Jewish History Sourcebook:

Bernard Lazare:

Antisemitism: Its History and Causes, 1894 Note: Bernard Lazare This public domain text, in a messy format, was made available at an anti-semitic website with the following note: This book overturns the ideological basis of both antisemitism and the Jewish apologetic literature. Its starts from the facts and athorough study of the relationship of the Jewish communities with their non-Jewish social environment. It is a REPLY to Drumont's confused antisemitism and to its mirror image in the fantasies entertained by many Jews on their own history. LAZARE died in 1903, before he could assess the development of Zionism, of which he was both one of the builders and one of the first critcs. One will find Lazare's book cited at many anti-semitic websites and in in anti-semitic publications. The reason for this is that Lazare conducted a major reveiw of the history of anti-semitism and, to a very large decree, can be read as having put the blame on Jews themselves. This, however, is a misreading of his work. From the way he is cited by anti-semites it may come as something of a surprise to note that Lazare, a journalist, was famous as the first defender of Captain Dreyfus - the first Drefusyard. Moreover, he was perhaps the first French Jewish intellectual to commit fully to Zionism as a political solution. Here are comments by Aron Rodrigue. Bernard Lazare has interested commentators and historians not only for his contribution to the revision of the Dreyfus case but also for his distinction as the first French Jew to make the transition from an almost self-hating endorsement of total assimilation as a solution to the Jewish problem to a full embrace of the cause of Zionism. Lazare's deserved reputation as the first Dreyfusard in the public sphere became magnified by the extraordinary pen of Charles Péguy, who elevated him to the rank of a Jewish Prophet, an incarnation of the essence of the Jewish "mystique," of the Jewish "prophetic" tradition.

- Aron Rodrigue. "Rearticulations of French Jewish Identities after the Dreyfus Affair", Jewish Social Studies Volume 2, Number 3 [online at http://www.indiana.edu/~iupress/journals/jss-art.html ] The material presented by Lazare is a valuable addition to online data about the history of Anti-semitism. Many of Lazare's explanations can be, and should, be challenged. But this is the work of a man trying to understand a phenomenon of hatred, not the work of a self-hating Jew. Paul Halsall Contents PREFACE Chapter One: GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM Chapter Two: ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY Chapter Three: ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIANANTIQUITY: FROM THE FOUNDATION OF CHURCH OF CONSTANTINE Chapter Four: ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY Chapter Five: ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY TO THE REFORMATION Chapter Six: ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION Chapter Seven: ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES Chapter Eight: MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM Chapter Nine: MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE Chapter Ten: THE RACE Chapter Eleven: NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM Chapter Twelve: THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM Chapter Thirteen: THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY Chapter Fourteen: THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM Chapter Fifteen: THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM BIBLIOGRAPHY PREFACE PORTIONS of this book, which at various times appeared in the newspapers and periodicals, received the honour of being noticed and discussed. This has induced me to write the few lines that follow. It has been my intention to write neither an apology nor a diatribe, but an impartial study in history and sociology. I dislike antisemitism; it is a narrow, one-sided view, still I have sought to account for it. It was not born without cause, I have searched for its causes. Whether I have succeeded in discovering them, it is for the reader to decide. An opinion as general as antisemitism, which has flourished in all countries and in all ages, before and after the Christian era, at Alexandria, Rome, and Antiachia, in Arabia, and in Persia, in mediaeval and in modern Europe, in a word, in all parts of the world wherever there are or have been Jews such an opinion, it has seemed to me, could not spring from a mere whim or fancy, but must be the effect of deep and serious causes. It has, therefore, been my aim to draw a full-size picture of antisemitism, of its history and causes, to follow its successive changes and transformations. Such a study might easily fill volumes. I have, therefore, been obliged to limit its scope, confining myself to broad outlines and omitting details. I hope to take up, at no distant day, some of its aspects which could only be hinted at here, and I shall then endeavour to show what has been the intellectual, moral, economic and revolutionary role of the Jew in the world. BERNARD LAZARE. Paris, 25 April, 1894. [Page numbers in brackets] Chapter One: GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM To make the history of antisemitism complete, omitting none of the manifestations of this sentiment and following its divers phases and modifications, it is necessary to go into the history of Israel since its dispersion, or, more properly speaking, since the beginning of its expansion beyond the boundaries of Palestine. Wherever the Jews settled after ceasing to be a nation ready to defend its liberty and independence, one observes the development of antisemitism, or rather anti-Judaism; for antisemitism is an ill chosen word, which has its raison d'etre only in our day, when it is sought to broaden this strife between the Jew and the Christians by supplying it with a philosophy and a metaphysical, rather than a material reason. If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local causes of this sentiment. But this race has been the object of hatred with all the nations amidst whom it ever settled. Inasmuch as the enemies of the Jews belonged to divers races, as they dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by different laws and governed by opposite principles; as they had not the same customs and differed in spirit from one another, so that they could not possibly judge alike of any subject, it must needs be that the general causes of antisemitism have always resided in Israel itself, and not in those who antagonized it. This does not mean that justice was always on the side of Israel's persecutors, or that they did not indulge in all the extremes born of hatred; it is merely asserted that the Jews were themselves, in part, at least, the cause of their own ills. Considering the unanimity of antisemitic manifestations, it can hardly be admitted, as had too willingly been done, that they were merely due to a religious war, and one must not view the strife against the Jews as a struggle of polytheism against monotheism, or that of the Trinity against Jehovah. The polytheistic, as well as[9] the Christian nations combated not the doctrine of one sole God, but the Jew. Which virtues or which vices have earned for the Jew this universal enmity? Why was he ill-treated and hated alike and in turn by the Alexandrians and the Romans, by the Persians and the Arabs, by the Turks and the Christian nations ? Because, everywhere up to our own days the Jew was an unsociable being. Why was he unsociable ? Because he was exclusive, and his exclusiveness was both political and religious, or rather he held fast to his political and religious cult, to his law. All through history we see the conquered peoples submit to the laws of the conqueror, though they may guard their own faith and beliefs. It was easy for them to do so, for with them a line was drawn between their religious teachings which had come from the gods, and their civil laws which emanated from legislation and could be modified according to circumstances, without inviting upon the reformers the theological anathema or execration; what had been done by man could be undone by man. Thus, if the conquered rose up against the conquerors, it was through patriotism alone, and they were actuated by no other motive but the desire to regain their land and their liberty. Aside from these national uprisings, they seldom took exception to being subjected to the general laws; if they protested, it was against particular enactments which placed them into a position of inferiority towards the dominant people; in the history of the Roman conquests we see the conquered bow to Rome when she extended to them the laws which governed the empire. Not so with the Jewish people. In fact, as was observed by Spinoza,1 "the laws revealed by God to Moses were nothing but laws for the special government of the Hebrews." Moses,2 the prophet and legislator, assigned the same authority for his judicial and governmental enactments, as for his religious precepts, i.e., revelation. Not only did Yahweh say to the Jews, "Ye shall believe in the one God and ye shall worship no idols," he also prescribed for them rules of hygiene and morality; not only did he designate the territory where sacrifices were to be offered, he also determined the manner in which that territory was to be governed. Each of the given laws, whether agrarian, civil, prophylactic, theological, or moral proceeded from the same authority, so that all these codes[10] formed a whole, a rigorous system of which naught could be taken away for fear of sacrilege. In reality, the Jew lived under the rule of a lord, Yahweh, who could neither be conquered, nor even assailed, and he knew but one thing, the law, i.e., the collection of rules and decrees which it had once pleased Yahweh to give to Mosesa law divine and excellent, made to lead its followers to eternal bliss; a perfect law which the Jewish people alone had received. With such an idea of his Torah, the Jew could not accept the laws of strange nations; nor could he think of submitting to them; he could not abandon the divine laws, eternal, good and just, to follow human laws, necessarily imperfect and subject to decay. Thus, wherever colonies were founded by the Jews, to whatever land they were deported, they insisted, not only upon permission to follow their religion, but also upon exemption from the customs of the people amidst whom they were to live, and the privileges to govern themselves by their own laws. At Rome, at Alexandria, at Antioch, in Cyrenaica they were allowed full freedom in the matter. They were not required to appear in court on Saturday;3 they were even permitted to have their own special tribunals, and were not amenable to the laws of the empire; when the distribution of grains occurred on a Saturday their share was reserved for them until the next day,4 they could be decurions, being at the same time exempt from all practices contrary to their religion;5 they enjoyed complete self-government, as in Alexandria; they had their own chiefs, their own senate, their ethnarch, and were not subject to the general municipal authorities. Everywhere they wanted to remain Jews, and everywhere they were granted the privilege of establishing a State within the State. By virtue of these privileges and exemptions, and immunity from taxes, they would soon rise above the general condition of the citizens of the municipalities where they resided; they had better opportunities for trade and accumulation of wealth, whereby they excited jealousy and hatred. Thus, Israel's attachment to its law was one of the first causes of its unpopularity, whether because it derived from that law benefits and advantages which were apt to excite envy, or because it prided itself upon the excellence of its Torah and considered itself above and beyond other peoples. Still had the Israelites adhered to pure Mosaism, they could,[11] doubtless, at some time in their history, have so modified that Mosaism as to retain none but the religious and metaphysical precepts; possibly, if they had no other sacred book but the Bible they might have merged in the nascent church, which enlisted its first followers among the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Jewish proselytes. One thing prevented that fusion and upheld the existence of the Hebrews among the nations; it was the growth of the Talmud, the authority and rule of the doctors who taught a pretended tradition. The policy of the doctors to which we shall return further made of the Jews sullen beings, unsociable and haughty, of whom Spinoza, who knew them well, could say: "It is not at all surprising that after being scattered for so many years they have preserved their identity without a government of their own, for, by their external rites, contrary to those of other nations, as well as by the sign of circumcision, they have isolated themselves from all other nations, even to the extent of drawing upon themselves the hate of all mankind."6 Man's aim on earth, said the doctors, is the knowledge and observance of the law, and one cannot thoroughly observe it without denying allegiance to all but the true law. The Jew who followed these precepts isolated himself from the rest of mankind; he retrenched himself behind the fences which had been erected around the Torah by Ezra and the first scribes,7 later by the Pharisees and the Talmudists, the successors of Ezra, reformers of primitive Mosaism and enemies or the prophets. He isolated himself, not merely by declining to submit to the customs which bound together the inhabitants of the countries where he settled, but also by shunning all intercourse with the inhabitants themselves. To his unsociability the Jew added exclusiveness. With the law, yet without Israel to put it into practice, the world could not exist, God would turn it back into nothing; nor will the world know happiness until it be brought under the universal domination of that law, i.e., under the domination of the Jews. Thus the Jewish people is chosen by God as the trustee of His will; it is the only people with whom the Deity has made a covenant; it is the choice of the Lord. At the time when the serpent tempted Eve, says the Talmud, he corrupted her with his venom. Israel, on receiving the revelation from Sinai, delivered itself from the evil; the rest of mankind could not recover. Thus, if they have each its guardian and its protecting constellation, Israel is placed under the very eye of Jehovah; it is the Eternal's favoured son who has the[12] sole right to his love, to his good will, to his special protection, other men are placed beneath the Hebrews; it is by mere mercy that they are entitled to divine munificence, since the souls of the Jews alone are descended from the first man. The wealth which has come to the nations, in truth belongs to Israel, and we hear Jesus Himself reply to the Greek woman: "It is not meet to take the children's bread and so cast it unto the dogs."8 This faith in their predestination, in their election, developed among the Jews an immense pride. It led them to view the Gentiles with contempt, often with hate, when patriotic considerations supervened to religious feeling. When Jewish nationality was in peril, the Pharisees, under John Hyrcanus, declared impure the soil of strange peoples, as well as all intercourse among Jews and Greeks. Later, the Shamaites advocated at a synod complete separation of the Jews from the heathens, and drafted a set of injunctions, called The Eighteen Things, which ultimately prevailed over the opposition of the Hillelites. As a result Jewish unsociability begins to engage the attention of the councils of Antiochus Sidetes; exception is taken to "their persistence in shutting themselves up amidst their own kind and avoiding all intercourse with pagans, and to their eagerness to make that intercourse more and more difficult, if not impossible."9 And the high priest Menelaus accuses the law before Antiochus Epiphanes, "of teaching hatred of the human race, of prohibiting to sit down at the table of strangers and to show good-will towards them." If these prescriptions had lost their authority when the cause which had produced and, in a way, justified them, had disappeared, the evil would not have been great. Yet we see them reappear in the Talmud and receive a new sanction from the authority of the doctors. After the controversy between the Sadducees and the Pharisees had terminated in the victory of the latter, these injunctions became part of the law, they were taught with the law and helped to develop and exaggerate the exclusiveness of the Jews. Another fear, that of contamination, separated the Jews from the world and made their isolation still more rigorous. The Pharisees held views of extreme rigour on the subject of contamination; with them the injunctions and prescriptions of the Bible were insufficient to preserve Man from sin. As the sacrificial vases were contaminated by the least impure contact, they came to regard themselves contaminated by contact with strangers. Of this fear were born innumerable rules affecting everyday life: rules relating to clothing,[13] dwelling, nourishment, all of which were promulgated with a view to save the Israelites from contamination and sacrilege; all these rules might properly be observed in an independent state or city, but could not possibly be enforced in foreign lands, for their strict observance would require the Jews to flee the society of Gentiles, and thus to live isolated, hostile to their environment. The Pharisees and the Rabbinites went still farther. Not satisfied with preserving the body, they also sought to save the soul. Experience had shown them that Hellenic and Roman importations imperiled what they deemed their faith. The names of the Hellenistic high priests, Jason, Menelaus, etc., reminded the Rabbinites of the times when the genius of Greece, winning over one portion of Israel, came very near conquering it. They knew that the Sadducean party, friendly to the Greeks, had paved the way for Christianity, as much as the Alexandrians and all those who maintained that "none but the legal provisions, clearly enunciated in the Mosaic law were binding, whereas all other rules growing from local traditions or subsequently issued, could lay no claim to rigorous observance.10 It was under Greek influence that the books and oracles originated which prepared the minds for Messiah. The Hellenistic Jews, Philo and Aristobulus, the pseudo- Phocylides and the pseudo-Longinus, authors of the Sibylline oracles and of the pseudo-Orphics, all these successors of the prophets who continued their work, led mankind to Christ. And it may be said that true Mosaism, purified and enlarged by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, broadened and generalized by the Judaeo-Hellenists, would have brought Israel to Christianity, but for Ezraism,Pharisaism and Talmudism, which held the mass of the Jews bound to strict observances and narrow ritual practices. To guard God's people, to keep it safe from evil influences, the doctors exalted their law above all things. They declared that no study but that of the law alone became an Israelite, and as a whole life-time was hardly sufficient to learn and penetrate all the subtleties and all the casuistry of that law, they prohibited the study of profane sciences and foreign languages. "Those among us who learn several languages are not held in esteem," said Josephus; contempt alone was soon thought insufficient, they were excom municated. Nor did these expulsions satisfy the Rabbinites. Though deprived of Plato, had not the Jew still the Bible, could he not listen to the voice of the prophets? As the book could not be proscribed,[14] it was belittled and made subordinate to the Talmud; the doctors declared: "The law is water, the Mishna is wine." And the reading of the Bible was considered less beneficial, less conducive to salvation than the reading of the Mishna. However, the Rabbinites could not kill Jewish curiosity with one blow; it required centuries. It was as late as the fourteenth century, after Ibn Ezra, Rabbi Bechai, Maimonides, Bedares, Joseph Caspi, Levi Ben Gerson, Moses of Narbonne, and many others, were gone, all true sons of Philo and the Alexandrians, who strove to verify Judaism by foreign philosophy; after Asher Ben Yechiel had induced the assembly of the rabbis at Barcelona to excommunicate those who would study profane sciences; after Rabbi Shalem, of Montpellier had complained to the Dominicans of the Moreh Nebukhim, and this book, the highest expression of the ideas of Maimonides, had been burnedit was only after all this that the rabbis ultimately triumphed.12 Their end was attained. They had cut off Israel from the community of nations; they had made of it a sullen recluse, a rebel against all laws, foreign to all feeling fraternity, closed to all beautiful, noble and generous ideas; they had made of it a small and miserable nation, soured by isolation, brutalized by a narrow education, demoralized and corrupted by an unjustifiable pride.13 With this transformation of the Jewish spirit and the victory of sectarian doctors, coincides the beginning of official persecution. Until that epoch there had only been outbursts of local hatred, but no systematic vexations. With the triumph of the Rabbinites, the ghettos come into being. The expulsions and massacres commence. The Jews want to live aparta line is drawn against them. They detest the spirit of the nations amidst whom they livethe nations chase them. They burn the Morehtheir Talmud is burned and they themselves are burned with it.14 It would seem that no further agency was needed to render the separation of the Jews from the rest of mankind complete and to make them an object of horror and reprobation. Still another cause must be added to those just mentioned: the indomitable and tenacious patriotism of Israel. Certainly, every people was attached to the land of its birth. Conquered, beaten by the conquerors, driven into exile or forced into slavery, they remained true to the sweet memories of their plundered city or the country they had lost. Still none other knew[15] the patriotic enthusiasm of the Jews. The Greek, whose city was destroyed, could elsewhere build anew the hearth upon which his ancestors bestowed their blessings; the Roman who went into exile took along with him his penates; Athens or Rome had nothing of the mystic fatherland like Jerusalem. Jerusalem was the guardian of the Tabernacle which received the divine word; it was the city of the only Temple, the only place in the world where God could efficiently be worshipped and sacrifices offered to Him. It was only much later, at a very late day, that prayer houses were erected in other towns of Juda, or Greece, or Italy; still in those houses they confined themselves to the reading of the law and theological discussion; the pomp of Jehovah was known nowhere but at Jerusalem, the chosen sanctuary. When a temple was built at Alexandria, it was considered heretical; indeed, the ceremonies which were celebrated there had no sense, for they ought not to be performed anywhere but in a true temple; so St. Chrysostom, after the dispersion of the Jews and the destruction of their city, was justified in saying: "The Jews offer sacrifices in all parts of the earth except there where the sacrifice is permitted and valid, i.e., at Jerusalem." All Jews of the period of dispersion sent to Jerusalem the didrachm tax for the maintenance of the temple; once in their lives they came to the holy city, as later the Mohammedans came to Mecca; after their death they were carried to Palestine, and numerous craft anchored at the coast, loaded with small coffins which were thence forwarded on camel's back. It was because in Jerusalem only, in the land given by God to their ancestors, their bodies would be resurrected. There those who had believed in Yahweh, who had observed his law and obeyed his word, would awake at the sound of the last trumpet and appear before their Lord. Nowhere but there could they rise at the appointed hour; every other land but that washed by the yellow Jordan was a vile land, fouled by idolatry, deprived of God. When the fatherland was dead, when adversity was sweeping Israel all over the world, after the Temple had perished in flames, and when the heathens occupied the holiest ground, mourning over bygone days became everlasting in the soul of the Jew. It was over; they could no longer hope to see on the day of mercy the black buck carry away their sins into the desert, neither could they see the lamb killed for the passover night, or bring their offerings to[16] the altar; and, deprived of Jerusalem during life, they would not be brought there after death. God ought not to abandon his children, reasoned the pious; and naive legends came to comfort the exiles. Near the tombs of the Jews who die in exile, they said, Jehovah opens long caverns through which the corpses roll as far as Palestine, whereas the pagan who dies there, near the consecrated hills, is removed from the chosen land, for he is unworthy of remaining there where the resurrection will take place. Still that did not satisfy them. They did not resign themselves to visiting Jerusalem merely as pitiable pilgrims, weeping before the ruined walls, many of them so maddened by grief as to let themselves be trampled upon by horses' hoofs, embracing the ground while moaning; they could not believe that God, that the blessed city had abandoned them; with Judah Levita they exclaimed: "Zion, hast thou forgotten thy unfortunate children who groan in slavery ?" They expected that their Lord would by his mighty right hand raise the fallen walls; they hoped that a prophet, a chosen one, would bring them back to the promised land; and how many times, in the course of ages, have they left their homes, their fortunes they who are reproached of being too much attached to worldly goodsin order to follow a false Messiah who undertook to lead them and promised them the return so much longed for ! Thousands were attracted by Serenus, Moses of Crete, Alroi, and massacred in the expectation of the happy day. With the Talmudists these sentiments of popular enthusiasm, this mystic heroism underwent a transformation. The doctors taught the restoration of the Jewish empire; in order that Jerusalem might be born anew from its ruins, they wanted to preserve the people of Israel pure, to prevent them from mixing with other people, to inculcate on them the idea that they were everywhere in exile, amidst enemies that held them captive. They said to their disciples: "Do not cultivate strange lands, soon you will cultivate your own; do not attach yourself to any land, for thus will you be unfaithful to the memory of your native land; do not submit to any king, for you have no master but the Lord of the Holy Land, Jehovah; do not scatter amongst the nations, you will forfeit your salvation and you will not see the light of the day of resurrection; remain such as you left your house; the hour will come and you will see again[17] the hills of your ancestors, and those hills will then be the centre of the world, which will be subject to your power." Thus all those complex sentiments which had in olden days served to build up the hegemony of Israel, to maintain its character as a nation, to develop a high and powerful originality, all those virtues and vices which gave it the spirit and countenance necessary to preserve a nation; which enabled it to attain greatness and later to defend its independence with desperate valour worthy of admiration; all that, after the Jews had ceased to be a State, combined to shut them up in the most complete, the most absolute isolation. This isolation has been their strength, in the opinion of some apologists. If they mean to say that owing to it the Jews have survived, so much is true; if the conditions are considered, however, under which the Jews have preserved their identity as a people, it is obvious that this isolation has been their weakness, and that they have survived up to modern times, as a race of pariahs, persecuted , often martyred. Moreover, it is not only to their seclusion that they owe this surprising persistence. Their extraordinary solidarity, due to their misfortunes, and mutual support count for very much; and even in our day, when they take part in public life in some countries, having abandoned their sectarian dogmas, this very solidarity prevents them from dissolving and disappearing as a people, by conferring upon them certain benefits to which they are by no means indifferent. This solicitude for worldly goods, which is a marked feature of the Hebrew character, has not been without effect upon the conduct of the Jews, especially since they left Palestine; by directing them along certain avenues, to the exclusion of all others, this feature of their character has drawn upon them the most violent animosities. The soul of the Jew is twofold: it is both mystic and positive. His mysticism has come down from the theophanies of the desert to the metaphysical dreaming of the kabbala; his positivism, or rather his rationalism, manifests itself in the sentences of the Ecclesiastes as well as the legislative enactments of the rabbis and the dogmatic controversies of the theologians. Still if mysticism leads to a Philo or Spinoza, rationalism leads to the usurer, the weigher of gold; it creates the greedy trader. It is true that at times these two states of the mind are found in just opposition, and the Israelite, as it occurred in the middle ages, can split his life into two parts: one devoted to meditation on the Absolute, the other to business. [18] Of the Jewish love for gold, there can be no question here. Though it may have grown so abnormal with this race as to have become well-nigh the only motive of their actions, though it may have engendered a violent and exasperated antisemitism, yet it cannot be classed among the general causes of antisemitism. It was, on the contrary, the effect of those very causes, and we shall see that it is partly the exclusiveness, the persistent patriotism, and pride of Israel, that has driven it to become the hated usurer of the whole world. In fact, all the causes we have just enumerated, if they be general, are not the only ones. I have called them general, because they depend upon one constant element: the Jew. Still the Jew is only one of the factors of antisemitism; he provokes it by his presence, but he is not the only one that determines it. The nations among whom the Israelites have lived, their manners, their customs, their religion, the philosophy even of the nations in whose midst Israel has developed determine the particular character of antisemitism, which changes with time and place. We shall trace these modifications and variations of antisemitism through the course of ages down to our epoch; and we shall examine whether, in some countries at least, the general causes I have attempted to deduce are still operating, or whether the reasons for modern antisemitism must not be sought elsewhere. FOOTNOTES 1 Tractatus theologico-politicus. 2 When I say "Moses assigned," it is not to maintain that Moses himself elaborated all the laws which pass under his name, but merely because he is credited with having revised them. 3 Cod. Theod., book II, title III, §2. Cod. Just., book I, title IX, §2. 4 Philo, Legat. ad Cai. 5 Dig., book I, title III, §3. (Decisions by Septimius Severus and Caracalla.) 6 Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus. 7 The Dibre Sopherim. 8 Mark, vii, 27. 9 Derembourg, Geographie de la Palestine. 10 Graetz, Histoire des Juits, b. II, p. 469. 11 Ant. Jud., xx, 9. 12 The Jewish thought still had a few lights in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. But those among the Jews who produced anything mostly took part in the struggle between philosophy and religion, and were without influence upon their co-religionists; their existence is therefore no denial of the spirit inculcated on the masses by the rabbis. Besides, one meets, throughout that period, none but unimportant commentators, physicians and translators; there appears no great mind among them. One must go as far as Spinoza to find a Jew truly capable of high ideas; it is wellknown how the Synagogue treated Spinoza. 13 "Insolentia Judaeorum," spoken of by Agobard, Amolon and the polemists of the Middle Ages means nothing but the pride of the Jews, who consider themselves the chosen people. This expression has not the sense forced into it by modern antisemites, who, it may be noted, are poor historians. 14 The Roman laws, the Visigothic ordinances and those of the Councils will probably be cited; yet nearly all these measures proceeded principally from Jewish proselytism. It was not until the thirteenth century that the Jews were radically and officially separated from the Christians, by ghettos, by symbols of infamy (the hat, the cape, etc.). See Ulysse Robert, Les Signes d'infamie au Moyen Age. (Paris, 1891.) Chapter Two: ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY MODERN antisemites who are in quest of sires for themselves, unhesitatingly trace the first demonstrations against the Jews back to the days of ancient Egypt. For that purpose they are particularly pleased to refer to Genesis, xliii, 32, where it is said: "The Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that it is an abomination unto the Egyptians." They also rely upon a few verses of the Exodus, among them the following: "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply." (Exodus, i, 9, 10.) It is certain that the sons of Jacob who came to the land of Goshen under the Shepherd Pharaoh Aphobis, were treated by the Egyptians with the same contempt as their brothers, the Hyksos, referred to in hieroglyphic texts as lepers, called also "plague" and "pest" in some inscriptions.15 They arrived at that very epoch when a very strong national sentiment manifested itself against the Asiatic invaders, hated for their cruelty; this sentiment soon led to the war of independence, which resulted in the final victory of Ahmos I., and the enslavement of the Hebrews. However, unless one is a violent anti-Jew, it is impossible to perceive in those remote disturbances anything beyond a mere incident in a struggle between conquerors and conquered. There is no antisemitism until the Jews, having abandoned their native land, settle as immigrants in foreign countries and come into contact with natives or older settlers, whose customs, race and religion are different from those of the Hebrews. Accordingly, the history of Haman and Mordecai may be taken as the beginning of antisemitism, and the antisemites have not failed so to do. This view is, perhaps, more correct. Though the historical reality of the book of Esther can scarcely be relied upon, still it is worthy of note that its author puts into the mouth of Haman some of the complaints, which, at a later period, are uttered by Tacitus and other Latin writers. "And Haman said unto the[20] king, Ahasuerus: there is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws." (Esther, iii, 8.) The pamphleteers of the middle ages, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of our own time, say nothing else; and if the history of Haman is apocryphal, which is highly probable, still it cannot be denied that the author of the Book of Esther has very ably brought out some of the causes, which for many centuries exposed the Jews to the hatred of nations. Yet we must go to the period of Jewish expansion abroad, to be enabled to observe with certainty that hostility against them, which by a peculiar misuse of terms has in our days been called antisemitism. Some traditions refer the entrance of the Jews into the ancient world to the epoch of the first captivity. While Nabu- Kudur-Ussur led away to Babylonia a portion of the Jewish people, many of the Israelites, to escape from the conqueror, fled to Egypt, to Tripoli, and reached the Greek colonies. Tradition brings back to the same period the arrival of the Jews in China and India. Historically, however, the wanderings of the Jews across the globe commence in the fourth century before our era. About 331 B.C. Alexander transported some Jews to Alexandria, Ptolemy sent some of them to Cyrenaica, and about the same time Seleucus led some of them to Antioch. When Jesus was born Jewish colonies flourished everywhere, and it was among them that Christianity recruited its first adherents. There were Jews in Egypt, in Phoenicia, in Syria, in Coele-Syria, in Pamphylia, in Cilicia, and as far as Bithynia. In Europe they had settled in Thessalia, Boeotia, Macedonia, Attica and Peloponnesus. They were to be found in the Great Isles, on Euboea, on Crete, on Cyprus, and at Rome. "It is not easy to find a place on earth," says Strabo, "which has not received that race." Why were the Jews hated in all those countries, in all those cities? Because they never entered any city as citizens, but always as a privileged class. Though having left Palestine, they wanted above all to remain Jews, and their native country was still Jerusalem, i.e., the only city where God might be worshipped and sacrifices offered in His Temple. They formed everywhere republics, as it were, united with Judea and Jerusalem, and from every place they[21] remitted monies to the high priest in payment of a special tax for the maintenance of the Templethe didrachm. Moreover, they separated themselves from other inhabitants by their rites and their customs; they considered the soil of foreign nations impure and sought to constitute themselves in every city into a sort of a sacred territory. They lived apart, in special quarters, secluded among themselves, isolated, governing themselves by virtue of privileges which were jealously guarded by them, and excited the envy of their neighbours. They intermarried amongst themselves and en tertained no strangers, for fear of pollution. The mystery with which they surrounded themselves excited curiosity as well as aversion. Their rites appeared strange and gave occasion for ridicule; being unknown, they were misrepresented and slandered. At Alexandria they were quite numerous. According to Philo,16 Alexandria was divided into five wards. Two were inhabited by the Jews. The privileges accorded to them by Caesar were engraved on a column and guarded by them as a precious treasure. They had their own Senate with exclusive jurisdiction in Jewish affairs, and they were judged by an ethnarch. They were ship-owners, traders, farmers, most of them wealthy; the sumptuousness of their monuments and synagogues bore witness to it. The Ptolemies made them farmers of the revenues; this was one of the causes of popular hatred against them. Besides, they had a monopoly of navigation on the Nile, of the grain trade and of provisioning Alexandria, and they extended their trade to all the provinces along the Mediterranean coast. They accumulated great fortunes; this gave rise to the invidia auri Judaici. The growing resentment against these foreign cornerers, constituting a nation within a nation, led to popular disturbances; the Jews were frequently assaulted, and Germanicu, among others, had great trouble protecting them. The Egyptians took revenge upon them by deriding their religious customs, their abhorrence of pork. They once paraded in the city a fool, Carabas by name, adorned with a papyrus diadem, decked in a royal gown, and they saluted him as king of the Jews. Under Philadelphus, one of the first Ptolemies, Manetho, the high-priest of the Temple at Heliopolis, lent his authority to the popular hatred; he considered the Jews descendants of the Hyksos usurpers, and said that that leprous tribe had been expelled for sacrilege and impiousness. Those fables were repeated by Chaeremon and Lysimachus. It was not only popular animosity, however, that[22] persecuted the Jews; they had also against them the Stoics and the Sophists. The Jews, by their proselytism, interfered with the Stoics; there was a rivalry for influence between them, and, notwithstanding their common belief in divine unity, there was opposition between them. The Stoics charged the Jews with irreligiousness, judging by the sayings of Posidonius and Apollonius Molo; they had a very scant knowledge of the Jewish religion. The Jews, they said, refuse to worship the gods; they do not consent to bow even before the divinity of the emperor. They have in their sanctuary the head of an ass and render homage to it; they are cannibals; every year they fatten a man and sacrifice him in a grove, after which they divide among themselves his flesh and swear on it to hate strangers. "The Jews, says Apollonius Molo, are enemies of all mankind; they have invented nothing useful, and they are brutal." To this Posidonius adds: "They are the worst of all men." Not less than the Stoics did the Sophists detest the Jews. But the causes of their hatred were not religious, but, I should say, rather literary. From Ptolemy Philadelphus, until the middle of the third century, the Alexandrian Jews, with the intent of sustaining and strengthening their propaganda, gave themselves to forging all texts which were capable of lending support to their cause. The verses of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, the pretended oracles of Orpheus, preserved in Aristobulus and the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria were thus made to glorify the one God and the Sabbath. Historians were falsified or credited with the authorship of books they had never written. It is thus that a History of the Jews was published under the name of Hecataeus of Abdera. The most important of these inventions was the Sibylline oracles, a fabrication of the Alexandrian Jews, which prophesied the future advent of the reign of the one God. They found imitators, however, for since the Sibyl had begun to speak, in the second century before Christ, the first Christians also made her speak. The Jews would appropriate to themselves even the Greek literature and philosophy. In a commentary on the Pentateuch, which has been preserved for us by Eusebius,l7 Aristobulus attempted to show that Plato and Aristotle had found their metaphysical and ethical ideas in an old Greek translation of the Pentateuch. The Greeks were greatly incensed at such treatment of their literature and philosophy, and out of revenge they circulated the slanderous stories of Manetho, adapting them to those of the Bible, to the great fury of the Jews; thus the con- [23]fusion of languages was identified with the myth of Zeus robbing the animals of their common language. The Sophists, wounded by the conduct of the Jews, would speak against them in their teaching. One among them, Apion, wrote a Treatise against the Jews. This Apion was a peculiar individual, a liar and babbler, to a degree uncommon even among rhetors, and full of vanity, which earned him from Tiberius the nickname "Cymbalum mundi." His stories were famous; he claimed to have called out, by means of magic herbs, the shade of Homer, says Pliny. Apion repeated in his Treatise against the Jews the stories of Manetho, which had been previously restated by Chaeremon and Lysimachus, and supplemented them by quoting from Posidonius and Apollonius Molo. According to him, Moses was "nothing but a seducer and wizard," and his laws contained "nothing but what is bad and dangerous."18 As to the Sabbath, the name was derived, he said, from a disease, a sort of an ulcer, with which the Jews were afflicted, and which the Egyptians called sabbatosim, i.e., disease of the groins. Philo and Josephus undertook the defence of the Jews and fought the Sophists and Apion. In Contra Apionem, Josephus is very severe on his adversary. "Apion," says he, "is as stupid as an ass and as imprudent as a dog, which is one of the gods of his nation." Philo, on the other hand, prefers to attack the Sophists in general, and if he mentions Apion at all, in his Legatio ad Caium, it is merely because Apion was sent to Rome to prefer charges against the Jews before Caligula. In his Treatise on Agriculture he draws a very black picture of the Sophists, and insinuates that Moses has compared them to hogs. Nevertheless, in his other writings, he advises his co-religionists not to irritate them, so as to avoid all provocation to disturbances, but to await patiently their chastisement, which will come on the day the Jewish Empire, the empire of salvation, will be established on earth. Philo's injunctions were not heeded; the exasperation on both sides often led to violent riots and massacres of Jews; the latter, however, valiantly defended themselves.19 At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colony as early as the first year of the Christian era. If Valerius Maximus may be trusted they first came to the city about 139 B.C., during the consulate of Popilius Loenus and Cajas Calpwinius.20[24] Certain it is that, in 160 B.C., an embassy from Judas Maccabee arrived in Rome to negotiate an alliance with the Republic against the Syrians; other embassies followed, in 143 and 139.21 The settlement of the Jews at Rome probably dates from that time. Under Pompey they came in numbers, and as early as 58 B.C., they had quite a settlement. Turbulent and formidable, they were an important factor in politics. Caesar availed himself of their support during the civil wars and lavished favours upon them; he even granted them exemption from military service. Under Augustus the distribution of free bread was postponed for them whenever it fell due on Saturday. The Emperor gave them permission to collect the didrachm which was sent to Palestine, and he ordered the sacrifice of one or two lambs to be offered in his behalf at the Temple of Jerusalem for all time to come. When Tiberius became emperor, there were at Rome 20,000 Jews, who were organized in colleges and sodalitates. Except the Jews of prominent families, like the Herods and the Agrippas, who mixed in public life, the Jewish masses lived in retirement. The majority resided in the dirtiest and busiest quarter of the city, the Transtiberinus. They were to be seen near the Via Portuensis, the Emporium and the Great Circus, in the Campus Martius, and in Suburra, beyond the Capenian Gate, on the banks of the Egerian Creek, and near the sacred grove. They were engaged in retail trade and the sale of second-hand goods; those at the Capenian Gate were fortune tellers. The Jew of the Ghetto is already there. At Rome the same causes were at work as at Alexandria. There, also, the excessive privileges of the Jews, the wealth of some of them, as well as their unheard-of luxury and ostentation, excited popular hatred. This resentment was aggravated by deeper and more important reasons of a religious character; it may even be maintained, strange as it may seem, that the motive of Roman anti-Judaism was religious. The Roman religion resembled in nothing the admirable and profoundly symbolic polytheism of the Greeks. It was ritual rather than mythical; it consisted of customs closely connected with the doings of everyday life, as well as with all sorts of public acts. Rome was one body with its gods; its greatness was bound, as it were, with the rigorous observance of the practices of their national religion; its glory depended upon the piety of its citizens, and it[25] seems that the Roman must have had, like the Jew, that notion of a covenant between the deities and himself, which was to be scrupulously lived up to by both parties. Somehow or other, the Roman was always in the presence of his gods; he left his hearth, where they abode, only to find them again in the Forum, on the public highways, in the Senate, even in the fields, where they kept watch over the power of Rome. At all times and on all occasions sacrifices were offered; the warriors and the diplomats were guided by auguries, and all authority, civil as well as military, partook of the priesthood, for the officer could not perform his duties unless he knew the rites and observances of the cult. It was this cult that for centuries sustained the Republic, and its commandments were faithfully obeyed; when they were changed, when the traditions became adulterated, when the rules were violated, Rome saw its glory fade, and its agony commenced. Thus the Roman religion preserved itself for a long time without change. True, Rome was familiar with foreign cults; she saw the worshipers of Isis and Osiris, those of the great Mother and those of Sabazius; still, though admitting them into her Pantheon, she gave them no place in her national religion. All these Orientals were tolerated; the citizens were allowed to practice their superstitions, provided they were harmless; but when Rome perceived that a new faith was subversive of the Roman spirit, she was pitiless, as in the case of the conspiracy of the Bacchantes, or the expulsion of Egyptian priests. Rome guarded herself against the foreign spirit; she feared affiliation with religious societies; she was afraid even of Greek philosophers, and the Senate, in 161, upon the report of the praetor Marcus Pomponius, barred them from entering the city. From this, one may understand the feeling of the Romans toward the Jews, Greeks, Asiatics, Egyptians, Germans, or Gauls, while bringing with them their rites and beliefs, made no objection to bowing before Mars of the Palatine, or even before Jupiter Latiaris. They conformed within certain limits, to the rules of the city, to its religious customs; at all events, they showed no opposition. Not so the Jews. They brought with them a religion as rigid, as ritualistic, as intolerant, as the Roman religion. Their worship of Yahweh excluded all other worship; thus they shocked their fellow citizens by refusing to swear to the eagles, whereas the eagle was the deity of the legion. As their religious faith was blended with the observance of certain social laws, the adoption of this faith was pregnant[26] with a change of the social order. Therefore the Romans were worried by its establishment in their midst, for the Jews were eager to make proselytes. The proselytic spirit of the Jews is attested by all the historians, and Philo justly says: "Our customs win over and convert the barbarians and the Hellenes, the continent and the isles, the Orient and the Occident, Europe and Asia, the whole world, from end to end." The ancient nations, at their decline, were deeply attracted by Judaism, by its dogma of divine unity, by its morals; many of the poor people were attracted by the privileges accorded to the Jews. These proselytes were divided into two great classes: those who accepted the circumcision and thereby entered into the Jewish community, thus becoming strangers to their families, and those who, without complying with the requisites for admission to the community, nevertheless gathered around it. These conversions, generally by suasion and at times by force, as when the rich Jews converted their slaves, were bound to create a reaction. It was this chief cause, together with the secondary causes previously referred to, viz., the wealth of the Jews, their political influence, their privileged condition, that led to anti-Judaic demonstrations at Rome. The majority of Roman and Greek writers from Cicero on bear witness to this state of mind. Cicero, who was a disciple of Apollonius Molo, inherited his teacher's prejudices; he found the Jews in his way: they were with the popular party against the party of the Senate, to which he belonged. He feared them, and we can see from some passages of Pro Flacco, that he hardly dared to speak of them, so numerous were they around him and in the public place. Nevertheless, one day he burst forth. "Their barbarous superstitions must be fought," says he; he accuses them of being a nation "given to suspicion and slander," and proceeds by saying that they "show contempt for the splendour of the Roman power,"22 They were to be feared, according to himthose men who, detaching themselves from Rome, turned their eyes towards the far away city, that Jerusalem, and supported it by denaries which they drew from the Republic. Moreover, he reproached them for winning citizens over to the Sabbatarian rites. It is this last charge that recurs most frequently in the writings of the polemists, the poets and the historians. The Jewish religion,[27] which charmed those who had penetrated its essence, was repulsive to others who had a scant knowledge of it and regarded it as a heap of absurd and dismal rites. The Jews are nothing but a superstitious nation, says Persius ;23 their Sabbath is a lugubrious day, adds Ovid;24 they worship the hog and the ass, affirms Petronius.25 Tacitus, well informed as he is, repeats, with regard to Judaism, the fables of Manetho and Posidonius. The Jews, says he, are descended from lepers, they honour the head of an ass, they have infamous rites. He further specifies his charges, which, one would say, are those of modern French Nationalists: "All those who embrace their faith," says he, "undergo circumcision, and the first instruction they receive is to despise the gods, to forswear their country, to forget father, mother and children." And he warms up by saying: "The Jews consider as profane all that is held sacred with us."26 Suetonius and Juvenal repeat the same thing; the principal charge reads: "They have a particular cult and particular laws; they despise the Roman laws."27 This is likewise the complaint of Pliny: "They despise the gods."28 Seneca has the same grudge, still with the philosopher other motives supervene. There was a rivalry between Seneca, the Stoic, and the Jews, the same as there had been between the Stoics and the Jews at Alexandria. He quarreled less with their contempt of the gods than with their proselytism which thwarted the spread of the doctrine of the Stoics. He thus gives expression to his displeasure: "The Romans," says he regretfully, "have adopted the Sabbath."29 And, further speaking of the Jews, he says in conclusion: "This abominable nation has succeeded in spreading its usages throughout the whole world; the conquered have given their laws to the conquerors."30 Seneca's view was in accord with the attitude of both the Republic and the Empire, by which measures were adopted from time to time to check Jewish proselytism. Under Tiberius, in the year 22, a senatus-consult was directed against the Egyptian and Judaic superstitions and four thousand Jews, says Tacitus, were deported to Sardinia. Caligula subjected them to vexatious persecution; he encouraged the doings of Flaccus in Egypt, and Flaccus, sustained by the Emperor, robbed the Jews of the privileges granted to them by Caesar; he took away from them their synagogue and directed that they might be treated as in habitants of a captured city. Domitian imposed a special tax upon Jews and those who led a Judaic life, hoping by the levy of the tax[28] to stop conversions, and Antoninus Pius prohibited the Jews from circumcising other than their sons. Anti-Judaism manifested itself not only at Rome and Alexandria, but wherever there were Jews: at Antioch, where great massacres occurred; in Lybia, where, under Vespasian, the governor Catullus stirred up the populace against them; in Ionia, where, under Augustus, the Greek cities, by an understanding among themselves, forced the Jews either to renounce their faith or to bear the entire burden of public expenditures. Yet it is impossible to speak of the persecution of the Jews without speaking of the persecution of the Christians. For a long time Jews and Christians, these hostile brothers, were included in the same contempt, and the same causes which made the Jews hateful made the Christians hateful as well. The disciples of the Nazarene brought into the ancient world the same deadly principles. If the Jews taught the people to leave their gods, to abandon husband, father, child and wife, and to come to Jehovah, Jesus also said: "I have not come to unite, but to separate." The Christians, like the Jews, refused to bow to the eagle; like the Jews they would not lie prostrate before idols. Like the Jews, the Christians knew another country than Rome; like the Jews, they would be oblivious of their civic, rather than their religious duties. Thus, during the first years of the Christian era, the Synagogue and the ancient Church were despised alike. Simultaneously with the Jews "a certain chrestus''31 and his followers were driven from Rome. Each side endeavoured to convince the people that it ought not to be mistaken for the other, and no sooner did Christianity make itself heard than it rejected, in its turn, the descendants of Abraham. FOOTNOTES 15 Inscription of Aahmes, chief of the mariners, cited in Ledrain's Histoire du peuple d'Israel, I, p. 53. 16 In Flaccum. 17 Preparatio Evangelica. 18 Josephus, Contra Apionem, book II, ch. 6. 19 Philo, In Flaccum. 20 Valerius Maximus, I, 3, 2. [185] 21 Maccab. viii., 11, 17-32- xii, 1-3; xiv, 16-19, 24.-Josephus, Antiqu. Jud., xii, 110; xiii, 5, 7, 9 Mai; Script. vet., 111, part 3, p. 998. 22 Pro Flacco. 23 Sat., V. 24 Ars amatoria, I, 75, 76. 25 Fragm. poet. 26 Tac., Hist., v. 4, 5. 27 Juvenal, Sat., xiv, 96, 104. 28 Hist. nat., xii, 4. 29 Epistle xv. 30 De superstitione, fragm. xxxvi. 31 Suetonius, Claud., 25. Chapter Three: ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIANANTIQUITY: FROM THE FOUNDATION OF CHURCH OF CONSTANTINE THE Church is the daughter of the Synagogue; she owes her early development to the Synagogue; she grew in the shade of the Temple, and from her first infant cry she opposed her mother, which was quite natural, for they were divided by a wide divergence of opinion. In the first centuries of the Christian era, during the apostolic age, Christian communities sprang forth from Jewish communities, like a swarm of bees escaping from a beehive; they settled on the same soil. Jesus was not yet born when the Jews had built their prayer-houses in the cities of the Orient and the Occident; their expansion to Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Rome, Greece and Spain has already been noted. By their unceasing proselytism, by their preaching, by the moral influence they exercised over the nations amidst whom they lived, they paved the way for Christianity. This immense class of proselytes won over by the Jews, this God-fearing multitude, was ready to receive the broader and more humanitarian teachings of Jesus, those teachings which the universal Church, from its very inception, undertook to adulterate and to turn away from their true meaning. These converts whose numbers steadily increased during the first century before Christ, were free from the national prejudices of Israel; they Judaized, but their eyes were not turned toward Jerusalem, and, one may say, the fervid patriotism of the Jews rather checked the conversions. The Apostles, or at least some of them, completely separated the precepts of the Jewish faith from the narrow idea of nationality; they built upon the foundation of Jewish work accomplished before and thus won for themselves the souls of those who had received the Jewish seed.[30] The Apostles preached in the synagogues. In the cities, where they arrived, they went straight to the prayer-houses and there made their propaganda and found their first helpers; later a Christian community was founded, side by side with the Jewish community, and the original Jewish nucleus was increased by all those whom they had convinced among the Gentiles. Without the existence of Jewish colonies Christianity would have encountered much greater obstacles; it would have had greater difficulties in establishing itself. As has been stated, the Jews in ancient society enjoyed considerable privileges; they had protective charters assuring them an independent political and judicial organization and freedom of worship. These privileges facilitated the development of the Christian churches. For a long time the associations of the Christians were not distinguished by the authorities from Jewish associations, the Roman government taking no cogni zance of the division between the two religions. Christianity was treated as a Jewish sect, thus benefiting by the same advantages; it was not only tolerated, but, in an indirect way, protected by the imperial governors. Thus, on the one hand, unwillingly, the Jews were unconscious auxiliaries of Christianity while, on the other hand, they were its enemies, for which there were numerous reasons. It is known that Jesus and his teachings enlisted their first following among the Galilean provincials who were despised by the Jerusalemites for having yielded more than others to foreign influences. "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" they said. These humble folks of Galilee, though much attached to the Judaic rites and customs, in which respect they were perhaps stricter than the Jerusalemites, were ignorant of the Law and were therefore despised by the haughty doctors of Judea. This scorn likewise followed the first disciples of Jesus, some of whom, besides, belonged to the disreputable classes, such as e.g., the publicans. Nevertheless, while the origin of the primitive Christians brought upon them the scorn of the Jews, it was not enough to excite their hatred; graver reasons were required for that, foremost among them was Jewish patriotism. The birth and early development of Christianity coincided with the time when the Jewish nation attempted to shake off the yoke of Rome. Offended in their religious feelings, ill- treated by the Roman administration, the Jews felt a yearning for liberty, which grew with[31] their hatred of Rome. Bands of zealots and assassins traversed the mountains of Judea, entering the villages and wreaking vengeance upon Rome by striking those of their brethren who bowed to the imperial authority. Plainly, these zealots and assassins who attacked the Sadducees for mere complacency towards the Roman procura tors, could not spare the disciples of Him to whom the words were attributed, "Render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar's." Absorbed in the expectation of the coming Messianic reign, the Jewish Christians of those days were "men without a country"; the thought of free Judea no longer made their hearts throb, though some, like the seer of the Apocalypse, had a horror of Rome, still they had no passion for captive Jerusalem, which the zealots strove to liberate; they were unpatriotic. When all Galilee rose in response to the appeal of John of Gischala, they held aloof, and when the Jerusalemites triumphed over Cestius Gallus, the Jewish Christians, indifferent to the outcome of this supreme struggle, fled from Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan and sought refuge at Pella. In the last battles which Bar Giora, John of Gischala and their faithful gave to the Roman power, to the trained legions of Vespasian and Titus, the disciples of Jesus took no part; and when Zion was reduced to ashes, burying under its ruins the nation of Israel, no Christian met his death amidst the destruction. One may well understand what could have been the treatment accorded, in those days of exaltation, before, during and after the insurrection, to the Jewish and Gentile Christians, who, with St. Paul, counseled submission to the power of Rome. The patriotic indignation roused by the nascent Church was seconded by the wrath of the rabbis against Christian proselytism. Originally the relations between the Jewish Christians and the Jews were fairly cordial. The followers of the Apostles, as well as the Apostles themselves, recognized the sanctity of the ancient law; they observed the rites of Judaism and as yet had not placed the worship of Jesus side by side with that of the one God. The development of the dogma of the divinity of Christ made a breach between the Church and the Synagogue. Judaism could not admit of the deification of a man; to recognize any one as the son of God was blasphemy; and as the Jewish Christians had not severed their connections with the Jewish community, they were disciplined. This accounts for the flagellation of the Apostles and the new con-[32] verts, the stoning of Stephen and the beheading of the Apostle James. After the capture of Jerusalem, after that storm which left Judea depopulated, the best of her sons having perished in battle, or in the circus where they were delivered to the beasts, or in the lead mines of Egypt, during this third captivity called by the Jews the Roman exile, the relations between the Jews and Jewish Christians became still more strained. Their country being dead, Israel gathered around their doctors. Jabne, where the Sanhedrin reconvened, replaced Zion without extinguishing its memory, and the conquered attached themselves still more closely to the Law which the sages commented upon. Thenceforth, those who assailed that Law, which had become the most cherished heritage of the Jew, were to be treated as enemies worse than the Romans. The doctors accordingly fought the Christian doctrine which was making proselytes amidst their flock. "The Gospels must be burnedsays Rabbi Tarphonfor paganism is not as dangerous to the Jewish faith as the Jewish Christian sects. I should rather seek refuge in a pagan temple than in an assembly of Jewish Christians." He was not the only one who thought so, and all the rabbis comprehended the danger threatening Judaism from Jewish Christianity. Some modern interpreters of the Talmud have gone to the rabbinical discussions and decisions of that epoch for weapons against the Jews, accusing them of blind hatred against anything that did not bear the mark of Israel; they do not seem, however, to have carried into their researches the requisite scientific spirit and good faith. Originally, all Talmudical inhibitions contemplated the Jewish Christians alone. The Tanaim wanted to preserve the faithful from Christian contamination; for this purpose the Gospels were likened to books on witchcraft, and Samuel Junior, by order of the patriarch Gamaliel, inserted in the daily prayers a curse against the Jewish Christians, Birkat Haminim, which has furnished the foundation for the charge that the Jews curse Jesus thrice a day. While the Jews thus sought to separate themselves from the Christians, the Church, swayed by a great religious movement, was forced to cast away Judaism. To conquer the world, to become a universal creed, Christianity had to rid itself of Jewish[33] particularism, to break the narrow chains of the ancient law, so as to be able to spread the new one. This was the work of St. Paul, the true founder of the Church, who opposed to the exclusiveness of the Jewish-Christian doctrine the principle of catholicity. As is well known, the struggle between these two tendencies in the nascent Christianity, which were symbolized by Peter and Paul, was long and bitter. The whole apostolic service of Paul was a long battle against the Judaizing. On the day when the Apostle declared that in order to come to Jesus one need not pass through the Synagogue nor accept the sign of the old covenant, the circumcision, on that very day all ties which bound the Christian Church to its mother were torn and the nations of the world were won over by Jesus. The resistance of the Judaizing who wanted to belong to Jesus and at the same time to observe the Sabbath and the Passover, was in vain; their prejudice against the conversion of the Gentiles was of no avail. After Paul's journey to Asia Minor the cause of Catholicism was won. The Apostle was braced up by an army, and that army arrayed against the Jewish spirit the Hellenic, Antioch against Jerusalem. The great bulk of the Jewish Christians tore themselves away from the narrow doctrine of the little community of Jerusalem; the ruin of the holy city led them to doubt the efficacy of the ancient law. It was good for the further development of the Church. Ebionism met its death. If Christianity had followed the Jerusalemites it would have remained a small Jewish sect. Having rid itself of the Ebionites and the Jewish Christians and cut loose from its mother, Christianity allowed the nations to come to it without forfeiting their individuality. To safeguard its supremacy, the Church had to fight the Jewish spirit in two forms. The first was that noted above, the Judaic positivism, hostile to anthropomorphism and deification of heroes. Nevertheless this positivism has maintained its existence throughout the ages so that a history of the Jewish current in the Christian Church could be written, beginning with early Ebionism down to Protestantism, including among others the Unitarians and Arians. The second form is the mystic form represented by the Alexandria and Asiatic gnosis. The Alexandrian Jews, as known, were influenced by Platonism and Pythagorism; Philo himself was the forerunner of Plotinus and Porphyry in this renovation of the meta-[34] physical spirit. Aided by Hellenic doctrines the Jews interpreted the Bible and scrutinized the mysteries contained therein, construing them into allegories and further developing them. Proceeding from monotheism and the conception of a personal God as their religious point of departure, the Jews of Alexandria were bound to come metaphysically to pantheism, to the idea of a divine substance, to the doctrine of intermediaries between man and the Absolute, i.e., to emanations, to the Eons of Valentinus and the Sephiroths of Kabbala. To this Jewish fund were superadded the contributions of Chaldean, Persian and Egyptian religions, which coexisted at Alexandria; at that time were elaborated those extraordinary Gnostic theogonies, so multifarious, so varied, so madly mystical. When Christianity was born, the gnosis was already in existence; the Gospels brought new elements into it; it speculated on the life and words of Jesus, as it had speculated on the Old Testament, and when the Apostles, in their early preaching, addressed themselves to the Gentiles, they were confronted with the Gnostics, and primarily the Jewish Gnostics. Peter met them at Samaria in the person of Simon the Magician; Paul faced them at Colosse, at Ephesus, at Antioch, wherever he came with his Gospel, and possibly he fought Cerinthus; John himself fought them, and, in the Epistles of the Apocalypse he opposed the Nicolaites who were "of the Synagogue of Satan." After having escaped the danger of crystallizing into a barren Jewish community, the Church was thus exposed to the new danger of Gnosticism, which, if triumphant, would have resulted in splitting it up into small sects and breaking its unity. All preachers of the Christian religion had to contend against this gnosis; traces of that fight are found in the Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and Ephesians, in the pastoral letters, in the second Epistle of Peter, in the Epistle of Jude and in the Apocalypse. They did not confine themselves to persecuting the Jewish spirit in the gnosis; as soon as the Pauline spirit had triumphed over Peter, they declared war to the Judaizing tendencies within the Church, as well as to the Jews themselves. We find all these sentiments reflected in the writings of the Apostle Fathers, with a growing desire to separate Christianity from Judaism; and with the development of the dogma of the divinity of Jesus, the Jews became the abominable people of Deicides, which[35] they had not been originally. The Pauline traditions resound in the beginning of the second century in the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch addressed to the churches of Rome, Magnesia, Philadel phia, Ephesus, Smyrna and Tralles and to the Bishop Polycarp. Still in face of these hostile demonstrations the Jews were not inactive and proved very dangerous adversaries. It was under the fire of their criticism that the dogma was constructed; it was they who, by their subtle exegetics, by their firm logic, forced the teachers of Christianity to give precision to their arguments. Their hostility worried the theologians; though having severed themselves from Judaism, they wanted to win over the Jews to their side; they believed that the triumph of Jesus would only be assured on the day when Israel would recognize the power of the Son of God; indeed, this belief has survived under different forms throughout the ages. It would seem as though the Church were not satisfied of the legitimacy of its faith until the day when the people of whom its God had come were converted to the Galilean. This work was taken up by the apologists of Christianity, and their apologetic prepossession was mixed with violent enmity. Thus the Letter to Diognetus, which has been preserved for us in the work of St. Justin, and was written to refute the errors of the adversaries of the Christians, may be considered as one of the first anti-Jewish writings. The unknown author of this brief epistle, in his vigorous attack upon the Millenarian ideas, speaks of the Jewish rites as superstitions. The motives are not the same as those which actuated the unknown author of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, for he wanted, and so he declared, to convert the Jews and convince them of the excellence of the word of Christ. The most thorough of the apologists of that epoch is assuredly Justin, the philosopher. His Dialogue with Tryphon will remain a model of this kind of dialogical polemics, of which we have another sample from the same epoch in the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus, from the pen of the Greek Ariston of Pella; the latter dialogue was reproduced in the fifth century by Evagrius, in his Altercation of Simon and Theophilus. Justin, a native of Samaria, and well acquainted with the Judeans, puts all the objections of the Jewish exegetes into the mouth of Tryphon, meant to represent Rabbi Tarphon, who vigorously fought against the apostolic evan gelization. The author attempts to persuade him that the New Testament is in accord with the Old, and to reconcile monotheism [36] with the theory of Messiah as the Word incarnate. At the same time, replying to Tryphon's reproach that the Christians have abandoned the Mosaic law, he maintains that it was merely a preparatory law. Justin attacked the Judaizing tendencies in both forms, viz., Jewish Christianity on the one hand, and, on the other, Alexandrinism, which would admit the Word only as a temporary irradiation of the One Being. He closes with the warning: "Blaspheme not the Son of God; listen not to the Pharisees; ridicule not the King of Israel, as you are doing daily." The irony of the Jews he met with sarcasm directed against the rabbis: "Instead of expounding the meaning of the prophecies your teachers indulge in tomfoolery; they are anxious to ascertain why male camels are referred to in this or that passage, or why a certain quantity of flour is required for your oblations. They are worried to know why an alpha is added to the original name of Abraham. This is the subject of their studies. As to things essential, worthy of meditation, they dare not speak of them to you, they do not attempt to explain them, and they prohibit you from listening to our interpretation." The last complaint is important, it indicates the character of the struggle for the conquest of souls in which Judaism was defeated. The second century is one of the most momentous epochs in the history of the Church. The dogma, still uncertain in the first century, is then formulated and defined; Jesus advances toward divinity and attains it, and his metaphysics, his worship, his conception, are blended with Judeo-Alexandrian doctrines, with Philo's theories of the Word of God, the Chaldean memra and the Greek logos. The Word is born, it becomes identified with the Galilean; in Justin's apologetics and the fourth Gospel, we see the work completed. Christianity has become Alexandrian, and its most ardent upholders, its defenders, even its orators, are at that hour the Christian philosophers of the Alexandrian school: Justin, the author of the fourth Gospel, and Clement. While this dogmatic transformation was going on, the idea of a universal church gained strength. Bonds of union were formed between the small Christian communities, detached from Jewish congregations; the more their numbers increased the stronger became the ties, and this conception of unity and catholicity kept pace with the growing expansion of Christianity. This expansion could not proceed undisturbed. Christian preaching addressed itself to all the Jewries of Asia Minor, Egypt,[37] Cyrenaica and Italy, wherever there was an unorthodox element among them, the Hellenized Jews whom the Christian teachers sought to win over to their side. The propagandists likewise spoke to the anxious masses who had already lent their ears to the Jewish word. The Jews witnessed the failure of their influence and, perhaps, of their hopes; at all events, they saw their beliefs, their faith, attacked by the neophytes; the feeling of the Jews against the Christians was as bitter as that of the Christians when they saw the obstacles which the Jewish preachers put in their way. Furious hatred was mutual, and the parties were not content with Platonic hatred. The Christian congregations, unlike the Jewish communities, were not recognized by the law; they were considered enemies of law and a danger to the Empire. From this there was but one step to violence; this accounts for the periods of suffering the Church had to go through. The Church, in those evil days, could not count upon its rival, the Synagogue, for assistance; in some places where the struggle between the Jews and the Christians had reached an acute stage the Jews, recognized by Roman legislation and possessed of vested rights, would join the citizens of the towns in dragging the Christians before the court. In Antioch, for example, where the enmity between those two sects was most bitter, in all probability, the Jews, like the pagans, demanded the trial and execution of Polycarp. They are said to have fed with great eagerness the stake upon which the bishop was burned. Still, not everywhere was the strife marked with such bloody manifestations. The controversy was always very lively, yet it must be said it was not conducted with equal weapons. The Bible was their common arsenal, but the Christian teachers had but a scant knowledge of it. They did not know Hebrew and used the Septuagint version, which they interpreted very freely, often relying, in support of their dogma, upon passages interpolated into the Septuagint by falsifiers for the good of the cause. The Greek speaking Jews did not hesitate to do the same, so that the Septuagint, a bad translation as it was, full of absurdities, became available for any purpose. These controversies, which continued through long centuries, were not always courteous. Simultaneously with touching legends concerning Jesus, scandalous stories were invented. To humiliate their enemies, the Jews attacked him of whom the former made their God, and to the deification of Jesus they opposed the stories[38] of the soldier Pantherus, of abandoned Mary; these were taken up by philosophers hostile to Christianity, and Origen refuted them in his Contra Celsum, meeting abuse with abuse. Amidst these battles was born a theological anti-Judaism, purely ideological, which consisted in rejecting as bad or worthless anything coming from Israel. This sentiment is evidenced by Tertullian's De Adversus ludaeos. In that work the fiery African attacked circumcision, which, he said, brought no salvation, but was a simple sign for distinguishing Israel; when Messiah would come he would substitute spiritual for bodily circumcision; he attacked the Sabbath, the temporal Sabbath, to which he opposed the eternal Sabbath. But this special anti-Judaism, which we find again in Octavius, by Minucius Felix; in De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate, by Cyprian of Carthage; in Instructiones Adrersus Gentium Deos, by the poet Commodian, and in Divinae Institutiones, by Lactantius, was mixed with the desire to convince the Jews of the truth of the Christian religion, of the soundness of its beliefs, its dogmas and principles; hence the ambition to make proselytes among them. This anti- Judaism crossed with the efforts which the Church was making to arrive at universality, and during the first three centuries remained purely theoretical. We shall further see how, since Constantine and the triumph of the Church, this anti-Judaism was transformed and more precisely defined. Chapter Four: ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY FOR three centuries the Church had to contend against those with whom the greatness of Rome was inseparable from the secular worship of the Gods. Still, the resistance of the civil authorities, of the priests and philosophers, could not arrest the march of the Church; persecutions, hatred, hostility enhanced its power of propaganda; it addressed itself to those whose spirit was troubled, whose conscience was vacillating, and to them it brought an ideal and that moral satisfaction which they lacked. Moreover, at that hour when the Roman Empire was rending all over, when Rome, having abdicated all power and authority, received its Caesars from the hands of the legions, and competitors for the purple bobbed up in every nook of the provinces, the Catholic Church offered to that expiring world the unity it was seeking. Yet, while offering intellectual unity to the world, the Church at the same time was ruining its institutions, customs and manners. In fact, at Rome, as well as in the Empire, all public functions were at once civil and religious, the magistrate, the procurator, the dux being invested with priestly functions; no public act was performed without rites; the government was, in a manner, theocratic; this ultimately came to be symbolized in the worship of the Emperor. All those who wanted to withdraw from that worship were held to be enemies of Caesar and the Empire; they were considered bad citizens. This sentiment explains the Roman dislike of Oriental religions and of the Jews; it explains the measures adopted against the worshipers of Yahweh, and still more the severity shown towards the worshipers of Mithra, of Sabazius and particularly towards the Christians, for the latter were not foreigners like the Jews, but rebel citizens. The triumph of Christianity was brought about by political considerations, and so, to make its victory and domination lasting, it was obliged to adopt many of the ceremonial observances of[40] ancient Rome. When the Christians had increased in numbers, and formed a considerable party, they were saved and could see the dawn of victory glimmer, for now a pretender to the throne could find support among them and use their services to solidify his authority. So it happened with Constantine, and Constantius, perhaps, foresaw it when he commanded the Gallic legions. The victorious church succeeded to Rome. She inherited its haughtiness, its exclusiveness, its pride, and almost without any transition period the persecuted turned persecutrix, wielding the power by which she had been fought, holding the consular fasces and hatchet and commanding the legionaries. While Jesus was taking possession of the superb city and his universal reign was commencing, Judaism was in agony in Pales tine; the teachers of Tiberias were powerless to hold the young Judeans and the "illustrious, most glorious, right reverend" patriarch had but the shadow of authority. The flourishing Jewish schools were in Babylonia; the centre of Israel's intellectual life was transferred thither; still wherever Christianity endeavoured to extend its influence it had to reckon and to contend with the influence of Judaism; though since the close of the third century the latter was of little importance, at least directly. Indeed, at that time the Judaizing heresies were nearly extinct. The Nazarenes, those circumcised Christians attached to the old law, who are mentioned by St. Jerome and St. Epiphanius, were reduced to a handful of meek believers, who had found refuge at Berea (Alep), at Kokabe in Batanea, and at Pella, in the Decapolis. They spoke the Syro-Chaldaic language; a remnant of the primitive Church of Jerusalem, they no longer exerted any influence, swamped as they were amidst Greek-speaking churches. Still, though Ebionism was dying out, Judaizing continued; the Christians attended the synagogues, celebrated the Jewish holidays, and the contentions over the Passover were still on. A large faction in the churches of the Orient insisted upon celebrating the Passover at the same time as the Jews. It required the action of the Nicaean Council to free Christianity of this last and weak bond by which it had still been tied to its cradle. After the Synod all was over between the Church and the Temple, officially, and from the orthodox standpoint, at least; it required, however, the action of further councils to prevent the faithful from conforming to the old usage, and it was not until 341 A.D., when the Council of Antioch[41] had excommunicated the Quartodecimans that unity of the celebration of the Easter was effected. Since the Church had become armed, anti-Judaism underwent a transformation. Purely theological in the beginning, confined to arguments and controversies, it defined itself and became harsher, more severe and aggressive. Beside writings, laws appeared; the enactment of laws resulted in popular manifestations. The writings themselves underwent a change. Throughout the centuries of persecution, apologetics had flourished, and a vast literature had come into being, born of the need felt by the Christians to convince their adversaries. They addressed themselves now to the Jews, now to the pagans, now to the emperors, and all of them, Justin, Athenagoras, Tatian, Aristo of Pella, Melito, endeavoured to prove to Caesar that their doctrines were not dangerous to the public weal; that even without sacrificing to the gods, they could be loyal subjects, as obedient as the pagans and morally superior. They argued with the Jews that it was they, the Christians, that were the only faithful to tradition, for they fulfilled the prophecies and the least details of their dogmas were foreseen and announced by the Scriptures. Triumphant Christianity was no longer in need of apologists; Caesar had been converted and Cyril of Alexandria, the author of a book against Julian the Apostate, was the last of the apologists. As regards Israel, the Christians persisted, even to our own day, in demonstrating to them their stubbornness; it was done in a less insidious and less convincing manner; they spoke as masters, and from the middle of the fifth century, apologetics proper ceased, reappearing only much later considerably modified and transformed. They no longer tried to win over the Jews to Christ; indeed, a few years sufficed to show to the theologians the futility of their efforts, and the effect of their reasoning, based most frequently upon a fantastic exegesis or a few absurdities of the Alexandrian translation of the Bible, was lost on these stubborn men, who listened only to their own teachers and clung the stronger to their faith the more it was despised. To arguments was added insult; the Jew was regarded less as a possible Christian than as an unrepenting deicide. They denounced those men, whose persistence was so shocking and whose very presence marred the complete triumph of the Church. Pains were taken to forget the Jewish origin of Jesus and the Apostles; to forget that Christianity had[42] grown in the shade of the Synagogue. This oblivion perpetuated itself, and today who in all Christendom would acknowledge that he bows to a poor Jew and a humble Jewess of Galilee? The Fathers, the bishops, the priests, who had to contend against the Jews treated them very badly. Hosius in Spain; Pope Sylvester; Paul, bishop of Constantine; Eusebius of Caesarea,32 call them "a perverse, dangerous and criminal sect." Some, like Gregory of Nyssa,33 remain on dogmatic ground, and merely reproach the Jews for being infidels, who refuse to accept the testimony of Moses and the prophets on the Trinity and Incarnation. St. Augustine34 is more vehement. Irritated by the objections of the Talmudists he brands them as falsifiers, and declares that one need seek no religion in the blindness of the Jews, and that Judaism may serve only as a term of comparison to demonstrate the beauty of Christianity. St. Ambrose35 attacked them from another side; he took up anew the charges of the ancient world, those which had been used against the first Christians, and accused the Jews of despising the laws of Rome. St. Jerome36 claimed that an impure spirit had seized the Jews. Having learned Hebrew in the schools of the rabbis, he said, referring doubtless to the curses pronounced against the Mineans and distorting their meaning: "The Jews must be hated, for they daily insult Jesus Christ in their synagogues"; and St. Cyril of Jerusalem37 abused the Jewish patriarchs, claiming that they were a low race. We find all these theological and polemical attacks combined in the six sermons delivered at Antioch, by St. John Chrysostom38 against the Jews; an examination of those homilies will give us an understanding of the methods of discussion, as well as the reciprocal attitude of Christians and Jews and their mutual relations. The Jews, says Chrysostom in the first of his sermons, are ignoramuses, who lack all understanding of their own law, and are consequently impious. They are wretches, dogs, bull- headed; their people are like a herd of brutes, like wild beasts. They have driven Christ away, therefore they are capable of evil only. Their synagogues may be likened to playhouses, they are dens of brigands, the abode of Satan. Being obliged to admit that the Jews are not ignorant of the Father, he adds that this is not enough, since they have crucified the Son and reject the Holy Ghost, and that their souls are the abode of the devil. Therefore they must be mistrusted; the Jewish disease must be guarded against.[43] In the second sermon these diatribes are resumed; Chrysostom appears in it much worried over the influence exerted by the Jews. "Our sheep," he exclaims, "are surrounded by Jewish wolves," and he reiterates the warning: Avoid them; avoid their impiety; it is not significant controversies that separate us from them, but the death of Christ. If you think that Judaism is true, leave the Church; if not, quit Judaism. The other four sermons are chiefly theological. Availing himself of the invectives of the prophets, Chrysostom calls the Jews thieves, impure, debauchees, rapacious, misers, crafty, oppressors of the poor; they have filled the measure of their crimes by immolating Jesus. He does not content himself with all that. He advances arguments upon controversies which must have been very lively at Antioch. He defends the Church; he shows that Israel is dispersed in consequence of the death of Christ; he draws from the prophets and the stories of the Bible proofs of the divinity of Jesus, and he recommends to his flock to stay away from the sermons of those Jews who call the cross an abomination and whose religion is null and useless to those who know the true faith. In short, says he in conclusion, it is absurd to consort with men who have treated God with such indignity and at the same time to worship the Crucified. These homilies of Chrysostom are characteristic and valuable. One finds there already the policy which the Christian preachers were to pursue throughout the ages to follow; that mixture of argument and apostrophizing, of suasion and abuse, which has remained peculiar to anti-Jewish preaching. Especially worthy of notice is the part of the clergy in the development of anti-Judaism originally religious anti- Judaism, for social anti-Judaism arose much later in Christian society. These sermons portray, in a live picture, the relations between Judaism and Christianity in the fourth century; these relations continued for a long time, until about the ninth century. The Jews had not arrived yet at that exclusive conception of their individuality and their nationality which was the work of the Talmudists. Their proselytic ardour was not dead; they were not conscious of the fact that they had forever lost their moral power over the world, and they struggled on. They persuaded pagans and Christians to Judaize, and they found followers; if need be they would make converts by force; they did not hesitate to circumcise their slaves. They were the only foes the[44] Church had to face, for paganism was quietly passing away, leaving in the souls but legendary survivals, which have not entirely died out even to this day. If paganism, through its last philosophers and poets, still opposed the diffusion of Christianity, it no longer sought, since the fourth century, to regain those whom Jesus held by his bonds. The Jews, however, had not given up; they deemed themselves in possession of the true religion, upon as good a title as the Christians, and in the eyes of the people their assertion had the attraction flowing from unflinching convictions. In the morning of its triumph the Church as yet did not hold that universal ascendancy which it gained later; it was still weak, though powerful; but those who directed it aspired to universality, and they could not help considering the Jews as their worst adversaries; they had to strain themselves to the utmost to weaken Jewish propaganda and proselytism. In this the Fathers followed a secular tradition; upon this battle ground they are unanimous, and there are legions of theologians, historians and writers who think and write of the Jews the same as Chrysostom: Epiphanius, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyprus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Athanasius the Sinaite, Synesius, among the Greeks; Hilarius of Poitiers, Prudentius, Paulas Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, Gennadius, Venantius Fortunatus, Isidore of Seville, among the Latins. However, after the edict of Milan, anti-Judaism could no longer confine itself to oral or written controversies; it was no longer a quarrel between two sects equally detested or despised. Before his conversion, Constantine, who originally declined to grant any exclusive privileges to Christians, accorded, by the edict of tolerance, to everyone the right to observe the religion of his choice. The Jews were thus put on an equal footing with the Christians; the pagan pontiffs, the priests of Jesus, the patriarchs and teachers of Israel enjoyed the same favour and were exempt from municipal taxes. But in 323, after the defeat and death of Licinius, who had reigned in the Orient, Constantine, the victor and lord over the Empire, supported by all the Christians of his states, showed them marked preference. He made them his great dignitaries, his counselors, his generals, and thenceforth the Church had the imperial power at its disposal to build up its dominion. The first use it made of this authority was to persecute those who were hostile to the Church; it found Constantine quite obedient to its wishes. On the[45] one hand, the emperor prohibited divination and sacrifices, closed the temples, ordered the gold and silver statues of the gods to be melted for the embellishment of the churches; on the other hand, he consented to repress Jewish proselytism and revived an ancient Roman law which prohibited the Jews from circumcising their slaves; at the same time he deprived them of many of their former privileges and barred them from Jerusalem, except on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple, and that upon payment of a special tax in silver. Thus, by aggravating the burdens which were oppressing the Jews, Constantine favoured Christian proselytism, and the preachers were not slow to represent to the Jews the advantages baptism would bring. Still, in spite of his hostility to the Jews, perhaps factitious, since the authenticity of the letter written in a violent language and attributed to him by Eusebius39 cannot be vouched for, he took pains to protect them against the attacks of their own renegades. Under his successors, no such reservation was made. The Church was now all-powerful with the emperors. Catholicism became the established religion, the Christian worship was the official worship, the importance of the bishops increased from day to day, as well as their influence. They inculcated upon the minds of the emperors those sentiments with which they were inspired themselves, and while their anti-Judaism manifested itself in writings, imperial anti Judaism found expression in statutes. These laws, inspired by the clergy, were directed not only against the Jews, but against Christian heretics as well. Indeed, during the fourth century, so fertile in heresies, the orthodox themselves were at times disturbed when heretical theologians led the emperors. Of these laws, all of which were enacted from the fourth to the seventh century, the majority are directed against Jewish proselytism. The penal statutes directed against those who circumcise Christians are reaffirmed;40 the offense is made punishable by exile for life and confiscation of property. The Jews are prohibited from owning Christian slaves;41 they are not allowed to marry Christians; such unions are treated like criminal fornication.42 Other laws encourage Christian propaganda and proselytism among the Jews, either directlyby protecting the apostates43 and enjoining Jews from disinheriting their converted sons and grandsons44 or indirectly, by vexatious legislation against Jews. Their privileges were curtailed. It was decreed that the moneys which were sent by[46] the Israelites to Palestine should be paid into the imperial treasury;45 they were debarred from holding public office;46 they were assessed with hard and oppressive curial taxes;47 they were practically deprived of their special tribunals.48 The vexations were not confined to that; the Jews were harassed even in the observance of their religion; the law undertook to regulate the manner of observing the Sabbath;49 they were ordered not to celebrate their Passover before Easter, and Justinian went as far as to prohibit them from reciting the daily prayer, the Schema, which proclaimed one God, as against the Trinity. Still, notwithstanding the favourable disposition of Emperor Constantine, the Church was not given a free hand in everything. While restricting the religious liberties of the pagans and the Jews, he was obliged to act with caution; the worshipers of the gods were still numerous under his reign, and he dared not provoke dangerous disturbances. The Jews benefited to some extent by this hesitation. With Constantius everything changed. Constantine, who was baptized only on his deathbed by Eusebius of Nicomedia, was a skeptic and a politician, who used Christianity as a tool; Constantius was an orthodox, as fanatical and intolerant as the clergy and the monks of his day. With him, the Church became dominant, and wielded its power for revenge; it seems the Church was eager to make its erstwhile persecutors pay dearly for all it had suffered at their hands. No sooner was it armed than it forgot its most elementary principles, and directed the secular arm against its adversaries. The pagans and the Jews were persecuted with utmost severity; those who offered sacrifices to Zeus, as well as those who worshipped Jehovah, were maltreated: anti-Judaism went together with anti- paganism. The Jewish teachers of Judea were exiled, they were threatened with de