Jews & the Medieval Church: From Tolerance to Persecution

Jews & the Medieval Church: From Tolerance to Persecution


I. Early Christian Theologians and the Jews



A. Theological Negation (verus Israel)

“The Jews sacrifice their children to Satan…they are worse than wild beasts…The synagogue is a curse…[the Jews] have fallen into a condition lower than the vilest animals. Debauchery and drunkenness have brought them to the level of the lusty goat and pig. They only know one thing: to satisfy their stomachs, to get drunk, to kill and beat each other…I hate the Jews, because they violate the Law…It is the duty of all Christians to hate the Jews.”

- St. John Chrysostom (347-407), Against the Judaizers

“Impelled by drunkenness, they were guilty of scoffing at Christians and even Christ himself; and in derision of the cross and those who put their trust in the Crucified One, they seized a Christian boy, and having bound him to a cross, began to laugh and sneer at him. But in a little while becoming so transported

with fury, they scourged the child until he died under their hands.”

- Socrates Scholasticus (c.380- c.450), Ecclesiastical History




B. Political Toleration (sicut Iudaeis)




B. Political Toleration (sicut Iudaeis)

C. Practical Limitation



A. Theological Negation

B. Political Toleration


II. Jews in the Middle Ages






II. Jews in the Middle Ages

A. Early Medieval Background

Jewish money-lenders in medieval France





II. Jews in the Era of the Crusades


B. The First Crusade: Riots in the Rhineland

1250 French Bible illustration depicts Jews being massacred by Crusaders

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d0/FirstCrusade.jpg








C. The Second Crusade (1145-46) & After

12th century images of monks preaching the Crusades

[Bernard preached] …It is noble of you to wish to go forth against the Ishmaelites; still, whoever touches a Jew so as to lay hands on his life, does something as sinful as if he laid hands on Jesus himself! My disciple, Ralph, who has spoken against them to exterminate them, has preached only unrighteousness, for, concerning them it stands written in the Books of Psalms: “Do not kill them, let my people not be forgotten!”

- Recorded by Ephraim bar Jacob, 1146









III. Jews Under Islam










A. Muslim Spain

THE RUINED CITADEL Samuel Ha-Nagid (993-1055)

I billeted a strong force overnight in a citadel laid waste in former days by other generals. There we slept upon its back and flanks, while under us its landlords slept. And I said to my heart: Where are the many people who once lived here? Where are the builders and vandals, the rulers and paupers, the slaves and masters? Where are the begetters and the bereaved, the fathers and the sons, the mourners and the bridegrooms? And where are the many people born after the others had died, in days gone by, after other days and years? Once they lodged upon the earth; now they are lodged within it. They passed from their palaces to the grave, from pleasant courts to dust.

Moses Maimonides teaching (1135-1204)

A page from a draft of Maimonides’s Guide to the Perplexed










IV. Christian-Jewish Relations in Later Middle Ages

14th century image of Jewish moneylenders











A. Economic Exploitation











A. Economic Exploitation

B. Increased Religious Persecution

1493 Image of Simon of Trent- artistic conception of a blood libel

Medieval artistic conception of Jews desecrating the Host

A late medieval image of Jews with badges

Medieval Jews & Christians debate

Documents

Jews & the Medieval Church: From Tolerance to Persecution