Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (114 page)

11. Augustine
City of God,
bk. 19, ch. 7, 861. The full paragraph reads, "I shall be told that the Imperial City has been at pains to impose on conquered people not only her yoke, but her language also, as a bond of peace and fellowship, so that there should be no lack of interpreters but even a profusion of them. True; but think of the cost of this achievement! Consider the scale of those wars, with all that slaughter of human beings, all the human blood that was shed!"

12. See Geremek, "Marginal Man," 347–74.

13. Parkes,
The Jew in the Medieval Community,
103.

14. H. Liebershütz, "The Crusading Movement and Its Bearing on the Christian Attitude Towards Jewry," in Cohen,
Essential Papers,
271.

15. The seventeenth Council of Toledo, in 694. See Baron,
History of the Jews,
vol. 9, 136.

16. The emergence of money-based economies required of the Church mental and theological acrobatics. Here is Thomas Aquinas's rationale for the simultaneous condemnation and acceptance of the sin of usury: "The civil law leaves certain sins unpunished to accommodate imperfect men who would be severely disadvantaged if all sins were strictly prohibited by suitable sanctions. Human law, therefore, allows the taking of interest, not because it deems this to be just but because to do otherwise would hinder the 'utilities' of a great many people."
Summa Theologiae,
2.2.78, cited by Le Goff,
Your Money or Your Life,
49.

17. See Shatzmiller,
Shyloek Reconsidered.

18. Oldenbourg,
The Crusades,
561.

25. The Incident in Trier

1. Oldenbourg,
The Crusades,
87.

2.
The Hebrew First-Crusade Chronicles: L
cited by Chazan,
European Jewry,
287–88.

3. Ibid., 289–91.

4. Cited by Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
73.

5. Cited by Agus, "Rabbinic Scholarship in Northern Europe," 189.

6. Ibid., 196. Elie Wiesel reports telling a version of the same legend to Cardinal Jean-Marie Lustiger, the Jewish-born archbishop of Paris, whose mother died at Auschwitz. To Wiesel, the legend's relevance seems to lie in the possibility that Lustiger himself could be elected pope. Wiesel,
Sea Is Never Full,
173.

7. "The Crusades,"
The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day,
vol. 4 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903), 379.

8. Blake and Morris, "A Hermit Goes to War," 82.

9. Ibid., 84.

10. Colin Morris, "Peter the Hermit and the Chroniclers," in Phillips,
The First Crusade,
32.

11. Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
92.

12. "The Crusades,"
Jewish Encyclopedia,
379.

13. The reference to "the place of execution" recalls that, as a sign of contempt, Christian criminals were often put to death in Jewish cemeteries. Near the tablet bearing the "Jewish Privilege" a visitor can still see a small sculpture of the "Jew's sow," an antisemitic slur carved into a thirteenth-century choir stall.

14. "Cologne Cathedral and City Guide" (Pulheim: Rahmel-Verlag), 25.

15. Blake and Morris, "A Hermit Goes to War," 86.

16. Bahat,
Atlas of Jerusalem,
86, 87.

17. Blake and Morris, "A Hermit Goes to War," 85.

18. Ibid., 87.

19. Quoted by Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
92.

20. The "
A.D.
" notation was first introduced in the sixth century by a Scythian monk, Dionysius Exiguus. Even if he had not passed on the miscalculation of the birth of Jesus by four years, his calendar would not have matched ours because the Roman numerals he worked with had no zero. Bede's innovation was to extend the counting back "before Christ," using minus numbers, but he too had to calculate without the zero. See Man,
Atlas of the Year 1000,
u.

21.
Merchant of Venice,
act 3, scene i.

22. McDougall,
Promised Land, Crusader State: The American Encounter with the World Since 1776.

23. Blake and Morris, "A Hermit Goes to War," 9.

24. Revelation 2o:i–jo.

25. Fasching,
Coming of the Millennium,
13. According to Joseph Dan, a scholar at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, it was Talmudic sources that had first divided "the six thousand year history of the universe into three parts: the age of
tohu
(chaos), the age of Torah, and the age of the messiah. These millennia will be followed by a thousand years of destruction, after which 'the next world'... will be created." Dan,
The Christian Kabbalah,
69.

26. I am indebted to Harold M. Stahmer, emeritus professor of religion and philosophy at the University of Florida, for drawing my attention to the Nazi exploitation of this millennial mythology. The deeper point is that mythic impulses—Talmudic, medieval, and Nazi—divide time into three phases, with the millennium having special symbolic significance.

27. Romans 11:25.

28. Cited by Fasching,
Coming of the Millennium,
20.

26. Mainz Anonymous

1. "The Crusades,"
The Jewish Encyclopedia: A Descriptive Record of the History, Religion, Literature, and Customs of the Jewish People from the Earliest Times to the Present Day,
vol. 4 (New York: Funk and Wagnalls, 1903), 378.

2. Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
18.

3. Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
93.

4. Ibid., 91. Léon Poliakov calls it "a thunderbolt out of a blue sky."
History of Anti-Semitism,
46.

5. Cited by Hastings,
Victory in Europe,
187.

6. Johnson,
Modern Times,
403.

7. Howard Zinn,
A People's History of the United States
(New York: Harper and Row, 19801, 412.

8. Ibid.

9. Hastings,
Victory in Europe,
149.

10. Manchester,
The Glory and the Dream,
334.

11. Ibid., 333.

12. Hastings,
Victory in Europe,
132.

13. "Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson," in Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders,
23–24.

14. Ibid., 24, 28.

15. Chazan,
European Jewry,
93.

16. Ibid.

17. "The Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson," in Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders,
30.

18. Ibid., 25.

19. Ibid., 30–31.

20. Cited by Langer,
Admitting the Holocaust,
37.

21. "The Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson," in Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders,
32–33.

22. On this point, Jon Levenson comments, "Indeed the boldness with which Paul projects Jesus (and the Church) into the story of Abraham is a midrashic tour de force that has affected Jewish-Christian relations ever since." Levenson,
Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son,
210.

23. Galatians 3:13–16.

24. Levenson,
Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son,
125–30.

25. Chazan,
European Jewry,
193.

26. John 2:19.

27. "The Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson," in Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders,
32.

28. Poliakov,
History of Anti-Semitism,
46.

29. Ibid., 86–87.

30. Ibid., 87. Poliakov concludes, "Thus appears that famous Jewish ambivalence: money is overvalued because without it death or expulsion threatens; and precisely because it is overvalued, it becomes the object of contempt, while other facets of life become more highly regarded."

31. The word "Kabbalah" means "tradition." "The beginnings of this movement are usually set in the last decade or two of the twelfth century C.E." Dan,
The Early Kabbalah,
1. Harold Bloom says that the use of the word "Kabbalah" as applied to esoteric Jewish teachings about God dates to "about the year 1200." Bloom,
Kabbalah and Criticism,
15.

32. Idel,
Kabbalah,
198.

27. The Blood Libel

1. "Sefer Zekhirah," or "The Book of Remembrance of Rabbi Ephraim of Bonn," in Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders,
128.

2. Solomon Grayzel, "The Papal Bull
Sicut Judaeis,
" in Cohen,
Essential Papers,
232.

3.
Vita Prima,
3.6, cited by E. Rozanne Elder, "St. Bernard of Clairvaux," in
Dictionary of the Middle Ages,
vol. 2, 190.

4. "Sefer Zekhirah," in Eidelberg,
The Jews and the Crusaders,
122.

5. Ibid.

6. Cited by Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
19.

7. Chazan,
In the Year 1096,
144.

8. Cited by Modras,
The Catholic Church and Antisemitism,
346–47.

9. Ibid. See also Kung,
Judaism,
268.

10. Carroll, "The Silence," 61.

11. See, for example, Monsignor George C. Higgins, "Catholics and the Holocaust,"
Tidings,
April 18, 1997.

12. Poliakov,
History of Anti-Semitism,
58.

13. Richards,
Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation,
105.

14. Ibid.

15. Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
21.

16. "Same idea those jews they said killed the Christian boy. Every man has his price." James Joyce,
Ulysses,
(New York: Random House, 1961), 108.

17. Cited by Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
20.

18. Ibid., 21.

19. In response, Rabbi lames Rudin of the American Jewish Committee said, "It's really throwing a verbal hand grenade into both Catholic-Jewish relations and Israel relations. I think it's a real setback to Vatican-Israel relations. I'm particularly upset with the phrase 'blood libel.' He [the spokesman] knows that people were murdered because of a blood libel."
Jewish Week,
July 23, 1999, 14.

20. Cited by Richards, Sex,
Dissidence, and Damnation,
105.

21. Quoted by Chazan,
In the Year 1096,
145.

22. Ibid., 143.

23. Frank Rich,
New York Times,
October 13, 1998.

24. Poliakov,
History of Anti-Semitism,
51. See also Cohn-Sherbok,
Crucified Jew,
41.

25. Richards,
Sex, Dissidence, and Damnation,
99–104.

28. Anselm: Why God Became Man

1. Küng,
Christianity,
393.

2. Ibid., 393–94. Küng says that the
Decretum Gratian,
a compendium of existing Church law, was published around 1140, and that "in time three official (and one unofficial ) collections of decretals were made, which together with the
Decretium Gratiani
formed the
Corpus luris Canonici.
The
Codex Iuris Canonici,
which is still in force today, worked out under curial direction, published in 1917/18 and then only lightly revised after the Second Vatican Council and republished in 1983, is based on it."

3. Pope Gelasius I in 495 had called himself
Vicarius Christi,
but with Innocent it became a common title for popes. It gave Rolf Hochhuth the title of his 1963 play,
The Deputy,
a stark indictment of Pius XII that is not unrelated to Innocent III.

4. Innocent III, "Sermon on the Consecration of a Pope," quoted by Brian Tierney,
The Crisis of Church and State,
1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall, 1980), 132.

5. Fourth Lateran Council, Constitutions 3: "On Heretics," in Tanner,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,
234.

6. Bunson,
The Pope Encyclopedia,
179.

7. Beckwith,
Early Medieval Art,
11.

8. See
The New Catholic Encylopedia,
vol. 8, 407–8.

9. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
248–49.

10. Fourth Lateran Council, Constitutions 1: "On the Catholic Faith," in Tanner,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,
230.

11. Fourth Lateran Council, Constitutions 68: "That Jews Should Be Distinguished from Christians in Their Dress," in Tanner,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,
266.

12. Küng,
Judaism,
164.

13. Carroll, "The Silence," 67.

14. Küng,
Christianity,
415.

15. Ibid., 414.

16. It was in Anselm's spirit that Pope John Paul II issued his 1998 encyclical
Fides et Ratio
("Faith and Reason"), a defense of the idea that faith and reason, while not the same, are not in conflict either. Reason is required for a proper grasp of revelation, and revelation is necessary for a full appreciation of truth.

17. Evans,
Anselm,
22.

18. Anselm, Cur
Deus Homo,
preface, 31.

19. Cecil Roth, "The Medieval Conception of the Jew: A New Interpretation," in Cohen,
Essential Papers,
300.

20. Anselm,
Cur Deus Homo,
bk. 1, ch. 20, 98.

21. Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 6, 120.

22. Ibid.

23. Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 3, 118.1 acknowledge my debt here to Pelikans explanation of Anselm's doctrine of salvation, its significance, and its relation to what follows from it.

24. Anselm,
Cur Deus Homo,
bk. 1, ch. 11, 63.

25. Ibid., bk. 2, ch. 18, 165–66.

26. Kung,
Judaism,
386.

27. Anselm,
Cur Deus Homo,
bk. 2, ch. 20, 174.

28. Quoted by Küng,
Judaism,
386.