Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

However, papal decrees and anathemas notwithstanding, self-interest might have prevailed over religious fanaticism, and the sovereigns who had hitherto sold their connivance to the Jews might have continued to shield them. In fact, the Duke of Toulouse and the barons, despite the oath which they had been obliged to take, continued to invest the Jews with public dignities, and in Spain the Pope’s commands were strenuously ignored. But there now came into being a power of persecution, even more formidable than Papacy itself. The pan-Catholic enthusiasm, which had inspired Innocent’s anti-Jewish policy was bequeathed to two bodies of apostles, through whose organised zeal it was destined to spread far and wide, and, like a poisonous breath, to blight many a noble flower in the bud. The age of stationary and corpulent monks was succeeded by the age of lean and wandering friars. ♦1223♦ A few years after Innocent’s death were instituted the Order of Dominic and the Order of Francis, the precursors of the stakes and scaffolds of the Inquisition. The latter order had been called into existence with the special object of stamping out the Albigensian heresy. But an essential part of the mission of both bodies was to hunt out dissent, to root out free-thought, and to realise the bigot’s ideal of spiritual peace by means of intellectual starvation. Uniformity was their idol, and to that idol they were prepared to sacrifice the moral sense of mankind and the lives of their fellow-creatures. The Jews supplied them with a splendid field for the exercise of their missionary ardour: numerous, obstinate, rich and unpopular, they offered a prey as tempting as it was safe. The friars were in some ways an undoubted power for good; but the Jews experienced none of this better side of their activity.

In 1227 a Council at Narbonne confirmed the canonical ordinances against the Jews, and many ancient decrees of the Merovingian kings were revived. Not only were the Jews forbidden to take interest on money and compelled to wear the badge and to pay taxes to the Church, but they were again prohibited from stirring abroad during Easter. ♦1231♦ Shortly afterwards two other Councils at Rouen and Tours re-enacted and enlarged the anti-Jewish statutes of the Council of Rome.

But the Dominicans were as subtle as they were zealous. They felt that the citadel of Judaism which had held out for so many centuries, could not be carried by storm. They resorted to less crude tactics. With a patience, perseverance, and ingenuity worthy of their high ambition, they devoted themselves to the study of the Hebrew language and literature, their Master Raymund de Peñaforte prevailing upon the Kings of Aragon and Castile to found special colleges for the purpose. The Prophets of the Old Testament had already supplied the apologists of the Church with proofs of the truth of Christianity.[51] The Talmud was now to supply them with fresh proofs of the falsity of Judaism. From the pages of that marvellous compilation of noble thoughts and multifarious absurdity, they culled everything that was likely to reflect discredit on the morality or the intelligence of their adversaries. In this campaign the Dominicans were fortunate enough to enlist the services of renegade Jews, who, after the fashion of renegades, strove to prove their loyalty to the faith they embraced by a bitter persecution of the one they deserted. One of these apostates, Nicolas Donin by name, in 1239 submitted to Pope Gregory IX. a minute indictment of the pernicious book, and induced him to issue Bulls to the Kings of England, Spain, and France, as well as to the bishops in those countries, ordering a general confiscation of the Talmud, and a public enquiry into the charges brought against its contents. The Pope’s instructions, so far as we know, appear to have produced no impression in the first two kingdoms, but in France there reigned Louis IX., known to fame as St. Louis: in mundane affairs a brave, high-minded, just and humane prince; but not far in advance of his age in things celestial. In fact, he possessed all the prejudices of an ordinary mediaeval knight, and more than the superstition of an ordinary mediaeval monk. He was sincerely convinced that the road to heaven lay through Jerusalem. Acting on this conviction, he led the last two Crusades, and laid down his life in the cause of Catholicism; a sacrifice which earned him a place among the saints of the Church. Such a prince could not, without flagrant inconsistency, ignore the Pontiff’s wishes. He, therefore, ordered that a careful search for the suspected book should be made throughout his dominions, that all copies should be seized, and that a public disputation should be held, in which four Rabbis were to take up the challenge thrown down by Donin.

The antagonists met in the precincts of the Court, and a brilliant assembly of secular and spiritual magnates formed the audience. Donin warmly denounced the Talmud as a farrago of blasphemy, slander, superstition, immorality and folly, and the Rabbis defended it as warmly as they dared. The debate, though distinguished by all the scurrility and more than all the ferocity of a village prize-fight, seems to have been conducted on the principle that whichever side had the best of the argument, the Christian should win; and the Court of Inquisitors returned a verdict accordingly. The Talmud was found guilty of all the charges brought against it and was sentenced to the flames. Execution was delayed for two years through bribery; but it was carried out in 1242. Fourteen—some say four and twenty—cartloads of Rabbinical lore and legislation fed the bonfire. The grief of the French Jews at the loss of their sacred books was bitter, and the most pious amongst them kept the anniversary of the cremation as a day of fasting.[52]

♦1263♦

Twenty-one years later a similar tourney took place in Barcelona by order, and in the presence, of Jayme I., King of Aragon. Don Jayme had borrowed from his northern neighbours the axiom that the Jews were to be treated as royal chattels. Moreover, his conscience was in the keeping of Raymund de Peñaforte, the Master of the Dominicans, a great Inquisitor born before his time. King Jayme had led an amorous and not immaculate youth. He was, therefore, in his old age, peculiarly susceptible to his Confessor’s admonitions. The sins of love should be atoned for by acts of persecution. The religious freedom of the Jews should be offered up as a sacrifice of expiation. It was the logic and the morality of the Middle Ages.

The outcome of Jayme’s remorse was a theological contest at the royal court of Barcelona. There again the lists were held for Christianity by a Dominican friar of Jewish antecedents, while the champion of Judaism was Nachmanides, famed in the annals of Israel as the greatest philosopher, physician, theologian, and controversialist of his age. Pablo Christiani politely endeavoured to prove that the prophets of the Jews had predicted the advent and recognised the divinity of Jesus. Nachmanides with equal politeness denied that they had done anything of the kind. After five days’ refined recrimination the Court unanimously pronounced in favour of Christianity. The books of the Jews were expurgated of all “anti-Christian” passages, Nachmanides’s account of the controversy was burnt publicly as blasphemous, and the author, then in his seventieth year, banished from Spain, ended his days in Jerusalem. Pablo, whose ambition was kindled by victory, undertook a tour through the Iberian Peninsula and Provence, and, armed with a royal edict, compelled the Jews to engage in religious controversies with him and to defray the expenses of his missionary journeys.

Missions to the Jews became the fashion of the day, and the kingdoms of the West were overrun by itinerant dialecticians seeking whom they might convert. The Jews were forced to attend church and to listen to sermons against their own religion. Thanks to their long training in Rabbinical subtleties, the benighted people sometimes proved more than a match for their assailants, and, if fair play were not contrary to the laws of ecclesiastical warfare, they might succeed in converting the would-be convertors. But, though religious discussion was invited, nay, forced by the Church, it was always on the clear understanding that the Christians might beat the Jews, but that the Jews should under no circumstances be allowed to beat the Christians. To prevent any misconception on the subject, Thomas Aquinas, justly celebrated as one of the least bigoted of theologians, and distinguished among schoolmen for his tolerance of Judaism, gravely cautioned his readers to have no intercourse with the Jews, unless they felt sure that their faith was proof against reason.

In later years the work of conversion in the various countries was entrusted by the Popes to Dominican friars and inquisitors, who carried it on with a diligence never practised except by men fanatically believing in the truth of their doctrines and with a ruthlessness only possible in men too firmly persuaded of the holiness of the end to be scrupulous about the means. These apostles were authorised to reinforce the powers of their eloquence by an appeal to the secular arm. Even so modern missionaries in China have been known in time of peril to forget that an apostle should be above earthly weapons and “to clamour for a gunboat with which to ensure respect for the Gospel.”[53]

And while disappointed theologians represented the Jew’s loyalty to his religion as a proof of his anti-Christian tendencies, scholars represented his aloofness as a proof of his anti-social nature, and they both agreed in denouncing him as “an enemy of mankind.” This lesson, to use the words of a distinguished Jewish writer, “was dinned into the ears of the masses until the calumny became part of the popular creed. The poets formulated the idea for the gentry, the friars brought it to the folk.”[54]