Medieval Anti Jewish Nationalism During The Reformation Of The Roman Empire

     Throughout history the Jewish people have been scapegoats; whenever something was not going right they were the ones to blame. From Biblical times through to the Shakespearean Era, all the way to the Middle East Crisis and the creation of Israel, the Jews have been persecuted and blamed for the problems of the world. The most horrifying account of Jewish persecution is the holocaust, which took place in Europe from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler tried to eliminate all the people that he thought were inferior to the Germans, namely the Jews, because he wanted a pure Aryan State.

Jews are a standout amongst the most stereotyped religious social orders ever, with the media every now and again utilizing negative pictures at whatever point they write about Judaism and the Jewish race. History demonstrates that Jews were constrained from their country and turned into an itinerant individuals, spreading all through Europe. Regarded as untouchables in Europe, local people were suspicious of the Jews and made numerous myths and pessimistic generalizations about them which are propagated today. Numerous limitations on callings were put on the Jewish individuals in the medieval times. The Catholic Church and numerous Christians accepted that loaning cash for premium was a wrongdoing and was prohibited. This pushed Jews into cash giving and rent gathering sort occupations which the congregation saw as second rate. This prompted the generalization that Jews are ravenous, shabby, mean and even degenerate.

Relations between the Christians and Jews of medieval Europe were always influenced by their unequal social and economic statuses and the religious competition that existed between them. While the Jews served a purpose in the Christian religion, this purpose meant that the more populous Christians that had come to dominate Europe only tolerated the Jews. No premise of equality existed, and the Jews came to depend on relationships with lower-level rulers to secure their relative safety. Rumors persisted that Jews had poisoned wells, and the Jews were often the targets of violence that the Christians seemed exceedingly willing to deliver. Overall, life was better for the Christians and worse for the Jews, although this would be of no

The Papacy in Rome sanctioned the First Crusade and Pope Urban II preached for a great Christian expedition to capture Jerusalem, the Holy Lands from the Muslims. During this time religion permeated every aspect of life. The Christian kings and peasants believed that every human being was judged in death and one way to absolve oneself of sin was to die in the name of the Lord, therefore dying in the Crusades would purify the soul allowing them to go straight to heaven. Consequently, “thousands of laymen and clergy took up the cross and younger sons of the upper-class had military advantages to become Crusaders” (Fiero, 2017). At this particular time, the church acknowledged and vindicated fighting and killing in the name of God, resulting in the Crusaders slaughtering all enemies of Christ; hundreds of men, women, and children plus the “entire Jewish populations of Cologne and Mainz became victims” (Fiero, 2017). The First Crusade set a dangerous precedent, the rise of organized anti-Jewish persecution and each subsequent Crusade resulted in renewed attacks on the Jews. The persecution of Jews reached a climax during the Crusades.

Jews played a crucial role in their communities in medieval Europe so the growth in anti-sematic action can be seen as unexpected. Whilst Jews had always been considered as ‘other’ by their Christian neighbour tolerance existed. So what caused the shift to viewing Jews as traitors? The causes for anti-Semitism during the Latin Middle Ages were sudden large events, the Crusades and the Black Death, and ongoing concerns, Jew’s economic position. The primary cause was the Crusades as the First Crusade began a tradition of organised violence against the Jewish population of Europe, rationalised as an extension of the Christian mission.

According to the text of the Old Testament, Jewish authorities treated Jesus and his followers with hostility. Many Christians to this day, even though it has been proven not to be true, believe that Jesus’ crucifixion was a direct result of the Jewish people. Christian antisemitism was born from a misconception by Jesus’ followers that was then eternalized by being written in their bible. Christian antisemitism would continue onward through the Crusades in which the persecution of the Jewish people reached an all-time high in Europe, where communities were destroyed, Jewish people were killed, and others were expelled from their lands. Many stereotypes for Jewish people arose from this period because they were restricted to specific “inferior” occupations by the Christian authorities such as tax collectors and moneylenders. This early on compulsory requirement to wear a yellow star began in certain parts of Europe.

no” and this shows just how predominant of an effect this threat had on the Jewish

Jews were constantly wondering “how could our lives get any worse?” Unfortunately, their lives got a lot worse. By the peak of the Plague (when the death toll reached the millions), everyone across Europe portrayed a Jew as a demon. They wore Satan’s face with long black horns, and had a curly, ominous beard. Jews made a large anti-christ image. To make matters worst, bad rumors about Jews spread around as quick as a snap. Angry priests said that Jews kidnapped and tortured Christian children in part of their efforts to kill off Christians. Though the gossip was not true, people ate up the rumors and spread it even farther around Europe. Eventually, Christians decided that the Plague occurred because they let Jews live in their midst. So - their response? The Christians decided to kill Jews in return, and thus: the massacres began. It was estimated that only twenty percent of Jews died from the Plague, while eight percent died from execution. The Jewish population almost disappeared by the year 1390. In Frankfurt, Germany the Jewish population started at 19,000 and then lowered to 10 people by the end of the Plague. In 1267, “the council of Vienna forbade purchases of meat from Jews on the ground that it was likely to be poisoned”. Now Jews were the ones losing money, and Christians were profiting from the massacres. In Vienna, Jews died so quickly, a new cemetery was built. Back at Strasbourg, two thousand Jews were murdered in hope to find gold on their backs (because they were perceived as rich men). In Mainz, the Jews rebelled against the Christians but failed terribly. The Jews killed 200 Christians, but the Christians retaliated by killing more than 12,000 Jews. The famous “Trial at Chillon”, in September 1346, said that Jews poisoned certain wells at Neustadt. Despite being innocent, the Jews were tortured. In Hansa, spring 1350: “Jews walled up alive in their houses and left to die of

As the first crusade began to take shape in 1095, Christians and Jews had an abrasive, or challenging, relationship. While there was nothing in the papal program that was explicitly anti-Jewish, Christians had long had a negative perception of Jews. To the acolytes of Christ, followers of the Torah were, “…Enemies of the Christian faith, regarded as responsible for Christ’s death on the cross” (Tyerman 30). To blame a group of people for the death of a beloved spiritual leader, is to cause friction between two followings. If this was the reason for the hatred of Jews, what

This means that the citizens would naturally jump to conclusions. Since they were extremely religious,they thought that god was punishing them for sins and such. In effect of this, there were people with white robes are walking through towns with a whip with a hook and they slapped it upon their backs to show god they were sorry and there white robes became as red as a rose dripping with blood. But they didn't all blame themselves, most of all they blamed the Jewish communities because they did not have the same religious beliefs as the christians. Thus the Jews struggled the most at this time.

“The LORD appeared to Abram and said, ‘To your offspring I will give this land.’ So he built an altar there to the LORD, who had appeared to him” (Holy Bible, Gen. 12.7). Despite God’s oath to the Jews, this Promised Land has been repeatedly offered and confiscated by Christians. The Renaissance is one period in history, though, during which Jews faced unimaginable brutality. Beginning in England, Jews throughout Europe were forced to constantly move in order to avoid persecution. However, the ways that Jews were treated in their respective countries differed sharply from the ways that they were portrayed in literature.

Levine’s book titled The Misunderstood Jew: The Church and the Scandal of the Jewish Jesus proves to be a highly informative resource when trying to understand the intricate relationship between Christianity and Judaism. Levine’s primary objective seems to be a desire to address the idea that there is a vast, irreconcilable disparity between the beliefs and practices of Christians and Jews. Levine’s central argument focuses upon a common misperception of this dissimilarity: it is the result of Jesus being in direct opposition to Judaism. Furthermore, she contends that only a decided openness and interfaith dialogue between Christianity and Judaism can truly provide the most complete and compelling portrait of Jesus’s life and work. To me, the most edifying facet of Levine’s argument was her call to anchor Jesus within the historical and cultural context in which he was teaching in order to best understand his work and his message. Levine not only provides support for this idea throughout The Misunderstood Jew, but near the end of the novel also offers up ways in which both Christians and Jews can reconcile these two ostensibly conflicting perceptions of Jesus. Therefore, in this essay, I will analyze Levine’s arguments regarding the importance of historical/cultural context in Chapter One and Chapter Four while synthesizing it with her solutions presented in Chapter Seven.

Blood libel, in a broad sense, is the claim that Jews kill Christians in order to use their blood for ritual sacrifices. It stems from the idea that Jews were the ones who killed Jesus, and began to rise in popularity in the 12th century when Thomas of Monmouth published a story that William of Norwich had been murdered by Jews for an ancient Jewish ritual. According to Ocker, the quick spread of this accusation can be at least partially attributed to the environment in the Christian world at the time of the Second Crusade, leading to their readiness to believe that Jews murdered Christians as vengeance reminiscent of the killing of Christ. Waldman addresses this same phenomenon, citing medieval representations of Jews as satanic heretics. Both articles emphasize the Christian view that Jewish beliefs and practices should be held in stark opposition to their own, as a dark other associate with the

Using the letter of Barnabas and the book of Hebrews as resources we begin to see the rise of the anti-Judaism movement occur in Rome at what begins as a relatively harmless uprising. Anti-Judaism literature began to be written when Christianity was not the official religion of the Roman Empire, in fact, it accounted for a very small population of the Roman Empire. (Ehrman, 449) It is believed that Christianity was not more prominent in Rome during this time because of the funding and organization it required that was just not available for such a small group. (Ehrman, 449-450) As Christianity became more prominent in Rome in the coming years, this is when the more harmful uprising movements began to occur in both Christian and Jewish history.

As if that were not enough, “Between 1648 and 1658, in organized massacres called pogroms, over 700 Jewish communities were destroyed. Jewish deaths numbered in the hundreds of thousands” (Esposito 107). Finally I learned of the Spanish Inquisition where Jews were once again treated as something separate from humanity. “Many were tortured and burned at the stake. The Jews were expelled from Spain in 1492” (Esposito 108). They endured this suffering for no crime they committed. They endured this suffering because of their faith. It is unfathomable to me. The Jews have a long history of violence against them and of others trying to eradicate them, a history that I was not fully aware of until this class.