|
footnote: The persecutions of the Jews from the early Middle Ages until the twentieth century were in no wise attacks from individuals but actions which had their root in the teachings of the Church. St. Justin in the "Dialogue with the Jew Tryphon" calls the Jews terrible people, spiritually ill, idolaters, cunning and sly, unjust, lacking in reason, hard-hearted and devoid of understanding. He maintains that they fornicate, that they are completely wicked, that their wickedness goes beyond all bounds, that all the water of the sea would not suffice to purify them; that they incite other peoples against the Christians and are not only guilty of the wrong which they themselves commit "but also of that done by all other men". St. Cyprian taught the Christians to say the Lord's Prayer against the Jews: "When he says 'Father', the Christian should remember that the Jews do not have God, but the devil as their father". The Father of the Church St. Chrysostom accused the Jews of robbery and stealing, called the synagogue a brothel, a den of cut-throats, a refuge for vile animals, and described the Jews as "pigs and goats". During the whole of the Middle Ages the Jews were suppressed by order of the synods. At the end of the sixth century in Merovengian Franconia, even compulsory baptism, mass deportations and burning down of synagogues became normal. The sixth synod of Toledo ordered in 638 that all Jews living in Spain should be baptized. The Archbishop Agobart of Lyon (d.840), a Catholic saint, already anticipated the ill-famed Nazi slogan "do not buy at any Jew's". The seventeenth synod of Toledo declared in 694 that, because of the abuse of Christ's blood, all Jews were slaves. Their possessions were confiscated, and their children taken away from them as soon as they were seven years old. (161:1) footnote: In Germany the persecutions of the Jews began with the crusades. "What use is it to seek out the enemies of Christianity in far-away regions, when the blasphemous Jews, who are far worse than the Saracens, are allowed in our midst to abuse Christ and the sacraments", the crusaders argued. Over the centuries it came to banishments, bloody persecutions and burnings alive. (161:2) footnote: Legal history shows what the Christians thought of non-Christians. The lawyer Doepler posed the question: "When a Christian has sexual intercourse with a Jewess or a Jew with a Christian woman, whether this is also to be considered an act of sodomy and is therefore to be punished by death? He was of the opinion that although the case was different (in nature), the act was still to be looked upon as sodomy. The Dutch scholars De Damhouder and Wielant, too, put the intimate association with Turks, Saracens and Jews on a par with that of dogs or of a dead woman, an act which was punished by the death of the Christian partner as well.
(161:3)
|