rule as chancellor were om inous for J ews. The econom ic pan ic of 1873 was
blam ed on their financial dealin gs. The journalist Wilhelm Marr published a pam phlet in 1879, The
Victory of J ewry over Germ an ism , that blam ed all Germ an ills on the dom inant J ews and, incidentally,
coined the euphem ism “Anti-Sem itism ”. Until then the term Sem itic had designated a language group,
not an ethn ic one. It should be noted that all racial Anti-Sem itism and som e m odern political Anti-
Sem itism was also anti-clerical.

A Lutheran chaplain at the Hohenzollern court in Berlin , Adolf Stöcker, becam e an advocate of a “healthy”
Christian socialism that fought J ewish suprem acy under the cloak of pietism . H is rabid anti-J ewishness
was adopted by som e in the dom inant Conservative Party even though Bism arck and Kaiser Wilhelm II
were favorable to the J ews. Stöcker’s Catholic counterpart in the em pire of Austria-Hungary was August
Rohlin g, who revived every m edieval charge against the J ews. H e had as a disciple Karl Lüger, the pre-war
m ayor of Vienna. Lüger, in turn, influenced the young Hitler and was the leader of an anti-J udaic party
that was dom inant in the Austrian parliam ent until 1938 .

After 1881, m any Russian J ews fled pogrom s and cam e into Germ any, feedin g popular sentim ent against
them . Antagonism toward J ews peaked in the election of 1893 when sixteen virulent oppon ents of J ews
were elected to the Germ an parliam ent. This seem s to have subsided by the onset of the 1914-18 World
War. Largely responsible was the attem pt of leadin g Germ an J ews to build bridges to the wider culture.
Many am on g them favored a total assim ilation and were so successful at it that, with Hitler’s rise, they
were stunn ed to learn that their position in the professions, com m erce, and the arts was not assured.
Until 1933, they had every reason to think of them selves as good Germ ans.

Germ any was populated with m ore J ews than any country in Western Europe when Hitler cam e to
power. It also had the sam e ugly heritage of anti-J ewish sentim ent as all Christian Europe. France and
Russia m ight have been thought better seed grounds for a m ovem ent like Hitlerism . There were,
however, certain im portant differences between these countries. The short- lived Weim ar Republic could
not deliver Germ any from the severe econom ic hardships it experienced after World War I. J ews had
been the Republic’s strong supporters and a few of them were the architects of its constitution , a fact that
Hitler capitalized upon . Huge inflation in 1923 and the depression of 1929 increased Germ any’s
problem s. Som e leading capitalist fam ilies, gentile and J ewish, m anaged to escape these problem s but the
eyes of the angry populace were train ed on the J ews rather than the gentiles.

Hitler’s virulent anti-J udaism was an Austrian , specifically a Viennese, im port. Lookin g for a scapegoat in
his rise to power, he seized on the twin threat to Germ an prosperity of com m un ism and rapacious
capitalism . The nam es of som e J ews were easily identifiable with both.

Hitler’s propaganda m achin e incorporated the racist theories of Alfred Rosen berg as well as m edieval
Christian slanders against J ewry to convince the populace that J ews were responsible for all of Germ any’s
ills. The plan to elim inate them and the gypsies from Germ an lands and later the face of the earth, to be
followed by what Hitler considered the equally verm inous Slavs, developed from this propaganda. Th e
people of Germ any gradually learned with horror that m illions were being transported to what continued
to be called “labor cam ps”. But by then it was im possible to undo the support they had given the
dem agogue who held out the hope of a greater Germ any, one which had risen from the ashes. It was to be
freed from the threats of com m unism and J ewish “dom ination” alike. That m uch, at least, the m ajority
favored, but by then they were firm ly in the grip of a sadistic police state.

Th e Eve r Pre s e n t Su b-Te xt

Was there a direct line from the anti-J ewish passages in the New Testam ent to the gas cham bers at
Auschwitz as som e have alleged? Probably not. The lin e was indirect, beginning around 150 with gentile
m isreadings of the bitter intra-J ewish polem ic contained in those writings. The theological anti-J udaism
of the Church fathers, repeated endlessly in m edieval and Renaissance-Reform ation preaching, was the
far greater culprit. It was the continuin g rationale for the indefensible Christian conduct of the m iddle
ages onward that was xenophobic and an gry at J ewish resistance to absorption into the cultural
m ainstream . There was resentm ent, that ugliest of hum an vices, at the perceived successes of J ews and
their grudgingly acknowledged intelligence and skills, reinterpreted as wilin ess and conspiracy. But
because the Church’s preachin g and its catechizing had long shaped the popular m ind a new
phenom enon was able to com e to birth, m odern antisem itism .

So m e Stirrin gs o f a Be tte r Kin d

Can the m ischief of eighteen and on e half centuries be reversed? Yes. H owever, it will take a very long
tim e and it needs to be worked at m uch m ore vigorously. Catholics point to statem ents like section 4 of
the Vatican II statem ent on non-Christian religions (Nostra Aetate, October, 1965) which exculpated the
J ews of all tim e of the charge of deicide (“killing God”) and warn ed Catholics against thin king that
anythin g in their Scriptures taught that J ews were a people accursed or rejected. A series of guidelines on
religious relations with the J ews em anating from various Vatican bureaus followed over the next decade.
In March 1998, a docum ent entitled We Rem em ber was produced that reflected on Catholic action and
inaction, chiefly papal, during the Hitler period. J ewish observers have seen in all of them certain
insufficiencies, and at tim es backward steps as well as forward. Num erous statem ents have com e from
Protestant bodies in the U.S. and Europe deplorin g Christian antisem itism . Docum entation of this sort is
important, but it is ineffective unless it is im plem ented from the pulpit, church publications, and
educational m aterials. Christians need to becom e aware of their alm ost total ignorance of postbiblical
J udaism , the hatred som e have for J ews, and the violence perpetrated against J ews by their fellow
Christians.

Visitors to the U.S. Holocaust Mem orial Museum and other exhibits from the Nazi period usually say:
“Why has no one told us of these thin gs?” It m ay well take centuries of education and prayer to reverse
the evils of two m illenn ia. The Christian com m unions have at least m ade a start.