Roman Christianity and How Popes and Emperors' Laws Hurt Jews

 Nadene Goldfoot                                              

                                Helena, mother of Emperor Constantine, who went to Palestine.  She was considered a saint in the eastern and western churches, reported to be the discoverer of the "true cross." His mother, Helena, was Greek and of low birth. Dates: About 248 CE to about 328 CE; her birth year is estimated from a report by the contemporary historian Eusebius that she was about 80 near the time of her death. I would guess that she was born in 276 CE.   Over time, the Christian church and faith grew with the help of Helena, emperor Constantine's mother,  and was more organized.

                                               

 In 313 AD, the Emperor Constantine issued the Edict of Milan, which accepted Christianity: 10 years later,  In 323, Christianity  had become the official religion of the Roman Empire.  Constantine I, also known as Constantine the Great, was Roman emperor from 306 to 337. Born in Naissus, Dacia Mediterranea, he was the son of Flavius Constantius.                                                

892 years later at the 4th Lateran Council, at a meeting of Catholic officials in 1215, Pope Innocent III announced measures designed to keep the Jews in permanent state of humiliation.  His goal was to break the soul of the Jews and force them to baptism, or, failing that, to reduce them to a condition which would prove that the Lord hated those who refused to worship Jesus as the son of G-d.   

1. According to these new laws, Jews were to be totally isolated from the Christian world.  

2. Jews and Christians were forbidden to live in the same house.

3. No Jew was to be appointed to any office which gave him control over a Christian.                               

4. Jews were forbidden to leave their buildings or even to open their shutters on Easter, to make sure that they would not "insult" Christians on that holiday.  

Finally, to make sure that no Christian would accidentally become friendly with an unbeliever, Jews were required to wear a special hat or badge whenever they appeared in public.  Like the the Blood Libel, this anti-Jewish practice survived to modern times:  Jews were again forced to wear distinctive badges by the Nazis. 

Christians tried to destroy Jewish scholarship.  In France a wave of book-burning was begun by King Louis IX, a man whose Christian zeal earned him the title of "Saint Louis."  

                                               

     

The Talmud, a book written by rabbis, explaining the records of academic discussion and judicial administration of Jewish Law, among many Jewish books, were burned in Paris by the church on June  17, 1242 when 24 cartloads of Talmud mss were burned as a sequel to the religious Disputation there 2 years earlier.  This burning of Jewish books recurred intermittently thereafter, like in Italy in 1322, and again in the 16th century when vast numbers of volumes comprising all types of Jewish literature was begin destroyed in Rome on September 9, 1553. 

 It served as an example to be followed all over northern Italy, and only deferred at Cremona until 1559. Rabbinic works were found in raids on the Jewish quarters and were thereafter burned sporadically.  Thousands of volumes of the Talmud were burned in Poland by order of Bishop Dembowski after the disputation between the rabbis and the "Zoharists"  led by Jacob Frank at Kamenetz-Podolsk in 1757. More than 20 public burning of the Talmud were held in Rome, Italy;  Barcelona, Spain, and other cities.                               

Besides that, the Christians worked toward bringing the teachings of Judaism into public scorn by using disputation---a formal discussion of the teachings of Judaism and Christianity between spokesmen for each religion, conducted by a government or Church official.  These were supposed to be fair debates.  In fact, the Jews were placed in an almost impossible position:  a weak defense of their religion would be a disgrace, but a strong defense that could be interpreted as critical of Christianity was  punishable as a crime.  Maybe this is when the phrase, "between the devil and the deep blue sea," came into fashion.  

                                                           

The most famous disputation was held in Barcelona in 1263 in the presence of the king of Aragon and his court.  The Jewish spokesman was a 69 year old scholar and physician, rabbi Moses ben Nahman, also known as Nahmanides.  He asked for and was promised the right of free speech during the debate, and freedom from prosecution for what he might say.  Nevertheless, after arguing his position with strength and skill, he was forced to leave Spain.    Nahmanides made the hard and dangerous voyage to Palestine in 1267. By then, Jerusalem had endured over a century of fighting between Christians and Muslims;  and only a few years before, the Tatars, a warlike people from Asia, had sacked the Holy City.  Finding himself at last in Jerusalem, Nahmanides wrote an emotional letter to his son in Spain.  His emotions must have been much like those felt by the ancient Hebrews as they returned from exile in Babylon some 1800 years earlier.  They too beheld Jerusalem in ruins---and they too set about to restore it to its former glory.  And to think, Jews have had to do it again from 1880 on.                                                                     

One more target on Jews was attacked;  one's livelihood.  In the Early Middle Ages, Jews were doing it all:  in agriculture, dyeing, silk-weaving, silver and gold working Smiths, glass-blowing, commerce, and many others.  They had education and skills and were the key element in many branches of European life. 

During the High Middle Ages, however, Christians learned many of these profitable trades and THEN forced Jews out of areas where they offered competition, not by being better competitively, but by making anti-Jewish laws. 

1. Jews were forbidden to farm.

2. Jews were kept out of craft unions (guilds). (Everyone had to be in a union).

3. Jews were even forced out of international commerce, a trade they had sustained for centuries.                                  

Only one field was left open to them, something which no Christian wanted to do;  money-lending.   In any growing economy, businessmen need to borrow money for new projects.  When they make profits, they repay their loans, plus an additional % in interest as payment for use of the money.  Today, bankers who provide such funds are a respected part of the business world, but in medieval times, lending money at interest was regarded by the Church as the sin of "usury" and forbidden to Christians.  The need for loans remained, however, and so Jews were invited----then forced----to become the moneylenders of Europe.  Of our 613 laws to be a better people, that was not listed, thank goodness.  Jewish fathers had the responsibility to make sure their sons could make a living, though. 

 Thus, Jews found themselves in a necessary but hated profession, maintaining the flow of cash into the pockets of Christian princes.  He ran the risk of if the borrower was unable to repay his loan---but also the dangers connected with  his insecure position.  ordinary borrowers might accuse him of ritual murder or desecrating the Host, organize a riot, kill him.  Kings might simply refuse to pay, threatening the "infidel moneylender" with imprisonment or death.  When large losses were common, interest rates had to be very high.  This fueled the hatred of the masses, who were convinced that the Jews were getting rich by bleeding poor Christians. More Jews were killed by kings getting out of paying interest than there were Jews charging high rates of interest.  

                                   Shylock, played by Italian Al Pacino

But, this is how stereotyping happens and one heard of the crafty, money-mad Jew.  this idea has poisoned Jewish-Christian relations ever since.  The most famous example dates from late in the 16th century:  Shylock in Shakespeare's THE MERCHANT OF VENICE, and even today, some dictionaries define "To Jew someone down" as "to get the better of" in bargaining, as by sharp practices.  Notice that Shakespeare was English and Jews had been banned from the country till 1655.  The creation of The Merchant of Venice can be dated between 1596 and 1598. Shakespeare must have written the play by the summer of 1598, since it was entered on the Stationers' Register on 22 July 1598.

Actually, Shakespeare never knew one single Jew in his life. Jews were only allowed back into the country 58 years after than the play had been on stage.  What was he basing his facts on?  Gossip in his family, gossip from friends, and gossip is not the same as facts;  It's usually exaggerated and mean and said out of wanting attention.                                             

Actually, the Jews didn't even control the dangerous and degrading field of  moneylending for very long.  Clever Christians found ways to get around the usury laws, and once they had established themselves in the profession, they forced the Jews out of  it.  This meant that Jews were no longer needed in the only trade they had been allowed to practice.  They could be looked on as totally useless members of society.  King after king breathed a sigh of relief as he freed himself of the "Jewish problem" by the simplest of all means:  complete expulsion.  When all efforts to convert the Jews failed, and when they could be eliminated from their key roles in the economy, they were expelled.  

Jews wondered if a Pope would help the Jews.  The 1st popes, like the earliest Christians, were born Jewish.  In medieval times, there was at least one Pope who came from a Jewish family.  His life may have given rise to a popular medieval legend about a "Jewish Pope."  Add to this the fact that during the High Middle Ages, Popes often had Jews as their personal physicians and you can see that history sometimes works in very curious ways. 

                                                                  

                                          Pope Martin V b: 1369-d: 1431.  

A Jewish delegation called on Martin V in 1417 to find out.  He belonged to one of the oldest and most distinguished families of Rome. His brother Giordano became Prince of Salerno and Duke of Venosa, while his sister Paola was Lady of Piombino between 1441 and 1445.  The excitement of the Church during the Hussite movement rendered the Jews apprehensive, and through Emperor Sigismund, they obtained from Pope Martin V various bulls (1418 and 1422) in which their former privileges were confirmed and in which he exhorted the friars to use moderate language. In the last years of his pontificate, however, he repealed several of his ordinances. A gathering, convoked by the Jews in Forlì, sent a deputation asking Pope Martin V to abolish the oppressive laws promulgated by Antipope Benedict XIII. The deputation succeeded in its mission.

The pattern was set by Gregory I (also called "Gregory the Great."), who was Pope from 590 to 604. first he said that no Jew could ever be a social superior or even the equal of any Christian, but he also said that Jews were protected by Church law from being physically hurt.   A tradition grew up that when the Messiah came, he would personally come to see the Pope and convince him to allow the Jews  to return to the Holy Land.  

In 1524, an African Jew, a false Messiah named David Reubeni, tried to do just that.  One historian has actually called Reubeni "the first Zionist."  He grandly entered Rome on a white horse, hoping to talk the Pope into approving a Catholic-Jewish mission to recapture Palestine.  of course, the scheme fell through---Reubeni later was burned at the stake---and the cause of Zionism had to wait another 4 centuries.                                 

At Pius IX's accession in 1846, Catholicism and Judaism were the only religions allowed by law (Protestant worship was allowed to visiting foreigners, but forbidden to Italians; atheism was unthinkable). Jews in Rome were required to live in a ghetto, a separated quarter of the city, and had very limited rights. His relations with them changed over time, from good to worse. He initially repealed laws that forbade Jews to practice certain professions and rescinded laws which forced them to listen four times per year to sermons aimed at their conversion.

After the pope's 1849 overthrow, the short-lived Roman Republic issued wide-ranging religious freedom measures. After French troops brought him back to power in 1850, the Pope issued a series of anti-liberal measures that eliminated even some his early openings, including re-instituting the Ghetto.     

This is the thing.  Jews have only been tolerated when the going is smooth for leaders. Let  the climate change and leaders are pressured,

and  the Jews are the 1st to  suffer.  Jews  have been so lucky in the USA.  Let things change and see what happens.  German Jews lasted for about 932 years before Nazis came along and slaughtered 6 million of them.   We have Israel again.  Let's hold onto it.  

 

Resource:

Book:  My People, Abba Eban's History of the Jews, volume I, Adapted by David Bamberger

https://jewishbubba.blogspot.com/2021/03/how-emperor-constantine-started-anti.html

https://www.thoughtco.com/helena-mother-of-constantine-3530253