History of the Jews, Vol. 4 (of 6)

by Heinrich Graetz

While the Jews of the East were rejoicing in a measure of peace and independence, and were able to indulge in Messianic speculations, and endeavoring, although by mistaken means, to bring about an ideal state of things, the Jews of the West were subjected to fresh persecutions instituted against them. The old accusations of their harmful influence upon mankind, their child-murder, their hostile attitude towards Christianity, which had ceased for a time during the excitement of the Reformation, were again heard. The bigoted ecclesiastical policy, espoused by those who sought to maintain their position against the ever-increasing strength of Lutheranism, reacted upon the Jews, and brought fresh sufferings upon them, principally in Catholic countries. To the old accusations was added a new one, which prejudiced also Lutherans against them. The Lutheran and Calvinistic Reformation, which had extended into England and Poland, had opened the eyes of many concerning religion and Christianity, and led them to find much that even the Reformers considered essentials of Christianity to be false, mistaken, and blasphemous. The Bible translated into most European languages gave thoughtful readers an opportunity of forming a religious system for themselves differing wholly from the dogmas of Rome, Wittenberg, or Geneva. In reading the Bible the Old Testament came before the New, and in the transition from one to the other many perceived that much in the two was irreconcilable; that the doctrine of the unity of God in the prophets was in direct contradiction to the doctrine of the Trinity propounded by the Church Fathers. Besides this, the Reformation had had in view not only religious freedom, but also political deliverance from the iron yoke of the princes, in whose eyes the people were nothing, of importance only for the payment of taxes and the forced service of bondmen. Now it struck not a few that the Hebrew Scriptures make the people the source of all power, and condemn the despotism of kings, whilst evangelical Christianity does not recognize a people, but only humble believers, whom it exhorts to bow the neck to the yoke of tyrants. The contrast between the Old and the New Testament, the one teaching active virtue together with a God-fearing life, the other glorifying passive virtue together with blind faith, could not be overlooked by eyes sharpened through deep research into the Bible.

Among the host of religious sects which the Reformation called forth in the first decades, there arose some which nearly approached Judaism, and whose adherents were stigmatized by the ruling party as half-Jews or Judaizers (Judaïzantes, Semijudæi). These found the doctrine of the Trinity a stumbling-block, and maintained that God must be conceived as an absolute Unity. Michael Servetus, an Aragonese, perhaps instructed by Marranos in Spain, wrote a pamphlet on the "Errors of the Doctrine of the Trinity," which created a great sensation, and brought him some faithful adherents; but he was burnt at the stake by Calvin at Geneva. The Reformers had retained the fanatical intolerance of the Catholic Church! Notwithstanding this, a sect of believers in the Unity (Unitarians, Anti-trinitarians) arose which rejected the identification of Jesus with God. In England, where Catholicism had been overthrown only by the whim of a tyrant, Henry VIII, to gratify his sensual desires, a religious-political party began to be formed, which proposed to take the Old Testament system of government and adapt it to English circumstances. It appeared to recognize only Old Testament types, and not to take any account of the praying brethren and sisters of the New Testament. Many kept the Sabbath as the day of rest appointed by God, but with their windows closed. Some eccentric Christians conceived a predilection for the Jews as the successors of the patriarchs, as the remnant of that people whom God had once favored with the fullness of His grace, as the direct descendants of the great prophets, on this account deserving the highest respect.

Among the innumerable pamphlets appeared one, a dialogue between a Jew and a Christian, in which the grounds of the Christian dogmas were overthrown by texts out of the Old Testament. Publications of this sort helped to make the Jews obnoxious to the Reformers, too. The adherents of the new faith in a measure simulated hatred of Jews in order to avert from themselves the suspicion that they wished to undermine Christianity, and set up Judaism in its place. The Jews, therefore, had enemies on both sides, and were soon compelled to relinquish the illusion that Catholicism was overthrown, and that the new religion was in sympathy with them.

When the peasants of South Germany, Alsatia, Franconia, and elsewhere, trusting too readily in the evangelical freedom proclaimed by Luther, attempted to throw off the yoke of their oppressors, the few Jews in Germany found themselves between two fires. On the one hand they were accused by the nobility and the upper classes of supporting the rebellious peasants and citizens with their money, and egging them on; and, on the other, the peasants attacked them as the confederates and abettors of the rich and the nobility. The fanatical priest, Balthasar Hubmaier, who had agitated the expulsion of the Jews from Ratisbon, was the adviser of the peasants of the Black Forest, and probably the author of the twelve written demands (articles) which the peasants had proposed. Instead of becoming milder and more humane by his apostasy from the Roman Catholic, he became still more fanatical as an adherent of the Anabaptist faith. He had no doubt excited the rage of the townspeople, who wished to free themselves from their debts to their Jewish creditors, and that of the peasants who desired to enrich themselves with the property of the Jews. The province of the Rheingau among other things demanded that no Jew should be allowed to remain in the district. The annals of the age of the Reformation thus continue to present year after year accounts of banishments, tortures, and restrictions. But, after all, times had improved. There were no longer sudden attacks, massacres, wholesale murders—simply expulsions, mere exile into poverty. Only events of deep and far-reaching effect can find a place here.

In Naples, where the Spaniards ruled, the ultra-Catholic party had long tried to introduce the Inquisition against the Marranos who resided there. When Charles V returned from his victorious expedition in Africa, this party tried to induce him to banish the Jews from Naples, because the Marranos were but strengthened in their unbelief by intercourse with them. But Donna Benvenida, the noble wife of Samuel Abrabanel, who was held in high respect by the Spaniards, so ardently entreated the emperor to revoke the decree of banishment, and her young friend, the daughter of the viceroy, so warmly supported her request, that he could not refuse them. It is also possible that Abrabanel's money may have had something to do with it. But a few years afterwards, Charles ordered the Neapolitan Jews to wear the badge of shame on their dress, and in case of transgression to suffer punishment in their person and property, or leave the country. They chose the latter alternative, probably by the advice of Samuel Abrabanel. They probably realized that persecution would not end there, but that it would form the prelude to harsher treatment. But this voluntary exile was turned into banishment, and every Jew who should venture to show himself again in Naples, was threatened with severe punishment (1540–1541). Many turned their steps towards Turkey, a few went to Ancona, under papal protection, or to Ferrara, under the rule of Duke Hercules II, who passed for a friend of the Jews. Those who emigrated by sea suffered much hardship, and many of them were taken by pirates, and carried to Marseilles. The Marranos who were living there did much for them, and King Henry II also treated them humanely. As he could not keep them in his country, he sent them in his ships to Turkey. Samuel Abrabanel also left Naples, although he was offered the exceptional license to remain there; but he refused to separate himself from the lot of his unhappy co-religionists. He settled in Ferrara, and lived there for about ten years. His noble wife, highly respected by Leonora, the daughter of the viceroy of Naples, now the Duchess of Tuscany, survived him.

A year later, the Jews of Bohemia experienced a milder, so to speak, more decent form of hatred. There had been many fires in the towns, especially in Prague. The Jews and shepherds were accused of having hired incendiaries. The Jews were also charged with having betrayed to the sultan the secret preparations for war against the Turks. The Bohemian diet therefore resolved to banish all Jews from Bohemia, and King Ferdinand, brother of Charles V, gave his assent. They were compelled to start on their exile with all their belongings (Adar, 1542), for of the numerous Jews of Prague only ten persons or families received permission to remain there. Many of them found their way into Poland and Turkey, then the two most tolerant countries. The innocence of those who had suffered death, and of the banished Jews, was established in the course of the same year. A few of the notables interceded for their recall, for they were more indispensable than trade jealousy, fanaticism, and the hatred of race would confess. Thus those who had settled near the Bohemian frontier were able to return to their home. But for this favor they were obliged to pay a tax of 300 schock groschen, and were ordered to wear a badge of yellow cloth as a mark by which they might be distinguished.

At the same time two persons of exalted rank and great influence, the one on the Catholic, the other on the Protestant side, attacked the Jews so mercilessly, that it is a marvel that they were not exterminated to a man. The cause of provocation in one instance was as follows:—About Easter, a peasant boy, four years old, from the duchy of Neuburg in Bavaria, was missed, and suspicions arose that he was with the Jews. After Easter the boy was discovered by means of a dog, and enemies of the Jews pretended to see signs of Jewish torture on his body. Upon this the bishop of Eichstädt caused certain Jews to be seized and dragged to his residence that they might be tried, and sent a request to the neighboring princes to seize the Jews in their domains. But the inquiry did not prove the guilt of the Jews. On this occasion Duke Otto Henry of Neuburg warmly espoused the cause of the Jews, and exerted his influence to oppose the bishop of Eichstädt. The latter moved heaven and earth to have them banished at least. A courageous writer, probably at the suggestion of the duke, boldly defended the Jews against the prejudice of Christians in a pamphlet. This publication, "Little Book about the Jews," the author of which was a Lutheran pastor (perhaps Hosiander), for the first time placed the whole falsehood and malice of the accusation of the murder of Christian children in a clear light. The author, who professed to have had much intercourse with Jews, and to have become thoroughly acquainted with their language, laws, and customs, declared emphatically that a shameful injustice was done to Jews by these perpetual accusations of child-murder. The wealth and the pure faith of the Jews were the reasons. On the one hand, avaricious and cruel princes, or impoverished nobles or citizens, who owed money to Jews, invented such tales in order to be able to use violence against them; and on the other, such fables were invented by monks and the secular clergy in order to make new saints and fresh shrines for the encouragement of pilgrimages. In the long period since the dispersion of the Jews among Christians, no one had asserted, till within the last 300 years, that they had murdered Christian children. These idle tales had become current only since monks and priests practiced so much deception with pilgrimages and miraculous healings. For the priests feared no one more than Jews, because the latter disregarded human invention, and understood the Scripture better than the priests, who, therefore, persecuted the Jews to the utmost, slandered them, and caused them to be hated. They even wished to burn their sacred books. Therefore, it was fair to assume that priests had invented the story of the murder of the child in the province of Neuburg. The author further points out that till the third century the Christians were accounted child-murderers and shedders of blood in the heathen world. The confessions of Jews themselves, which were quoted in confirmation of the accusations, had been made under torture, and could not be received as evidence.

Fanatical Catholic priests, especially the bishop of Eichstädt, saw with indignation that Jews, instead of being abhorred and persecuted, were glorified in this book, and hastened to efface the impression. Dr. John Eck, so notorious in the history of the Reformation, a favorite of the bishop of Eichstädt, was commissioned to write an answer, to prove the crime of bloodguiltiness, and to defame the Jews. This lawyer-theologian, with the broad shoulders of a butcher, the voice of a seditionist, and the disputativeness of a sophist, who had brought the Catholic Church, which he intended to defend against the Lutherans, into discredit by his vanity and his intemperate habits, this unprincipled disputant gladly undertook to belabor the Jews. In 1541 he wrote a hostile reply to the above-mentioned pamphlet, in which he set himself to prove "the evil and wickedness brought about by Jews in all the German territories and other kingdoms." He revived the old accusations against baptized Jews, patched together old wives' tales about the cruel nature of the Jews, raked up the false stories about Trent and Ratisbon uttered by Jews when undergoing torture, and added his own experiences to them. Eck was so shameless as to bring proofs of the cruelty of the Jewish character from the Old Testament. To cast infamy upon them he even slandered the Old Testament heroes held sacred by the church. In verbose language and with a false show of learning he maintained that Jews mutilated the children of Christians, and used their blood in the consecration of their priests, to assist their wives in child-birth, and to heal sickness; and that they desecrated the host. He exclaimed indignantly: "It is a great mistake that we Christians leave the Jews so much freedom, and grant them protection and security." Probably on the petition of Jews against these accusations, the emperor, Charles V, renewed their privileges, and declared them innocent of shedding the blood of Christians.

It is not edifying to find that Luther, the champion against obsolete prejudices, the founder of a new faith, agreed completely on the subject of Jews with his mortal enemy, Dr. Eck, who, with the same effrontery, had employed similar falsehood against himself. These two passionate opponents were of one heart and soul in their hatred of Jews. Luther had become greatly embittered with advancing age. He had lost much among his own followers by his obstinacy and persistent caviling, had disturbed the unanimity of those of the same way of thinking, and in his own camp created a breach which caused infinite harm to the Reformation for several centuries. His hard disposition had steadily gained the mastery over his gentle religion and humility, and his monkish narrowness could not at all comprehend Judaism with its laws, which brought forth and developed not the faith, but the morality and elevation, of man. He became enraged when his colleagues, Karlstadt, Münzer, etc., referred for example to the year of Jubilee, and the enfranchisement of the slaves and serfs. A pamphlet, in the form of a dialogue, in which Judaism was involved in a contest with Christianity, probably written by a Christian, was now sent to him; this was too much for him. Could Judaism be so bold as to think of measuring itself against Christianity! Luther at once set about writing a passionate, stinging pamphlet, "Concerning the Jews and their Lies" (1542), which, in spitefulness, exceeded the writings of Pfefferkorn and Eck.

Luther began by saying that he had made up his mind not to write anything further about Jews, nor against them, but because he had learnt that "this miserable, wicked people" dared entice Christians to join them, he wished to warn weak-minded men not to allow themselves to be befooled. Luther's principal argument, in proof of the truth of Christianity against the denial of the Messiahship of Jesus by the Jews, is written in very monkish style. Because the Christians, for more than a thousand years, had robbed them of all the rights of man, had treated them as evil beasts, had trodden them under foot, lacerated, and slain them: in a word, because they had fallen into distress through the harshness of Christians, therefore, they must be rejected, and the Saviour of the world must have appeared!