Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

fashion. Indeed, I may dare to say that if one conceives its dignity

and grace, no other language expresses so much with so few words and

so powerful expressions; no language is so rich in many-sided and

meaningful... modes of imagery. No language so delights and quickens

the human heart. `063221

-

Luther was not so enthusiastic. "How I hate people," he

complained, "who lug in so many languages as Zwingli does; he spoke

Greek and Hebrew in the pulpit at Marburg." `063222 In the

irritability of his senility Luther attacked the Jews as if he had

never learned anything from them; no man is a hero to his debtor. In a

pamphlet "Concerning the Jews and Their Lies" (1542) he discharged a

volley of arguments against the Jews: that they had refused to

accept Christ as God, that their age-long sufferings proved God's

hatred of them, that they were intruders in Christian lands, that they

were insolent in their usurious prosperity, that the Talmud sanctioned

the deception, robbery, and killing of Christians, that they

poisoned springs and wells, and murdered Christian children to use

their blood in Jewish rituals. We have seen, in studying his aging

character, how he advised the Germans to burn down the homes of

Jews, to close their synagogues and schools, to confiscate their

wealth, to conscript their men and women to forced labor, and to

give all Jews a choice between Christianity and having their tongues

torn out. In a sermon delivered shortly before his death he added that

Jewish physicians were deliberately poisoning Christians. `063223

These utterances helped to make Protestantism- so indebted to Judaism-

more antisemitic than official Catholicism, though not more so than

the Catholic populace. They influenced the Electors of Saxony and

Brandenburg to expel the Jews from those territories. `063224 They set

the tone in Germany for centuries, and prepared its people for

genocidal holocausts.

II. ON THE RACK

-

Why did Christians and Jews hate each other? Doubtless a pervasive

and continuing reason was a vital conflict in religious creeds. The

Jews were a perennial challenge to the fundamental tenets of

Christianity.

This religious hostility led to a racial segregation at first

voluntary, later compulsory, issuing in the establishment of the first

ghetto in 1516. The segregation accentuated differences of dress,

ways, features, worship, and speech; these differences encouraged

mutual distrust and fear; this fear generated hate. The Jews turned

into a glory their usual exclusion from marriage with Christians;

their pride of race boasted of descent from kings who had ruled Israel

a thousand years before Christ. They scorned the Christians as

superstitious polytheists, a little slow of mind, mouthing gentle

hypocrisies amid merciless brutalities, worshiping a Prince of Peace

and repeatedly waging fratricidal wars. The Christians scorned the

Jews as outlandish and unprepossessing infidels. Thomas More told of a

pious lady who was shocked to learn that the Virgin was a Jewess,

and who confessed that thereafter she would be unable to love the

Mother of God as fervently as before. `063225

The theory of the Eucharist became a tragedy for the Jews.

Christians were required to believe that the priest transformed the

wafer of unleavened bread into the body and blood of Christ; some

Christians, like the Lollards doubted it; stories of consecrated

wafers bleeding at the prick of a knife or a pin could strengthen

belief; and who would do so horrible a deed but a Jew? Such legends of

a bleeding Host were plentiful in late medieval centuries. In

several cases, as at Neuburg (near Passau) in 1338, and at Brussels in

1369, the allegations led to the murder of Jews and the burning of

their homes. In Brussels a chapel was set up in the cathedral of St.

Gudule to commemorate the bleeding Host of 1369, and the miracle was

annually celebrated with a festival that became the Flemish

Kermess. `063226 In Neuburg a clerk confessed that he had dipped an

unconsecrated Host in blood, had hidden it in a church, and had

accused the Jews of stabbing it. `063227 It should be added that

enlightened ecclesiastics like Nicholas of Cusa condemned as

shameful cruelties the legends of Jewish attacks on the Host.

Economic rivalries hid behind religious hostility. While the papal

prohibition of interest was respected among Christians, the Jews

acquired almost a monopoly of moneylending in Christendom. When

Christian bankers ignored the taboo, firms like the Bardi, Pitti,

and Strozzi in Florence, the Welsers, Hochstetters, and Fuggers in

Augsburg, rose to challenge this monopoly, and a new focus of

irritation formed. Both Christian and Jewish bankers charged high

interest rates, reflecting the risks of lending money in an unstable

economy rendered more unstable by rising prices and debased

currencies. Jewish lenders ran greater risks than their competitors:

the collection of debts owed by Christians to Jews was uncertain and

hazardous; ecclesiastical authorities might declare a moratorium on

debts as in the Crusades; kings might, and did, lay confiscatory taxes

upon Jews, or force "loans" from them, or expel the Jews and absolve

their debtors, or exact a share in permitted collections. North of the

Alps nearly all classes except businessmen still regarded interest

as usury, and condemned the Jewish bankers especially when borrowing

from them. Since the Jews were generally the most experienced

financiers, they were in several countries employed by the kings to

manage the finances of the state; and the sight of rich Jews holding

lucrative posts and collecting taxes from the people inflamed

popular resentment.

Even so, some Christian communities welcomed Jewish bankers.

Frankfurt offered them special privileges on condition that they would

charge only 32 1/2 per cent, while their rate to others was 43 per

cent. `063228 This seems shocking, but we hear of Christian

moneylenders charging up to 266 per cent; the Holzschuhers of

Nuremberg charged 220 per cent in 1304; the Christian lenders in

Brindisi charged 240 per cent. `063229 We hear of towns calling for

the return of Jewish bankers as more lenient than their Christian

counterparts. Ravenna stipulated, in a treaty with Venice, that Jewish

financiers should be sent to it to open credit banks for the promotion

of agriculture and industry. `063230

Nationalism added another note to the hymn of hate. Each nation

thought it needed ethnic and religious unity, and demanded the

absorption or conversion of its Jews. Several Church councils, and

some popes, were aggressively hostile. The Council of Vienne (1311)

forbade all intercourse between Christians and Jews. The Council of

Zamora (1313) ruled that they must be kept in strict subjection and

servitude. The Council of Basel (1431-33) renewed canonical decrees

forbidding Christians to associate with Jews, to serve them, or to use

them as physicians, and instructed secular authorities to confine

the Jews in separate quarters, compel them to wear a distinguishing

badge, and ensure their attendance at sermons aimed to convert

them. `063231 Pope Eugenius IV, at war with the Council of Basel,

dared not be outdone by it in troubling the Jews; he confirmed the

disabilities decreed by that Council, and added that Jews should be

ineligible for any public office, could not inherit property from

Christians, must build no more synagogues, and must stay in their

homes, behind closed doors and windows, in Passion Week (a wise

provision against Christian violence); moreover, the testimony of Jews

against Christians should have no validity in law. Eugenius complained

that some Jews spoke scandalously about Jesus and Mary, and this was

probably true; `063232 hatred begot hate. In a later bull Eugenius

ordered that any Italian Jew found reading Talmudic literature

should suffer confiscation of his property. Pope Nicholas V

commissioned St. John of Capistrano (1447) to see to it that every

clause of this repressive legislation should be enforced, and

authorized him to seize the property of any Jewish physician who

treated a Christian. `063233

Despite such edicts the general Christian public behaved toward

the Jews with the good nature that actuates nearly all men, women, and

animals when their purposes are not, crossed. But there could be found

in most communities a minority not averse to practicing cruelty when

this might be done with collective impunity. So the Pastoureaux,

originating as shepherds bound for the Holy Land, but attracting

riffraff as they passed through France (1320), decided to kill en

route all Jews refusing to be baptized. At Toulouse 500 Jews sought

refuge in a tower; they were besieged by a wild mob, which gave them a

choice between baptism or death. The governor of the city tried in

vain to rescue them. Finding resistance impossible, the fugitives

instructed the strongest among them to slay them; in this way, we

are told, all but one died; and the survivor, though offering to

submit to baptism, was torn to pieces by the crowd. In like manner all

the Jews of 120 communities in southern France and northern Spain were

blotted out, leaving only some destitute remnants. `063234 In 1321, on

a charge of poisoning wells, 120 Jews were burned near Chinon. `063235

In 1336 a German fanatic announced that he had received a revelation

from God commanding him to avenge the death of Christ by killing Jews.

He gathered a following of 5,000 peasants, who called themselves

Armleder from a leather band worn on the arm; they ranged through

Alsace and the Rhineland, killing all the Jews they could find. A

murderous mania swept through Bavaria, Bohemia, Moravia, and Austria

(1337). Pope Benedict XII tried in vain to stop it, but only in

Ratisbon and Vienna were the Jews effectively protected; elsewhere

thousands were tortured and killed. `063236

The Black Death was a special tragedy for the Jews of Christendom.

The same plague had slain Mongols, Moslems, and Jews in Asia, where no

one thought of blaming the Jews; but in Western Europe a populace

maddened by the ravages of the pestilence accused the Jews of

poisoning the wells in an attempt to wipe out all Christians.

Fevered imaginations brewed details: the Jews of Toledo, it was

said, had dispatched agents with boxes of poison, made from lizards

and basilisks and Christian hearts, to all the Jewish communities in

Europe, with instructions to drop these concentrations into wells

and springs. The Emperor Charles IV denounced the charge as absurd; so

did Pope Clement VI; `063237 many burgomasters and municipal

councils spoke to the same effect, which was little indeed. A false

belief spread among the Christians that the Jews were rarely touched

by the plague. In some cities- perhaps through differences in hygienic

laws or medical care- the fever did seem less fatal to them than to

the Christians; `063238 but in many places- e.g., Vienna, Ratisbon,

Avignon, Rome- the Jews suffered equally. `063239 Nevertheless some

Jews were tortured into confessing that they had distributed the

poison. `063240 Christians closed their wells and springs, and drank

rain water or melted snow. Merciless pogroms broke out in France,

Spain, and Germany. In one town in southern France the entire Jewish

community was cast into the flames. All Jews in Savoy, all Jews around

Lake Leman, all in Bern, Fribourg, Basel, Nuremberg, Brussels, were

burned. Clement VI a second time denounced the horror and the

charge, declared the Jews innocent, and pointed out that the plague

was as severe where no Jews lived as anywhere else; he admonished

the clergy to restrain their parishioners, and excommunicated all

persons who killed or falsely accused Jews. In Strasbourg, however,

the bishop joined in the accusation, and persuaded the reluctant

municipal council to banish all Jews. The populace thought this

measure too mild; it drove out the council and installed another,

which ordered the arrest of all Jews in the city. Some escaped to

the countryside; many of these were killed by the peasantry. Two

thousand Jews left in the city were jailed, and were commanded to

accept baptism; half of them submitted, the rest refused and were

burned (February 14, 1439). All in all, some 510 Jewish communities

were exterminated in Christian Europe as a result of these

pogroms; `063241 many more were decimated; in Saragossa, for

example, only one Jew out of five survived the Black Death

persecutions. `063242 Lea estimated 3,000 Jews killed at Erfurt,

12,000 in Bavaria. `063243 In Vienna, on the advice of Rabbi Jonah,

all the Jews gathered in their synagogue and killed themselves;

similar mass suicides occurred in Worms, Oppenheim, Krems, and

Frankfurt. `063244 A panic of flight carried thousands of Jews from

Western Europe into Poland or Turkey. It would be hard to find, before

our time, or in all the records of savagery, any deeds more

barbarous than the collective murder of Jews in the Black Death.

Slowly the surviving Jews of Germany crept back to the cities that

had despoiled them, and rebuilt their synagogues. But they were all

the more hated for having been wronged. In 1385 all thirty-six towns

of the Swabian League imprisoned their Jews, and released them only on

condition that all debts owed them should be canceled; this was

especially satisfactory to Nuremberg, which had borrowed 7,000

pounds from them ($700,000?). `063245 In 1389 a number of Jews were

massacred on a charge that they had desecrated a consecrated Host;

on the same excuse fourteen Jews were burned in Posen

(1399). `063246 For diverse reasons the Jews were expelled from

Cologne (1424), Speyer (1435), Strasbourg and Augsburg (1439),

Wurzburg (1453), Erfurt (1458), Mainz (1470), Nuremberg (1498), Ulm

(1499). Maximilian I sanctioned their expulsion from Nuremberg on

the ground that "they had become so numerous, and through their

usurious dealings they had become possessed of all the property of

many respectable citizens, and had dragged them into misery and

dishonor." `063247 In 1446 all Jews in the mark of Brandenburg were

imprisoned, and their goods were confiscated, on charges which

Bishop Stephen of Brandenburg scored as a cover for greed: "Those

princes have acted iniquitously who, prompted by inordinate avarice,

and without just cause, have seized on certain Jews and thrown them

into prison, and refuse to make restitution of that of which they

robbed them." `063248 In 1451 Cardinal Nicholas of Cusa, one of the

most enlightened men of the fifteenth century, enforced the wearing of

badges by the Jews under his jurisdiction. Two years later John of

Capistrano began his missions, as legate of Pope Nicholas V, in

Germany, Bohemia, Moravia, Silesia, and Poland. His powerful sermons

accused the Jews of killing children and desecrating the Host- charges

which popes had branded as murderous superstitions. Urged on by this

"scourge of the Jews," the dukes of Bavaria drove all Hebrews from

their duchy. Bishop Godfrey of Wurzburg, who had given them full

privileges in Franconia, now banished them, and in town after town

Jews were arrested, and debts due them were annulled. At Breslau

several Jews were jailed on Capistrano's demand; he himself supervised

the tortures that wrung from some of them whatever he bade them

confess; on the basis of these confessions forty Jews were burned at

the stake (June 2, 1453). The remaining Jews were banished, but

their children were taken from them and baptized by force. `063249

Capistrano was canonized in 1690

The tribulations of the Jews in Ratisbon illustrate the age. A

converted Jew, Hans Vogel, alleged that Israel Bruna, a

seventy-five-year-old rabbi, had bought from him a Christian child,

and had killed it to use its blood in a Jewish ritual. The populace

believed the accusation, and cried out for the death penalty. The city

council, to save the old man from the crowd, imprisoned him. Emperor

Frederick III ordered him released. The council dared not obey, but it

arrested Vogel, told him that he must die, and invited him to

confess his sins. He admitted that Bruna was innocent, and the rabbi

was freed. But news came to Ratisbon that Jews under torture had

confessed to killing a child in Trent. Belief in Vogel's charge rose

again. The council ordered the arrest of all Ratisbon Jews, and the

confiscation of all their goods. Frederick intervened, and laid a fine

of 8,000 guilders on the city. The council agreed to free the Jews

if they would pay this fine and an additional 10,000 guilders

($250,000?) as bail. They answered that 18,000 guilders were more than

all the property still left them; they could not possibly raise such a

sum. They were kept in jail for two years more, and were then released

on taking oath not to leave Ratisbon and not to seek revenge. The

clergy, however, agitated for their expulsion, and threatened with

excommunication any tradesman who sold goods to Jews. By 1500 only

twenty-four families remained, and in 1519 these were

expelled. `063250

Their expulsion from Spain has been described above, as vital to the

history of that country. In Portugal their crucifixion was renewed

when Clement VII, at the urging of Charles V, allowed Portuguese

prelates to establish the Inquisition (1531) for the purpose of

enforcing the practice of Christianity upon the novos cristaos -

mostly Jews who had been baptized against their will. The severe

code of Torquemada was adopted, spies were set to watch the converts

for any relapse into Jewish religious observances, and thousands of

Jews were imprisoned. Emigration of Jews was prohibited, for their

economic functions were still necessary in the Portuguese economy.

To prevent flight, Christians were forbidden to buy property from

Jews, and hundreds of Jews were sent to the stake for attempting to

leave the country. Shocked by these procedures, and perhaps swayed

by Jewish gifts, Clement abrogated the powers of the Portuguese

Inquisition, and ordered the release of its prisoners and the

restoration of confiscated goods. His bull of October 17, 1532, laid

down humane principles for dealing with the converts:

-

Since they were dragged by force to be baptized, they cannot be

considered members of the Church; and to punish them for heresy and

relapse were to violate the principles of justice and equity. With

sons and daughters of the first Marranos the case is different; they

belong to the Church as voluntary members. But as they have been

brought up by their relatives in the midst of Judaism, and have had

this example continually before their eyes, it would be cruel to

punish them according to the canonical law for falling into Jewish

ways and beliefs; they must be kept in the bosom of the Church through

gentle treatment. `063251

-

That Clement was sincere appears from a brief issued by him on

July 26, 1534, when he felt death upon him; it instructed the papal

nuncio in Portugal to hasten the release of imprisoned

converts. `063252

Pope Paul III continued the efforts to aid the Portuguese Jews,

and 1,800 of the prisoners were freed. But when Charles V returned

from his apparently successful expedition against Tunis he demanded,

as reward, the restoration of the Inquisition in Portugal. Paul

reluctantly agreed (1536), but with conditions that seemed to King

John III to nullify his consent: the accused must be confronted with

the accuser, and the condemned should have the right of appeal to

the pope. A fanatical convert helped the inquisitors by placarding

Lisbon Cathedral with a defiant announcement: "The Messiah has not yet

appeared; Jesus was not the Messiah; and Christianity is a

lie." `063253 As such a statement was clearly calculated to injure the

Jews, we may reasonably suspect an agent provocateur. Paul appointed

a commission of cardinals to investigate the procedures of the

Portuguese Inquisition. It reported:

-

When a pseudo-Christian is denounced- often by false witnesses-

the inquisitors drag him away to a dismal retreat where he is

allowed no sight of heaven or earth, and least of all to speak with

his friends, who might succor him. They accuse him on obscure

testimony, and inform him neither of the time nor the place where he

committed the offense for which he is denounced. Later on he is

allowed an advocate, who often, instead of defending his cause,

helps him on the road to the stake. Let an unfortunate creature

acknowledge himself a true believing Christian, and firmly deny the

transgressions laid to his charge, they condemn him to the flames, and

confiscate his goods. Let him plead guilty to such and such a deed,

though unintentionally committed, they treat him in a similar manner

under the pretense that he obstinately denies his wicked intentions.

Let him freely and fully admit what he is accused of, he is reduced to

extremest necessity, and condemned to the dungeon's never-lifting

gloom. And this they call treating the accused with mercy and

compassion and Christian charity! Even he who succeeds in proving

his innocence is condemned to pay a fine, so that it may not be said

that he was arrested without cause. The accused who are held prisoners

are racked by every instrument of torture to admit the accusations

against them. Many die in prison, and those who are set free, with all

their relatives bear a brand of eternal infamy. `063254

-

Though harassed by political developments, and the danger of

losing Spain and Portugal as Leo had lost Germany and Clement England,

Paul did all that he could to mitigate the Inquisition. But day by day

the terror went on, until the Portuguese Jews found, by whatever

desperate device, some escape from their hosts, and joined the Jews of

Spain in seeking some corner of Christendom or Islam where they

might keep their Law and yet be allowed to live.

III. THE SECOND DISPERSION

-

Where could they go? Sardinia and Sicily, where Jews had lived for a

thousand years past, were included with Spain in Ferdinand's edict

of expulsion; by 1493 the last Jew had left Palermo. At Naples

thousands of the fugitives were welcomed by Ferrante I, by Dominican

friars, and by the local Jewish community; but in 1540 Charles V

decreed the expulsion of all Jews from Naples.

Genoa had long had a law limiting the entry of additional Jews. When

Conversos arrived from Spain in 1492 they were not allowed to stay

more than a few days. A Genoese historian described them as

"cadaverous, emaciated specters with sunken eyes, differing from the

dead only in retaining the power to move." `063255 Many died of

starvation; women bore dead infants; some parents sold their

children to pay for transport from Genoa. A small number of the exiles

were received into Ferrara, but were required to wear a yellow

badge, `063256 perhaps as a precaution against the spread of disease.

Venice had long been a haven for the Jews. Efforts had been made

to expel them (1395, 1487), but the Senate had protected them as

important contributors to commerce and finance. A considerable part of

the Venetian export trade was carried on by Jews, and they were active

in the import of wool and silk from Spain, spices and pearls from

India. `063257 For a long time they had, of their own choice, occupied

the quarter named after them- the Giudecca. In 1516, after

consultation with leading Jews, the Senate ordained that all Jews,

except a few specially licensed, should live in a section of the

Durant W. The Reformation. A History of European Civilization from Wyclif to Calvin: 1300-1564

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