A Convenient Hatred: The History of Antisemitism (17 page)

Other popes issued similar statements. In 1205, for example, Innocent III stated that “Christian piety permits the Jews to dwell in the Christian midst.” Yet he too warned that “Jews ought not be ungrateful to us, [repaying] Christian favor with [abuse] and intimacy with contempt.”

In 1215, Innocent called together 400 bishops and hundreds of other religious and political leaders for the Fourth Lateran Council, an assembly that met in the Lateran Palace in Rome. The council issued 70 edicts in an effort to unite Christians and stamp out heresies, which were considered threats to the church. Five of the 70 edicts affected Jews or former Jews. Two addressed the cost of the loans Jews made to Christians. Charging interest for a loan was considered usury, a sin in the church. Another edict repeated a law that had been in effect for several hundred years: Jews were not to hold public office, “since this offers them a pretext to vent their wrath against Christians.” Yet another edict dealt with Jews who converted to Christianity: church leaders were to keep those Jews from returning to Judaism. The final edict stated:

In some provinces a difference in dress distinguishes the Jews or Saracens [Muslims] from the Christians, but in certain others such a confusion has grown up that they cannot be distinguished by any difference. Thus it happens at times that through error Christians have relations with the women of Jews or [Muslims], and Jews and [Muslims] with Christian women. Therefore, that they may not, under pretext of error of this sort, excuse themselves in the future for the excesses of such prohibited intercourse, we decree that such Jews and [Muslims] of both sexes in every Christian province and at all times shall be marked off in the eyes of the public from other peoples through the character of their dress….
Moreover, during the last three days before Easter and especially on Good Friday, [Jews] shall not go forth in public at all, for the reason that some of them on these very days, as we hear, do not blush to go forth better dressed and are not afraid to mock the Christians who maintain the memory of the most holy Passion by wearing signs of mourning
.

This, however, we forbid most severely, that any one should presume at all to break forth in insult to the Redeemer. And since we ought not to ignore any insult to Him who blotted out our disgraceful deeds, we command that such impudent fellows be checked by the secular princes by imposing [on] them proper punishment so that they shall not at all presume to blaspheme Him who was crucified for us.
⁶

The first paragraph of the edict is similar to ones found in Muslim countries, because Christian authorities, like their Muslim counterparts, were concerned about “honest mistakes” in identifying the “other.” And as in Muslim countries, the edict concerning clothing was not always enforced. A number of Jews quietly resisted the order, and a number of rulers quietly ignored their failure to obey. These rulers regarded Jews as their own subjects, and they did not want the pope to tell them how their subjects were to be treated. A few rulers pointed out that the requirement that all Jews wear a badge contradicted earlier bulls, which had said no change could be made in the customs of Jews.

Still, by the end of the thirteenth century, most European Jews were forced to wear badges or distinguishing clothing. The aim was to humiliate Jews by setting them apart from their neighbors. The effect was twofold: the image of Jews as a threat to Christians was reinforced, and as Jews became easier to identify, they were more vulnerable to attacks.

An even greater infringement on the traditional rights of Jews also had its start in the thirteenth century. The church began to attack the Talmud—the massive collection of Jewish laws and traditions compiled from about 200 to 600
CE
. The first to denounce the Talmud was a former Jew named Nicholas Donin. Even before he converted to Christianity, he had rejected the Talmud as contrary to what he considered authentic Judaism—the Judaism of the Bible. The rabbis in La Rochelle, the French port city where he lived, excommunicated him for those beliefs in 1225. He then converted to Christianity and became a Franciscan friar.

A Jewish couple from Worms, a German city. The man has a badge sewn on his upper garment. Jews who failed to wear a badge were fined. In some places, all Jews also had to pay a special tax for the “right” to wear the badge.

In 1236, Donin presented Pope Gregory IX with a list of 35 charges against the Talmud and rabbinic Judaism—the form of Judaism practiced by most Jews since the first century of the Common Era. Donin told the pope that the Talmud was a work of heresy, as it contained lies and statements critical of Christians and Christianity. We do not know why Donin saw the Talmud as a threat to Christianity. Nor do we know why he thought the pope would care that Jews did not practice their faith in exactly the way their ancestors had.

What is known is that the pope waited three years to respond to Donin’s charges. In June 1239, he sent Donin to the bishop of Paris with a copy of the charges and a request that the bishop pass them on to religious and political leaders in other parts of France. The letter contained an order to seize “all the books of Jews” in the leader’s district on the first Saturday
of Lent at a time when Jews gathered in their synagogues for prayer. A few weeks later, Gregory issued a second letter to the bishop of Paris directing that the books he had seized be burned.

King Louis IX of France decided to delay the book burnings. He first wanted to place the Talmud on trial. He asked Donin to serve as prosecutor and ordered the leading rabbi of Paris to answer Donin’s charges. Another, more formal trial followed this public debate. The outcome was clear before either event took place: the Talmud was found “guilty,” and the books were burned.

In June 1242, more than 24 wagonloads of books—about 10,000 volumes, each painstakingly created by hand—were destroyed in a public square in Paris. The fire burned for a day and a half. The book burning marked the beginning of a campaign against rabbinic Judaism, a campaign that was part of a larger war against heresies of all kinds. Jews tried desperately to persuade a new pope, Celestine IV, to change the ruling. Although he was willing, it was too late. The damage was done. In the years that followed, the Talmud would become the symbol of everything Christians feared about Jews and tried to suppress.

As a result of the “blood libel” and other lies, Christians in Europe in the thirteenth century and beyond increasingly saw Jews as a depraved and evil people. In many countries, Jews were now required to live apart from their neighbors and wear distinctive badges or clothes that alerted strangers to the “dangers” they posed. In times of war, plague, and other crises, those lies were used to blame “the Jews” for every misfortune.

(1347–1492)

Throughout much of the history of Europe and the Middle East, religion shaped decisions about who belonged and who did not. Nonbelievers were often seen as outsiders and viewed with suspicion, fear, and sometimes hatred. In both Muslim and Christian lands during the 1300s and 1400s, Jews were considered outsiders no matter how long they and their families had lived in these regions. They were repeatedly told that they would be treated like everyone else if they accepted the religion of the majority. But many wondered whether this step would be enough to end discrimination and include them in the larger society.

In October 1347, several trading ships from Genoa, Italy, pulled into the harbor at Messina in Sicily. Everyone aboard those ships was dead or dying of a mysterious plague. Europeans called it the Black Death, because victims had black swellings (each the size of an egg) on their bodies and black splotches on their skin. Today we know that bubonic plague is spread through the bites of fleas and lice that live on infected rats. But in 1347, people had no idea what caused the plague, how to treat it, or how to keep it from spreading.

In the countryside, an outbreak of plague usually lasted about six months and then faded away. In cities and other places where people lived in very crowded conditions—including monasteries and schools—the disease lasted much longer, often diminishing in the winter only to reappear in the spring. Jacob von Königshofen, a priest and historian, was a child during the years of the plague. He wrote of that time:

Death went from one end of the earth to the other, on that side and this side of the sea, and it was greater among the [Muslims] than among the Christians. In some lands everyone died so that no one was left. Ships were also found on the sea laden with wares; the crew had all died and no one guided the ship. The Bishop of Marseilles [in France] and priests and monks and more than half of all the people there died with them. In other kingdoms and cities so many people perished that it would be horrible to describe
.
¹

T
HE
S
PREAD OF THE
B
LACK
P
LAGUE
T
HROUGH
E
UROPE
(1347–1351)

Notice the relationship between the route of the flagellants and the places where Jews were killed because people falsely believed that they were responsible for the plague.

From ports like Messina, the plague spread through Europe, the Middle East, and North Africa. Between 1347 and 1351, the disease killed more than one out of every four people in those regions. Almost every family was affected. The rich died along with the poor, saints along with sinners. In Europe alone, some historians estimate the death toll at more than 20 million out of a population of approximately 80 million. No one knows the actual number, but so many people died that cemeteries
were overflowing. At one point, Pope Clement VI sanctified the waters of the Rhone River in France so that bodies thrown into the river would be considered to have had a Christian burial.

Most people viewed the plague as an act of God, a kind of divine punishment. To avoid that punishment, Christians, Jews, and Muslims tried desperately to purify themselves through fasting and prayer. Ibn Battuta, a Muslim from Morocco who traveled through the Middle East in the four-teenth century, described the arrival of the plague in Damascus, Syria:

[T]he people fasted for three successive days… then they assembled in the Great Mosque… until the place was filled to overflowing, and there they spent the Thursday night in prayers and litanies. After the dawn prayer next morning they all went out together on foot, holding Qurans in their hands…. The procession was joined by the entire population of the town, men and women, small and large; the Jews came with their Book of the Law and the Christians with their Gospel, all of them with their women and children
.
²

In Europe people also fasted and prayed, but they did not join together with those of other faiths. Instead, Christians increasingly blamed non-believers and heretics for the epidemic. Jews were the most common targets. Jacob von Königshofen wrote:

In the matter of this plague the Jews throughout the world were reviled and accused in all lands of having caused it through the poison they are said to have put into the water and the wells—that is what they were accused of—and for this reason the Jews were burnt all the way from the Mediterranean [Sea] into Germany
.
³

Jews had been accused of poisoning wells long before the plague struck. Like the accusations of ritual murder, it was one of many myths fabricated about Jews in the fourteenth century. During the plague, those accusations were expanded to include lepers and Muslims as well as Jews. These outsiders supposedly boiled a mixture of frogs, spiders, lizards, consecrated hosts, and the hearts of Christians and then dried that mixture and ground it into a powder to drop into wells. Messengers supposedly transported the deadly powder to conspirators in cities and towns throughout Europe.