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This article discusses the role of the Church in propogating anti-Jewish sentiment in Europe, particulary in Germany.
Early Anti-SemitismAnti-semitism took root as early as third century B.C. when Jewish people first came into contact with the Hellenistic world. It has remained a constant, underlying hatred ever since. In the ancient world, writings depicted Jews in a cruel way, demeaning their character.1 This hatred was largely religious in motivation. The Jews were seen to have shunned their Messiah.2 They were the ones responsible for the death of Christ. For this reason, Christians regarded the Jews as a blight on the moral order of the world; a blemish that had to somehow be removed. The Role of the Catholic ChurchDuring the Middle Ages, the Church made hatred of the Jews part of its dogma. It was believed that every good Christian had a “sacred duty” to oppress the Jewish population.3 Christians must show hostility toward Jews. The same hostility displayed toward evil and the devil. Medieval Christians came to see Jews as agents of both.4Christians believed that, because the Jews had rejected Christ, they were no longer the “Chosen People.” Christianity now superceded Judaism as the one true faith. Consequently, it was Church policy that the Jews needed to disappear. By disappear they did not mean extermination. It was much too early for that mindset to take shape, although massive pogroms did occur sporadically, wiping out entire Jewish communities.5 The Church desired conversion of the Jews as the only just course of action to rid the world of this blemish to the soul of the world. This was crucial. If Christianity was the one true faith, Judaism had to be discredited. John Chrysostom, an important Church father, stated that, “if the Jewish rites are holy and venerable, our way of life must be false.”6 The thought that the Jews might be in the right did not sit well with most Christians. It served to strengthen their fear, hatred, and resentment of the Jews. The Jew as the DevilThe anti-semitism of the Church grew steadily in the subsequent centuries. It came to the point where, in the thirteenth century, Peter the Venerable of Cluny asked, “whether a Jew can be human.”7 There was no longer any question. Jews were agents of the devil. Medieval hatred of the Jews grew so intense that all social problems began to be blamed on them. How could the Jewish people have caused the Black Death? The logical answer was… they couldn’t have. The Church had rooted its doctrine so deep into the minds of the people that this and other outlandish claims somehow made sense. Toward the close of the Middle Ages, the Church abandoned its unsuccessful conversion campaign. The Jews came to be seen more and more as a separate group, incapable of assimilation. They were inherently different from Christians and a danger to the faith.8 1 Shmuel Ettinger, “TheOrigins of Modern Anti-Semitism,” in The Nazi Holocaust, Volume 2, ed. Michael R. Marrus (Westport: Meckler, 1989), 208. 2 Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (New York: Vintage Books, 1996), 49. 3 Ettinger, 208. 4 Goldhagen, 51. 5 Ettinger, 208. 6 Goldhagen, 49-50. 7 Goldhagen, 52-53. 8 Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jew, Volume 1 (New York: Holmes and Meier, 1985), 7.
The copyright of the article Religious Anti-Semitism in Medieval History is owned by Jonathan Moroschan. Permission to republish Religious Anti-Semitism in print or online must be granted by the author in writing.
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