Israel in Europe

by G. F. Abbott

Protestantism from the first proved as hostile to the Jews as Catholicism. It has been suggested that Luther’s animosity was due to the fact that the enthusiasm for Reform and for the simplification of doctrine and worship had produced a tendency towards Hebrew Unitarianism, the leaders of which movement were stigmatised as Semi-Judaei. It would perhaps be nearer the truth to say that the hostility towards the Jew was so old and so deep, and it sprang from so many sources, that not even community of interests and enmities could obliterate it. We have already seen Jews and Christians both lost in the same maze of Cabbalistic mysticism; but this partnership in folly did not improve the relations between the two sects. Nor did the Reformers’ attachment to the Hebrew Bible produce any affection for the race of whose genius that Bible was the fruit. The Jew was detested in the concrete as much as he was admired in the abstract. Luther’s disappointed hope of converting the Jews to Protestantism may have also influenced him. But, be the origin of the feeling what it may, the promoters of the Protestant cause and their followers, from the sixteenth century onwards, adopted a most unfriendly attitude towards Israel. Nor, so far as Luther is concerned, is this development altogether unintelligible.

Luther the rebel against the Church was one person; Luther the founder of a Church, another. While engaged in his duel with Rome, Martin Luther strove to secure the favour and assistance of the Humanists of his day. He took pains to represent the cause of Reform as being the cause of Reason. He described his friends as the friends of liberal culture, and his foes as the foes of light. He invited theological discussion, and professed himself ready to be guided in the interpretation of the Scriptures by pure reason. But when the struggle was over and the battle was won, the despotic character and inflexible dogmatism of the religious leader alienated many of his literary allies, Erasmus among them; while the same causes also estranged many of his religious sympathisers. Indeed, Luther’s bearing in the hour of his success seemed to lend colour to the assertion of his adversaries, that, had he been pope, instead of Leo X., he would have defended the Church against a much more formidable antagonist than the monk of Wittenberg. After all, a rebel often is only a tyrant out of power.

Towards the Jews Luther’s conduct was the same as towards his fellow-Christians and fellow-rebels. At first he undertook to defend them against all the time-honoured prejudices of the Middle Ages. He denounced in no measured terms the un-Christian spirit of “silly theologians” and their insolence towards the Jews, and in 1523 he published a work under the startling title, Jesus was born a Jew; in which he declares, “Those fools the Papists, bishops, sophists, monks, have formerly so dealt with the Jews, that every good Christian would have rather been a Jew. And if I had been a Jew, and seen such stupidity and such blockheads reign in the Christian Church, I would rather be a pig than a Christian. They have treated the Jews as if they were dogs, not men, and as if they were fit for nothing but to be reviled. They are blood-relations of our Lord; therefore, if we respect flesh and blood, the Jews belong to Christ more than we. I beg, therefore; my dear Papists, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew.

“Therefore, it is my advice that we should treat them kindly but now we drive them by force, treating them deceitfully or ignominiously, saying they must have Christian blood to wash away the Jewish stain, and I know not what nonsense. Also we prohibit them from working amongst us, from living and having social intercourse with us, forcing them, if they would remain with us, to be usurers.”[92]

These were the sentiments of Luther the rebel. Luther the victor retained nothing of them, save the vigour with which they are expressed. Although in preparing his German translation of the Bible Luther availed himself of the assistance of Jewish Rabbis, he regarded them with no less aversion than the Papists to whom he often compares them. His violent tergiversation was made manifest in 1544, when he published a pamphlet under the suggestive title Concerning the Jews and their lies. In this work the apostle of emancipation gives the reins to a Jew-hatred fully equal to that exhibited by the Catholic enemies of Judaism. The quotations from Luther’s Table-Talk, given already, have shown that he shared the antipathy nourished by his contemporaries against the Jewish people. Some more quotations from the same book will show that he surpassed them in his hostility towards the Jewish creed.

Martin Luther is deeply impressed by the ancient greatness of the Hebrew race: “It was a mighty nation.”[93] “What are we poor miserable folk—what is Rome, compared with Jerusalem?”[94] “The Jews above all other nations had great privileges; they had the chief promises, the highest worship of God, and a worship more pleasing to human nature than God’s service of faith in the New Testament.... The Jews had excelling men among them, as Abraham, Isaac, Jacob, Moses, David, Daniel, Samuel, Paul. Who can otherwise than grieve that so great and glorious a nation should so lamentably be destroyed?”

Martin Luther is as deeply sensible of our debt to the Jews: “The Latin Church had no excelling men and teachers, but Augustin; and the Churches of the East none but Athanasius, and he was nothing particular; therefore, we are twigs grafted into the right tree. The prophets call the Jews, especially those of the line of Abraham, a fair switch, out of which Christ himself came.”[95] Nor is he blind to their sufferings—“The Jews are the most miserable people on earth. They are plagued everywhere and scattered about all countries, having no certain resting place”[96]—or to their heroic faith in the future.[97]

But these noble sentiments of admiration, gratitude, and pity seem to be mere transient emotions; the theologian within him is too powerful for the man. The Jew’s sublime confidence is no virtue in Luther’s eyes. It is a wicked delusion: “Thus hardened are they; but let them know assuredly, that there is none other Lord or God, but only he that already sits at the right hand of God the Father.”[98] Their attachment to the rites of their religion is to Luther another proof of their wickedness: “Such superstitions proceed out of God’s anger. They that are without faith, have laws without end, as we see in the Papists and Turks. But they are rightly served, for seeing they refused to have Christ and his gospel, instead of freedom they must have servitude.”[99] Their calamities, far from inspiring Luther with compassion, supply him with a fresh argument for denunciation: “The glory of the Temple was great, that the whole world must worship there. But God, out of special wisdom, caused this Temple to be destroyed, to the end the Jews might be put to confusion, and no more brag and boast thereof.”[100] And again, “Either God must be unjust, or you, Jews, wicked and ungodly; for ye have been in misery and fearful exile a far longer time than ye were in the land of Canaan. Ye had not the Temple of Solomon more than three hundred years, while ye have been hunted up and down above fifteen hundred. At Babylon ye had more eminence than at Jerusalem, for Daniel was a greater and more powerful prince at Babylon than either David or Solomon at Jerusalem.... You have been above fifteen hundred years a race rejected of God without government, without laws, without prophets, without temple. This argument ye cannot solve; it strikes you to the ground like a thunder-clap; ye can show no other reason for your condition than your sins.”[101]

The destruction of Jerusalem and the dispersion and persecution of the race are clear evidence of God’s anger: “But the Jews are so hardened that they listen to nothing: though overcome by testimonies, they yield not an inch”[102]—so “stiff-necked, haughty and presumptuous they are”:[103] Verily, an arrogant and cruel race of men, boasting, like the Papists, “that they alone are God’s people, and will allow of none but of those that are of their Church.”[104] To Luther, as to Tacitus, the Jews are the enemies of mankind: “And truly, they hate us Christians as they do death. It galls them to see us. If I were master of the country, I would not allow them to practise usury.”[105]

The reputed proficiency of the Jews in the black art is another grievous offence in Luther’s eyes: “There are sorcerers among the Jews, who delight in tormenting Christians, for they hold us as dogs. Duke Albert of Saxony well punished one of these wretches. A Jew offered to sell him a talisman covered with strange characters, which he said effectually protected the wearer against any sword or dagger thrust. The Duke replied: ‘I will essay thy charm upon thyself, Jew,’ and, putting the talisman round the fellow’s neck, he drew his sword and passed it through his body. ‘Thou feelest, Jew!’ said he, ‘how it would have been with me had I purchased thy talisman?’”[106] The story contains several points of interest for the student of mediaeval Christianity, Luther’s own approbation of the Duke’s act being not the least interesting of them.