The Jews and the Reformation 9780300187021

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THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION

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YALE UNIVERSIT Y PRESS NEW HAVEN AND LONDON iii

Published with assistance from the foundation established in memory of Oliver Baty Cunningham of the Class of 1917, Yale College. Copyright © 2020 Kenneth Austin All rights reserved. This book may not be reproduced in whole or in part, in any form (beyond that copying permitted by Sections 107 and 108 of the U.S. Copyright Law and except by reviewers for the public press) without written permission from the publishers. For information about this and other Yale University Press publications, please contact: U.S. Office: [email protected] yalebooks.com Europe Office: [email protected] yalebooks.co.uk Set in Fournier MT by IDSUK (DataConnection) Ltd Printed in Great Britain by TJ International Ltd, Padstow, Cornwall Library of Congress Control Number: 2020935061 ISBN 978-0-300-18629-1 A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

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CONTENTS

List of Plates Acknowledgements Timeline Introduction Chapter One Chapter Two Chapter Three Chapter Four Chapter Five Chapter Six Chapter Seven Chapter Eight

A Contested Inheritance: Judaeo-Christian Relations on the Eve of the Reformation A New Dawn? Re-evaluating the Jews at the Start of the Reformation Era Dashed Hopes: Jews and the Early Reformation People of the Book: The Reformed Church and Judaism A Tridentine Response: The Catholic Church and the Jews Fault Lines: Jews in a Confessionally Divided Christendom Caught in the Crossfire: Jews and Christians in the Era of the Thirty Years War Heightened Expectations: Messianism, Millenarianism and the Hope of Israel

Conclusion Endnotes Bibliography Index

vi vii ix xii 1 25 50 78 104 132 159 181 205 215 255 284

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PLATES

1. Ecclesia and Synagoga. Photograph by ‘Sodabottle’ (2011) of a replica of statues from the exterior of Strasbourg Cathedral, taken at an exhibition at the Museum of the Jewish People at Beit Hatfutsot, Tel Aviv. CC BY-SA 3.0. 2. The martyrdom of Simon of Trent, from Hartman Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremberg, 1493). The Picture Art Collection / Alamy. 3. Judensau. Friedrich Stark / Alamy Stock Photo. 4. Jews burnt alive for Host desecration, from Hartman Schedel’s Nuremberg Chronicle (Nuremberg, 1493). 5. An auto da fé, by B. Picart, 1723. INTERFOTO / Alamy. 6. Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies (Von den Jüden und Iren Lügen) (Wittenberg, 1543). The Picture Art Collection / Alamy Stock Photo. 7. The ‘Pillar of Shame’ erected in Frankfurt am Main. Reproduction of a painting. Institut für Stadtgeschichte Frankfurt / Historisches Museum Frankfurt am Main. 8. A page from the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1522). 9. Portrait of Pope Paul IV, by Onofrio Panvinio (before 1568). 10. Portrait of Carlo Borromeo, by Orazio Borgianni (early 1610s). Hermitage Museum. CC BY-SA 3.0. 11. The Triumph of Mordecai, by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1641). Met Museum. 12. Belshazzar’s Feast, by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1635–38). National Gallery, London. 13. Portrait of Menasseh ben Israel, after Salomo d’Italia (Amsterdam, 1642). Photograph by James Steakley. Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy. 14. Portrait of Oliver Cromwell, after Robert Walker (c. 1649). National Portrait Gallery. © National Portrait Gallery, London.

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

This book has taken far longer, and has proved far harder, to write than I ever imagined. During the course of this process, I have accumulated many debts which it is a pleasure to be able to acknowledge here. I am, in the first instance, grateful to James Clarke, in discussion with whom the idea to write this book first arose. Much of my initial thinking on this subject emerged from teaching on two Masters courses at the University of Bristol – on ‘Jews and Judaism’, and on ‘Persecution and Toleration’ – and I am thankful to the various cohorts of students on both for helping me to sharpen my ideas. I have presented material and ideas in this volume before audiences in Bristol, Glasgow, Cambridge, Dublin and Hull, and I am grateful both for the opportunities to speak in those venues, and for the questions and conversations which they generated. I am also pleased to record my gratitude to the staff of the libraries of Bristol, Glasgow and Edinburgh Universities, the British Library, and the National Library of Scotland. My debts to scholars in the field will be apparent on virtually every page. I am delighted to mark my appreciation of the University Research Fellowship from the University of Bristol, which allowed me to spend the 2017–18 academic year writing up the majority of the text. At the University of Bristol, I am fortunate to work in a very collegial environment, and I have benefited greatly from both the intellectual insights and moral support of my colleagues, within the Department of History, in the School of Humanities and in the Early Modern Studies research cluster in the Faculty of Arts. These debts are too numerous for me to list them all here, except to record my special thanks to Josie McLellan who was a particular help at a difficult time. I am grateful to Heather McCallum and her team at Yale, for their support and patience throughout this process, and also to the various anonymous readers for the press, from whose insights and suggestions this book has greatly benefited. My family

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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS has again provided me with great emotional support and encouragement for which I am hugely grateful. Finally, I wish to thank Wendy Anderson: she has read multiple drafts of each element of this book, offered great suggestions and counsel throughout, and her continuous support was essential to me completing this book. For those reasons, I dedicate this book to her.

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TIMELINE

1095 1144 1215 1240 1263 1290 1306 1311 1347–50 1391 1413–14 1429 c. 1450 1453 1464 1475 1480 1488 1490 1491 1492 1497 1507–21 1510 1514–15

First Crusade First recorded blood libel accusation, Norwich, England Fourth Lateran Council Disputation of Paris Disputation of Barcelona Expulsion of Jews from England Expulsion of Jews from France Council of Vienne: recommends establishment of chairs of Hebrew in various European universities Black Death Anti-Jewish riots in Spain Tortosa Disputation Bull prohibiting Franciscans from preaching against Jews issued by Pope Martin V Advent of printing in Europe Fall of Constantinople to Ottomans First chair of Hebrew established at University of Bologna Trent ritual murder accusation Creation of Spanish Inquisition First complete Hebrew Bible produced by Soncino, Italy Expulsion of Jews from Geneva Completion of the Reconquista in Spain Expulsion of Jews from Spain Expulsion of Jews from Portugal Johann Pfefferkorn publishes works about Jews Josel of Rosheim becomes leader of Alsatian Jews Publication of Letters of Famous Men and Letters of Obscure Men ix

TIMELINE 1516 1517 1519 1521 1523 1530 1534 1534–35 1538 1541 1542 1543 1545–63 1546 1553 1555

1559 1561–1629 1564 1566–67 1569 1571

1584 1598 1614

Creation of ghetto in Venice Martin Luther attaches Ninety-five Theses to door of Wittenberg Castle Church Expulsion of Jews from Regensburg Diet of Worms Publication of Martin Luther’s That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew Publication of Anthonius Margaritha’s The Whole Jewish Faith Pogroms against Jews in Poland–Lithuania Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster Martin Bucer provides guidance on Jews to Philip of Hesse Colloquy of Regensburg – last of a series of meetings intended to reunite Catholic and Protestant churches Creation of Roman Inquisition Publication of Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies Council of Trent Death of Martin Luther Execution of Michael Servetus in Geneva Religious Peace of Augsburg grants formal recognition to Lutheranism in Holy Roman Empire Calvin assumes total control in Geneva Cum nimis absurdum bull issued by Pope Paul IV Talmud placed on Index of Prohibited Books Creation of Genevan Academy French Wars of Religion Death of John Calvin ‘Wonderyear’ marks start of Dutch Revolt Pope Pius V expels all Jews from Papal States, except Avignon, Ancona and Rome Creation of ghetto in Florence Battle of Lepanto: Christian navy defeats Ottoman forces, Venetian government decides to expel Jews; not enforced Death of William of Orange (‘the Silent’) Edict of Nantes brings hiatus to French Wars of Religion Attack on Frankfurt ghetto as part of Fettmilch Uprising

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TIMELINE 1648

1653 1655 1666 1677 1685 1688

Treaty of Westphalia ends Thirty Years War Chmielnicki massacres Sabbatai Zevi declares himself the Messiah Oliver Cromwell becomes Lord Protector in England Whitehall Conference in London meets to discuss Jewish readmission Sabbatai Zevi converts to Islam Expulsion of Jews from Vienna Louis XIV revokes Edict of Nantes Overthrow of James II of England in ‘Glorious Revolution’

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INTRODUCTION

On 7 November 1938, Herschel Grynszpan, a Jewish teenager living in Paris, sought a meeting with the German ambassador.1 Only a few days earlier, he had received a postcard from his sister in which she explained that she and their parents were to be deported from Germany back to Poland. Having bought a pistol and bullets, Grynszpan headed to the German embassy, planning to kill the ambassador. In the event, the ambassador would not meet him, and instead sent a junior official, Ernst vom Rath, to deal with him. Grynszpan let off five bullets, hitting vom Rath twice; the diplomat died from his wounds two days later. This incident, which was portrayed by the Nazi Propaganda Ministry as an attack on the Third Reich by ‘world Jewry’, was the trigger for the events which have come to be known as Kristallnacht: a series of attacks against Jews carried out in Germany and parts of Austria during the night of 9–10 November 1938. Jewish homes, businesses, schools and hospitals were attacked. More than 1,000 synagogues were burnt. The official Nazi report estimated ninety-one deaths, though the real number was likely much higher.2 In the week following this pogrom, 30,000 Jewish men were arrested and taken to concentration camps.3 For many, the spectral figure of Martin Luther, who had launched the Protestant Reformation in Germany more than four centuries previously, appeared to lurk behind these horrific deeds. The mobs declared that they were conducting their attacks on the Jews as a birthday present for Luther, who had been born on 10 November 1483. Indeed, the Nazis had been making much of this connection since 1933, the 450th anniversary of Luther’s birth.4 Ten days after Kristallnacht, in an article in the newspaper Deutscher Sonntag, Immanuel Schairer, a pastor from Stuttgart, presented these events as a response to Luther’s question as to what should be done about the Jews, and quoted a lengthy passage from his On the Jews and Their Lies to substantiate his claim.5 Similarly, Bishop Martin Sasse of Thuringia chose this moment to publish a volume of Luther’s anti-Jewish writings, alluding both to Luther’s birthday and the recent destruction of synagogues in his preface.6 Most infamously, at the Nuremberg xii

INTRODUCTION trials held in the aftermath of the war, Julius Streicher, the owner of the profoundly anti-Semitic newspaper Der Stürmer, cited Luther in his defence, arguing that he had added nothing to the reformer’s original message, and indeed suggested that Luther himself would be in the dock with him, were he still alive.7 It is impossible to discuss the Reformation’s impact on the Jews without acknowledging these events. Whether or not one accepts the Nazis’ claims that they were acting in accordance with Luther’s wishes, and regardless of how one assesses the relationship between Luther’s writings on the Jews and the Holocaust, this genocide continues to cast a great shadow over the subject. This has, in some ways, been a double-edged sword. On the one hand, the Holocaust has encouraged historians to pay greater attention to the (mis-) treatment of Jews in earlier periods; on the other, there is the risk that these subsequent developments unduly shape how we think about those earlier events, or encourage us to draw simplistic links between the two. Yet, while it is perfectly reasonable to recognise this connection, it is the duty of the historian to approach the past on its own terms. In this context, this has at least two main implications. First, we must detach Reformation-era attitudes towards the Jews from the ends to which they were put several hundred years later. Second, we should recall that, despite both his significance to the Reformation movement, and the notoriety of his opinions on the Jews in particular, Luther does not speak for the Reformation as a whole. This will allow us to come to a much more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of Judaeo-Christian relations in the Reformation era. It should also mean that discussions of this theme in later ages will be better informed.

R The relationship with Judaism has been fundamental to Christianity since its inception, but through the patristic and medieval periods it had also been a deeply ambivalent one. On the one hand, the two faiths were part of the same broad religious current: the Judaeo-Christian tradition. Most obviously, the Hebrew Scriptures were accepted by Christians (who referred to them as the Old Testament), while Jesus Christ and his earliest followers had themselves all been Jews. Furthermore, many Christian theologians – most notably Saint Augustine of Hippo, the great fourth-century church father – felt that Jews were deserving of Christian respect as they had once been God’s chosen people, and might again feature within the divine plan for humanity. At the same time, Christians from Saint Paul onwards believed that with the advent of Christ, the Jews had been ‘superseded’ as God’s chosen people. This view had seemingly been confirmed by the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce and the subsequent dispersal xiii

INTRODUCTION of the Jews, and was further reinforced with the conversion to Christianity of Constantine the Great in the early fourth century. This last development had meant that Christianity was soon established as the official religion of the Roman Empire, while Jews were effectively rendered second-class citizens. This in turn shaped the broad framework which would determine the relationship between Jews and Christians through the Middle Ages: Jews constituted a privileged but often persecuted minority living somewhat uneasily alongside Christians who regularly exerted their power over them. Anti-Judaism was far from universal, but it remained an undercurrent in European society, and meant that Jews were always vulnerable to Christian attack.8 At this point, a brief discussion of the terminology to be used in this study is necessary. In common parlance, anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism are often treated as if they are synonymous. Here, however, preference will be given to ‘anti-Judaism’ on the grounds that it is anachronistic to use ‘anti-Semitism’ for the early modern period: the latter term was only coined in the late nineteenth century, and reflected an effort to give pseudo-scientific justification for the hostility, by drawing on ideas which conceptualised Jews as a race.9 That said, especially because the term has become so widespread, some historians have felt it appropriate to use it for earlier periods. Gavin Langmuir, in particular, has sought to distinguish the two terms in a rather different way. He has argued that anti-Judaism might be considered ‘rational’ (in that it expresses largely understandable Christian resentment that the Jews had not come to share their beliefs about Jesus) and, in that sense, inherent to Christianity. ‘Anti-Semitism’ by contrast, was ‘irrational’ in that it reflected a set of beliefs, and accusations against the Jews, which defied logical thought. Importantly, he suggests that this irrational sentiment emerged in the twelfth century, and was reflected in some of the extraordinary allegations which Christians then began to direct against their Jewish neighbours.10 It was hardly a surprise that the Reformation should bring back to the fore the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. It was, after all, one of the most seismic events in the history of Christianity, shattering the unity of Western Christendom, which had survived intact for more than 1,000 years.11 Ostensibly beginning with Martin Luther’s criticism of the relatively obscure medieval practice of indulgences, it rapidly escalated into a wholesale assault on the status, beliefs and values of the Catholic Church. Luther’s revolutionary message of reform, which was disseminated by the equally radical medium of the printing press, which had only come into being in the mid-fifteenth century, was received with considerable interest and enthusiasm, by members of all levels of society.12 Within forty years, it received formal recognition, with the Religious Peace of Augsburg of 1555, through which the Holy Roman xiv

INTRODUCTION Emperor, Charles V, permitted local political authorities to introduce Lutheranism within their territories if they wished, a policy famously expressed by the Latin tag Cuius regio, eius religio (‘Whose reign, his religion’). Luther’s impact was greatest in his native Germany, but his writings were extensively published and circulated across the continent. At the same time, other reformers had appeared, some of whom had been directly inspired by Luther’s protest, while others had come to adopt similar positions independently. Almost from the outset, the Reformation was set on a path of internal fragmentation. Simultaneously, the Catholic Church underwent its own process of internal renewal. This had begun before Luther’s appearance, and indeed drew on similar currents of reform, but it is undeniable that the challenge posed by Protestantism galvanised the institutional church into a more systematic response, as exemplified by the Council of Trent which met over a period of eighteen years in the middle of the sixteenth century. Indeed, in light of these developments, historians are increasingly ready to talk of ‘Reformations’, rather than a single ‘Reformation’, in order to acknowledge this diversity.13 In this context, each of the Christian ‘confessions’ (as the different branches of Christianity are often termed) sought to distinguish itself from the others, and to establish its credentials as the ‘true’ church. Much of their effort was, of course, directed at clarifying issues of religious belief and practice, but many other spheres of life were also affected. This has been reflected in a substantial proportion of recent scholarship which has seen, for instance, studies of the impact of the Reformation(s) on the arts and music, the emotions, and even the landscape.14 Given the significance of Jews and Judaism to Christianity, it was all but inevitable that they too should have been affected by the Reformation. At first glance, then, it is perhaps surprising that at least until now no full-length study of the impact of the Reformation on the Jews of Europe has been written. But this is not quite as remarkable as it first appears. From the Jewish perspective, the reconfigurations which occurred within Christianity during the sixteenth century have often seemed fairly inconsequential, at least when set against the apparently unremitting anti-Judaism of the premodern period.15 While the Reformation is frequently mentioned as an episode of importance within the Christian world, with widespread ramifications, it is quite common that the discussion gets little further than Luther (not least because of the long afterlife of his pronouncements, as mentioned above), which does rather risk misrepresenting, or unnecessarily simplifying, the complexity of the movement.16 From the Christian perspective, meanwhile, there has been a general tendency for ‘majority history’ to neglect the Jewish contribution. Indeed, the medievalist Gavin xv

INTRODUCTION Langmuir, writing in the 1960s, contended that ‘majority historiography as it relates to Jews has been marked by a lack of interest and by ignorance, when it has not been marked by derogatory attitudes’.17 Even if they were not anti-Jewish per se, historians were products of a historiographical tradition which was hostile to, or at best not particularly interested in, its Jewish dimension. Certainly this situation has changed significantly over the intervening half-century, but there remains a tendency for Jewish history to be written by Jewish historians, and for it to be seen as somehow peripheral.18 There are then further factors specific to the Reformation. The often harsh treatment of Jews, and the vitriolic comments of some of the leading Protestant reformers about them, did not sit easily with those accounts, especially those written in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, which held up the Reformation as a harbinger of modernity, and an important stepping stone towards the emergence of toleration.19 Reformation attitudes towards the Jews have thus been something of an embarrassment, which scholars have sometimes sought to explain away, or simply to ignore. It has been striking, however, that the recent quincentenary of the Reformation in 2017 (marking the 500th anniversary of Luther’s nailing of the Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg), has seen much more attention given to Luther’s attitudes towards the Jews, in a more holistic assessment of a flawed individual.20 In addition, Jews have often been considered marginal figures in the Reformation: after all, they had been expelled from large swathes of Europe during the later Middle Ages, and many territories, officially at least, did not have a Jewish presence. Indeed, Jews likely only constituted between 1 and 2 per cent of the total population of Europe in this period. But the numbers only tell part of the story. They were a significant minority, traditionally enjoying a protected status, and frequently occupying prominent positions within society. This was not without its difficulties. For the Christian majority, Jewish success was often an especially unpalatable source of resentment; for the Jews, on the other hand, there was a particular tension between assimilation and the maintenance of a distinct Jewish identity, which it was not easy for these ‘aliens within’ to reconcile.21 Moreover, the Jewish population was not evenly spread across the continent. As one might imagine, they tended to congregate in those areas which proved more welcoming, or at least less hostile. Iberia, at least until 1492, Italy, and parts of eastern Europe were all home to quite substantial numbers of Jews; inhabitants of those areas presumably had rather different views about the Jews compared, for instance, with residents of France and England, from where they had long been expelled, and for whom an encounter with a Jew was exceptionally unlikely. But this was not a static xvi

INTRODUCTION situation: just as some territories expelled their Jews, others might decide to encourage their settlement. When one takes a perspective which looks beyond the boundaries of a particular polity, one gets a much clearer sense of the extent to which Jewish groups moved from one territory to another, as changing rulers and shifting policies made it more or less desirable to live in a given area. Indeed, their expulsions only served to make them more visible, as they traversed the continent, and established communities in locations where they had not previously existed. In addition, it is apparent that Jews lived, whether secretly or with the tacit acceptance of the authorities, in many locations which were officially free of Jews. Not only that but, given the umbilical relationship between Christianity and Judaism, which came under renewed scrutiny during the Reformation era, Jews wielded far greater power in the minds of their Christian contemporaries than their actual numbers warranted. Fortunately, though, the last couple of decades or so have seen considerably more attention given to the Jewish contribution. Increasingly, reference works and collections of essays on the Reformation are realising that this needs to be considered for a proper understanding of the period.22 There have, moreover, been significant strides in a range of spheres. The views of a growing number of the leading reformers have been examined.23 The treatment of Jewish populations in Spain and Italy has always been relatively well served, as one might expect for places where Jews (and converts from Judaism) lived in greatest numbers, but a growing number of other territories, whether nations or cities, have been the subject of more detailed studies. Broader themes, including the realms of book culture and Christian Hebraica, have also benefited from sustained and specialist attention. But there has been a tendency for different territories, different confessions, and these separate themes, to be treated largely in isolation. This volume seeks to draw these disparate strands together into a more rounded analysis. It is only by considering the different Christian confessions, as represented in different territories, alongside each other and by considering ‘the Jews’ in a broadly construed way (incorporating not just contemporary Jews, but also their language, learning and their symbolic value) that we can properly understand their significance to the Reformation.

R This book is concerned with the impact of the Reformation, in its various forms, on the Jews. Its focus will largely be restricted to Europe, and particularly western Europe. Recent studies have started to bring a welcome global perspective to Jewish experiences in the early modern period, and the links between Jews in Europe, and those in north Africa, Asia Minor, and the Americas are becoming better understood, both through xvii

INTRODUCTION the Jews’ own migrations, and as a corollary of Christians’ exploration and colonisation of these territories.24 However, for reasons including my own expertise as a historian of the European Reformation, the fact that the Reformation heartlands were in Europe, and the space limitations of a book of this sort, I have taken the decision only to allude to those other territories where their fortunes closely intersect with the European narrative. Similarly, this volume is concerned predominantly with the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Again, given recent historiographical developments which have put emphasis on the so-called ‘Long Reformation’, one could make a case for continuing this narrative into the eighteenth century, into the Enlightenment, or even beyond. However, in order to retain focus on those elements which are most closely associated with the Reformation, attention here will be restricted to these two centuries. This nonetheless makes it possible to evaluate the implications of the theological positions elaborated in the sixteenth century, and their subsequent modification. It also means that there is a degree of symmetry here: the expulsion of Jews from Iberia marks the beginning of this period, while the last chapters will include their readmission to parts of western Europe – in England’s case more than 350 years after the original expulsion. Further, the focus will chiefly be on Christian attitudes and behaviours. On occasions, as we will see, Jews did record their responses to their treatment by Christian authorities, and there was clearly an awareness of the advent and consequences of the Reformation; at the same time, as has already been noted, the changes within Christianity often seem to have occurred with relatively little comment from Jews. Where possible, we will of course seek to evaluate the impact of Christian initiatives, but it should be emphasised that this study is principally a contribution to Reformation historiography. This book seeks to do justice to the complexity of the European Reformations. Rather than the (sometimes seemingly almost exclusive) focus on Martin Luther, it will examine the attitudes of a wide range of figures and groups associated with the various branches of Protestantism which emerged in the sixteenth century. As a result, it will be possible to show that ‘Reformation’ attitudes were much more diverse and multidimensional than the conventional picture has tended to suggest. This volume will therefore seek to discuss both magisterial (e.g. Lutheran, Calvinist/Reformed) and radical (e.g. Anabaptist) groups, across Europe. Importantly, moreover, Catholic attitudes will also be considered alongside these Protestant ones. Indeed, Protestant and Catholic attitudes towards the Jews and Judaism in this era only truly make sense when considered in conjunction with each other. In addition to witnessing a set of xviii

INTRODUCTION similar, and often parallel, developments, they were also interrelated, in the sense that developments within one confessional group or area often had direct implications for those in another. More than that, it is necessary to recognise the ways in which a confessionally divided Europe affected Judaeo-Christian relations. On the one hand, the Catholic and Protestant Reformations directed renewed attention to the Bible, increased the sense that God was active in the world, encouraged concern with individual and collective piety, and sharpened awareness of those who did not fit with the heightened religious standards which came into operation. On the other, however, the religious divisions instigated by the Reformation meant that Jews were no longer the only, nor even necessarily the most dangerous, religious ‘other’: competing Christian confessions were, in many cases, not only more populous, but also often had the support of powerful political forces, and were ready to defend their beliefs with a vigour which rarely characterised the much more defenceless Jews. As we will see, at least in certain respects, religious pluralism made it easier for Jews to find places of safety than had previously been the case. Moreover, the lengthy wars provoked by these theological disputes had a further indirect consequence: Jews might contribute to the economies of cash-strapped states, for instance through their trade or as financiers. Of course, it is important to acknowledge that religious, let alone specifically theological, considerations were far from being the only factors in play, and they were certainly not always the most significant. As we will see, for instance, there were numerous occasions when the political authorities rejected the advice that they received from Protestant reformers or the injunctions of the Catholic Church. Economic necessity and political pragmatism were often in tension with more explicitly spiritual concerns, and rulers needed to find a balance between these competing objectives which served their political needs, satisfied their conscience, and maintained the support of the people over whom they ruled. But it is an underlying contention of this volume that while these economic and political factors have been fully considered, religious factors have tended to be passed over rather too rapidly, apparently on the assumption that religion was not a serious motivating force even by the end of the sixteenth century. Indeed, much recent scholarship has demonstrated that even if religious division did cast doubt on absolute religious truth, this did not necessarily manifest itself in a significantly diminished attachment to religion.25 More than that, though, we need to challenge some of the grounds on which this assumption has been based. Especially at the start of the Reformation era, the distinction between religion and politics, which can seem almost a given to us in the twenty-first xix

INTRODUCTION century, was hardly meaningful. As a number of scholars have recently demonstrated, shared ideas about the body politic were fundamental to the working of early modern societies, as was the notion that for a political entity to operate successfully, it needed to be free from harmful spiritual influences.26 Such ideas lay behind the zealotry with which groups that were perceived to threaten that unity – such as heretics, witches, Muslims and Jews – were often treated. The religious pluralism of the Reformation era had serious implications for notions of religious and political unity, and undoubtedly contributed to the emergence of scepticism and doubt; but it would be simplistic to imagine that this was a swift or straightforward transformation. Indeed, especially in the short term, the divisions of the Reformation only served to heighten such tensions. This study seeks to integrate intellectual and theological approaches with social and cultural ones. While it is perhaps most straightforward to establish the positions adopted by the respective Christian churches – through an examination of the relevant writings of key reformers, and the decisions taken by popes and church councils, for instance – we should recall that these were often little more than theoretical statements. It is equally necessary to ascertain as much as possible the consequences of such views, both in terms of their impact on secular policies and also their implementation at the local level. In addition, we will seek to understand the nature of Jewish-Christian interactions in Catholic and Protestant locations, ranging from the anxieties which could attend such encounters through to forms of interaction, collaboration and identification. This will necessarily be impressionistic, given both the broad geographical and chronological canvas, and because we remain highly reliant on those sources which have survived; but it is certainly possible to identify particular patterns and tendencies. To that end, this volume aims to draw together a range of themes which are often treated separately. It is the contention here, however, that it is necessary to consider the various dimensions of Christian thinking about Jews in the Reformation era, and the different ways in which these shed light on Judaeo-Christian relations, alongside each other. While these were in some ways complementary, they could also be somewhat contradictory: how these were reconciled, and the often ambivalent consequences, in fact help us better to understand this multi-layered issue. These include attitudes towards the Jews, in the past, present and future; views regarding the Hebrew language and Jewish learning and traditions more broadly; and also the ways in which Christian thinking about these themes in turn sheds light on the Reformation and its priorities. Christians in the Reformation were concerned with the Jews as a group of people. Most immediately this meant how they dealt with those Jews who lived among them: should they be tolerated, persecuted, or removed entirely? In the late fifteenth and xx

INTRODUCTION early sixteenth centuries, there was a new wave of expulsions. The most famous of these, largely because of the number of people involved, were from Spain and Portugal in the 1490s, but there were many others around the same time, from territories in Italy, the Holy Roman Empire and elsewhere. The reasons behind these expulsions were complex, but it is clear that at least in part they drew on the same late medieval currents of reform, and concerns with religious purity, which provided the context for both Protestant and Catholic Reformations. As the sixteenth century progressed, religious and secular leaders had to decide whether to allow Jews to reside within their borders, and if so, how – and how much – to moderate their presence. Likewise, the authorities had to determine how they would ensure that converts from Judaism adhered to the requirements of the religion to which they had attached themselves. As we will see, ideas on these questions shifted over time, as the Reformation progressed. This is interlinked with the important broader theme of toleration. It is tempting, particularly in the twenty-first century where we are inclined to make moral judgements on matters such as toleration of other religions, to seek to place the different confessions in some kind of ranked order. But of course these confessions were not monolithic. To give only the most obvious example: various leading Lutherans evidently did not share the sentiments that Luther expressed in his most anti-Jewish writings of 1543. Reformation attitudes towards the Jews were a product of the particular circumstances in which individual reformers found themselves, their shared Christian inheritance, and their particular theological outlook. Even if we could say, for instance, that the Reformed churches were more sympathetic to the Jews than the Lutherans, it is much more important to appreciate the many elements to their thinking with regards to the Jews, and the various contradictions which these often reflected. Importantly, moreover, in Christian thinking, contemporary Jews were frequently linked with Jews of the past, and Jews of the future. The former had once held a special place in God’s eyes: they had been His chosen people and had enjoyed a Covenant with Him. Christians believed they had now replaced the Jews in this regard, though the divisions within Christianity, provoked by the Reformation, significantly complicated matters: it was surely not possible for more than one of the Christian confessions to be God’s chosen people. On the other hand, Jews were generally held to be responsible for the execution of Christ, and their descendants felt to harbour malice towards Christianity and still to bear responsibility for this act. The growing awareness of the difference between the Jews of the Bible and their successors added a further dimension to this relationship: Christians frequently criticised their Jewish contemporaries for failing to live up to that model. xxi

INTRODUCTION As for the Jews of the future, in millenarian thought, it was generally believed that Jews would convert to Christianity as one of the signs of the ‘Last Days’. A key element of Paul’s Epistle to the Romans was its discussion of Jews and Israel in relation to salvation (Rom. 9–11): in the context of this discussion it was noted that ‘all Israel will be saved’ (Rom. 11.26). Meanwhile in the Revelation of Saint John, it is noted that 144,000 Jews (12,000 each from the twelve tribes of Israel), ‘marked with God’s seal on their foreheads’, would convert (Rev. 7.3–8). But views varied about how likely this was, given their difference from the ancient Jews, and if so how many might convert, in what context, and whether or not they would be restored to Israel. In the Reformation era, these theological concerns relating to the history of the church, and its eschatological future, took on considerable significance with regard to how this religious minority was to be treated in the present day. Alongside these considerations of the Jews as a people, this study also seeks to bring to a more central position the Reformation engagement with the language and learning of the Jews. Though initial steps had been undertaken in the Renaissance, it was only in the sixteenth century that these fields flourished. Substantial efforts were directed to learning not only Hebrew, but also a range of other ancient Semitic languages, and also to contemporary Jewish languages, most notably Yiddish. This activity both facilitated interaction with Jews and Jewish scholars (indeed, Jews and Jewish converts frequently played an important role in providing instruction in these languages in the first place), and also helped advance the Christian study of Jewish materials. Furthermore, scholars were increasingly interested in various forms of Jewish learning, that extended beyond the linguistic and philological; rabbinic exegetical traditions could help Christians better understand the foundations of their religion, not just the experiences of the Israelites of the Old Testament, but also those of Jesus and his early followers in the New. For too long, these have been regarded as esoteric activities, of interest to only a handful of scholars. While it is certainly the case that the number of people who were able to work with Hebrew texts with genuine expertise remained small, engagement with such materials was much more widespread than has generally been appreciated. In this regard, the traditional, if often implicit, distinction between ‘scholars’ and ‘reformers’ is not especially helpful: almost all of the front-line reformers had some familiarity with Hebrew, and some were clearly well-informed about Jewish interpretations, and drew on these or sought to counter them in their own exegeses. Not only that, but this Hebrew scholarship created ripples which were felt much more widely through the Reformation world. Sermons, polemics, commentaries and other writings drew on translations of the Bible, whether in Latin or the vernacular, which xxii

INTRODUCTION themselves had been made from the Hebrew by authors familiar with Jewish lines of interpretation. In this way, this Jewish scholarship permeated, often in quite subtle ways, the religious culture of the entire period. Furthermore, that engagement with Hebrew and Jewish learning also fed into competing claims to truth and authenticity which were at the centre of the confessional conflicts of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Living and believing in a way that aligned with the early church had of course been an aspiration of Christianity in the Middle Ages, but in the Reformation, particularly with its emphasis on sola scriptura (‘by Scripture alone’), this idea was given a new impetus: the nascent Protestant churches sought to demonstrate their superiority over the traditional church through what they believed was greater conformity with that ancient model. Catholicism, meanwhile, which felt that it had remained true to those ancient strictures, found it difficult to avoid participating in this particular arms race: in an age of confessional polemic and religious dispute, it was necessary for each branch of Christianity to bolster its own claims to legitimacy by every means possible. To that end, and building on the Christian humanism of the Renaissance, scholars and reformers paid great attention to the Bible, increasingly in its original languages of Hebrew and Greek, and to other writings which had been produced in the same context, as a means of coming to a better understanding of that milieu. In this regard, biblical scholarship was almost weaponised: the best understanding of the Bible was fundamental to the churches’ rival claims to the truth. Knowledge of Hebrew, and familiarity with Jewish and rabbinic texts, contributed to this endeavour. This was not without its risks, however. Hebrew study could easily prompt accusations of ‘Judaising’. This was a rather loose concept, but could refer to the continuing practice of Judaism by those who had converted to Christianity, efforts made to convert others to Judaism, through to undue sympathy to Jewish lines of interpretation. Allegations of the last of these, in particular, peppered religious debates of the period, and indeed were sometimes even used by participants on both sides of a given encounter.27 Nonetheless, and despite these risks, it also encouraged collaboration with Jews and a readiness to engage with Jewish ideas and traditions. This book argues, finally, that the relationship with Jews and Judaism was fundamental to the Reformation. Both the Catholic and the various Protestant churches underwent a sustained process of self-reflection and self-examination, with a view to bolstering the conviction of each one that it was the most authentic and holy church in existence. In this process, the Jews were a critical point of reference. It was necessary to negotiate very carefully a balance between competing forces. On the one hand the xxiii

INTRODUCTION different groups sought to establish their proximity to the Jews of the Old Testament, and to position themselves as their rightful successors; to that end, Jewish, and especially biblical, cultural norms provided a series of touchstones for the Christian confessions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. On the other, it was the contention of each of these confessions that they had replaced the Jews, and so at the same time they sought to emphasise the ways in which they differed from Judaism. Responses to these factors were important for developing the sense of identity of these churches, but also, potentially, of winning (or winning back) adherents. While this volume does not argue that the Reformation marked a turning point per se – as Reformation historians rather simplistically once did – it will suggest that this was nonetheless a critical moment for Judaeo-Christian relations. It caused the members of every Christian confession to consider afresh the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, and it gave a new significance to a series of questions which stemmed from this. In the short term especially, this arguably exacerbated the tensions between the two. Christians came to understand even more fully the differences between the Jews they read about in the Old Testament, and those they might encounter in daily life. The Reformation also placed greater emphasis on establishing and maintaining the religious purity of a community, while breathing new life into apocalyptic and millenarian thought: all of this could easily lead to extra scrutiny of, and pressure on, the Jews. In the longer term, however, there were some more positive aspects. Jewish learning was not without its perceived dangers, and was much more commonly used as a handmaiden for Christian purposes rather than engaged in for its own sake, but it did nonetheless have a role in the Christian endeavour, which gave it value. At the same time, the concomitant efforts to better understand Jewish life and practice did, at the very least, help somewhat to demystify the Jews. Indeed, the cultural, theological and intellectual reinterpretation of the Jews and Judaism which the Reformation encouraged arguably helped pave the way for their readmission to certain areas from which they had been expelled, a process which gathered momentum through the seventeenth century. In the Reformation, Christians attempted to resolve a set of seemingly timeless questions: how to regard and treat Jews who, sometimes at least, lived among them; whether they should be left to their own devices, face expulsion, or whether attempts should be made to bring them over to Christianity; to what extent should their language, and their linguistic and exegetical skills be drawn upon; how could one ensure that one’s religion was as authentic as possible; how certain could one be that one was a member of the faith that had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people. These questions xxiv

INTRODUCTION have often been treated separately but they were all interrelated. Moreover, it is only with a perspective which acknowledges both the similarities and differences between the Christian confessions, and that takes a long view, that we can properly attempt to offer answers to these questions. But it is important that the attempt is made, so that we can come to a better understanding of the priorities of both Catholics and Protestants in the early modern period, their attitudes to the most important religious minority, their nearest ally but also their longest-standing rival, and also their respective senses of self. Taken together, all of this should help us to come to a better understanding of this critical, but often somewhat neglected, aspect of the Reformation.

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R A CONTESTED INHERITANCE Judaeo-Christian Relations on the Eve of the Reformation

Sometime in 1515, Lupold Federfusius wrote to Ortwin Gratius, a member of the faculty of arts at the University of Cologne, about a ‘very subtle matter’ that had ‘come up in the quodlibeticals [a form of academic debate] at Erfurt between the faculties of theology and natural philosophy’, which he hoped his correspondent might help them resolve.1 According to the writer, the theologians were of the view that ‘when a Jew becomes a Christian, his foreskin, the part of his member that is cut off at birth according to the Jewish law, grows back’. The natural philosophers, by contrast, held that ‘a Jew who, when he was a Jew, lost a portion of his body, will not recover it when he is of the Christian faith’. All of this mattered, they felt, because it would establish whether a convert would appear physically like a Christian at the Last Judgement, which might in turn determine whether he would attain salvation. In order to resolve this quandary, Federfusius proposed that Gratius should ask ‘Herr Pfefferkorn’s wife’ whether or not her husband had a foreskin. Johann Pfefferkorn was a converted Jew, so his wife might have been able to resolve this query – had it been a serious one. But this letter was a satire, one of a collection known as the Letters of Obscure Men, written as a contribution to the debate about the value of Jewish learning which was currently being waged across Europe, in which Pfefferkorn was a key figure.2 Pfefferkorn, the nephew of a distinguished rabbi, had converted from Judaism to Christianity in 1504, at the age of about thirty-five.3 Like many other converts of the era, he sought to prove his commitment to his new faith by turning against his former co-religionists. Between 1507 and 1521, with the support of the Dominicans of Cologne, Pfefferkorn wrote more than a dozen anti-Jewish pamphlets, in German and Latin.4 In the earliest of these, The Mirror of the Jews, Pfefferkorn assured his readers that he was writing in the best interests of his ‘dear brethren’, whom he pitied ‘because the devil has made you so blind and obstinate that you refuse to listen to the Holy Scripture or anything else’. He hoped to ‘move [their] hearts of stone’ and bring them ‘to the light of eternal salvation’.5 1

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION This was not especially likely, however, as Pfefferkorn’s pamphlets were typically characterised by a combination of accusation and insult. In one section of The Confession of the Jews (1508), for instance, he set out the rite of confession which he claimed was undertaken by ‘the blind Jews’, arguing that he did so ‘that they may be mocked and reproved for this custom and perhaps abandon their errors on account of this ridicule, and be moved to turn to the light of the Christian faith’.6 At the same time, he sought to portray Judaism as a threat to Christianity. He repeatedly asserted that Jews prayed for the destruction of Christendom, and catalogued the insults he claimed they made about Jesus, Mary, the cross, and the clergy.7 He also insisted that through their moneylending and deceitfulness they undermined the Christian society in which they lived.8 He therefore advised the authorities to stop protecting their Jewish populations: instead, Jews should be made to attend Christian sermons, and to undertake manual labour.9 Conversion was to be encouraged, and those who converted genuinely (he was presumably at least in part thinking of himself here) should be treated with respect.10 Most significant, though, was Pfefferkorn’s recommendation that the Jews’ books should be confiscated and destroyed, on the grounds that they were ‘full of lies about Christ, Mary . . . and the whole heavenly host’, and so hindered Jewish conversion.11 He managed to persuade Maximilian I, the Holy Roman Emperor, of this need, and in August 1509 the emperor issued a decree approving this course of action. Immediately, Pfefferkorn began seizing books from Jewish communities in the Rhineland, including those of Frankfurt, Mainz and Worms: in 1516 he would claim to have seized 1,500.12 The archbishop of Mainz, however, regarded this as a challenge to his authority, and requested that due process be followed. In response, Maximilian set up a commission, chaired by the archbishop, to reconsider the matter. The universities of Mainz, Heidelberg, Cologne and Erfurt were asked for their views, as were three scholars with expertise in this area.13 Johann Reuchlin, a distinguished jurist and Hebraist, was the only one not to endorse the policy. Pfefferkorn would subsequently allege that Reuchlin had only adopted this position because he had been bribed by Jews.14 Reuchlin sought to justify his stance with a treatise of his own, the Eye Mirror (1511). Referring throughout to Pfefferkorn as ‘the baptised Jew’ (even this ‘defender of the Jews’ was not above exploiting anti-Jewish language to score cheap points), Reuchlin elaborated his position with systematic precision. He set out, for example, the four main grounds on which some argued that Jewish books should be destroyed, followed by six reasons why they should not.15 Turning to Jewish books, Reuchlin divided these into seven categories – Scripture, the Talmud, the Kabbalah, biblical 2

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE commentaries, disputations, philosophical works and works of fiction – and suggested that ‘only very few will be found to contain mockery, slander, or blasphemy’ against Christianity. Indeed, he claimed to know of only two works that did so: the Sefer Nizzahon and Toledot Yeshu.16 Though he admitted his knowledge of the Talmud was limited, and conceded that it did contain errors, he argued that it should not be burnt or suppressed, because ‘it has much that is admirable’.17 He justified the use of several other, less contentious, genres on similar grounds. Conversely, he then provided an array of reasons why it would be unwise to burn these books. These included that they might be useful in the future; that suppression would only encourage Jewish interest in them; that it would be futile to destroy them in German lands if they continued to exist elsewhere; and, above all, that this was forbidden by canon law.18 Although Reuchlin’s intervention had persuaded the emperor to reverse his position, the matter was far from closed. Pfefferkorn and the Dominicans continued to lobby against Reuchlin, finally winning papal condemnation of his Eye Mirror in 1520.19 In the meantime, though, Reuchlin’s defence of Hebrew scholarship had become a cause célèbre. In 1514, a selection of letters written by his humanist supporters were published as the Letters of Famous Men.20 The companion volume, the Letters of Obscure Men, also written by his supporters, but mocking his opponents, was published the following year. By this point, the debate had become a much broader one, pitting the value of the old learning against the new.21 Nevertheless, it is highly significant that all of this had been provoked by discussions about the value of Hebrew learning, and that this had come to the fore only three years before Luther embarked on his challenge against the Catholic Church. Among the issues of greatest significance were the contested value of Jewish books, the role and status of Jews in Christian society, and the nature of the relationship between the two. Defending Jewish books, let alone the Jews themselves, was a potentially dangerous activity, but some people were ready to do this; many others, though, still had to decide where they stood on these matters. This chapter seeks to establish the position that the Jews occupied in Christian thinking and society by the start of the Reformation era. The Reformation inherited a wide range of contradictory and ambivalent attitudes from the ancient and medieval periods. On the one hand, Jews were valued positively because they were God’s chosen people in the Old Testament, and potentially a means by which Christians could better understand the origins of their faith. On the other, in their refusal to accept Christ as Messiah, they sat outside the bounds of accepted behaviour. On both theological and economic grounds they enjoyed a privileged position in Christian society, but especially in the later Middle Ages, relations between Christians and Jews did worsen, and they 3

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION were increasingly the victims of popular animosity and official discrimination. An understanding of these various factors will allow us to appreciate the situation which confronted reformers at the start of the sixteenth century, as well as making it possible to evaluate the extent to which those reformers challenged, modified or accepted the views which they inherited. Theological Roots The relationship between Christianity and Judaism was ambiguous and ambivalent from the outset. Traditionally, scholars spoke of a ‘parting of the ways’, a model which implied that ‘Christianity’ broke away from a ‘Judaism’ that was already a coherent and clearly defined religion.22 The reality was rather more complicated. Jesus and his followers were, of course, Jews, even if it was sometimes convenient to overlook this fact. Initially, the leaders of this new group hoped that the rest of the Jewish population would come to recognise Jesus as the Messiah, whose arrival they believed had been foretold. When that did not happen, they sought to distinguish this movement – ‘Christianity’ – more clearly. In so doing, they also contributed to the construction of Judaism as a religion. Rather than a swift separation, moreover, this was a process which took place over a couple of centuries or more.23 Nonetheless, it is important to recognise that the early development of Christianity occurred, at least in part, in opposition to Judaism: indeed, in order to justify its existence it was necessary to assert its superiority over that faith. This was at the core of the doctrine of ‘supersessionism’, a view which was first elaborated by the apostle Paul.24 According to this view, the Christians had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people, because they had recognised Christ as the Messiah; the Jews, by contrast, blindly continued to adhere to their former beliefs, and in so doing disqualified themselves from salvation. As a consequence, it has at times been asserted that antiJudaism was inherent to Christianity from the outset, though many others have rejected this provocative point of view.25 Immediately at issue was the relative status of the Hebrew Scriptures. In Judaism these were supplemented in due course by the Talmud (‘learning’), which itself consisted of two main parts: the Mishnah (‘repetition’), composed in around 200 ce, a written compendium of Judaism’s oral Torah (‘teaching’), and the Gemara (‘study’), edited about 300 years later, which elaborated on the Mishnah and other writings. In Christianity, meanwhile, the Hebrew Scriptures came to be described as the ‘Old Testament’ to which was then added a ‘New Testament’. The shared significance of the Old Testament for the two faiths was consequently both a reason for mutual 4

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE sympathy (both groups were part of a Judaeo-Christian tradition) and potential hostility (given that they disagreed fundamentally over how elements of it should be interpreted). The New Testament was one of the first locations in which these tensions were manifested. Here we should recall the context in which its books were written. While the Epistles of Saint Paul are generally thought to have been written in the 50s and 60s, the Gospels of Mark, Matthew and Luke were written in the following decade, while John wrote his Gospel around the end of the century. Importantly, this means not only that the Gospels were written substantially after the events that they purported to describe (by which time few of the protagonists would still have been alive), but also that they were, in the main, written after the fall of the Temple in Jerusalem to the Romans in 70 ce. The Christians were especially keen by this point to distance themselves from a group which had come to be regarded as a thorn in the imperial side. These considerations undoubtedly had a role in shaping the tenor of the New Testament. On the one hand, there were clear elements of continuity with the Old Testament. In many ways, the apostles continued to live and act as Jews. For instance, Paul had Timothy circumcised (Acts 16.3), adhered to the Jewish custom of shaving his head to indicate that he had kept a vow (Acts 18.18), and later participated in a ceremony of purification with Jews in order to demonstrate that he ‘live[d] in accordance with the Law of Moses’ (Acts 21.20–26). Peter professed his reluctance to eat anything ritually unclean, despite divine encouragement to ignore the Old Testament injunction against this (Acts 10.9–16), while the apostles similarly urged the Gentiles to observe the following rules: ‘eat no food that has been offered to idols; eat no blood; eat no animal that has been strangled; and keep yourselves from sexual immorality’ (Acts 15.29). Jesus was even more explicit. In Matthew’s Gospel, for example, he said: ‘Do not think that I have come to do away with the Law of Moses and the teachings of the prophets. I have not come to do away with them, but to make their teachings come true’ (Matt. 5.17–19). Christ here presented himself as the culmination or fruition of the law, rather than its replacement. On the other hand, the separation between the Jews and the nascent Christianity was repeatedly underlined. This was apparent, for instance, in discussions about the respective Covenants. The idea of a Covenant was central to the Old Testament. God made a Covenant with Noah before the Flood (Gen. 6.18) and sent him a rainbow as a sign of his everlasting promise (Gen. 9.8–17). This was renewed with Abraham, when the land of Israel was marked out, and promised to his descendants (Gen. 15.18–21); circumcision became the marker of the continuing human commitment to this Covenant 5

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION (Gen. 17.10–14). However, in the New Testament Paul argued that a new Covenant, agreed with Christ, had now replaced the old one (e.g. Gal. 3–4, Heb. 8.6–13), and that Mosaic Law therefore no longer applied to Christians. Christians consequently attacked Jews for their continuing adherence to the old law. This distancing was also evident in the way that relations between the two faiths were expressed. Strikingly, while the expression ‘the Jews’ (a term which implied that they were regarded as a distinct ‘other’) appears only sixteen times in the Gospels of Matthew, Mark and Luke combined, it was used in John’s Gospel, the last to be written, seventy-one times.26 Nowhere was this distancing more apparent than in relation to the crucifixion. In the Gospels, considerable efforts were made to exculpate the Romans for Christ’s execution, despite the fact that it was at their hands that he died. In John’s Gospel, Pontius Pilate says on three separate occasions that he can find no reason to kill Jesus (John 18.38, 19.4, 19.6), while in similar fashion Luke records that Pilate asked on three occasions what crime Jesus had committed, as he could see none (Luke 23.13–24). Instead, responsibility is placed squarely on the shoulders of ‘the Jews’. This is most evident in Matthew’s account. Not only does he record that Pilate’s wife came to believe in Jesus’s innocence through a dream (Matt. 27.19), but, in perhaps the most famous scene, Pilate washed his hands in front of the crowd, symbolically detaching himself from the decision, whereupon, ‘The whole crowd answered “Let the responsibility for his death fall on us and our children!” ’ (Matt. 27.24–5). Leaving aside the sheer implausibility of such a scenario, this episode would have a huge impact on future relations between the two faiths. The charge of deicide was first made explicitly in the second century by Bishop Melito of Sardis, in a homily on the Passover: discussing the crucifixion, for instance, he commented: ‘And where has he been murdered? In the middle of Jerusalem. By whom? By Israel’.27 The accusation that Jews were ‘Christ-killers’ was of fundamental importance, and arguably lay at the root of anti-Jewish sentiment, both in this period and subsequently.28 Moreover, in keeping with the line from Matthew’s Gospel, it was repeatedly stressed that this was a timeless animosity which passed down through the generations. This sense of separation was further emphasised by a literary genre which emerged in the patristic period, known as Adversus Judaeos or Contra Judaeos, in which Christian authors wrote against Jews and Judaism.29 One of the earliest examples was written by the Greek church father, Justin Martyr, in the middle of the second century. It took the form of a dialogue, conducted over two days, between Justin and a Jew called Trypho.30 Their discussion remains courteous, and the pair part on amicable terms, but Trypho is essentially a cipher, and the text seeks to convey several key arguments: Christians 6

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE understand the Bible correctly, Jesus is the Messiah, and Christianity has superseded Judaism.31 Similar arguments were put forward by Tertullian, a Latin church father, in his Against the Jews, written early in the third century.32 This work was also supposedly the product of a debate between a Christian and a Jew. That one was conducted in a rather more fractious atmosphere, so, Tertullian claims, he decided ‘to settle the questions that have been reconsidered in writing, after a more careful examination of the texts’.33 In particular, he sought to prove that the Christians had replaced the Jews as God’s chosen people, and identified various passages from the Old Testament which, he contended, confirmed that Jesus was indeed the Messiah. The best known example of this genre was written in the fourth century by John Chrysostom, bishop of Constantinople. Only six months after his ordination to the priesthood he delivered a series of eight sermons in his native Antioch which have been described as ‘the most horrible and violent denunciations of Judaism to be found in the writings of a Christian theologian’.34 Yet, while he does repeatedly berate the ‘pitiable and miserable’ Jews, condemning them for ‘their plundering, their covetousness, their abandonment of the poor, their thefts, their cheating in trade’ and so on, John’s real anger was directed at the Christians in his congregation.35 As he explained in his sermons, he was aware that some of them had been attending the synagogue, and participating in Jewish ceremonies, including their fasts, and perhaps even circumcision.36 What was worse, they appeared not to realise that such activities were incompatible with their Christianity. As he noted in his fourth sermon, for instance: ‘I blame the Jews for violating the Law. But I blame you much more for going along with the lawbreakers, not only those of you who run to the synagogues but also those of you who have the power to stop the Judaizers but are unwilling to do so.’37 A contribution of a rather different character to the discussion of Judaeo-Christian relations was made by John Chrysostom’s contemporary, the Latin church father and prolific writer, Augustine, Bishop of Hippo. Augustine’s most important statement on the Jews came in his most famous work, the City of God. Having discussed how the prophecies in Kings and Psalms should be understood as relating to Christ, he turned to consider more fully the Jews, who rejected those prophecies. He took as his starting point a line from Psalm 59 which read: ‘Do not kill them, O God, or my people may forget. Scatter them by your strength and defeat them, O Lord, our protector’ (Psa. 59.11). Augustine used this as an opportunity to reflect on the status of the Jews who, having rejected Jesus, had been punished by being evicted from Jerusalem and had been dispersed, but whom Christians were nonetheless enjoined not to kill. He wrote: 7

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION And this is the reason for his forbearing to slay them – that is for not putting an end to their existence as Jews, although they have been conquered and oppressed by the Romans; it is for fear that they should forget the Law of God and thus fail to bear convincing witness on the point I am now dealing with. Thus it was not enough for the psalmist to say, ‘Do not slay them, lest at some time they forget your Law’, without adding, ‘Scatter them.’ For if they lived with that testimony of the Scriptures only in their own land, and not everywhere, the obvious result would be that the Church, which is everywhere, would not have them available among all nations as witnesses to the prophecies which were given beforehand concerning Christ.38

For Augustine, Jews thus occupied a position of great importance. They had ensured the survival of the Scriptures at a crucial time; indeed, their dispersal following the fall of Jerusalem had meant that these Scriptures had been widely disseminated. In addition, as elaborated on in the passage above, the Jews served as witnesses to the prophecies of the Old Testament. They had been rightfully punished, Augustine believed, for their failure to recognise Jesus as the Messiah; as a consequence, they served as living reminders for Christians of what would happen if they also failed to follow God’s word. For these reasons, Jews should be allowed to survive, and to practise their own religion; they should not be forced to convert, however, as this would happen in the Last Days. At the same time, though, and to ensure that they fulfilled their admonitory role effectively, they should be kept in a subjugated position. Augustine’s attitudes thus constituted something of a double-edged sword. While his stance was more benign than many other church fathers, his doctrine of ‘Jewish witness’ reinforced the idea that Jews deserved subjugation: as a result, their position as second-class citizens would go largely unchallenged for more than 1,000 years.39 In the first instance, we can see Augustine’s influence in the church’s official teachings on the Jews, as reflected particularly in papal policy. Gregory the Great (r. 590–604) was the first pope to express the view that the papacy should protect the Jews. He was also the first to use the phrase that would come to identify subsequent papal policy, Sicut Judaeis (‘And so to the Jews’). A papal bull with this name was first issued by Pope Calixtus II in around 1120, though the earliest surviving version of it was issued by Alexander III, about half a century later. This soon became an established part of papal policy, and was reiterated at regular intervals.40 The strong and direct influence of Augustine on this policy can be seen, for instance, in the new introduction with which Innocent III opened his bull of 1199: 8

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE Although in many ways the disbelief of the Jews must be reproved, since nevertheless through them our own faith is truly proved, they must not be opposed grievously by the faithful, as the prophet says: ‘Do not slay them, lest these be forgetful of Thy Law’, as if he were saying more openly: ‘Do not wipe out the Jews completely, lest perhaps Christians might be able to forget Thy Law, which the former, although not understanding it, present in their books to those who do understand it.’41

This was in large measure a summary of Augustine’s position, as outlined above. As in previous iterations, the bull went on to threaten excommunication to any Christians who forced Jews to convert (though voluntary conversion was encouraged), caused them harm, took their property, prevented them from celebrating their religious festivals, or harmed their cemeteries. A further important step taken by the church in its treatment of the Jews came with the Fourth Lateran Council, convened by Pope Innocent III in 1215, the last four canons of which pertained to the Jews.42 Canon 67 was concerned with usury and was intended to prevent Jews from harming Christians by charging ‘oppressive and excessive interest’. It is worth noting that Jewish moneylending itself was not outlawed; the issue at stake was the amount of interest charged. In the next canon it was acknowledged that it was not always easy to identify Jews, as a result of which ‘it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians join with Jewish . . . women, and Jews . . . with Christian women’. Consequently, Jews were instructed to ensure that whenever they went out in public, they should be easily identifiable by ‘the character of their dress’. Sometimes this took the form of a particular item of clothing, but more common was the requirement that a piece of coloured material should be attached to their clothes.43 Insisting that it would be ‘too absurd for a blasphemer of Christ to exercise power over Christians’, it was asserted in canon 69 that Jews should not hold public office. Finally, canon 70 addressed concerns about those converts who had only partially embraced Christianity: every effort was to be made to prevent them from returning to their original faith, including the use of force if necessary. None of these injunctions was unprecedented, but this council did still herald a new phase in Judaeo-Christian relations. Not only was this the first attempt to deal with Jewish matters in a more systematic fashion, but also considerably greater effort was made to enforce these policies. Indeed, it should be seen as part of a broader effort by the Catholic Church to impose tighter control over Christendom, and those elements which threatened its unity.44 On either side of the council, papal approval was given for 9

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the creation of two new religious orders – the Franciscans, in 1209, and the Dominicans, in 1216 – both of which consciously took a more active role in the world, effectively waging an internal crusade against those whom they deemed opponents of the church. This was then followed in 1229 by the establishment of the Inquisition, in which members of these new orders would play leading roles.45 These new orders were particularly concerned with the Jews.46 Their activity took several main forms. First, several mendicants contributed works to the Adversus Judaeos tradition. These had continued to be written during the Middle Ages: notable examples included Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews, written by the Benedictine Peter the Venerable, and the Dialogue Against the Jews, penned by the Jewish convert Petrus Alfonsi, both of which appeared early in the twelfth century.47 But the new orders added considerably to the genre. Perhaps the most remarkable contribution was the Pugio fidei (‘Dagger of Faith’), compiled by the Spanish Dominican Raymond Martini, and completed in 1278.48 This was a 1,000-page volume which drew on ‘those books of the Old Testament which the Jews accept and even from the Talmud and the rest of their writings’, including those written by various rabbis, all of which were quoted in the original, in order to provide arguments in support of Christian ideas, and to anticipate Jewish responses, so that it could be used ‘like a dagger for preachers and guardians of the Christian faith’.49 Second, members of these orders were very active in delivering sermons (indeed, the Dominicans were also known as the Order of Preachers). Pablo Cristiani and Ramon Lull in the thirteenth century, and Vincent Ferrer in the fourteenth, were among those who led sermon campaigns against the Jews in Spain. Over time this can only have helped to instil and develop animosity towards Jews among the Christian population.50 In addition, there was growing secular support for conversionary sermons which Jews were obliged to attend.51 Third, members of these orders often played leading roles in a series of disputations between representatives of Judaism and Christianity which took place in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries.52 In 1236, Nicholas Donin, a recently converted Jew from La Rochelle, had presented Pope Gregory IX with a list of thirty-five articles, in which he claimed that Jews favoured the Talmud over the Torah, that their writings contained numerous blasphemies against Christ and the Virgin Mary, and that Jews were encouraged to deceive and inflict harm upon their Christian neighbours.53 Gregory called for these accusations to be investigated further. At the Disputation of Paris of 1240, Donin’s claims were accepted; two years later, following papal encouragement, twenty-four cartloads of copies of the Talmud were burnt in France.54 Further major 10

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE disputations were held in Barcelona in 1263, and Tortosa in 1413–14. The last of these, which was overseen by Pope Benedict XIII (one of three rival popes during the schism), involved sixty-nine sessions which took place over a period of twenty-one months; the Christian account of this encounter was 600 pages in length.55 In its wake, a substantial number of Jews converted to Christianity. More likely this was a response to the increasingly precarious position in which they found themselves, rather than a genuine change of heart. Jews in Christian Society By the end of the Middle Ages, Jews were a well-established presence in western Europe, widely, if not evenly, dispersed through Christendom. But this had not always been the case. From their traditional centres of Palestine and Mesopotamia, Jews had gradually moved west during the first half of the medieval period, establishing communities all around the Mediterranean, in Asia Minor, north Africa, Italy, southern France and Spain. This development was closely linked with the expansion of Islam from the seventh century. Indeed, in the wake of that expansion, perhaps 80 per cent of Jews lived under Muslim rule; most of the remainder were in the declining Byzantine Empire, while relatively few lived in Christian areas.56 Towards the end of the first millennium, however, this situation began to change. Christendom underwent a period of rapid transformation, involving among other things a significant population increase, greater urbanisation and the emergence of a money economy. This in turn provided opportunities for Jews who started to live under Christian rule in greater numbers. This was often actively encouraged by the Christian rulers themselves who saw in the Jews a means of enhancing the territories under their control. Bishop Rudiger of Speyer, for instance, invited the Jews of Mainz (where there had recently been a fire) to his city in 1084, noting that ‘When I wished to make a city out of the village of Speyer, I . . . thought that the glory of our town would be augmented a thousand-fold if I were to bring Jews’.57 This led to the creation of a series of Jewish communities in northern Europe, with particular centres in northern France (e.g. Troyes and Sens) and in Germany along the Rhine (notably Speyer, Worms and Mainz). Especially in the early stages, when the Jewish communities were both relatively new and small, they seem to have been accepted without too much difficulty. Over time, however, tensions could sometimes arise. Part of this stemmed from resentment at the privileged place in society which they occupied. In England, Spain and the Holy Roman Empire, Jews lived under the direct protection of the Christian kings, while in 11

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION many territories they were often awarded specific privileges.58 Jews were frequently permitted to settle in the most desirable central parts of towns, so they could conduct their business more easily, but this meant they were a highly visible presence while their place of worship was very close to the church at the heart of the Christian community. As non-Christians, moreover, Jews were not subject to the influence of the local clergy. This situation was compounded when the rulers chose to exempt them from the demands – such as the badge of identification – required by the church. The roles which Jews held in these communities could also be problematic. In fact, Jews are known to have occupied a vast range of occupations in medieval society, but they became particularly associated with two, both of which were potential sources of tension. First, Jews frequently became doctors. There was a fairly widespread belief that Jewish doctors took an oath to kill a certain proportion of their Christian patients, whether by poisoning them, or through some form of maleficent magic.59 Given the limited success of any doctors in this period, it was almost inevitable that a number of their patients would die, which made this a difficult accusation to disprove. Rulers often issued instructions against consulting Jewish doctors, though it is striking that many of them still employed Jews as their own personal physicians. Second, Jews frequently acted as moneylenders and tax-collectors. Indeed, it was often in order to fulfil this role that Jews were invited into a territory in the first place. Not only did they have particular expertise in this area, but this also provided a means of circumventing the biblical injunction against lending money at interest to one’s brother (Deut. 23.19–20), thereby facilitating the economic transformation of the later Middle Ages. At the same time, though, this was a position to some extent imposed upon the Jews. They were generally excluded from guild membership, and not allowed to own land, which meant that many occupations were barred to them. But in holding these roles there was a good chance they would provoke resentment. As tax-collectors, they embodied the demands made on its citizens by the state. As moneylenders, they would often end up holding as surety the valuable possessions of their Christian customers, whose financial difficulties were exacerbated by their indebtedness to their Jewish neighbours. Animosity was not inevitable, however: in the early fourteenth century, a Jewish moneylender in Marseille was able to call upon twenty-four Christian witnesses in a court case to demonstrate the high esteem that he enjoyed in the town.60 Nonetheless, there always remained the risk that a ruler might turn against his Jews, as a means of placating his Christian population. One of the early indications of growing tensions between Christians and Jews occurred during the Crusades, which were launched by Pope Urban II in 1095, in an 12

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE effort to regain the Holy Land from the Muslims who had occupied Jerusalem since the seventh century. While the target of the Crusaders were the Muslims in the Middle East, the Jews of western Europe constituted an altogether more accessible ‘infidel’, who essentially became collateral damage in that other conflict.61 During the spring and summer of 1096, disorganised Christian armies turned on local Jewish communities: those of Mainz, Worms – the two great intellectual centres of the Rhineland – and Cologne were all totally destroyed, with the death of perhaps 3,000 Jews. At the same time, it would be wrong to see this violence as typifying relations between the two faiths, or even necessarily marking a turning point in that relationship.62 As the accounts of these episodes written by Solomon bar Simson and Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan make clear, for example, Jews instinctively turned to their Christian neighbours for protection, and on occasion received it.63 Moreover, the later Crusades passed with far less violence directed against Jews. This was, at least in part, because of the interventions of leading churchmen, such as the abbot Bernard of Clairvaux who, despite his enthusiasm for the Crusades, and his readiness to express anti-Jewish sentiments in other contexts, recommended toleration of the Jews.64 In one letter written in 1146, for instance, he insisted that ‘the Jews are not to be persecuted, killed, or even put to flight’. Echoing Augustine, he went on to assert: ‘The Jews are for us the living words of Scripture, for they remind us of what our Lord suffered. They are dispersed all over the world so that by the suffering for their crime they may be everywhere the living witnesses of our redemption’.65 Yet, as the original violence had demonstrated, there were limits to the amount of control that the secular and religious authorities could enforce. Popular Attitudes Discerning what ordinary people thought about Jews in the Middle Ages is exceptionally difficult. The majority of the surviving evidence sheds light on the anxieties that Christians felt with regard to Jews, and the ways in which they sought to characterise, and indeed to demonise, the Jews who lived among them. But it is less easy to be sure how deeply felt, or how typical, these views were. If relations were generally amicable they were far less likely to make a significant mark on the historical record. It is certainly the case that a range of allegations against the Jews proliferated in the Middle Ages. The first of these was the accusation of ritual murder, also known as the blood libel. The earliest recorded instance of this accusation was made in England in the twelfth century.66 According to the monastic chronicler Thomas of Monmouth, the mutilated body of a young apprentice named William was found in woods outside Norwich, the day before Easter, 1144.67 While no witnesses came forward, William’s 13

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION uncle, a priest, came forward to ‘accuse the Jews, enemies of the Christian name, as guilty in this matter, spillers of innocent blood’.68 Thomas’s account was intended to substantiate that claim. This included the testimony of Theobald, a Jewish convert who was now a priest, who claimed that Jews believed they should kill a Christian annually to bring an end to their exile.69 By far the largest part of the account, however, consists of a record of all the miracles which were attributed to William.70 Before too long, other similar accusations were made, both in England and on the continent: more than 100 are known to have been made between the twelfth and sixteenth centuries.71 Perhaps the most famous of these occurred in Trent, the town in northern Italy which would subsequently host the great Church Council of the sixteenth century. Here, in 1475, again notably during Easter Week, the body of a Christian child, ‘Little Simon’, was discovered by a member of one of the town’s three Jewish families, in the waterways beneath their houses.72 Appreciating how this might look, the Jews immediately alerted the Christian authorities. But this was still not enough to save them from arrest and repeated torture, during the course of which their testimonies gradually came to match the model of events assumed by their captors: namely that they had tortured and killed the child in order to use his blood in a macabre religious ceremony.73 This interpretation of events was then consolidated by the many accounts which circulated in the aftermath.74 Some of these, moreover, presented the death as an echo of Christ’s crucifixion. According to the humanist and medical practitioner Giovanni Mattia Tiberino, for instance, the Jews supposedly said ‘Let us butcher this boy just like Jesus, the Christians’ God, who is nothing. Thus may our enemies be eternally confounded.’75 A second set of accusations concerned the desecration of the Host (that is, the consecrated bread used in Mass). The first known case occurred in Paris in 1290, though there may have been precedents on which it drew.76 Typically in these accusations a Jewish man would obtain a Host from a Christian woman, and seek to cause it harm, or indeed to destroy it. The Host would then display its supernatural qualities by producing signs which indicated that a crime was being perpetrated, and allowed it to be found. The person responsible would be caught and punished, while members of his family would frequently convert to Christianity. Again this accusation evoked aspects of the crucifixion, as the Jewish protagonist sought to inflict harm on Christ as embodied in the bread. It likely also reflected the growing importance attached to the doctrine of transubstantiation (according to which the bread and wine of the Mass were turned into the body and blood of Christ), which had only been affirmed at the Fourth Lateran Council in 1215.77 This was perhaps a rather perplexing metaphysical 14

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE belief, but by showing that Jews also accepted this – which was the only way to explain their apparent desire to cause the Host harm – the accusation may have helped to reinforce that doctrine. A third set of accusations related to the belief that Jews sought to cause physical harm to Christians. The belief that Jewish doctors sought to kill a number of their Christian patients has already been mentioned. In addition, Jews were frequently accused of seeking to poison Christians. For instance, in 1261 the City Councils of Vienna and Breslau forbade the purchase of meat from Jews on the grounds that it was likely to be poisoned.78 Accusations of poisoning wells were also common: examples included Bohemia (1163), Breslau (1226) and Vienna (1367).79 There was even a case in the south of France in 1321 where it was alleged that Jews conspired with lepers and Muslims, two other minority groups, to poison the water supplies and so to overthrow Christianity.80 That episode, in particular, serves to highlight the extent to which such accusations were a product of Christian existential anxieties, and paranoia about those who were regarded as different. The Black Death, which ravaged Europe in the mid-fourteenth century, killing between a third and a half of the population, prompted a further wave of accusations.81 The first cases of persecution took place in Provence, in the south of France, in the spring of 1348. In September, a group of Jews were accused of having poisoned the wells of Neustadt: the application of torture brought confessions which appeared to confirm an elaborate international conspiracy.82 As news spread, the repercussions were swift. Zurich immediately voted to banish its Jews, while in Basel the Jewish community was walled in and burnt alive.83 Through 1348 and 1349, perhaps as many as 350 massacres took place, and more than 200 Jewish communities were wiped out.84 Particularly striking was the case of Strasbourg, where close to 1,000 Jews were executed in February 1349, several weeks before the first cases of infection were reported.85 Certainly, many were ready to blame the Jews for this outbreak of plague. Herman Gigas, a Franciscan monk from Franconia in Germany, for instance, claimed that ‘God, the lord of vengeance, has not suffered the malice of the Jews to go unpunished’.86 On the other hand, while the authorities in Cologne also attributed the plague to ‘divine vengeance and nothing else’, they had yet to be persuaded that the Jews were culpable; instead, they expressed their intention ‘to forbid any harassment of the Jews in our city because of these flying rumours but to defend them faithfully and keep them safe, as our predecessors did’.87 Similarly, Pope Clement VI issued a bull in which he threatened to excommunicate anyone who harmed the Jews, noting that ‘the same plague, by the hidden judgement of God, has afflicted and afflicts the Jews themselves’.88 15

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Alongside these various accusations, a broader repertoire of ideas about the Jews had gradually accumulated, further contributing to their demonisation.89 Many of these found expression in the art and literature of the period. By the twelfth century, a stereotyped iconography for the Jew was well established: they were bearded, had hooked noses and bulbous eyes, and wore circular badges and conical hats.90 This external ugliness was evidently intended to convey their internal sinfulness, while their identifying symbols served to reduce their individuality, and even to dehumanise them. Jews were regularly presented as a theological threat. This was most evident in images relating to the Passion, where discernibly medieval Jews were depicted crucifying Christ.91 This helped to strengthen the idea that Jews always behaved like this, and so positioned them as the timeless enemies of Christ, and thus of Christianity. Jews were also represented as a social threat. In the richly illustrated thirteenth-century French manuscripts of the Bible moralisée, for instance, there are more than fifty images in which Jews are portrayed carrying money bags.92 The proliferation of such imagery must have done much to strengthen the association in Christian minds of Jews and moneylending discussed above. Two further forms of visual representation also merit mention. On the exteriors of a sizable number of European cathedrals, statues of two women gave visual form to the relationship between the two faiths. These were personifications of Ecclesia and Synagoga, ‘church’ and ‘synagogue’ – or, more broadly, Christianity and Judaism. Both women were often quite beautiful, but while Ecclesia was typically shown wearing a crown and holding a battle standard and chalice, Synagoga was portrayed blindfolded, with her head lowered, holding a broken staff, and dropping the tablets on which the Mosaic Law was written.93 Even when she was portrayed with a degree of dignity, Synagoga’s defeat, failure to follow the Torah and blindness in the face of the Christian message were all given visual form. Altogether more grotesque was a second image, the so-called Judensau, a phenomenon almost entirely located in German-speaking lands. Though these often took the form of woodblock depictions, more than thirty examples, dating from the thirteenth to the sixteenth century, were located on the exteriors of churches.94 Most commonly in these images, identifiably Jewish figures are positioned around the hindquarters of a sow, either suckling from its teats, or consuming its excrement. Pigs are considered unclean animals in Judaism, which can only have served to exacerbate the scatological and bestial dimensions of these representations: not only were they intended to encourage ridicule of Jews but they also constituted a vile visual attack. Of particular note is the fact that a Judensau sculpture was added to the main church in 16

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE Wittenberg, most likely early in the fourteenth century.95 Martin Luther and his congregation would therefore have passed this image every time they entered the church. Luther even referred directly to it in one of his most strongly anti-Jewish works, when he joked that the sow was the Talmud from which Jews drew their spiritual nourishment.96 Anti-Judaism also found expression in a range of literary texts. Perhaps the best known example comes from Geoffrey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales, written in the late fourteenth century. In her tale, the Prioress narrates a case of Jewish ritual murder which took place in Asia.97 A pious seven-year-old boy enraged the local Jewish population by singing a song which praised the Blessed Mary, as he walked to and from school. The Jews ‘conspired to chase this innocent child from the earth’s face’ and so hired someone who grabbed the boy ‘and slit his little throat and cast him in a pit’. When the boy’s mother, a widow, confronted the Jews about her son, they denied all knowledge of his disappearance, but divine inspiration enabled her to find the pit in which the boy’s body was located. The Jews were punished, while the boy was returned to a Christian church, where he was able to sing for one last time, before his soul finally left his body. The tale ends with an allusion to a much more recent and local episode, that of Hugh of Lincoln, ‘likewise murdered so by cursed Jews, as is notorious (for it was but a little time ago)’. Hugh, a boy aged eight or nine, had gone missing in 1255; when his body was discovered a few weeks later, it was alleged that he had been tortured and then crucified by Jews.98 Also the target of regular attacks was Judas, whose very name was held to embody the Jew. This was the case, for example, in the widely disseminated collection of saints’ lives compiled by Jacobus de Voragine in the thirteenth century, The Golden Legend. In the life of Saint Matthias, for instance, it was claimed that as a child Judas was raised in a royal household (having been abandoned by his parents), but he had to flee to Jerusalem after he killed the king’s son. There he became a favourite of Pilate, for whom he killed a man, simply in order to present him with the apples which that man had in his possession.99 In the account of Christ’s Passion, moreover, de Voragine asserted that Christ had been brought to his death ‘by Judas due to greed, by the Jews due to envy, and by Pilate due to fear’.100 Indeed, the Passion was a particular focus for anti-Jewish sentiment. William Langland, in his fourteenth-century narrative poem Piers Plowman, has ‘Faith’ denounce the ‘treacherous Jews’, for tricking Longinus, the blind soldier, into thrusting his spear into Christ on the cross, going on to comment: ‘You and your offspring will descend to the status of villeins [i.e. feudal tenants], never again to prosper . . . Instead, 17

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION you will languish, barren, producing nothing, and earn your living by practising usury, something that God’s own law roundly condemns’.101 Once again, the distinction between the Jews of the Bible and medieval Jews was blurred with polemical intent. Of course, in an age of low literacy levels, all of the texts discussed so far were largely restricted to the elite, but the ideas they contained would have reached a far wider audience, through other genres. We have already alluded to the sermons, often delivered by members of the new religious orders, in which negative ideas about Jews were frequently repeated.102 In addition, these frequently featured in the so-called mystery plays, which were performed in many towns and cities on key days in the Christian calendar. Especially towards the end of the Middle Ages, these plays were increasingly concerned with the life and death of Christ, and within those, the role of the Jews in Christ’s downfall often received particular emphasis. Songs, too, helped to reinforce these ideas. More than twenty different versions of a ballad entitled ‘Sir Hugh, or the Jew’s Daughter’, prompted by the supposed ritual murder of Hugh of Lincoln mentioned above, appeared in the following century, for example.103 Indeed, one scholar has contended that these ideas were repeated so frequently as to allow ‘such allegations to saturate the general consciousness of the commonplace’.104 Without in any way wanting to downplay the significance of all of this, especially for those who were most directly affected, it is important to maintain a sense of perspective. Jews were hardly unique in being treated like this. Many other outsider groups – including lepers, Muslims, prostitutes, heretics and foreigners – were also characterised in ways that were deeply offensive.105 In addition, attacks on Jews were the exception rather than the rule; had that not been the case, it is far less likely that they would have chosen to remain under Christian dominion.106 Likewise, while some of the accusations levelled against Jews could have devastating results, these were still relatively rare. There were less than 200 trials relating to allegations of ritual murder and Host desecration across Europe over a period of nearly three centuries. Furthermore, reading the evidence against the grain does suggest that relations were quite amicable, at least most of the time. That is already the implication of the repeated legislation intended to make it easier to distinguish Jews, and to limit their interactions with Christians: one rarely legislates against what is not being done, nor repeats that legislation if it is being followed. Even in the famous case of Simon of Trent, it seems that the three accused Jewish families had hitherto enjoyed good relations with their Christian neighbours. Ubertino Pusculo, a humanist teacher and poet from Brescia, explained that the first reason for writing his account of the episode was as a warning ‘to those Christians who love fraternizing with Jews, and think 18

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE themselves loved by them’.107 When accusations of this sort were made, the consequences for Jews could be devastating, but it would be unwise to assume that these typified the relationship between members of the two faiths. Hebraica Veritas A further dimension to Judaeo-Christian relations was provided by Christian interest in the language and literature of the Jews. In both the ancient and medieval periods, individual Christians had engaged in the study of Hebrew, and indeed Jewish materials more broadly. One of the earliest examples was the church father Origen in the third century: although he did not learn Hebrew himself, he had Jewish contacts, through whom he was able to draw on Jewish ideas in his biblical exegesis.108 An even more important contribution was made by Jerome, at the end of the fourth century.109 He was, from a relatively early stage, keen to present himself as an expert in Hebrew, though how true this was is harder to gauge.110 He could certainly work swiftly. He claimed, for instance, to have completed translations of the Books of Solomon (i.e. Proverbs, Song of Songs and Ecclesiastes) in three days.111 There is also evidence of rabbinic influence in his works.112 On the other hand, he could draw on existing translations, while in his own translations he aimed more to convey the sense of the original, rather than a word-for-word rendering. More significant than his personal competence, though, was his well-publicised enthusiasm for the Hebrew of the Old Testament. At the time, Christian scholars devoted their attention to the Greek version, known as the Septuagint (from the Latin for ‘seventy’, a name which derived from the seventy-two translators who had supposedly produced it for Ptolemy II in the third century bce). But Jerome insisted that it was only by consulting what he would term the hebraica veritas (‘Hebrew truth’) that errors associated with the Greek version could be resolved. As he explained in the preface to his Hebrew Questions on Genesis, his intention was ‘to rebut the errors of those who make different kinds of conjectures about the Hebrew books, and to restore to their proper authority those things which in the Latin and Greek codices seem to burst forth in abundance’.113 This approach was not without its critics, however. When Augustine, who like many others believed that the Septuagint was divinely inspired, learnt that Jerome had recently translated the Book of Job from Hebrew, he advised: ‘I would rather you translated the Greek scriptures to us as they are presented in the Septuagint.’ Not only did he believe that the Hebrew text was less valuable than the Greek version, but also that it raised other difficulties. If any problems arose when using the translation made from Hebrew, he pointed out, they could only be resolved by turning to the Jews to 19

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION confirm a particular reading.114 That would be a very undesirable state of affairs. Despite this admonition, Jerome proceeded to translate the Old Testament iuxta hebraeos (‘according to the Hebrew’), a work he completed in 405. It was only in the ninth century that this work was properly accepted by the church, and it would only be given the name by which it is now most commonly known – the ‘Vulgate’ – at the Council of Trent in the mid-sixteenth century.115 In the meantime, however, doubts about its accuracy had mounted. During the Renaissance, scholars including Lorenzo Valla, Johann Reuchlin and Desiderius Erasmus identified a growing number of discrepancies between Jerome’s translation and the Hebrew and Greek originals.116 Some of his defenders suggested that Jerome might not in fact have been the author of these works, while others speculated that the many generations of copyists had introduced these errors in the intervening centuries.117 While many Protestants were exercised by the endorsement of the Vulgate at Trent, it is remarkable how much respect they accorded to it, given its many limitations. Not only did Luther commend the work, despite his many criticisms of Jerome more broadly, for instance, but it continued to feature as one of the versions incorporated into numerous polyglot editions of the Bible (i.e. volumes in which there were multiple editions of the text, in different languages) produced in the sixteenth century.118 During the Middle Ages, there were relatively few scholars who were able to engage with Hebrew, but there were some notable exceptions. The abbey of St Victor, founded in the early twelfth century in Paris, was a particular focal point for this activity. Hugh of St Victor (d. 1142) learnt some Hebrew, and evidently consulted Jews to assist his biblical exegesis: there are traces in his surviving work that suggest the influence of the great medieval rabbis, Rashi (Solomon ben Isaac of Troyes, d. 1105; his name was an acronym derived from RAbbi SHlomo Itzhaki) and his grandson Rashbam (Samuel ben Meir, d. 1158; RAbbi SHmuel Ben Meir).119 Likewise, Andrew of St Victor (d. 1175) drew on rabbinic traditions, though it is unclear whether he was able to read them for himself or whether they were mediated by local Jews. He did not always agree with the Jewish interpretations, but more important was that he thought it worthwhile to consult and cite them. His greater emphasis on the literal interpretation of the biblical text was also a product of this encounter.120 Other activities were rather more fragmented. The Pugio fidei, a vast compendium of Hebrew materials from the late thirteenth century, presumably compiled by a team of scholars working under the direction of Raymond Martini, has already been mentioned. This drew extensively on rabbinic works, and helped to disseminate them to a wider clerical audience in Spain. Produced at roughly the same time was an 20

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE anonymous Latin translation of selections from the Guide for the Perplexed of Maimonides (Moses ben Maimon, d. 1204, also known as Rambam: RAbbi Moses Ben Maimon), which sought to reconcile theology with Aristotelian philosophy; almost twenty copies of this translation have been found across Europe.121 Similarly, Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349), head of the Franciscan Order in France, drew heavily on rabbinic works and emphasised the literal meaning of Scripture in his biblical commentaries, the Postillae: these would be hugely influential over the coming centuries (not least because they were among the first books to appear in print), and did much to bring knowledge of rabbinic ideas to a wider public.122 However, it was during the Renaissance that interest in Hebrew, and in Jewish traditions of knowledge, began to expand beyond the occasional scholar. Just as classical humanists had sought to better understand antiquity through sustained study of the languages and texts of ancient Greece and Rome, the so-called ‘Christian humanists’ wanted to deepen their understanding of their faith by better comprehending its key texts: especially the Old and New Testaments, but also other writings from the early church. Yet while Valla, Erasmus and others were able to turn their expertise derived from working with classical Greek texts to the Greek of the New Testament, work on the Old Testament tended to lag behind, because knowledge of Hebrew was restricted to a very small number of people. One of the pioneers was the Venetian humanist Marco Lippomano who, in the first half of the fifteenth century, learnt Hebrew alongside the more familiar Latin and Greek. More remarkable still was his near contemporary, Giannozzo Manetti, a student of Leonardo Bruni, and secretary to Pope Nicholas V.123 He produced a polyglot edition of the Psalms for the king of Naples: this included a translation from the Hebrew that he had made himself, alongside two that he attributed to Jerome, one from Hebrew, and one from the Greek Septuagint.124 In addition, he wrote a defence of that volume, in the course of which he explained that he had identified more than 6,000 differences between Jerome’s two translations, which for him demonstrated the dangers of relying only on the Greek tradition.125 In the fifteenth century, humanists also devoted more attention to the Kabbalah.126 It was believed that alongside the written tradition, which took the form of the Old Testament, there was also an oral tradition which had been passed to Moses at the same time as the Ten Commandments. In addition, it was believed that the biblical text, which was divinely inspired, conveyed a wide range of messages, many of which had not yet been properly understood. It was thought that by constant contemplation of the text, and the deployment of a range of approaches – including numerology, according 21

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION to which letters were attributed numbers, from which complex calculations might be generated – its many mysteries would gradually be revealed.127 In Christian circles, engagement with the Kabbalah tended to remain on the periphery, both because it was highly complex, and because it often intersected with heretical beliefs. One of the earliest individuals to draw explicitly on the Kabbalah was the Italian philosopher Giovanni Pico della Mirandola.128 In his famous 900 Theses, in which he attempted to construct a synthesis of a vast range of distinct intellectual traditions, he claimed that more than 100 of his ‘conclusions’ were derived from the Kabbalah. While the claims he made there – such as that the Kabbalah confirmed the Trinity, and that the need for circumcision had been removed by the advent of the Messiah – were themselves uncontroversial, the broader project, in which he seemed to accord all belief systems greater respect than was the norm, was more problematic, and the work was swiftly condemned by the church.129 Johann Reuchlin, who had studied with Pico della Mirandola, was the first Christian who fully engaged with the Hebrew texts as part of this endeavour. In 1494, he wrote De verbo mirifico, a discussion of the miraculous powers of divine names, through which one might seek to practise a form of mystical magic.130 Then, in 1517, as his conflict with Pfefferkorn neared its denouement, he wrote De arte cabalistica, in which he sought to show his readers how they might make use of Jewish mystical writings, and how engagement with the Kabbalah might lead to a better understanding of Christianity. Again this was a risky undertaking, though it is noteworthy that Reuchlin sought to give the work legitimacy by dedicating it to Pope Leo X.131 Perhaps the most controversial of all was the French polymath Guillaume Postel, who used the Kabbalah to bolster his belief that a nurse he met in a Venetian hospital in 1547 was the embodiment of Christ who had reappeared in order to bring about the redemption of the world.132 Postel would be arrested for heresy in 1555 and imprisoned in Rome; not long after his release he was captured again in France, and put under house arrest in a Parisian monastery where he remained until his death in 1581.133 At the same time, while the Renaissance did seem to signal a greater interest in Jewish learning, the extent of this should not be exaggerated. Undoubtedly, humanism did encourage a greater number of Christians to engage with Jewish materials than had been the case in the preceding centuries, but this still remained very much a minority interest; indeed, it would not be until the Reformation era, when other motivations were added in, and the circumstances had changed in a number of meaningful ways, that a real appetite for all of this material began to emerge, as will be discussed in the next chapter (pp. 37–42). 22

A CONTESTED INHERITANCE At least in part, this slowness to make use of Jewish materials during the Renaissance was a consequence of the fact that a number of humanists evidently did not think that it was worth the effort. For instance, Poggio Bracciolini, the humanist and famous collector of classical manuscripts, noted in a letter of May 1416 that he had been learning Hebrew, but spoke disparagingly of his teacher, who ‘has the mental capacity of a typical convert to Christianity’ and is ‘a trifling sort of man’; he went on to say that the study of Hebrew ‘is of no use in increasing our wisdom’, though it did at least help him to understand Jerome’s method of translation.134 Similarly, Leonardo Bruni, the renowned historian and chancellor of Florence, wrote a letter to Giovanni Cirignano of Lucca in 1442; Bruni had learnt that Cirignano was contemplating learning Hebrew, and had counselled against this. In his letter he explained his guidance further: ‘I did not advise against the knowledge and study of this literature on the ground that it was evil, but on the ground that it was relatively useless and, so to speak, a pointless endeavour’. He went on to insist that there was no valuable Jewish texts which had not already been translated.135 Perhaps most remarkably, Desiderius Erasmus, though a champion of toleration in other respects, did not extend this to Jews. There have been some efforts to exonerate Erasmus on the charge of anti-Jewish sentiment.136 He has been commended, for instance, for not responding to the encouragement of one of his correspondents to write a work attacking Jews and Judaising converts.137 It has also been noted that his use of anti-Jewish expressions and metaphors in his many writings – for instance his tendency to portray Jews as stubborn and arrogant, or to equate Judaism with ritual – was entirely conventional.138 While that may be true, it is still the case that the Jews are a regular focus for his criticism. Perhaps most famously, he wrote, ‘If it is Christian to detest the Jews, on this count we are all good Christians, and to spare’.139 The Renaissance had certainly seen important steps in the study of Hebrew and Jewish materials, but Erasmus, whose biblical scholarship was much more focused on the Greek of the New Testament, in many ways reflects the limitations to that progress.

R As the Middle Ages drew to a close, Jews were increasingly marginalised, both metaphorically and literally. The clearest indication of the latter, perhaps, was provided by where they were able to live. Jews had been expelled from England in 1290, and from France in 1306 (and again in 1322 and 1394). During the fifteenth century, there was a wave of further expulsions from various territories in the Holy Roman Empire, including Vienna (1421), Cologne (1424), Zurich (1426) and Augsburg (1438), though 23

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the impact of these was reduced by the much more fragmented nature of the empire: Jews who were expelled from one area often did not have far to travel before they could find another which was rather more welcoming. By the last decades of the fifteenth century, there may have been as many as half a million Jews in Europe but they were not evenly spread across the continent.140 In England there can only have been a handful of Jews, while in France there might have been as many as 20,000, despite the expulsions. The greatest number – perhaps 200,000 to 250,000 – were located in Iberia, though, as will be more fully discussed in the next chapter that situation would soon change. Other large populations were to be found in the Holy Roman Empire and Italy: roughly 120,000 and 80,000 respectively. The Jewish populations of Poland and Hungary were rather smaller, at 30,000 and 20,000 respectively, but these had grown quite substantially over the previous two centuries, and they would continue to increase through the Reformation era, as the pressures in the west continued to build. Europe’s population at this time was a little bit more than 50 million. The Jews, therefore, constituted approximately 1 per cent. Arguably, though, they occupied a greater significance in the minds of their Christian neighbours than their numbers might have suggested was appropriate. As ‘Christ-killers’, moneylenders, poisoners, murderers, Host-desecrators, and magicians, they were vilified. Jewish animosity towards Christians, moreover, was widely assumed to be eternal: their supposed child sacrifice and Host desecration, in particular, were effectively re-enactments, in different forms, of the crucifixion; contemporary plays and visual imagery which portrayed the Jewish tormentors of Christ in modern garb further served to blur this division. The growing realisation that contemporary Jews were different from those in the Old Testament, rather than giving pause to rethink assumptions about their timeless qualities, instead provided further grounds to condemn them. Yet, at the same time, Jews occupied a privileged position in Christendom, the only non-Christian religious group which received official sanction; as a result, many held distinguished and prominent positions. There was, then, a real tension surrounding the place of Jews in European society at the end of the Middle Ages. With the advent of both Catholic and Protestant religious reform around the turn of the sixteenth century, European Christians would adopt a range of strategies intended to resolve that situation.

24

2

R A NEW DAWN? Re-evaluating the Jews at the Start of the Reformation Era

In the four months through to the end of July 1492, between 40,000 and 50,000 Jews were driven out of Spain, mainly from Castile, from where they headed to other more welcoming territories, especially Portugal, Navarre and north Africa.1 While this number is lower than once thought, it was still the largest single movement of people to that point.2 Indeed, contemporaries’ higher estimates convey quite how momentous an event they felt this was. One anonymous Hebrew account suggested that the expulsion had involved more than 50,000 families, while the Christian chronicler Andrés Bernáldez gave a figure of ‘170,000 souls’, which he claimed came from one of the rabbis who had subsequently returned to Spain to be baptised.3 Its traumatic impact is also apparent in many of the works written in its aftermath. In one heart-wrenching poem, addressed to the son he had been forced to leave behind, the distinguished philosopher, doctor and poet Judah Leon Abravanel described the impact of the departure: ‘You steal my very sleep with the thought of you – am I sleeping or awake? I cannot tell. I cannot touch my food, for even honey stings, and sweets taste venomous to me . . . For you, my son, my heart is thirsting, burning; in you I quell my hunger and my thirst.’4 This episode, which served once more to highlight their vulnerable place in Christian society, would cast a long shadow over the Jews of the Reformation era. The expulsion had been ordered by Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon, los Reyes Católicos (‘the Catholic monarchs’) as they would soon be dubbed by the Spanish Borgia pope, Alexander VI, in recognition of their service to the faith. Indeed, the expulsion should be seen as part of their broader religious policy. Almost from the outset of their reign they had sought to reform the church under their control, a process described as Reformación.5 In 1482, Isabella and Ferdinand renewed the Reconquista (‘Reconquest’), which had been underway for centuries, finally bringing the kingdom of Granada, the last surviving Muslim enclave on Spanish soil, under Christian control in November 1491.6 Then, in April 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand agreed to support the Genoan navigator, Christopher Columbus, as he undertook his voyages of discovery 25

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION which would in turn serve as a launch pad for the Catholicisation (but also the exploitation) of the New World.7 Nonetheless, the decision to expel the Jews was equally an acknowledgement that previous efforts to control their presence within Spain had failed. In some places, Jews had been subjected to increased restrictions. In Segovia, for instance, Jews were prohibited from buying food during working hours, while in Burgos Jewish midwives were not allowed to attend to Christian women. In 1480, in the towns around Toledo, Jews were confined to their aljamas, forerunners of the ghetto.8 There had also been local expulsions: from the dioceses of Seville, Córdoba and Cádiz in Andalucia in 1483, and from the dioceses of Zaragoza, Albarracín and Teruel in Aragon in 1486.9 The Spanish Inquisition, which was introduced to resolve the situation in 1480, in fact only served to demonstrate how intractable the problem was. This was made especially clear by an episode which occurred on the eve of the expulsion. In June 1490, a consecrated Host was supposedly found in the possession of a Jewish convert from the town of La Guardia, near Toledo.10 After further investigation, a number of Jews and Jewish converts were accused of kidnapping and crucifying a young Christian boy, who came to be known as the Santo Niño de La Guardia (‘Holy Child of La Guardia’). It was also claimed that they intended to use his blood in a magic ritual which would, among other things, neutralise the Inquisition. Though no body had been found, nor even any child reported missing, three Jews and six converts were found guilty and burnt at the stake in Avila in November 1491. The case – which managed to combine virtually every allegation made against the Jews in the Middle Ages – was widely disseminated by the Inquisition, which thereby hoped to demonstrate the dangers of continuing to tolerate Jews in a Christian kingdom. It also came to occupy an important place in Spanish Catholicism more broadly: Ferdinand, Charles V and Philip II would all visit the shrine of the Holy Child, while new accounts of the episode were written in the sixteenth century.11 So it was that, on 31 March 1492, Isabella and Ferdinand issued the Alhambra Decree, explaining their decision to expel their Jews.12 The monarchs began by noting that ‘we have been informed that in these our kingdoms there were some wicked Christians who Judaized and apostatized from our holy Catholic faith, the great cause of which was interaction between the Jews and these Christians’. Previous attempts to address this problem, whether by segregating the Jews, expelling them from particular territories, or clamping down on unacceptable behaviour by means of the Inquisition had all failed: ‘Christians have engaged in and continue to engage in social interaction and communication’ with the Jews who manage ‘to subvert and to steal faithful 26

A NEW DAWN? Christians from our holy Catholic faith . . . instructing them in the ceremonies and observances of their law’. This included circumcision, providing them with books, reading prayers, holding fasts, teaching them the history of their law, giving them unleavened bread and ritually slaughtered meats, and generally holding to the law of Moses. All of this, they continued, had been confirmed by the testimony of many, including Jews, and was ‘to the great injury, detriment and opprobrium of our holy Catholic faith’. For these reasons, it had therefore been decided to banish the Jews from Spain. They had until the end of July to settle their affairs: if they did not leave at that point, they would face the death penalty. Religious considerations were undoubtedly at the root of the decision to expel the Jews from Spain. Admittedly, there were potentially financial gains too: departing Jews had to sell off their possessions cheaply in the short time available to them, while much of what they left behind was confiscated by the royal treasury.13 But these would only have been short-term benefits. Indeed it was reported that the Ottoman sultan ‘marvelled greatly at expelling the Jews from Spain, since this was to expel its wealth’.14 Instead, as King Ferdinand explained in a letter to the count of Aranda, he and his wife had been persuaded to expel the Jews ‘because of our debts and obligations to the said Holy Office [i.e. the Inquisition]; and we do so despite the great harm to ourselves, seeking and preferring the salvation of souls above our own profit and that of individuals’.15 The Catholic monarchs were concerned about the damage posed to their kingdom by the continuing presence of Jews; but they did also genuinely hope that a good number of Jews would prefer to convert than to depart. This was most apparent in another royal order, issued in November, which promised a fresh start for all Jews who returned to Spain as baptised Christians.16 It is conventional to regard Martin Luther’s nailing of the Ninety-five Theses to the church door in Wittenberg on 31 October 1517 as the ‘start’ of the Reformation. In fact, the status of that event, which may not even have happened, is largely a product of subsequent Protestant myth-making.17 Such an iconic moment certainly helps us to make sense of what was going on, but it does risk over-simplifying what we understand by ‘the Reformation’. The Reformation was, in reality, a much more complicated and multi-faceted phenomenon. Luther was only one of many figures who sought to wrestle with a range of fundamental theological questions: how to be a good Christian; how a good Christian community should be organised; and how its members might attain salvation. Others, including Huldrych Zwingli in Switzerland, Jacques Lefèvre d’Etaples in France, and Gasparo Contarini in Italy, would reach quite similar conclusions to Luther on some of these issues. Importantly, they did so independently 27

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION of him; and while Zwingli broke with the Catholic Church, Lefèvre and Contarini did not. All of them, moreover, reflected a certain spiritual anxiety which was especially apparent in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries.18 The desire to resolve these anxieties did much to direct the Protestant and Catholic Reformations, as they took shape during the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. The expulsion of the Jews from Spain was yet another product of the same set of concerns. Indeed, in his ‘alternative history’ of the Reformation, the historian Nicholas Terpstra has convincingly argued that this expulsion should be viewed as one of the key episodes which signified its start.19 In this chapter, then, we are concerned with the first waves of reform, in the earliest decades of the sixteenth century, in both the Catholic and Protestant realms. In Spain and Italy, this included the first instances of efforts to address the issues associated with having large populations of Jews or Jewish converts, through instruments such as the Inquisition and the ghetto. For the earliest Protestants, there was an opportunity to reconsider the relationship with Jews and Judaism. Their perspective was somewhat different, not least because there were far fewer Jews in the immediate environment, so this was often a more theoretical discussion. At the same time, the Hebrew language and Jewish learning appeared to offer means by which these nascent churches could bring about a revitalisation of Christianity, and also, before too long, underpin their challenge to the established church. From Convivencia to Inquisition In the Middle Ages, Spain had been renowned for its convivencia, whereby Christians, Jews and Muslims lived together with a harmony seemingly unmatched anywhere else on the continent.20 Gradually, however, this had begun to fall apart. With the capture of Seville in 1248, and Faro the following year, Granada was left as the only region still under Muslim control. Pressure on the Jews also began to mount, not least through the sermon campaigns and disputations discussed in the previous chapter. In the summer of 1391, this culminated in anti-Jewish riots throughout the peninsula, during the course of which several hundred Jews were killed in Seville, Valencia and Barcelona.21 In response to all of this, a substantial proportion of the peninsula’s Jews decided it would be best to convert.22 But this triggered a new set of problems. Many conversos, as the converts were known, rose to positions of considerable prominence. For example, Salomon Halevi, who had been the chief rabbi in Burgos, would, following his conversion in 1390, become the bishop of Burgos. At least four bishops in Isabella’s Castile were ‘new Christians’, as were three of her secretaries.23 Increasingly, though, the success of this group provoked 28

A NEW DAWN? resentment from those ‘old Christians’ whose positions they challenged, and even usurped. New Christians were regularly accused of being ‘crypto-Jews’, who had converted in name only, and continued to practise their Judaism in private. On occasion this spilled over into attacks on converso populations, as happened in Carmona, near Seville, in 1462, and in Toledo in 1467.24 The extent of crypto-Judaism is all but impossible to gauge. It was, by its nature, hidden behaviour so we must assume that not all instances were detected. On the other hand, there were factors which may have encouraged it to seem more prevalent than was actually the case. Accusations could be used to tarnish the reputation of one’s rivals. In addition, there might be alternative explanations for behaviour that was supposed to constitute crypto-Judaism. For instance, one might choose to abstain from certain foods – most obviously pork – for religious reasons, but one might equally do so on grounds of health, habit or taste.25 It was in this context, in the mid-fifteenth century, that greater emphasis started to be put on limpieza de sangre (‘purity of blood’). If it was difficult to determine who was a Christian on the basis of what someone claimed to believe, it was, at least in theory, easier to identify who had Jewish heritage.26 This concern first manifested itself in Toledo, where, following a lengthy power struggle between the old Christians and the conversos, a law was passed in 1449 which barred all those with Jewish ancestry from holding municipal office.27 This was a significant change. Until that point, conversion had officially wiped the state clean, but now, at a stroke, the differences between the faiths were rendered impermeable. Unsurprisingly the change met with considerable opposition, not only from prominent conversos, such as the Dominican Juan de Torquemada (uncle of the first inquisitor-general), who realised the risk to their own careers, but also from the church more broadly, as such a policy would make it far harder to win converts in the future.28 Nonetheless, other bodies soon followed suit. In the second half of the fifteenth century, a number of university colleges, guilds and town councils adopted this policy; in the sixteenth century, so did various cathedral chapters and religious orders.29 But again the reality did not quite match the theory. Given several centuries of convivencia and the close intermingling between members of the two faiths, it was not entirely surprising that the majority of ‘old Christians’ did in fact have some Jewish heritage. Many sought therefore to evade the rules, either through bribery or by presenting forged claims about their genealogy.30 Although the concern with limpieza de sangre was not endorsed universally (the Jesuits, for instance, consistently opposed the statutes)31, this development did mark a new and alarming step, and one which anticipated the racial ideas which gained greater prominence in more recent anti-Jewish thought.32 29

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION The establishment of the Spanish Inquisition was one of the most significant religious achievements of the Catholic monarchs. Ferdinand and Isabella had married in 1469, thereby uniting the crowns of Castile and Aragon. Imposing a more combative form of Catholicism was one of the ways in which they sought to assert greater dominance over the territories under their control. The Jews posed a particular problem. So far as we can tell, the monarchs were personally quite sympathetic. In 1477, Isabella had affirmed that ‘all the Jews in my realm are mine and under my care and protection’.33 In 1484, a Polish visitor to Spain reported that he had ‘heard it said that the queen is the protector of the Jews’ and added his own assessment that ‘she has more confidence in baptized Jews than in Christians and entrusts them with all her rents and taxes. They are her counsellors and secretaries, as they are also of the king’.34 For instance, Fernando de Pulgar, a converso, was the queen’s personal secretary and a member of the royal council, while Abraham Seneor, perhaps the wealthiest man in the kingdom, was a leading courtier both as a Jew and then, following a showpiece conversion in 1492, as a converso.35 While the remit of the Spanish Inquisition would expand over time, it was first introduced in order to address the tensions between Judaism and Christianity. During the course of a visit by Ferdinand and Isabella to Seville in 1477–78, the archbishop had alerted them to claims that conversos were continuing to practise Judaism, not just in Seville, but throughout Andalucia and Castile. Isabella, who had become a tertiary sister of the Dominican Order only a few months earlier, was shocked by the news, and determined to do something about it.36 She therefore sought permission from Pope Sixtus IV to establish an Inquisition to pursue the matter, which he granted with a bull on 1 November 1478.37 The first tribunal was set up in Castile in 1480; by 1492, there were a dozen tribunals, covering Aragon, Castile and the monarchs’ Italian territories.38 In 1483, the notorious Dominican Tomás de Torquemada, Isabella’s confessor, was appointed the first inquisitor-general of Spain, a position he would hold through to his death in 1498.39 In 1485, Torquemada produced a handbook in which he explained how the local tribunals should conduct themselves; a revised version of this text was issued in 1561.40 According to these Instrucciones, when inquisitors arrived in a given district, an ‘edict of faith’ was to be read out after Mass on a Sunday when all residents were required to be in attendance. A period of grace of thirty or forty days would be announced, in which any members of the congregation who ‘find themselves guilty of any sin or heresy or apostasy, or of keeping and performing the rituals and ceremonies of the Jews, or any [rituals] which may be contrary to the Christian religion’ should confess their sins to the Inquisition, so they might be given a penance, rather than face death or 30

A NEW DAWN? life imprisonment.41 Certainly many confessed, either out of guilt or because they feared they might be denounced by someone with whom they had a long-standing animosity. Although the Spanish Inquisition continues to have a reputation for cruelty – in large measure a consequence of Protestant efforts to damage Catholicism through the creation of a so-called ‘black legend’42 – it was actually better regulated than many other such tribunals of the period. Even before an accusation came to trial, an effort was made to establish whether there was a case to answer. Torture, often regarded as synonymous with the Inquisition, was in practice used with considerable restraint. Likewise, death was far from inevitable; some of the accused were acquitted, while others were subjected to lesser penalties, including confiscation of goods, flogging and imprisonment.43 Nonetheless, death sentences, which took the form of a public auto da f é (‘act of faith’), were iconic events in the history of the Inquisition. These were consciously theatrical events, often held on public holidays in order to maximise attendance. Typically, the day would begin with the celebration of Mass, following which a procession would make its way through the streets to the square where the main action would take place. A public sermon would then be delivered, during the course of which the crimes of each of the victims would be itemised. Once their crimes had been set out, the accused would be put on display, often in cages, until all had been dealt with. At that point they were ‘relaxed’ (that is, handed over) to the secular authorities who were responsible for conducting the executions themselves, usually by being burnt at the stake. All of this was intended to demonstrate the supremacy of the Catholic Church, as crimes were punished, and the enemies of society were destroyed; at the same time, such events helped to instil a culture of fear and mutual suspicion.44 We can get a much better sense of the issues involved if we look at a specific case. A certain Pedro de Villegas was among the first to be brought before the Inquisition in December 1483.45 The prosecutor began by setting out the various ways in which Pedro had ‘observed the law of Moses, and its ceremonies and rituals’: these included eating meat during Lent ‘on account of Jewish ceremony and in contempt of our Holy Catholic Faith’, eating unleavened bread to mark the Passover, and observing the Sabbath on Saturdays. In his testimony, Pedro addressed these charges in turn. If he ate meat during Lent, he claimed, it was ‘because of an illness I have, which recurred at that time’; he insisted that ‘it’s as likely I ate [unleavened bread] as it is that Muhammad ate pork’ and surmised that he would only have done so ‘if I were hungry and if people offered it to me repeatedly’; finally, he explained that ‘if I rested on certain Saturdays, it was not because of a ceremony of Mosaic Law . . . it would have been at a time when 31

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION my job of cloth making wasn’t flourishing’.46 While witnesses were produced who confirmed the accusations, Pedro was also able to find others who would confirm his good standing as a Christian. In the event, he was exonerated, but he was warned to be more careful in the future. We lack properly reliable statistics for the Inquisition, but it is clear that it was in the first decades, through to approximately 1530, that it was most active. Perhaps 2,000 people were executed by the Inquisition in its first fifty years: this is much lower than many contemporary estimates, but it was far from an insignificant number.47 Of still greater significance is the extent to which conversos dominated proceedings in this period. Ninety-one per cent of the cases in Valencia between 1484 and 1530 concerned conversos, while they were also the focus of 99 per cent of cases in Toledo between 1485 and 1500, and 99 per cent of cases in Barcelona between 1488 and 1505.48 The magnitude of these proportions is further illustrated by the contrast with the subsequent period. Between 1540 and 1700, trials relating to Judaism accounted for only 4 per cent of cases held by the tribunals of Aragon, and 18 per cent of those handled in Castile.49 In part this reflected the adaptability and growing remit of the Inquisition which was increasingly directed against the perceived threats of Protestantism, Islam and crimes such as witchcraft. At the same time, it also suggests that the Inquisition had done a good job of rooting out crypto-Judaism from large parts of the kingdom. Driven underground, it became ever harder for remaining Judaisers to continue worshipping as they wished, let alone to involve others, without taking great personal risk. The Inquisition in the early decades of the sixteenth century perhaps best exemplified Spain’s commitment to Catholicism under Ferdinand and Isabella, and was a critical component of the Catholic Reformation in their territories. This approach would be continued by their grandson, Charles, who became king of Spain in 1516 and Holy Roman Emperor in 1519. Charles saw the promotion of a universal Catholicism as a central requirement of his tenure. For instance, in 1521, shortly after his encounter with Luther at the Diet of Worms, Charles asserted ‘I am entirely determined to dedicate my kingdoms and lordships, my friends, my body, my life and my very soul’ to countering heresy.50 His reign was notable, moreover, for his efforts to combat Protestantism, especially in Germany and the Netherlands, and also to deal with the threat posed by the Ottoman Turks in the Mediterranean. The Jews, however, were a rather more complicated case. In Spain, there were hopes that Charles would reform the Inquisition, but in fact he endorsed it, and allowed it to continue as before. But in the Holy Roman Empire, he acted as a protector of the Jews, as the emperors had generally done during the Middle Ages.51 Of course, the 32

A NEW DAWN? fundamental difference was that while Jews were permitted to live in parts of the empire, following their expulsion from Spain, there were not Jews, only converts, who were expected to adhere to the Christianity that they had adopted. The Venetian Ghetto Meanwhile, in Italy a second significant measure for dealing with Jews was instituted. Like the Inquisition, it too would go on to become a key element of the Catholic Reformation later in the century. This was the creation of the first ghetto, so-named perhaps for its proximity to a foundry or geto (though other explanations have also been proposed), in Venice in 1516.52 The Venetian ghetto was the product of a specific set of circumstances. The War of the League of Cambrai of 1509 saw a range of powers arrayed against Venice. When the League’s army launched an assault on the Venetian mainland, the Jews who lived there fled to Venice for safety.53 Not least because Jewish moneylenders had valuable Christian items in their possession, as security for their loans, they were permitted to enter. Once the immediate danger had passed, however, there were questions about how to proceed. There were certainly many who felt that the Jews should not be allowed to remain indefinitely in the city. Such views were encouraged by visiting preachers who attacked the Jews in their sermons, particularly in the lead up to Easter. For instance, the Franciscan Ruffino Lovato of Padua delivered several series of sermons against the Jews. In one, delivered in 1509, he urged his congregation to take all the Jews’ money, and ‘leave them nothing to live on’.54 In April 1511, according to the diarist Marino Sanuto, Lovato reiterated this point, ‘saying it would be good to deprive them of everything they owned and put them to the sack, because this city is full of Jews who have fled to it’.55 Following complaints from the Jewish community, Lovato received a warning from the city government, but on Good Friday he used a discussion of the Passion as a further opportunity to attack the Jews, saying that ‘you could with a clear conscience take everything they have and drive them away’.56 Others were more sympathetic to Jewish requests to remain in the city, albeit at a price. In 1513, in return for a yearly fee of 6,500 ducats, Jews were given the right to lend money in the city, and two years later, in return for a substantial loan, they were permitted to sell second-hand items.57 Also in 1515, it was proposed that the Jews might be moved to the Giudecca, one of Venice’s many islands, but the Jews opposed the move, fearing that they might be attacked by the soldiers based on it. The following year, it was proposed that the Jews might instead be enclosed in an area known as the Ghetto Nuovo (‘New Ghetto’) to the north of the city.58 While the Jews were again 33

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION reluctant to accept this option, as it would mean giving up many of the freedoms they had up to this point enjoyed, this was approved by the Venetian Senate on 29 March 1516. In order to expedite this, the houses of the Ghetto Nuovo were to be evacuated immediately, and the Jews were to move in as tenants, paying a third more than the standard rents.59 According to the founding legislation, gates were to be installed at the two entrances to the ghetto, which would be opened at sunrise and closed at sunset, to ensure that the two faiths were kept apart at night.60 Four Christian guards, their salaries paid by the Jewish community, were to live at the gates. The two sides of the ghetto which overlooked small canals were to be blocked off by high walls. Two boats, also financed by the Jews, were to circle the island, day and night. Any Jew caught outside the ghetto when they ought not to be was subject to a series of mounting penalties: 100 lire for the first offence, 200 lire for the second, and a 500 lire fine and two months in jail for a third. Over time, some of these regulations were relaxed: the number of guards was reduced from four to two, Jews were allowed outside the ghetto until an hour after sunset (two in winter), and the boat patrol was abandoned.61 There was scope, moreover, for exceptions to be made. As early as 1516, legislation was passed which confirmed that there might be times when Jewish doctors would need to leave the ghetto at night.62 Likewise, there were several recorded instances of people going out to help with the proofreading, typesetting and printing of Hebrew books.63 Conversely, there were various occasions when Christians were permitted to enter the ghetto after nightfall, whether in a professional capacity (as lawyers for example), or simply as visitors, such as the group of noblemen and women who attended a celebration of the festival of Simhat Torah early in the seventeenth century.64 The ghetto was, from the outset, a cramped and overcrowded location, with already several hundred residents when it was established.65 The nature of the island meant that as the community gradually expanded, it needed to build upwards rather than outwards, while living space was divided into ever smaller pieces. Nonetheless, there were two occasions on which horizontal expansion was permitted. In 1541, the Venetian government gave over to the Jews twenty houses in an adjacent area known (somewhat confusingly) as the Ghetto Vecchio (‘Old Ghetto’), largely in response to complaints from visiting Jewish merchants about the over crowded nature of the existing ghetto; the government was concerned that these merchants, who enjoyed valuable trading connections with the Ottoman Empire, might otherwise choose to conduct their business elsewhere. Then, seventy years later, this was followed by a Ghetto Nuovissimo (‘Very New Ghetto’) in 1611.66 By that stage, the Jewish population had risen to 34

A NEW DAWN? somewhere between 2,000 and 3,000, and constituted roughly 2 per cent of Venice’s total population.67 This Jewish presence was, unsurprisingly, often a cause of concern for the Christian majority. Even before the ghetto had been established, the diarist Sanuto recorded how matters had deteriorated quite rapidly. Previously, he noted, Jews on the mainland had kept a low profile between Palm Sunday and Easter, but now ‘up to the day before Good Friday they went around freely . . . but no one said anything to them since because of the war one had need of them, and thus they do what they want’.68 In the last years of the century, Cardinal Lorenzo Priuli, the patriarch of Venice, submitted a memorandum to the Venetian government in which he repeated many of the familiar complaints about the Jews, whom he described as ‘domestic enemies’, and insisted that the various restrictions on them should be better enforced.69 Among other things, he demanded that they should remain in their houses on Good Friday, with their windows and doors shut; and if they should encounter a procession of the Holy Sacrament, they should withdraw discreetly, rather than mocking it. From a Christian perspective, though, the introduction of the ghetto seems to have helped address some of the problems which the Jewish presence raised. There was an evident tension between the economic benefits of having a Jewish population (first as moneylenders and subsequently as traders engaged in international commerce, especially given that all of their activities, and even simply their presence, were taxed at exorbitant rates), and the spiritual dangers of allowing a sizable non-Christian community to live in their midst. But whereas the Spanish rulers (like the kings of England and France before them) had simply taken the decision to expel their Jews, allowing only those who would convert to remain, the Venetian government pursued a policy which was rather more pragmatic. The walls of the ghetto meant that Jews and Christians could be kept apart when it was considered necessary, while its very existence meant that Christian superiority was clearly demonstrated. Yet, as we have seen, there were many occasions on which exceptions might be made to the regulations, and in practice the boundaries were rather more fluid. This arrangement also seems to have facilitated conversion from Judaism, at least on occasion. In November 1569, Marc’Antonio degli Eletti (formerly Isaac), a glassblower who had permission to ply his trade on the island of Murano, outside the ghetto, explained to the Inquisition the circumstances which had brought him to Christianity. Marc’Antonio had held numerous conversations about religion with one Antonio Boldu, the person who had obtained for him permission to leave the ghetto. However, ‘since I would not understand what he said about Christianity he took me to a sermon at Santi 35

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Giovanni e Paolo, where there was a preacher very learned in the Hebrew language’, Pietro Loredan, who helped him better understand the faith; he was also encouraged to buy a copy of a work by Pietro Colonna, intended to encourage Jewish conversion.70 This had the desired effect. As Marc’Antonio explained, ‘I have been baptized for no purpose other than the saving of my soul, and so I wish to persevere to the end, and I will accept death for the faith as readily as any other good fortune, and I hope to be the means of bringing other Jews to the light of the holy Christian faith’.71 At the same time, while we might instinctively react against the idea of a ghetto now, both in light of later developments in this period, and even more those in the twentieth century, one could still argue that there were some benefits to this arrangement from the Jewish perspective too. First, the ghetto meant that Jews were able to live in Venice, and continue to practise their religion. Indeed this would become easier over the course of the sixteenth century. One law from 1528 permitted the Tedeschi Jews (those of German origin) to follow their own religion, and in 1548 they were allowed to have their own synagogues. In due course, there would be eight separate synagogues within the Venetian ghetto.72 By contrast, German merchants were only permitted to hold private Protestant services from 1657, while the Turks were never allowed to build a mosque in the city. In addition, while the walls of the ghetto were ostensibly built to ensure the protection of the Christian population, they also served to protect the Jews. While the Venetian Jews did not celebrate the founding of the ghetto (as did Veronese Jews that of their own in 1599),73 nonetheless, and despite the cramped and overcrowded conditions, it did provide a relatively appealing place in which to live. Francesco Sansovino, a humanist who wrote various works about Venice, asserted in 1581 that Jews preferred to live in Venice more than any other part of Italy, ‘since they are not subject to violence or tyranny here as they are elsewhere . . . reposing in most singular peace, they enjoy the city almost like a true promised land’.74 This was echoed by Simone Luzzato, a Venetian rabbi, who wrote in 1638 that ‘there is no doubt that among all the states and places in the world, the Jewish nation is pleased by the very gentle government of the Most Serene Republic’. He went on to explain that ‘above all, keeping them settled and attached to the City and its state is the exemplary justice administered in their defence against any group of persons that offends either their life or their goods, with the precise observance of all that is promised to them in their charters and privileges’.75 Indeed, Jewish culture flourished in Venice (and other places which had ghettos, such as Florence, Siena, Ferrara and Modena) in ways which would not otherwise have been possible.76 36

A NEW DAWN? Christian Hebraica Another striking feature of the Reformation era was the emergence and proliferation of the study of Hebrew and Hebraic materials by Christians. Certainly, as we saw in the previous chapter, this had roots in the medieval period, but an extra impetus was provided by the Reformation.77 Some of the longer-standing reasons for this were connected to the relationship between the two faiths, and the desire to demonstrate the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Christians appreciated that it would be useful to know what Jews said and believed: this would allow them better to identify points of dispute, to counter Jewish arguments more effectively, and thus to win Jewish converts. Martini’s Pugio fidei, compiled in the thirteenth century, and the disputations of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, discussed in the previous chapter, were all products of this intention. There was, moreover, an attempt to give this institutional support. At the Council of Vienne of 1311, Pope Clement V had sought to establish professorships of Hebrew, Arabic and Chaldaean in Rome and at the universities of Paris, Oxford, Bologna and Salamanca, in the hope that this would aid conversionary efforts, though in practice little came of this initiative.78 Of critical importance was the Reformation principle of sola scriptura (‘by Scripture alone’). This went to the very heart of the Reformation and its challenge to the Catholic Church. The Catholic Church took inspiration from a range of authorities, including the Bible, papal decrees, the wisdom of the church fathers, decisions of church councils, and accumulated tradition. When Luther and his fellow evangelicals started to elaborate their critique of Catholicism, they insisted that the Bible should be the ultimate arbiter on any disputed matters of belief or practice. This view was not in itself new – John Wycliffe, the leader of the English Lollards, and the Czech reformer Jan Hus had both asserted the same principle in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries – but with the Reformation it took on a greater power, not least because it was accepted by all Protestant groups. Even the Catholic Church, though it reaffirmed its traditional position at the Council of Trent, could not fully ignore the challenge. The terms of the debate had shifted.79 Yet while this was a crisp principle in itself, it was not as straightforward as it might at first appear. There remained disagreements over what constituted the canonical text of the Bible (and Catholics and Protestants provided slightly different answers to this question).80 The Bible was, moreover, a complex and at times seemingly contradictory text, open to a wide range of readings.81 Martin Luther, for instance, was horrified when he saw how peasants in parts of Germany, Austria and Switzerland sought to use

37

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the Gospel to support their demands for social and economic reform in the Peasants’ War of 1524–5.82 Disagreement between Luther and Huldrych Zwingli at the Colloquy of Marburg in October 1529 over how to interpret the phrase ‘this is my body’ was critical to the fragmentation of Protestantism.83 It soon became apparent to the Protestants, as it already was to the Catholics, that the Bible needed to be mediated by those who understood it best. Fundamental to this enterprise was learning Hebrew and Greek, the languages in which it had been written, and acquiring greater familiarity with the contexts from which the Scriptures had emerged. In the first instance, this new attention to Hebrew and Hebraic materials had important implications for how the basic skills were attained. During the Renaissance and in the early years of the Reformation, any Christian who wanted to learn Hebrew, or to read Hebrew texts, was obliged to turn to a Jew or Jewish convert for assistance, as they were the only people with sufficient linguistic knowledge.84 Elijah Levita, a Jewish scholar, lived in the house of Cardinal Egidio da Viterbo, the general of the Augustinian Order, in Rome for more than a decade, teaching him Hebrew, and providing him with manuscripts relating to the Kabbalah.85 Pico della Mirandola learnt Hebrew from Elijah del Medigo, the Kabbalah from Johann ben Isaac Alemanno, and acquired translations of Hebrew texts from the Jewish convert Flavius Mithridates.86 Johann Reuchlin learnt Hebrew from Jacob ben Jechiel Loans, the doctor of Emperor Frederick III, and from Rabbi Obadiah ben Jacob Sforno, a renowned biblical scholar.87 While this model worked well enough for the individuals just mentioned, it was not exactly ideal. Above all, it was not easy to scale up. There were not many Jewish converts, and nor were there many Jews willing to help Christians in this way. This was hardly surprising given that the information they provided might end up being used against the Jewish faith, while they risked condemnation from their fellow Jews simply for working with Christians in the first place. From the Christian side, meanwhile, close collaboration with a Jew or Jewish convert could look suspicious, and could easily lead to allegations of ‘Judaisation’, that is, undue sympathy for Jewish lines of interpretation.88 As a monk at Freiburg commented in 1521, for instance, ‘those who speak this tongue are made Jews’.89 In the Reformation era, accusations of Judaisation became quite commonplace, as it was an effective means of denigrating a religious enemy, and one that was almost impossible to disprove. As a consequence Christian writers who worked with Hebrew materials often wrote quite harshly about the Jews, at least in part to pre-empt accusations of this kind.90 It therefore became necessary to find other means by which Hebrew might be learnt. Two strategies in particular were adopted. The first involved the composition 38

A NEW DAWN? and publication of works which allowed Christians to become proficient in the language without requiring access to a Jewish teacher. This development thus exploited the recent emergence of the printing press. In the early years, especially, this was a major endeavour. Not only did it require a distinct Hebrew type – an expensive outlay in itself – but it also necessitated the involvement of a team of people sufficiently familiar with that language to be able to typeset and correct the texts as they went to print. It was also potentially risky economically. Johann Reuchlin was obliged to make a substantial personal financial contribution to get his Hebrew grammar De rudimentis hebraicis (1506) into print.91 It was published by a relatively inexperienced printer, Thomas Anshelm at Pforzheim, and was a commercial flop. Reuchlin then approached Johann Amerbach, a printer based in Basel, who in turn consulted various booksellers; none of them were ready to gamble on a stack of books in an unfamiliar language, for which there was no guaranteed market. The best he could do was suggest that Reuchlin wait until Amerbach’s edition of Jerome came out, as it was ‘sprinkled throughout with Hebrew letters, sentences and even passages’, and so readers of that volume might then see the value in learning Hebrew.92 From these somewhat inauspicious beginnings, however, a rapid transformation occurred. Almost 300 different Hebrew grammars, dictionaries and concordances were published in the period between 1500 and 1560.93 For example, the renowned Venetian printer Aldus Manutius produced a pocket Hebrew grammar, A Very Useful Introduction for Those Wishing to Learn Hebrew, in 1500.94 This included the Hebrew alphabet, an explanation of the vowel points, a guide on how to read Hebrew, and translations into Hebrew of a number of Latin Christian prayers. More than twenty editions of this work had appeared by 1520.95 Manutius’s work was produced before the emergence of Protestantism, and to an extent the success of his work reflected the more general Christian interest in Hebrew that was developing at this point. However, the advent of the Reformation gave an extra impetus to activity of this sort. Many of the other grammars to appear in the first half of the sixteenth century were written by Protestant scholars (or at least by those who would go on to become so). These included Konrad Pellikan, a student of both Levita and Reuchlin, who would become a Professor of Greek and Hebrew in Zwingli’s Zurich, and who published his Hebrew grammar in 1503;96 Wolfgang Capito, who would play an important role in the Reformation of Strasbourg, whose grammar was published in Basel in 1518;97 Sebastian Münster, the great polymath based in Basel, who produced two Hebrew grammars and one of Aramaic all in the 1520s;98 and Theodore Bibliander, also based at Basel, who produced an advanced Hebrew grammar in 1542.99 39

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION This should certainly not be regarded as an exclusively Protestant phenomenon: several Catholic authors produced equivalent works. More broadly, these were not generally works in which their authors engaged in confessional polemic. The religious boundaries were not at this stage as clearly drawn as they would be later in the century, and Catholic authors frequently made use of works by Protestant authors. Also, in a fair number of these publications their authors drew heavily on, or indeed provided direct translations of, works by Jewish authors, such as David Kimhi and Elijah Levita.100 Despite this great outpouring of books, the market did not appear to dry up, and several hundred more such texts were produced in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.101 Alongside the publication of books which could allow autodidacts to study Hebrew themselves, a second phenomenon was the proliferation of institutions at which one could study the language. The number of universities in Europe had almost doubled during the fifteenth century (increasing from twenty-nine to fifty-seven), and a further eighteen were created between 1500 and 1625.102 This remarkable expansion was, in large measure, a consequence of the two great intellectual movements of the period: the Renaissance and the Reformation. During the Renaissance, possession of a classical education increasingly came to be a prerequisite for a growing range of careers, and a means of entry to cultured circles.103 Similarly, in the Reformation, university education was seen as ever more necessary for a successful career in the church.104 It was, moreover, during this period that the ideal of the trilingual scholar – educated in Latin, Greek and Hebrew – and the trilingual institution, which would provide that education, both emerged. Again, it was possible to study Hebrew at university before the Reformation. The University of Alcalá had opened in 1508, and Alfonso de Zamora, the son of a rabbi, became its first professor of Hebrew in 1512, a post he held for more than three decades.105 But it was the first decade or so after Luther’s initial challenge that witnessed the greatest explosion of such institutions: sixteen would be created between 1517 and 1530.106 Importantly, all three major confessions were represented, in a reasonably even split. In the Catholic world, in addition to Alcalá, these included institutions in Paris, Louvain, Rome and Vienna; in the Lutheran realm, there were Hebrew professorships at Wittenberg, Leipzig, Tübingen and Strasbourg; while Heidelberg, Basel, Zurich and Bern were among the Reformed universities which provided instruction in this language. The next two decades were rather quieter on this front, before a further flurry of activity in the 1550s and 1560s, during which the Regius Professorships in Hebrew at Oxford and Cambridge were inaugurated, and the trilingual Academy in Geneva was 40

A NEW DAWN? founded. This constituted a dramatic change. At the start of the century, it had been virtually impossible to find formal training in Hebrew, but within a generation or so, it was possible to study Hebrew at university in most countries of western Europe, and in institutions aligned with each of the major Christian confessions. Especially in the early days, however, it was not always easy to fill these posts. A good example of this is provided by the University of Wittenberg, which had been established by the elector of Saxony in 1502. Martin Luther was keen to turn it into a trilingual institution, and in May 1518 he wrote to George Spalatin, the elector’s secretary and Luther’s principal contact at his court, requesting his support in establishing chairs in Greek and Hebrew.107 Philip Melanchthon was appointed professor of Greek later the same year, but it proved rather harder to find someone for the Hebrew chair. Early in 1519, it appeared that John Keller from Burgkundstadt, who had taught Hebrew privately and had published a Hebrew grammar, was willing to take on the role, but by the time he was offered it he had accepted a post at Leipzig.108 Then, in November 1519, Matthew Adrian, a Spanish Jew who had converted to Christianity, and who had previously taught at the University of Louvain, arrived in Wittenberg looking for a job.109 At the same time, though, the university was also considering Werner Einhorn of Bacharach, another Jewish convert. Luther, anxious that Leipzig might try to poach Adrian as they had done Keller, wrote to Spalatin in April 1520, urging action: ‘In this whole affair we have to be extremely careful that, as the saying goes, in trying to sit on two chairs, we don’t fall between them.’110 Adrian was appointed the same month, though he would soon resign, in February 1521, for reasons that are unfortunately not entirely clear. Finding individuals to teach Hebrew was hard enough, but it was also necessary to persuade people that it was worth the effort to learn the language at all. Hebrew teachers often sought to advocate for their subject. A good example of this is the inaugural lecture of Robert Wakefield, the first person formally to teach Hebrew in England, which he published in 1524, and dedicated to King Henry VIII, who he claimed was ‘persuaded, and with good reason, that no one will make any significant progress in the Scriptures without a knowledge of the Hebrew language’.111 In the course of his lecture he praised Hebrew as the most beautiful of languages before insisting that it was a truly holy language, ‘sent down to us from heaven in its entirety.’112 But he went on to offer further reasons for learning Hebrew. ‘In theology, very many things are grossly misunderstood. Through ignorance of the holy language they are made worse by the mockery and shameful derision of the uninitiated.’ He added: 41

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Those who would dispute with the Jews in order to challenge them on matters of salvation, while remaining ignorant of their language and traditions, will certainly look ridiculous and get nowhere. Believe me, it is one thing to read the psalms in the churches of Christian believers, another to respond to the Jews who make false accusations and claim that virtually not one word of our translation is to be found in the Hebrew.113

Wakefield was above all a scholar, interested in Hebrew largely for its own sake. The early reformers may have shared some of these ideas, but they also saw it as a means to an end. Luther, in particular, held a rather ambiguous attitude to the study of the language. He certainly learnt enough Hebrew to be able to discuss individual words, and included references to the original text in his writings. Yet while he acknowledged the value of Hebrew, he also felt that there were dangers of becoming too concerned with questions of language. At one point, for instance, he remarked: Without that language [Hebrew] one can never comprehend Scripture. Even the New Testament, though written in Greek, is replete with Hebraisms. It was therefore correctly stated that the Hebrews drank from the springs, and the Greeks from rivulets, while the Latins imbibed from puddles. I am not a Hebraist with respect to grammar, nor do I wish to be one, for I cannot stand being tied down to rules. I rather translate it freely, for even if one has a talent for languages, he cannot fully reproduce the meaning from one language to another. Accurate interpretation is a gift of God.114

This was a critical distinction for Luther. He was in his own mind more concerned with the theological meaning of the text, rather than philological niceties. On another occasion, recorded by one of the people who collected snippets of conversation from his dinner table (known as his Table Talk), he returned to this point. When the meaning of a passage was ambiguous, he claimed, he would seek to establish what he thought it should mean from the rest of the book, and would then ask Hebrew experts whether that meaning could be sustained from the text. As he explained, ‘And that is most fitting which is closest to the argument of the book. The Jews go astray so often in the Scriptures because they do not know the [true] contents of the books.’115 Of course, this left Luther open to attack from his enemies, who claimed that he fitted the biblical text to his theology, rather than the other way around. 42

A NEW DAWN? Early Luther As with so many other themes, discussions of the Reformation and the Jews have often been dominated by Martin Luther, sometimes almost to the exclusion of all else. In many ways this is perfectly understandable. Luther was a pivotal figure, a voluminous writer, and a huge influence on the Reformation both in his own time and over the following centuries. Of all the major reformers, Luther was the one who wrote most extensively on the Jews. More than that, his views appeared to shift quite dramatically, from a relatively benign position to one of real vitriol by his final years. Charting and explaining the evolution of his views is undoubtedly important, though, as this volume contends, it remains necessary to locate this development within its wider context. Luther’s most combative writings, composed in the last years of his life, will be discussed in the next chapter (pp. 62–8); here, the focus will be on the earlier stages of his career. So far as we can tell, Luther’s direct contacts with Jews were relatively few (though still perhaps greater than for some of the other leading reformers). There were small Jewish communities in Eisleben, the town of his birth, and Mansfeld, where he spent the first decade or so of his life, while his travels through Germany meant that he did on occasion visit territories where Jews were tolerated; on the other hand, Jews were not permitted in Eisenach, Erfurt or Wittenberg, the places where he lived for most of his career.116 In his Table Talk, there are various accounts of encounters with Jews, and anecdotes with Jewish protagonists, though these probably need to be viewed with scepticism. In one, for instance, Luther tells of a Jew who following a visit to Rome requested Catholic baptism, not because he had been impressed by the Christian piety on display, but rather because he was impressed at the indulgence of a God willing to ‘endure such knavery’.117 This was, presumably, little more than a joke at the expense of both Judaism and Catholicism. Rather more serious were his comments on the Pfefferkorn affair. In a letter to Spalatin, Luther commented favourably on the ‘innocent and learned’ Reuchlin, and criticised the Cologne theologians who opposed him, though he also denounced the Jews who ‘will always curse and blaspheme God and his King Christ, as all the prophets have predicted’.118 It is almost impossible to overstate the importance of the Bible for Luther. It remained a constant source of theological inspiration, and the focus of continuous activity throughout his entire career. Not only did he lecture on many different books of the Bible, and publish commentaries on them, but he also produced vernacular

43

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION biblical translations: his translation of the New Testament was completed as early as 1522, while his translation of the Old Testament, produced with the assistance of a number of colleagues in Wittenberg, was completed in 1534.119 While the New Testament, and especially the writings of Saint Paul, were critical for many of Luther’s main theological ideas (including his emphasis on Christ’s crucifixion as the means by which man’s sinfulness was redeemed, and the connected idea of ‘salvation by faith’), that did not mean that he neglected the Old Testament. In his preaching he was mostly concerned with the New Testament, though between 1523 and 1529 he focused on the Pentateuch; but at the University in Wittenberg he spent twenty-eight years out of thirty-two lecturing on the Old Testament.120 At Wittenberg, Luther chose the Psalms as the first book of the Bible which he would teach. There is certainly considerable anti-Jewish sentiment to be found in the lectures which he delivered. The Jews are used as a recurrent image of the sinful, and are contrasted with the righteous Christians. In his comments on the first Psalm, for example, he refers to their role in the crucifixion of Christ, which he contends is continually repeated: ‘To this very day they crucify Him within themselves, as the apostle accuses them, because they keep the truth pierced through, and continue to stab it with their extremely hard iron lies (which are their goads)’.121 Further insight into Luther’s early thinking about the Jews is provided by his exposition of Mary’s prayer in Luke’s Gospel, known as the Magnificat, which he wrote while in hiding in the Wartburg castle in 1521–22. In the final part of that work Luther set out his ideas on Jewish conversion, and the attitude that Christians should adopt towards them. There are strong echoes in his discussion of Augustine’s thinking. Luther insisted that, ‘Although the vast majority of them are hardened, yet there are always some, however few, that are converted to Christ and believe in him.’122 Mary’s prayer included the line, ‘He has remembered to show mercy to Abraham and to all his descendants for ever!’, and so Luther emphasised that this meant it was an eternal promise, rather than one that lasted, for instance, for only 1,000 years. For this reason, he continued, ‘we ought, therefore, not to treat the Jews in so unkindly a spirit, for there are future Christians among them, and they are turning every day.’ From these early statements, we get a good sense of the ideas about the Jews which Luther held at the outset of the Reformation. Several strands are apparent. The Jews are criticised especially because of their failure to interpret the scriptures as Christians do. At the same time, he was ready to accept their rejection, as this was the role that it had been prophesied they would occupy. Moreover, Luther was critical of efforts to force the conversion of the Jews, believing that this was something that should be in 44

A NEW DAWN? God’s hands alone. While he does criticise Jews on theological grounds, there are none of the more hysterical accusations that had been levelled against the Jews in the Middle Ages. Further, as we have just seen, he even advocated greater respect for Jews. He would elaborate many of these ideas in his first major writing on the Jews. That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew appeared in 1523.123 It is remarkable how early this was: it was only six years since Luther had made his initial complaint against indulgences, and only a year or so since his return to Wittenberg from the Wartburg. In the preface, he explained the particular circumstances which had led him to write this treatise. He opened with the dramatic statement: ‘A new lie about me is being circulated.’124 Luther, who had effectively been declared an outlaw following his encounter with the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms in 1521, had not been able to attend the Diet of Nuremberg convened in March 1522. Frederick III, elector of Saxony, had not attended either, but he had received a letter from his deputy in January 1523, which relayed some of the allegations which were being directed against Luther.125 Among other things, Luther was supposed to have claimed that Mary was not a virgin, that she had many sons after Christ, and that Jesus had been conceived of the seed of Joseph. When he learnt that these accusations had also reached Archduke Ferdinand, the brother of Charles V, Luther felt he could no longer ignore them.126 This text was in the first instance, then, an attempt by Luther to clear his name. The book is divided into two main parts. In the first of these, Luther addressed the various charges which had been made against him. He did this through a discussion of four short passages from the Old Testament.127 All of these Luther interprets ‘Christologically’: that is to say that while the text ostensibly describes other matters (the first, for instance, concerns the words uttered by the serpent to Adam and Eve in the Garden of Eden), Luther understands them as pertaining to the advent of Christ. In this instance, Luther argues that, as the seed of ‘the woman’ to whom reference is made in Genesis must be without sin so that he will be able to overcome sin, and ultimately death, this passage cannot refer to an ordinary man; the only logical explanation, he contends, is that the woman will conceive by God, so that her child is both like other men, but also without sin.128 After discussing these four passages, Luther then moved on to reflect on the Jews more broadly. Already in the introduction he had noted his hope that in explaining his belief ‘that Christ was a Jew born of a virgin . . . I might perhaps also win some Jews to the Christian faith’.129 Luther does not seem to have expected that many Jews would read this work themselves, but instead claimed that his intention was to ‘suggest for the benefit of those who want to work with them a method and some passages from 45

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Scripture which they should employ in dealing with them’.130 Specifically, he provided a discussion of two further passages from the Old Testament – Gen. 49.10–12 and Dan. 9.24–7 – which were intended to show that the Jewish belief that the Messiah was still to come was wrong.131 Indeed, this, the key point of difference between Christianity and Judaism, was the most recurrent theme in Luther’s writings about the Jews, and one to which he would return with extra vigour in the last years of his career. While Luther uses the book as a whole to counter Jewish readings of Old Testament passages, the text is also remarkable for the relatively positive way in which he speaks about contemporary Jews. This had been hinted at in the title of the work, but it also frames much of his discussion. As he explained in the introduction: ‘When we are inclined to boast of our position, we should remember that we are but Gentiles, while the Jews are of the lineage of Christ. We are aliens and in-laws; they are blood-relatives, cousins, and brothers of the Lord . . . The Jews are actually nearer to Christ than we are.’132 Moreover, he noted that while the Jews had been entrusted with the Scriptures (just as Augustine had emphasised), among the Gentiles there had been no patriarchs, apostles or prophets, ‘indeed, very few genuine Christians either’. Provocatively, he then went on to suggest: ‘Accordingly, I beg my dear papists should they be growing weary of denouncing me as a heretic, to seize the opportunity of denouncing me as a Jew.’ This commendation of the Jews was, at the same time, balanced by a highly critical treatment of Catholicism. It was hardly surprising, Luther felt, that Jews should not feel any enthusiasm for Christianity: ‘If I had been a Jew and seen such dolts and blockheads govern and teach the Christian faith, I would sooner have become a hog than a Christian.’133 Their treatment of Jews had been particularly reprehensible: ‘They have dealt with the Jews as if they were dogs rather than human beings; they have done little else than deride them and seize their property.’134 As with many of his other writings, Luther was using his discussion of one theme as a means of attacking simultaneously what he saw as the failings of the established church, and particularly its neglect of the central message of Christ. Instead, Luther advocated an altogether more benign approach. He wrote: ‘I hope that if one deals in a kindly way with the Jews and instructs them carefully from Holy Scriptures, many of them will become genuine Christians and turn against the faith of their fathers, the prophets and the patriarchs’.135 As this passage makes clear, his intention was above all to bring about widespread conversion from Judaism – we should not be lulled into thinking that this was toleration for its own sake – but it did prompt him to advocate, at least for the time being, the charitable treatment of Jews. As he insisted in the conclusion: ‘We must receive them cordially, and permit them to trade 46

A NEW DAWN? and work with us, that they may have occasion and opportunity to associate with us, hear our Christian teaching, and witness our Christian life.’136 Indeed, in his final comment on the matter, he demonstrated a remarkable readiness to draw equivalence between the two faiths: ‘If some of them should prove stiff-necked, what of it? After all, we ourselves are not all good Christians either.’137 While the text is notable for its relatively gentle tone, at least compared with the works written towards the end of Luther’s career, one should not overplay this: even at this early stage he made plain his fundamental belief in the error of the Jews; and while he may have spoken of them in positive terms, he still hoped for their conversion. Luther lived with the belief that the end of the world was imminent: this sense would only become sharper as his career developed, and he saw an increasing number of signs of the Last Days, including the papacy apparently becoming the Antichrist. The conversion of the Jews was an important element of that.138 Second, the Jews had the potential to play a more symbolic role. If they converted to the form of religion which Luther espoused, after many centuries of failing to embrace Catholicism in meaningful numbers, it would be a clear endorsement of the truth of Luther’s message. Thus, while Luther’s text was a significant contribution to discussions about the relationship between Judaism and Christianity, it also had important implications for the relationship between Catholicism and the emerging evangelical church over which Luther presided.

R In the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries several shockwaves were felt across Europe, challenging many ideas that had previously been taken for granted. In 1492, the expulsion of the Jews from Spain once again reminded the Jews of how vulnerable they were, not just in Iberia, but across the continent. The ascent to power of the Dominican monk Girolamo Savonarola in Florence in the last years of that decade, where he displaced the ruling Medici family, revealed the great power that popular piety and religious reform could exert. That message was heard with even greater effect in the early decades of the new century, as the Reformation split Christendom apart. As we will see in later chapters, the Jews were often caught in the crossfire of the confessional conflicts which would do so much to determine the fortunes of Christian Europe, but, at least initially, the Reformation was warmly welcomed by Jews. In fact, to some it appeared as if these events were all interconnected as part of some great divine plan. For instance, Abraham Farissol, a French Jew who had become the hazzan (cantor) of the Jewish community of Ferrara, like many others portrayed the expulsions 47

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION from Iberia in dramatic terms.139 He lamented: ‘Nowhere do we behold a people so broken and scattered as the sacred congregation of Israel’. The way had been paved, he concluded, for the arrival of a Messiah.140 In similar fashion, it seems that Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi, who had fled from Iberia to Jerusalem, reinterpreted the predictions of a fifteenth-century astronomer, who had foretold the appearance of a ‘great, valiant and mighty’ man who would ‘pursue justice and loathe debauchery . . . originate a religion and destroy their houses of worship and clergy’ as pertaining to Luther.141 Indeed, especially in the 1520s, there was considerable Jewish enthusiasm for the Reformation. Jews noted how the reformers mounted an assault upon the Catholic clergy at whose hands they had suffered so greatly over the preceding generations. A certain Rabbi Abraham in a letter praised the iconoclasm which accompanied the earliest stages of the Reformation: ‘With might and main they destroy and burn the images of their gods, and their idols are cut down in all parts of his dominion.’142 Meanwhile the schism within the church seemed to indicate that the world was reaching its ‘Last Days’. Asher Lämmlein, a German-born Jew who travelled to Istria, near Venice, and Isaac Abravanel (or Abarbanel), a famous and vastly wealthy Portuguese statesman and scholar, who spent his last years in Venice (and, incidentally, father of Judah Leon Abravanel, whose poetry was discussed at the start of this chapter), both predicted that the world would end in 1503 (though Abravanel would subsequently revise his views on this several times, finally settling on 1591).143 Luther’s emergence was met with particular interest. That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew was bought in significant numbers by Jews and converts, and it was even translated into Spanish, so that copies of it could be smuggled from Antwerp in the Netherlands back to Spain, for those conversos who were currently having to conceal their true religion. Some copies even made it to Palestine.144 In the first place, the Jews saw in Luther an ally, and someone who was ready to stand against the Catholic Church. In the anonymous Prague Chronicle, for instance, it was noted that in 1525, ‘A priest named Martin Luther created turmoil in the Catholic religion, deriding and repudiating its customs’.145 But they were also pleased by the gentle tone of that early work. As Abraham, the rabbi quoted above, explained: ‘All the gentiles in all the lands . . . affected by the influence of this noble man exalt the Jews. Whereas before there were lands wherein any wayfaring Jew would be put to death . . . now they invite him to their worship, joyously and with a pleasant countenance’.146 Likewise, Joseph ben Joshua ha-Kohen, a Jew who had been born in Avignon in France, and who had subsequently moved to Genoa in Italy, praised ‘the priest Martin, a wise and discerning man’, for his attack on the Franciscans, whom the author blamed above all for the building of St Peter’s.147 48

A NEW DAWN? Rabbi Abraham ibn Megas, the physician to the Ottoman sultan Suleiman the Magnificent, believed that the division of Christendom brought about by the Reformation would also be beneficial, as it involved stripping away much that had become associated with Christianity: God has aroused the spirit of the Lutherans – who originally belonged to them, but now rejected their views – to destroy their stelae, demolish their towers and burn the graven images of their gods. So they abrogated and devastated much of the unworthy faith they possessed. And each day that passes, this people is gaining in strength, so that it waxes exceedingly great . . . Now, behold, this congregation has cast off all faith in icons and priests, and has discarded the form of their worthless creed. So their faith has reverted to a state of primeval flux.148

Schadenfreude at the treatment of the Catholic Church seems to have been a recurrent sentiment through various Jewish accounts of the sixteenth century. As we will see in the next chapter, however, this initial optimism would not last long.

49

3

R DASHED HOPES Jews and the Early Reformation

On Easter Sunday, April 1534, Jan Matthys, a former baker from Haarlem, led a squad of no more than twenty men out from the besieged town of Münster in Westphalia, near the Dutch border.1 The assembled forces of the city’s expelled bishop had ensured that neither people nor provisions had been able to enter the city since the start of the year. Although the situation was far from favourable, Matthys, who had only been in charge of the city for a matter of weeks, believed that he was a second Gideon, a leader of the Israelites who, despite a vast numerical disadvantage, had led a force of 300 men to a decisive victory over the Midianites.2 According to one account, written forty years later, Matthys went out ‘with more boldness than sense and certainly with more courage than if he had a vast army following him’.3 Unfortunately, though, Matthys was less successful than his inspiration: as soon as he was recognised, the opposing forces fell upon him, ‘slashing at him with such butchery that all the joints of his body were severed with frequent sword blows, and his guts spilled out with a rush of blood.’ According to one source, his decapitated head was placed on a stick, which was raised into the air; according to another, his genitals were cut off and displayed on one of the city’s gates.4 This event heralded the beginning of the end of one of the most notorious episodes of the Reformation: the short-lived Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster.5 The Reformation in Münster had begun fairly conventionally. Bernard Rothmann, a Catholic priest who had become a Lutheran pastor in the late 1520s, received sympathetically the ideas of the Dutch Anabaptist Melchior Hoffman.6 Hoffman was a furrier and lay preacher, who had come to identify himself with the prophet Elijah. He predicted that the world would end in 1533 (1,500 years after the death of Christ), and that Strasbourg would become the New Jerusalem, where all true believers would gather in anticipation of the Last Days. Rather than welcome him with open arms, however, the city authorities put him in prison. In the same year, Rothmann took up Hoffman’s message, publishing a series of pamphlets in which he denounced the Catholic Church, and invited the poor inhabitants 50

DASHED HOPES of the surrounding areas to come and share in Münster’s wealth. Thousands of people, many of them Dutch Anabaptists, flooded into the city. At the same time, a growing number of Catholics and Lutherans departed the city, concerned by the direction in which events were heading. In the civic elections of February 1534, Rothmann and his allies were able to take control of the government, which was seen as further evidence of the divine support for their mission. These included Matthys, another of Hoffman’s followers, and Jan Beukelszoon, a tailor from Leiden, who started to style himself ‘Jan of Leiden’. This pair swiftly assumed leadership of the reform movement. Matthys began to cast Münster as an alternative ‘New Jerusalem’ (Strasbourg having missed the opportunity), claiming that only those who were in the town would be saved, while the rest of the world would imminently be destroyed.7 With that in mind, he set about reordering the city in line with the primitive church, as portrayed especially in Acts. In January 1534, adult baptisms had begun to take place in the city: 1,400 people were baptised within the first week.8 Following the elections in February, this then became compulsory. Matthys initially planned to kill anyone who refused, but he was persuaded to allow them to leave instead. By 3 March, only Anabaptists, who addressed each other as ‘Sister’ and ‘Brother’, remained in the town.9 The property of those who had fled the city was confiscated. Before long, it was proclaimed that all property should be held in common. Food was made public property, money was prohibited, and residents were required to keep their house doors open at all times. Following the death of Matthys at the head of his misguided band in April, Jan of Leiden, who by this point was claiming that the Lord spoke directly to him, was proclaimed his successor. Victories against the besieging army in May and August seemed to endorse the view that the community enjoyed divine protection; it also allowed Jan, who identified himself with the biblical David, to have himself crowned the ‘king of righteousness’ and to proclaim himself ruler of a new Zion. The city was now run by twelve men, dubbed the ‘Twelve Elders of the Tribes of Israel’.10 Among their first acts, they issued two sets of regulations. The first, dealing with the citizens’ private lives, set out thirteen commandments, the failure to follow which was punishable by death: these included blasphemy, failing to honour one’s parents, and challenging the authority of the government.11 The second set of regulations covered public behaviour. The preamble explained that this document set out the ‘duties and articles [to be] faithfully and firmly observed by every Israelite and member of the house of God’.12 The tone of these articles can be seen in this typical example: ‘What the elders in common deliberation in this new Israel have found to be good is to be proclaimed and announced by the prophet John of Leiden as the faithful servant of the Most High 51

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION and the holy government to the congregation of Christ, and the entire congregation of Israel’.13 Arguably the most controversial development, though, was the legalisation of polygamy. In a work of 1534, Rothmann sought to defend this innovation: ‘God has restored the true practice of holy matrimony amongst us. Marriage is the union of man and wife – “one” has now been removed . . . Freedom in marriage for the man consists in the possibility for him to have more than one wife . . . This was true of the biblical fathers until the time of the Apostles, nor has polygamy been forbidden by God.’14 While the example of the church fathers provided his ostensible justification, it does seem there were other factors at play. Evidently, Jan of Leiden, who may have had as many as sixteen wives, was keen to marry the widow of Jan Matthys. Beyond that there was a great disparity between the genders: there may have been four times as many women in the city as there were men. Polygamy of the form instituted in Münster served to redress that imbalance; it may also have been intended to help the city get closer to the 144,000 saints described in the book of Revelation.15 This identification with the people of Israel was not restricted to the leadership and the instructions they issued, moreover. In his exhaustive account of the Münster episode, Hermann von Kerssenbrock, who had been forced to leave the city with his parents when the Anabaptists took control, recorded an incident involving Hille Feichen, ‘a woman of outstanding beauty and peaceful disposition’.16 She found inspiration in a sermon which told of Judith, who was able to release the town of Bethulia from a siege by deceiving and killing the Assyrian general Holophernes, and determined to copy her.17 Indeed, ‘feeling that the thought was not lessening but increasing daily, she had no doubt that she was being divinely impelled’. She confided first in a couple of friends, and then the city’s leaders ‘who egged her on to such an extent with prayers and rewards, and instilled in her such desire for eternal fame and repute, that she had no doubt about a successful outcome’. Her plan involved lacing an undergarment in ‘a very lethal poison’, which she intended to give to the bishop as a present. According to von Kerssenbrock, the plan did almost succeed, but at the last moment, another citizen was able to escape from Münster to raise the alarm. Feichen, who had been apprehended by the bishop’s guards, was tortured and confessed; her gift was burnt, and she was decapitated. This ‘new Jerusalem’ did not last for much longer, however. Already the common ownership of property in practice equated to a form of war-time rationing. Indeed, one individual who managed to escape from the city claimed that twenty-five horses had already been eaten, and that cats were being roasted on spears, while mice were 52

DASHED HOPES cooked in pans.18 Finally, two deserters directed the besieging army to the weakest gate, and, following a violent battle, the city was retaken on 25 June. Several of the leaders, including Jan of Leiden, were tortured and executed in the aftermath.19 They were then put in iron cages which were hung from the steeple of St Lambert’s church, located on one side of the city’s main market square, and their corpses left to rot; their bones were left there for several decades, while the cages remain there to this day. This episode was deeply problematic for both Anabaptism specifically, and for the Protestant Reformation more generally. Subsequent Anabaptist groups sought to distance themselves from Münster, frequently embracing a more explicitly pacifist outlook. For the mainstream reformers, meanwhile, it was a further indication of what could go wrong if religious reform occurred without the support of the existing political authorities. More than that, though, it brought into question the Reformation principle of sola scriptura, discussed in the previous chapter. The inhabitants of Münster clearly believed that they were acting in accordance with the precepts of the Bible, and sought to provide scriptural justification for their actions. But this had taken them in directions with which most people in the sixteenth century felt deeply uncomfortable. Such close identification with the Jews of the Old Testament, both in terms of individual leaders styling themselves as prophets and kings, and references to Münster as Zion or the New Jerusalem, and its inhabitants as Israelites, all served to illustrate the dangers of the biblical literalism which could seem the logical conclusion of the Protestant endeavour. Allegations of Judaising threatened to taint not merely this individual episode, but the Reformation as a whole. Luther’s protest led him to break with the church. In his wake, however, the Reformation movement rapidly started to fragment, as reformers emerged in different locations and sought to find solutions to the religious issues which they faced. This of course had implications for Christian attitudes towards the Jews and Judaism. Participants in the Peasants’ War and early radicals had to think about the issue; those in part then impacted on the views of mainstream reformers, including Luther, whose Jewish teachings took on a much harsher tone, but also Martin Bucer, the Strasbourg reformer. While the Protestant Reformation had begun with an initial wave of optimism about the possibilities for Judaeo-Christian relations, as the Reformation movement consolidated its position this gave way to a situation typified by rather greater animosity. Radicals and the Jews There was a radical dimension to the Protestant Reformation almost from the outset. When Luther went into hiding between 1521 and 1522, following his condemnation 53

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION by the Holy Roman Emperor at the Diet of Worms, Andreas Karlstadt, one of his colleagues, took over the direction of the Reformation in Wittenberg.20 He swiftly introduced a range of reforms. On Christmas Day 1521, he celebrated the Mass ‘in both kinds’ (that is, sharing both bread and wine with all communicants, rather than restricting the latter to the clergy as was done at this time), and in the German vernacular. He followed this by announcing his intention to marry (thereby challenging ideas of clerical celibacy), and demanding the removal of images from churches. When Luther returned, he sought to undo many of the changes which Karlstadt had introduced, not because he disagreed with him, but rather because he appreciated that the pace of reform was alarming for the more conservative elements of Wittenberg society. The pair soon fell out, and Karlstadt would leave the town in 1523. Karlstadt was a well-regarded Hebraist, and is known to have owned copies of Hebrew grammars written by Konrad Pellikan and Johann Reuchlin, and other works by the latter.21 This may have contributed to his reform programme, in which he looked to align the church more closely with Mosaic Law, and Old Testament models. In, On the Removal of Images (1522), for instance, he insisted that ‘to have images in churches and houses of God is wrong and contrary to the first commandment’, and he subsequently defended this position with reference to the Hebrew kings mentioned in Deuteronomy (7.5), such as Hezekiah and Josiah, who were praised by God for removing idols and objects of false worship.22 This tendency became more provocative still when in 1524, following his departure from Wittenberg, Karlstadt wrote a text on the issue of the Sabbath.23 There were two main issues relating to Sabbatarian belief in this period, and Karlstadt addressed them both. The first was the importance of actually keeping the Sabbath. As he noted, ‘desecration of the Sabbath . . . is rather common among today’s Christians’, by which he meant that people continued to work and do other activities on that day; indeed, he conceded that he was often guilty of this himself.24 (This would remain a bone of contention throughout the Reformation. In 1583, the English Puritan Philip Stubbes catalogued the many activities his countrymen undertook on the Sabbath: ‘frequenting of bawdy stage plays and interludes, in maintaining lords of misrule . . . May games, church ales, feasts and wakes’ and so on, ‘whereby the Lord God is dishonoured, his Sabbath violated, his word neglected . . .’).25 The second issue raised by Karlstadt was arguably still more controversial, and concerned the day on which the Sabbath was celebrated. He tried to broach this difficult topic quite delicately: ‘It is no secret that human beings instituted Sunday. As for Saturday, the matter is being debated. But this is clear that you must celebrate on the seventh day, 54

DASHED HOPES and allow your servants to celebrate whenever they have worked for six days’.26 Despite this Solomonic pronouncement, he acknowledged that it would be impractical for people to celebrate the Sabbath on different days. Yet while his main concern was with ensuring the seventh day was observed (whenever that might fall), by drawing attention to the fact that the celebration of the Sabbath on a Sunday was a human invention, and raising the possibility of moving it to the Saturday (when Jews celebrated it), he risked making it seem as if he was seeking to move Christianity in the direction of Judaism. Indeed, Luther would comment to this effect in a direct response: ‘he would truly make us Jews in all things, and we should come to be circumcised; for . . . he who deems it necessary to keep one law of Moses . . . must deem all necessary, and keep them all’.27 This idea of celebrating the Sabbath on a Saturday was also adopted by a small group of Anabaptists in Moravia and Silesia (areas in modern Czechia and Poland), led by Oswald Glaidt and Andreas Fischer. Relatively little is known about this group, or its leaders, and most of the information comes from their opponents. Glaidt and Fischer likely met in 1527 and when they arrived in Silesia, an Anabaptist community was already in existence. Under their influence, this community began to start celebrating the Sabbath on Saturdays, though this concerned the theologian Kaspar Schwenckfeld, who had a played a key role in introducing the Lutheran reform in Silesia during the 1520s.28 Schwenckfeld and his colleague Valentin Krautwald agreed to hold a debate on the matter. The records of that debate do not survive, and nor do the books which Glaidt and Fischer wrote in its wake defending their position; instead, we are reliant on Krautwald’s response to their works.29 From this, it can be ascertained that they argued that the Sabbath should be celebrated on Saturday on the basis of the Ten Commandments, and because this was the practice which had been followed by the patriarchs, and indeed by Jesus, while Sunday worship had been introduced by the papacy.30 It appears that Fischer was accused of Judaising during this dispute. While Fischer insisted that he and his followers were not Jews, he still contended that Christians and Jews had much in common theologically (especially their belief in the same God) and also noted that Christians believed that ‘salvation has come through the Jews’. Luther would subsequently allude to rumours that circumcision was also practised within this community, but this is not confirmed by any other source, and does not seem especially likely. By the mid-1530s, both Glaidt and Fischer had left the area but they did not manage to steer clear of further controversy: in the following decade they would both be executed for their beliefs. Their views do not seem to have found many sympathisers, but as we will see below, they did nonetheless provoke considerable anxiety in their opponents. 55

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION The Peasants’ War provided a rather different form of radicalism in the early stages of the Reformation. This was the name given to the series of partly co-ordinated uprisings that took place in 1524–25 across central Europe among the lower orders (though despite its name, peasants were a relatively small component), which constituted the largest popular uprising before the French Revolution. The demands of different peasant bands give us an indication of how they viewed Jews within Christian society. On the one hand, many lists of demands do not refer to Jews at all. This was the case, for instance, with the famous Twelve Articles of the Upper Swabian Peasants, a text which was widely disseminated and adopted or adapted in many other regions.31 In some instances this may simply reflect the fact that Jews were not very numerous, but it equally suggests that they were not widely perceived as a significant threat or a high priority, at least compared with their other grievances. However, in other instances, Jews are singled out for attention. The statement of one group, based in the south of Alsace, for instance, drew directly on the Twelve Articles for some of its points, but among those they added was the demand that Jews should be expelled from the area.32 Likewise, in the Articles of the Porrentruy Band, who were based near Basel, four further points were added to the original Twelve Articles. The first of these read: ‘First, to take possession of all lands and goods in town and country belonging to the Jews, but that his Imperial Majesty shall grant them a land whereon they may subsist.’33 This was a request for a localised expulsion, though it was rather short on detail as to the practicalities. Similarly, in the Frankfurt Articles of 13 April 1525, a collection of forty-six articles which held a similar status to the more famous Twelve Articles, two related to the Jews. They read as follows: 12. No Jew should in any way be allowed to practice such intolerable and great usury in buying and selling, by which they burden the poor man. If any stolen property is found on them, they should be obliged to surrender it without any compensation: but whatever has been pawned to them by way of old clothes or the like may be sold, but only whole and not in lengths. 25. It is true and well known that many a poor man has had his goods burnt by the Jews, and sometimes had them offered for sale by the Jews, or had them sold elsewhere . . .34

In part this concern might be explained by the fact that Frankfurt had a larger Jewish community than most other locations at this time. It is striking, moreover, that the concern expressed here relates to the role of the Jews as moneylenders and pawnbrokers: 56

DASHED HOPES that is to say, these are presented principally as social and economic concerns; there is no mention of the Jews as a spiritual enemy, despite the broader context in which documents such as these sought to portray their demands as consistent with the Gospel. Article 12, in particular, victimised the Jews: even if goods had been stolen by others before they were sold to the Jews, it was they who would face the financial penalty. At the same time, it is striking that there was no call for the Jews to be expelled: the authors of the Frankfurt Articles simply sought to restrict their moneylending activity. The radical dimension to the Reformation is perhaps most closely associated with the Anabaptists. It is difficult to generalise about the Anabaptists on any topic, given that they were a disparate and amorphous body, which comprised at least twenty different groups based in different locations in central Europe.35 Even their name was something of a misnomer. Anabaptism meant ‘re-baptism’ and alluded to the fact that the groups that fell under this name favoured adult baptism; however, as they did not accept infant baptism, this was not a name which they would have recognised. These groups typically sought to withdraw from Christian society to form separate communities which they hoped to restore to something close to an original apostolic form (and, at least in the case of Münster, even identifying with the people of the Old Testament); especially because of this withdrawal from society, the connections between the groups were generally weak, and they tended to develop their own distinctive theologies and identities. In general, the Anabaptists seem to have written about contemporary Jews only quite rarely. Of the small number who did, it was more common that they should have done so before they became Anabaptists, which makes it still harder to identify a distinct Anabaptist position with regard to Jews. This is the case, for instance, with Menno Simons (1496–1561), who would become a major figure in Dutch Anabaptism, and after whom the Mennonites are named. In his Blasphemy of John Leiden, a work written about the episode in Münster, he said that the Jews ‘were often punished and at last cut off from the olive tree as unfaithful branches’; elsewhere he asserted, quite conventionally, that ‘all Israel shall be saved . . . Since Israel is yet to be converted unto Christ, it follows that the King David, whom Israel shall seek, can be none other than Christ’.36 Similarly, Balthasar Hubmaier (c. 1485–1528), a radical thinker who would be executed for heresy in Vienna, had not yet become an Anabaptist when he spoke about the Jews. He had arrived in Regensburg in 1516, to become the city’s preacher. There was already in the city a well-established anti-Jewish sentiment, which he capitalised upon in his sermons. He condemned their usury, and argued that this activity posed a 57

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION threat to the spiritual well-being of the Christian community. When Emperor Maximilian, who had acted as the Jews’ protector, died in 1519, the Jews were driven from Regensburg.37 Their synagogue was destroyed and in its place was built a chapel dedicated to Mary. Hubmaier submitted a list to the city council of fifty-four miracles which he claimed happened in this shrine.38 As an Anabaptist he did not repeat his calls for persecution of the Jews, but it is hard to know whether that means that he had changed his mind on this issue, with that change of perspective, or whether simply he was more concerned with other matters. Pilgram Marpeck (d. 1556), an Anabaptist leader from south Germany, spoke almost exclusively about Jews from the time of Jesus, referring for instance to their blasphemies against Christ, and their disbelieving nature. He complained for instance that, ‘I fear that those false prophets who wait for a second coming will experience what the Jews experienced because they did not want in their view, to have the son of a carpenter for a Messiah’.39 Similarly, he wrote, ‘Far be it from us that we should seek to be redeemed like the Jews, and these present alleged Christians who comfort themselves and hope to be redeemed by human power and the arm of man’.40 On the other hand, there is at least one instance where it does seem likely that collaboration between Anabaptists and Jews took place. The product of this was a book known as the Worms Prophets, which was published in 1527. This volume was the first translation of the Old Testament prophets from Hebrew into German, and was the work of two Anabaptists based in Worms, Hans Denck and Ludwig Hätzer.41 Martin Luther had obtained a copy within a month of it coming off the presses, but in his open letter on translating, which he wrote in 1530, he offered only begrudging praise: ‘It has been carefully done and approaches my German very closely. But Jews had a hand in it, and they do not show much reverence for Christ. Apart from that there is plenty of skill and craftsmanship there.’42 The authors of the translation do not discuss this point themselves, but in his discussion of the work, the historian James Beck has argued not only that there was a well-established tradition of cooperation between Jews and Christians interested in Hebraica in Worms by this point, but also that the character of the text, and especially its annotations, make this seem plausible: there is an absence of Christological exegesis, while a number of the annotations suggest the influence of several of the great rabbinic interpreters, including Rashi (d. 1105), Abraham ibn Ezra (d. 1167) and David Kimhi (d.1235).43 At the same time, there was a concern among mainstream reformers that Anabaptism might lead its adherents into undue sympathy towards Jewish modes of behaviour. For instance, Kaspar Schwenckfeld published a response to Glaidt and 58

DASHED HOPES Fischer’s Sabbatarian views (see above, p. 55), entitled Against the Ancient and the New Ebionite Error of Those Who Confuse Moses with Christ, the Law with the Gospel in 1528.44 Likewise, Valentin Krautwald, another German who assisted Schwenckfeld in the Reformation of Liegnitz (modern Legnica) in Lower Silesia, an area in south-west Poland, wrote a letter to the leaders of the Reformation in Strasbourg, urging them not to rely too heavily on Jewish linguistic support: ‘Scholastic and sophistic foolishness has been exploded; there follows now, unless the Lord provide otherwise, rabbinical and Jewish perfidy’.45 Once again, interest in Jewish practices by one group was met with anxiety about Judaising on the part of their rivals. A final broader point worthy of note with regard to the radical groups of Europe is the extent to which they shared quite similar experiences. The views of both the Jews and these radical groups (not only Anabaptists, but also Antitrinitarians) differed sufficiently from the norm for them to be considered beyond the pale by mainstream Christians, both Catholic and Protestant. Jews were condemned for their failure to accept Jesus as Messiah; Anabaptists were criticised for their rejection of infant baptism, and their withdrawal from society more broadly; and Antitrinitarians were castigated for their failure to accept the notion of the Trinity, which was seen as a core Christian belief.46 All three groups were attacked in print by the Christian reformers, and were regularly marginalised by wider society. More than that, there were some points of theological overlap. We have already seen in this chapter how some of the Anabaptist groups sought to replicate elements of Jewish worship, in line with the injunctions of the Old Testament; similarly, as will be discussed more fully in the next chapter with regard to Michael Servetus (pp. 86–9), the idea of the Trinity was one of the principal conceptual obstacles for the Jews to accept Christianity. These groups may often have viewed each other with hostility, but at times they were at least united by their shared marginal positions. Josel of Rosheim and the Jews of the Empire One of the most important contributions made with regard to Judaeo-Christian relations in the era of the early Reformation was made by Josel (or Joseph) of Rosheim (c. 1478–1554). He played a key role in defending Jewish interests in the empire, and in his Chronicle he left a rare but substantial account from a Jewish perspective which sheds light on many of the developments associated with the early decades of the Reformation.47 It seems likely he was related to Jacob ben Jechiel Loans, who had been physician to the Emperor Frederick III (the great-grandfather of Charles V), and who had also taught Reuchlin Hebrew.48 Such distinguished connections did not, however, 59

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION mean that his family escaped the growth of anti-Jewish sentiment which emerged at the turn of the sixteenth century. He began his Chronicle by describing an accusation of ritual murder which was brought against members of his family in Endlinger in 1471, and which culminated in three of his father’s uncles being burnt at the stake.49 In 1510 the Jews of Lower Alsace appointed Josel (who would have been about thirty years old), along with Rabbi Zadok, as leader of the community.50 At some stage his remit was expanded, and he started to be referred to as the ‘commander of the Jews in the Holy Roman Empire’. This was quite a flexible position but it tended to involve him acting as a spokesman on behalf of the Jewish community, and interceding with the political authorities in defence of Jewish interests.51 In 1519, for instance, in the wake of the expulsion of the Jews from Regensburg discussed above, the inhabitants of Dangolsheim, a town near Strasbourg, decided to follow suit. Josel intervened and gave the villagers ‘a stern warning, whereupon they repented of their evil intentions and deeds, and their violation of the privileges’, and the Jews were permitted to return.52 In the same year, on the death of the Emperor Maximilian I, Josel immediately met with his successor, Charles V. As he recorded in his Chronicle: ‘I came to him and to his servants to plead for our people and our inheritance. We . . . obtained comprehensive privileges for all of Germany’.53 This did not mean that the Jews were secure however, and constant vigilance was required. Jewish expulsions were ordered in the town of Rosheim, and the area of Kayserberg: Josel managed to cancel the first of these, but in the latter he could only enact a series of postponements.54 The advent of the Reformation inevitably added further difficulties to his role. This was illustrated, for instance, in his intervention in the Peasants’ War, where he was required to defend Jewish interests when the conflict came into Alsace.55 A peasant army had assembled at Altdorf, a town less than 20 kilometres from Strasbourg, and even closer to his hometown of Rosheim. Protestant leaders from Strasbourg, including Matthias Zell, Wolfgang Capito and Martin Bucer all visited the peasant leaders, and tried to persuade them not to attack, but without success.56 The Jewish communities therefore turned to Josel, who went to negotiate with the peasants directly. As he subsequently explained in his Chronicle, ‘By God’s mercy I came to them at the abbey called Altdorf, and spoke to their hearts with the Book,’ – by which he meant he used the Old Testament to demonstrate the views they held about the Jews were wrong – ‘concerning the counsel they should give to the leaders of their forces. They proclaimed loudly that the Jews were not to be harmed and also wrote many letters of safe-conduct for every city and region’.57 In the event, he went on, the peasants went back on their 60

DASHED HOPES word and broke their promises (though he does not explain how), but ‘at all events, their public undertaking brought relief and deliverance for the Jews’.58 Perhaps even more remarkably, he had achieved rather more than Bucer and his colleagues in this instance. Josel would also be required to defend Jewish interests against one of the most notorious authors of the era, Anthonius Margaritha.59 Born in the last decade of the fifteenth century in Regensburg, Margaritha was the son of Rabbi Samuel Margoles and grandson of another rabbi, Jacob. When the Jewish community of Regensburg was expelled in 1519, it seems that Margaritha went with his family to Italy, though he returned to Germany in 1521, where he converted to Catholicism. Thereafter, he began to teach Hebrew in various places including Augsburg. It was also in that city, in 1530, that he published the work for which he would become most famous: The Whole Jewish Faith.60 This book, as its title suggests, was the first sustained attempt to explain to a Christian audience the prayers, customs and ceremonies used by Jews.61 The book has two main elements. In the first part, Margaritha surveys Jewish rituals and customs: this includes a discussion of the rituals of the day, the week, the month and the year, and finally fast days; he then moves on to deal with subjects such as dietary laws, key moments in the life of a Jew (such as circumcision, marriage and death) and the attendant ceremonies, before discussing broader social and cultural issues. While this was a wide-ranging account of Jewish religious life, all was cast in an altogether negative light. Margaritha presented these ceremonies as superficial, and lacking in any spiritual meaning, for instance, and alleged that rabbis intentionally prevented Jews from coming into contact with Christological interpretations of specific biblical passages. In the second part of the work, Margaritha then provided German translations of the Jewish prayerbook, through which he sought to create the impression that anti-Christian curses were a central component of Jewish ritual life. Indeed, he suggested that they hardly celebrated any occasion without wishing for revenge against Christians. The book evidently met with considerable success: a second edition was published within a month.62 But this also brought it wider attention than Margaritha may have anticipated. When the Emperor Charles V became aware of it, he felt obliged to investigate Margaritha’s accusations, to ascertain whether the Jews posed as much of a threat as he had claimed. He arranged for a debate to take place and asked Josel of Rosheim to speak in defence of the Jews. The debate took place on 25 June 1530 in Augsburg. According to Josel’s account of the event, he had to address three main charges: that Jews slandered Christ and Christianity, that they were attempting to win converts, and that they intended to overthrow the political authorities under whom they lived.63 61

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Josel does not say much about the defence he offered, but it was evidently successful, as he was deemed to have won. Margaritha was briefly imprisoned, but the bishop of Vienna intervened to have him released, whereupon he was banished from Augsburg. Margaritha would teach Hebrew at Leipzig from 1531, before becoming professor of Hebrew at the University of Vienna in 1537, a position he would occupy until his death in 1542. Josel would subsequently allege that Margaritha, having already converted from Judaism to Catholicism, had by then become a Lutheran.64 His work was clearly very influential on Luther, as we will see shortly, but there does not seem any grounds to believe this accusation. Later Luther In the later 1530s, Luther’s attitude towards the Jews started to harden. Indeed, in the last years of his life, he wrote some of the most offensive anti-Jewish passages to emerge from the Reformation era. This has been particularly uncomfortable for Lutherans (and indeed Protestants more generally) in the present day, and has required reflection on how they should locate Luther’s pronouncements within his theology. For some it has been preferable to reduce the attention given to the later writings, while others have argued that different elements of his thought are more significant as regards Judaeo-Christian relations.65 For historians, meanwhile, there is the further issue of how to account for the considerable difference between Luther’s earlier and later writings on this topic. Certainly, various explanations have been offered. These include: the suggestion that Luther was disappointed that Jews had not converted to Christianity in the numbers that he had hoped following his 1523 text That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew; a broader sense of disappointment about the relatively slow progress of the Reformation, which found expression in a range of hostile works against a spectrum of perceived enemies of the movement; a growing sense that the apocalypse was imminent which meant that it was even more urgent to complete the process of reform; and the considerable physical and mental ill health that Luther, who was now sixty, was by this point suffering.66 Of course, while these factors may go some way to explaining his change in perspective, they hardly absolve him of responsibility for those later writings. In fact, the first evidence of his shift in attitude came in a text which did not deal with the Jews directly, but rather the issue of Sabbatarianism. As discussed above, reports were circulating that a radical Anabaptist sect in Moravia had accepted Jewish laws and had started celebrating the Sabbath on a Saturday. It seems likely that Luther started to hear these rumours in the mid-1530s. In his Lectures on Genesis, begun in 62

DASHED HOPES 1535, he mentioned that ‘in our time there arose in Moravia a foolish kind of people, the Sabbatarians, who maintain that the Sabbath must be maintained after the fashion of the Jews. Perhaps they will insist on circumcision too, for a like reason’.67 Then, in 1538, he addressed the topic directly, with Against the Sabbatarians, which took the form of an open letter to a friend.68 As he explained, this work was intended to show Christians how they should refute Jewish arguments on this topic.69 In the first place, he set out several principal lines of theological argument. He noted that the Jews had been in exile for almost 1,500 years, since the fall of Jerusalem in 70 ce, and asserted that this was punishment for their failure to adhere to the Law. On previous occasions when the Jews had been sent into exile – Egypt, the wilderness, Babylon and so on – a fixed time had been established, and various signs had been sent to reassure them that God was still with them. ‘But now in this last exile there is none of all of this. No sin is named to which they might point. There is no prophet; there is no time limit defined . . .’70 This unprecedented situation, Luther argued, meant that their sin must be far greater than any before; for him, the only possible explanation for this was their failure to recognise the Messiah. Second, Luther sought to clarify the nature and value of Mosaic Law. In so doing, he moved towards addressing the specific issue of the Sabbatarians, the Christian celebration of the Sabbath, and, more broadly, Christian enthusiasm for the Jewish religion. According to Luther’s correspondent, ‘the Jews boast that their law will endure forever and . . . we Gentiles must become Jews’.71 Luther countered this, claiming that the coming of the Messiah meant that the law no longer applied. He insisted instead that the Jews would have to return to Jerusalem (i.e. their exile must come to an end) before one could expect them to convert. He also contended that the Jews followed their law selectively, practising circumcision and abstaining from certain types of food for instance, while neglecting its more fundamental elements.72 As for the issue of the Sabbath specifically, Luther asserted that the ‘third commandment concerning the Sabbath, of which the Jews make so much, is per se a commandment that applies to the whole world; but the form in which Moses frames it and adapts it to his people was imposed only on the Jews’.73 For Luther, it was important to teach and hear the word of God on the Sabbath, which would thereby sanctify the day. This was more meaningful than marking the day, as the Jews did, by not working on it. The text on Sabbatarianism had brought Luther back to thinking about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism, but it was in 1543 that he fully addressed that theme, composing three separate works on the subject. These are among Luther’s most notorious writings, and are characterised by a very different tenor compared with 63

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the one he had used in That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew. At the same time, we should perhaps not be entirely distracted by the change in tone. There were in fact considerable continuities with his earlier writings. Luther’s principal issue with the Jews was always that they failed to recognise the Messiah, despite what he felt was the self-evident message of the Scriptures; his discussion of these issues remained focused around questions of biblical interpretation; and in particular, Luther was keen to demonstrate that his interpretation was Christological, and thus entirely orthodox. In fact, one might even suggest that it was the text of 1523 which was the anomaly: its optimistic tone might be explained by the fact that his main concerns were to defend his own orthodoxy, and to criticise the Catholic Church. Nonetheless, we can be fairly confident that Luther’s reputation would be very different, especially as regards his attitude towards Jews, had he died in 1540. The first of the three texts which Luther produced was entitled On the Jews and Their Lies, and had in fact been written in the last months of 1542.74 In the introduction he admitted that he had previously decided not to write further against this ‘miserable and accursed people’, but he had changed his mind for two reasons. First, echoing his work against the Sabbatarians, he was concerned about Jewish efforts to win Christian converts. Second, he claimed to have received a work in which a Christian and a Jew discussed religion, in which the latter twisted the meaning of Scripture.75 But Luther was no longer interested in dialogue: ‘It is not my purpose to quarrel with the Jews, nor to learn from them how they interpret or understand Scripture; I know all of that very well already. Much less do I propose to convert the Jews, for that is impossible.’76 On this last issue in particular, the contrast with his text of 1523 was stark: then conversion had seemed a genuine hope, but twenty years later he had entirely given up on the idea. As the title of the work implied, Luther’s principal focus was countering a series of lies that he claimed the Jews disseminated. Here, strikingly, he drew explicitly on medieval Catholic polemicists, including the Franciscan Nicholas of Lyra (d. 1349) and the Spanish convert from Judaism Paul of Burgos (d. 1435).77 First, he addressed what he considered to be the four major lies that Jews put forward about themselves: that they were of noble lineage, because of their descent from the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac and Jacob; that they had been ‘chosen’ by God, on account of their circumcision; that God had given them the Law; and that they had received the land of Canaan and the city of Jerusalem from God.78 Luther sought to counter each of these by means of scriptural quotations which he felt demonstrated that their confidence in these claims was misplaced. Worse than all of that, however, as far as Luther was concerned, was the fact that Jews refused to accept that the Messiah had already appeared: in the next section, therefore, he wrote at considerable length on this issue.79 64

DASHED HOPES Third, Luther dealt with the lies which he claimed Jews told about Christ, Mary, and indeed Christians as a whole.80 Here, Luther drew explicitly on Margaritha’s Whole Jewish Faith. (Again, the fact that Margaritha was a Catholic was evidently not a concern for him.) In this section, Luther repeated many of the accusations which had been made against the Jews in the medieval period. He attacked them as ‘bloodthirsty bloodhounds and murderers of all Christendom for more than fourteen hundred years’, and noted that ‘they have been accused of poisoning water and wells, of kidnapping children, of piercing them through with an awl, of hacking them in pieces, and in that way secretly cooling their wrath with the blood of Christians, for all of which they have often been condemned to death by fire’.81 While Luther did acknowledge that the Jews denied those allegations, the rhetorical force of his writing implies that he was ready to give the stories credence; it was also telling simply that he thought it appropriate to rehearse those ideas here.82 Finally, in the most chilling, and infamous, part of the text, Luther made a set of recommendations about how contemporary Jews should be treated. He urged rulers ‘to set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn so that no man will ever again see a stone or cinder of them’. Similarly, he demanded that the houses of Jews be destroyed and their religious writings, including the Talmud, should be seized from them, while their rabbis should be forbidden from teaching. A further set of stipulations dealt with ordinary Jews. They should no longer be given safe conduct on the highways, they should be prohibited from moneylending, and instead should be required to undertake physical labour.83 All this amounted to a comprehensive assault on the Jews, their faith, and their place in Christian society. Rulers, he went on, must ‘exercise a sharp mercy toward these wretched people’. Exploiting a medical metaphor he portrayed the Jews as a gangrene which the rulers, as physicians, should remove immediately. The time for gentle treatment was over: ‘Therefore it would be wrong to be merciful and confirm them in their conduct . . . we must drive them out like mad dogs, so that we do not become partakers of their abominable blasphemy and all their other vices and thus merit God’s wrath and be damned with them. I have done my duty. Now let everyone see to his.’84 In the 1523 text, Luther had condemned the harsh treatment of the Jews by the Catholic Church, but now he advocated an approach that was harsher still. The other two texts which Luther wrote about the Jews in 1543 might in some senses be regarded as appendices to On the Jews and Their Lies. The first of these, On the Ineffable Name and On Christ’s Lineage, was published in March.85 Again, Luther’s anxiety that Christians might convert to Judaism is apparent: he explained that ‘those 65

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION who want to become Jews will see what kind of “fine” dogmas they must believe and keep among the damned Jews’.86 At the same time, Luther conceded that his original hope of converting the Jews had been dashed: ‘Although there are many who derive the crazy notion from the 11th chapter of the Epistle to the Romans that all Jews must be converted, this is not so. Saint Paul meant something quite different.’87 The text comprises two elements. The first begins with a translation into German of part of a work written by the Genoese monk Porchetus Salvaticus, Victoria adversus impios Hebraeos (‘Victory over the impious Jews’). Salvaticus had completed his text in 1315, but an edition of it had been printed in Paris in 1520. Luther had already drawn on this work in his On the Jews and Their Lies. The section that Luther translated in this second work contained Porchetus’s summary of points take from the Toledot Yeshu (one of the two Jewish texts which Reuchlin had identified as definitely harmful to Christianity), in which Jesus was presented as a magician who wielded his power by pronouncing correctly the Tetragrammaton, the four-letter Hebrew name of God, commonly transliterated as ‘YHWH’, and for the Jews ‘ineffable’ (that is, ‘unutterable’), and thus generally not spoken aloud.88 Luther then goes on to ridicule the beliefs that were presented in this text.89 The second part of his work discusses the relative merits of Christian and rabbinic exegeses of a series of passages from the Old Testament as a means of reconciling the quite different accounts of Christ’s lineage provided in the Gospels of Matthew (1.1–16) and Luke (3.23–37) in order to demonstrate that he was descended from David, both through Joseph and Mary.90 The last of Luther’s three late anti-Jewish writings, The Last Words of David, was a rather less polemical work than the other two.91 It centred on an exposition of the last words uttered by David, as recorded in 2 Samuel 23.1–7. In these verses, Luther found proof of two doctrines that distinguished Christian and Jewish exegesis: the Trinity, and the dual nature of Christ (i.e. that he was both human and divine). The biblical evidence for these two doctrines was relatively slight, but they had come to be regarded as integral to Christianity. However, it was arguably this which made those doctrines particularly contentious when it came to the relationship between the two faiths. More than that, it was much to Christian advantage if it could be shown that these two doctrines, so important to Christianity, in fact appeared in the Old Testament, the Scripture of the Jews. While these three texts constitute Luther’s main contribution to the discussion about Jews, it is striking that Jews remained to the fore in his thinking right through to the end of his life. In late January and early February 1546, Luther gave a series of four sermons in Eisleben. In the penultimate one, delivered on 7 February, only eleven days 66

DASHED HOPES before his death, he returned to the issue of how Jews should be treated. In particular he addressed Christian leaders who continued to allow Jews to live in their lands, and who hoped that they would come to accept the Messiah. Noting that ‘Jewish blood has now become more diluted and impure’, Luther instead insisted that they should be given a final ultimatum: ‘You should first invite them to turn to the Messiah and be baptised so that people can see they are serious. If not, we will not tolerate them, for Christ has commanded us to be baptized and believe in him.’92 The initial hope for the Jews that had been promised by the advent of the Lutheran Reformation had, within a matter of only a few decades, been entirely extinguished. Whereas Luther’s That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew had appeared in more than a dozen editions, published in at least five different locations, his later writings met with a far cooler reception.93 Only two editions of On the Jews and Their Lies were printed, both in Wittenberg, though the Latin translation made by Justus Jonas did allow the work to circulate internationally.94 Josel of Rosheim wrote two letters, in May and July 1543, to the Strasbourg city council, expressing his disgust at Luther’s works, and requesting that they prohibit their circulation. In the second of these, Josel noted that various people were going around ‘openly and complacently telling members of the common people that when they injure a Jew in his person or property they will be forgiven since Dr. Martin Luther has expressed this view in print’, and later claimed that he had learnt that ‘in many places’ Jews had been ‘cruelly oppressed, plundered, expelled and injured’, all because of the views which Luther had expressed.95 Josel claimed that in his long life, he had only once encountered a Jewish work in which the blasphemies recorded by Luther had been written – presumably he also meant the Toledot – and argued that the Jews should not be punished for what one individual had said. The Strasbourg city council agreed, and the various works were forbidden. Certainly it does seem that Luther’s writings had an impact on the policies adopted by some political figures. John Frederick, elector of Saxony, reintroduced anti-Jewish legislation which had been allowed to wane in 1539, claiming that Luther’s writings had alerted him to the Jews’ wicked intentions.96 The margrave of Neumark withdrew the right of safe-conduct for Jews in his territories.97 Philip of Hesse, one of the most tolerant of Lutheran princes, introduced new measures prohibiting Jews from engaging in moneylending and requiring them to attend Christian sermons. At the same time, though, it should be noted that most political authorities did not act on his recommendations. There was, however, periodically renewed interest in these works. In 1570, George Nigrinus, a pastor in Giessen, published a work, entitled Enemy Jew, in which he 67

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION echoed the various suggestions made by Luther to the political authorities about how they should treat the Jews in their kingdom. In 1577, Nikolaus Selnecker, who had been one of the authors of the Lutheran Formula of Concord, published a volume containing Against the Sabbatarians, On the Jews and Their Lies and On the Ineffeable Name. An edition of On the Jews and Their Lies is believed to have been published in Dortmund in 1595, though it was swiftly supressed. Then, in Frankfurt am Main in 1613 and 1617, the three 1543 texts were printed again; these editions coincided with expulsions of Jews from Frankfurt and Worms (discussed in Chapter 7).98 Other Lutherans When one looks at Luther’s colleagues, however, it is apparent that few among them held such strongly anti-Jewish views. Philip Melanchthon (1497–1560), Luther’s second-in-command in Wittenberg, and often his representative given that Luther was still under the ban of empire, is one of the clearest examples of this. Certainly, we can identify various ways in which he followed Luther’s lead. Like Luther, Melanchthon was concerned by the Jews’ failure to recognise Jesus as Messiah. As he said in one lecture, ‘Modern-day Jews plainly also condemn, persecute, and denounce the Gospel. They deny that the Messiah is the son of God and that the Messiah is the one who suffered . . . They condemn this resurrected Son, and hold to many other terrible errors.’99 At the same time, there is considerable evidence that he took a more sympathetic position. He only rarely used disparaging language in relation to the Jews.100 Perhaps even more remarkably, only four years before Luther wrote his harshest works, Melanchthon acted as a defender of Jews. In 1510, Joachim I, elector of Brandenburg (1484–1535), had used an accusation of Host desecration – for which thirty-eight Jews had been burnt at the stake – to justify expelling Jews from his territories.101 Though he had not formally readmitted them, they had been permitted back into his lands in order to conduct their business in the last years of his life. His son and successor Joachim II was on the point of reiterating his father’s expulsion. However, at a gathering in Frankfurt in April 1539, Melanchthon insisted that the evidence on which the original expulsion was based was unreliable. Paul Fromm, a coppersmith who had made the original accusation only when he was arrested for theft, subsequently confessed that this had been ‘falsehood and calumny’;102 the priest who had heard his confession told the bishop of Brandenburg, but this information had not been passed on to the elector. The priest, however, had then reiterated this story following his conversion to Protestantism and departure to Württemberg. 68

DASHED HOPES Josel of Rosheim, the spokesman for the Jews who had also attended the Diet at Frankfurt, immediately capitalised on the revelation. He met privately with Joachim II, who promised that he would allow Jews to trade and travel freely; he confirmed this with a decree of June 1539. John Frederick, elector of Saxony, also agreed to allow Jews to travel freely through his territories.103 Of particular note is the fact that Melanchthon intervened on behalf of the Jews at exactly the same time that Luther’s writings about the Jews were heading in a more hostile direction. Indeed, one must imagine that when Luther alluded to Host desecration in On the Jews and Their Lies, he was aware that Melanchthon had made this intervention. At the same time, in January 1543, Melanchthon did send Philip of Hesse a copy of On the Jews and Their Lies, noting that it ‘truly contains much useful teaching’.104 Whether that can be read as an indication that he endorsed all of its contents is a rather different matter. Justus Jonas (1493–1555) also evidently differed from Luther in his views. He was Luther’s lifelong colleague in Wittenberg: he was best man at his wedding, at his side when he died, and he preached the funeral sermon. He was responsible for translating many of Luther and Melanchthon’s works into German or Latin.105 This included translating Luther’s German writings on the Jews into Latin, which meant that he contributed to their wider dissemination. To the 1523 work, Jonas appended a letter that Luther had written to an individual who had converted from Judaism to Protestantism.106 In his work on Luther and his contemporaries, the historian Heiko Oberman has noted that Jonas occupied a distinct position from Luther. In his Latin translation of Luther’s work against the Sabbatarians, he notes, Jonas ‘introduced his own notions so emphatically that the resultant text distorts Luther’s position’.107 In particular, he asserted that the Catholics were much further from the Scriptures than were the Jews, and he envisaged a situation in which Jews and Gentiles would be bound together in Christ.108 Another good example is provided by Andreas Osiander (1498–1552), a Lutheran theologian who had helped bring the Reformation to Nuremberg in 1525, and whose niece would marry Thomas Cranmer, the future archbishop of Canterbury.109 An accomplished Hebraist, Osiander had begun to teach Hebrew in Nuremberg’s Augustinian monastery in 1519, and in 1522 he published a version of the Vulgate, revised in light of the Hebrew. Jews had been expelled from Nuremberg in 1498, the year of his birth, but he still enjoyed various Jewish contacts.110 In a request he made to the city council asking permission for a rabbi to enter the city to teach him Aramaic, he emphasised the value of Hebrew and Aramaic to the Christian endeavour, noting that ‘it is undeniable that the Jews understand the Law and the Prophets better than 69

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Christians, except that they do not hold Christ to be the person we understand him to be’. At the same time, he was keen not to challenge the city’s underlying position, noting that ‘It is for good reason that no Jews are allowed into our city . . . and I do not ask that such an order be abolished’.111 On the other hand, Osiander was particularly concerned to encourage conversions from Judaism to Christianity, writing in support of specific converted Jews. A good example was Paul Staffelsteiner, on whose behalf Osiander intervened because he was still being badly treated, and continued to be regarded as a Jew. Osiander insisted that this convert ‘confesses our Lord Jesus Christ with [his] mind and heart’, and noted that he had published two works in Nuremberg in which he sought to persuade other Jews to convert.112 In 1551, Staffelsteiner would become a Hebrew teacher at the University of Heidelberg. In his sermons as well, while Osiander did on occasion equate Jewish legalism with Catholic dependence on works, there were also occasions when he spoke much more positively about Jews. In particular, he frequently praised individuals in the Old Testament, such as Abraham and Moses, and suggested that they should be emulated by contemporaries.113 Above all, as we will see in Chapter 6 (pp. 145–6), like Melanchthon, Osiander acted as a defender of the Jews, writing a text in which he denied one of the classic medieval accusations made against the Jews, the blood libel. Finally, we have the example of Urbanus Rhegius (1489–1541), the person who played the key role in introducing the Lutheran Reformation to Augsburg during the 1520s. It is unclear how he acquired his Hebrew, but he seems to have done so by the time of the Diet of Augsburg in 1530.114 There, Rhegius, Melanchthon and the theologian Johannes Brenz apparently spent six hours discussing the interpretation of a couple of biblical passages with a rabbi from Prague. During the last decade of his life, by which point Rhegius and his family were based in Celle in Lower Saxony, his expertise in Hebrew became more significant. In 1536, he wrote a work in the Adversus Judaeos tradition, in which he argued for the Christological interpretation of various passages from the Old Testament.115 The previous year he had written a letter in Hebrew to the Jews of Brunswick, in Lower Saxony, in which he invited them to engage in dialogue with him and advocated conversion to Christianity. He then visited that community in 1538, even attending the synagogue.116 There were in addition at least two occasions on which he intervened on their behalf. In 1540, he requested that the council of Braunschweig should permit a rabbi, Samuel, who taught Hebrew there to live within the city.117 In September 1540 he wrote another letter advocating toleration of the Jews more generally. The expulsion of about 100 Jews from the city in December 1546 suggests that his influence was 70

DASHED HOPES limited (though of course by that point Luther’s vitriolic texts had now been published).118 At the same time, the examples of Melanchthon, Jonas, Osiander and Rhegius all suggest that Luther’s great animosity towards the Jews was not automatically shared by other leading figures within the Lutheran Reformation. Again this highlights the dangers of regarding him as typical of his confession, let alone the Reformation as a whole. Strasbourg and Bucer Strasbourg was one of the first cities to adopt the Reformation, and in Martin Bucer it had one of the key figures of the early Reformation.119 Matthias Zell had spread the evangelical message from his pulpit from 1523, finding sympathy among the city’s elite. The Mass was abolished in 1529, the classic marker that the Reformation had been implemented. Martin Bucer, a Dominican from Sélestat in Alsace, first heard Luther speak in 1518 and was deeply impressed by him. However, as his thought developed, Bucer also demonstrated some sympathy with the reformist currents associated with Switzerland. He was involved in early attempts at mediation between Wittenberg and Zurich, and in due course would set Strasbourg on a separate path. This was made most obvious by the refusal of Strasbourg to sign up to the Augsburg Confession, the doctrinal statement of the German Lutheran Church in 1530; instead, Bucer authored the ‘Tetrapolitan Confession’, which, as its name suggests, was only adhered to by four cities (Strasbourg, Constance, Memmingen and Lindau). This divergence from the Wittenberg model was also apparent in connection to Judaeo-Christian relations. Strasbourg had expelled its Jews in 1390, and there was a further wave of expulsions from Alsace in the decades around the turn of the sixteenth century, including from Sélestat in around 1490, from Colmar in 1510, and from Mulhouse and Obernai in 1512. That is not to say that there were no Jews in the area, however. In Strasbourg, following the expulsion, six Jewish families were allowed back in 1396, and they now lived in the outskirts of the city.120 In addition, there were perhaps as many as 500 Jews living in Alsace, spread across twenty-five or thirty villages, all of which imposed strict quotas.121 Moreover, as the historian Debra Kaplan has shown in an important recent study, Strasbourg occupied a rather ambivalent position. On the one hand, the city fathers were keen to demonstrate that Strasbourg was not welcoming of Jews: indeed, between 1530 and 1648, they passed legislation on eleven separate occasions banning Jews from the city.122 But the reality was very different. Jews entered Strasbourg on a daily basis, as traders (especially selling food, wine and animals), middlemen, physicians, 71

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION moneylenders and so on.123 Every time they entered the city they were required to pay a fee, and they were obliged to leave again at the end of the working day, when a horn on top of the cathedral was sounded. There was a similar ambivalence with regards to moneylending. In March 1530, only a year after the Reformation had been introduced, legislation was passed which forbade Jews from lending money to Christians. But in 1534, Josel of Rosheim intervened, as a result of which it was agreed that Jews could lend money to Christians, so long as they did not do so at excessive rates, and that, if it turned out that they had received stolen items as pawn, these should be returned to their Christian owners without compensation to the Jews.124 Officially, then, Strasbourg could claim to be a city almost entirely free from a Jewish presence, while at the same time accommodating Jews in various ways to their mutual benefit. As Kaplan argues, the laws relating to the Jews were thus a ‘rhetorical tool through which the magistrates were able to construct a narrative about the Christian nature of the city.’125 This was of course not a new ambition, but it is apparent that the Reformation gave it added significance. Strasbourg had only recently embraced Protestantism, and therefore had to present itself as a beacon and an exemplar of the new piety to which the Reformation aspired; it was important that it should be able to demonstrate that it was more ‘Christian’ than its Catholic neighbours. There is, therefore, a certain irony in the fact that one can identify clear parallels with the implementation of the ghetto in Venice only a decade or so earlier, and discussed in the previous chapter. Both sets of arrangements were a practical solution to an intractable problem: it was widely acknowledged that Jews did make a valuable contribution to the society in which they operated, but especially in an era of heightened religious sensitivity – in both Catholic and Protestant areas – it was felt to be unwise to give them free rein. Rather, more formal structures – whether in the form of walls or rules, or both – could be used to maintain the veneer of propriety, and a reassurance of order, even if the reality was much less clear cut than that. This ambiguity was also reflected in the thought of several of the leading Protestant reformers in Strasbourg.126 As well as being a reformer, Wolfgang Capito (c. 1478– 1541) was a Hebraist who had studied with Matthew Adrian, the Jewish convert who taught briefly at Wittenberg. Erasmus described Capito as ‘a man more learned in Hebrew than Reuchlin’, while Sebastian Münster, the distinguished Basel Hebrew scholar, considered him the fourth most significant Hebraist after Reuchlin, Pellikan and himself.127 Capito evidently wrote a brief introduction to Hebrew, which is no longer extant, and then in 1516, he added a short grammar to a Hebrew Psalter written 72

DASHED HOPES by Pellikan. A separate edition of the grammar, published in 1518, met with considerable success: Conrad Reisch in Paris asked Boniface Amerbach, a member of the distinguished Swiss publishing family, to send him 200 copies of the work, commenting that ‘they are clamouring for Capito’s grammar here’.128 He is known to have owned a copy of the Talmud from at least 1526, though he was keen to assert that his engagement with Jewish materials remained within acceptable boundaries. In the preface to his Hexameron Dei he confirmed that ‘I have always used the teachers of the Jews, not that thereby anything is attributed to them, but either that I might refute their errors or confirm our religion by means of their testimonies’.129 In addition to his interest in Hebrew language and learning Capito also seems to have enjoyed quite a close relationship with Josel of Rosheim, who attended some of his sermons, and discussed Jewish books with him.130 It was, then, quite natural for Josel to turn to Capito for assistance. In August 1536, John Frederick, elector of Saxony, had passed a law expelling all Jews from his territories, and forbidding them from conducting business there or even passing through them. Josel of Rosheim hoped to overturn this decision, and appealed to Capito, Bucer and Strasbourg’s city council. On 26 April 1537, Capito duly wrote to Martin Luther, asking him to receive Josel or to convey his request to the elector, both out of his duty as a clergyman to act graciously, and also because the Jews would ‘realise that we are prepared to treat kindly not only strangers but even our enemies’. Capito went on: ‘We truly feel sorry for this people which has been despised for so long by everyone, for we constantly see that the prophecies about their blindness have been fulfilled. We should also treat them honourably, insofar as they do not blaspheme against God, because they are descended from the holy race and were possessors of the promises and the covenants . . .’131 In the event, Luther, whose attitude towards the Jews was beginning to become more openly hostile, as we have seen, refused to have anything to do with this case. On 11 June, he wrote to Josel, asserting that he ‘would gladly have appealed to my most gracious lord on your behalf ’ but ‘because your people so shamelessly misuse my service and undertake such things, which we Christians cannot accept from them, they themselves have thereby taken from me any influence that I might otherwise have had with dukes and lords’.132 Luther thus blamed the Jews themselves for his refusal to intervene on their behalf. In this context, it is still more striking that Capito was ready to give his support to the Jewish cause. Martin Bucer’s attitude towards the Jews was even more complex.133 In general terms he is renowned as a moderate, who sought to mediate in the growing disagreements between Wittenberg and Zurich over the Eucharist, and also hoped to reunite 73

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Catholicism and Protestantism. Like Capito, moreover, Bucer was another Hebraist.134 In 1526 he published a commentary on the Psalms, based on Luther’s German translation of the text, rather than the Vulgate.135 Already in this work there was some evidence of rabbinic influence. This became all the more obvious in his commentaries on the Latin Psalms which he published between 1529 and 1532: his sources included the Jewish biblical commentators David Kimhi, Abraham ibn Ezra and Rashi of Troyes.136 As he explained in the preface: ‘I have given all my attention to expounding the details correctly and above all, in accord with the historical sense, so that I leave no occasion for Jewish ridicule of our material, nor for our own masters of subtlety to scorn it, let alone call it into question.’137 At the same time, Bucer did establish a strong relationship with the Italian Jewish convert Immanuel Tremellius (whose career is discussed more fully in the next chapter).138 Not only did Bucer provide Tremellius with his first post following his flight from Italy, at the Academy in Strasbourg, but when the pair were reunited in Cambridge, during the reign of King Edward VI, Tremellius attended Bucer’s lectures on Ephesians there, and would subsequently publish two works based on them, a decade after Bucer’s death.139 By contrast, when he became involved in a broader discussion about Jewish policy, initiated by Philip, landgrave of Hesse (1504–67), Bucer took a rather more severe position.140 In 1524 Philip had been one of the earliest princes to embrace Protestantism, and along with the elector of Saxony, John Frederick, he became one of the movement’s staunchest supporters (though he remained inclined to moderation, and hoped to find diplomatic means of achieving compromise between the Catholics and Protestants, and the competing Protestant factions).141 In 1532, Philip had granted Jews permission to remain in his territories for six years. In 1538 it was time to decide whether to renew this policy. Philip therefore sent a series of seven articles to his clergy, setting out his intended policy on the Jews, which he hoped they would approve. The first five dealt with economic matters: the Jews were to be allowed to engage in trade, but only if it did not threaten the guilds; they were to conduct business honestly; usury was prohibited, and there were tight guidelines on moneylending; individuals were to be appointed within the Jewish communities to enforce Jewish justice in addition to that of the Christian authorities; and each Jew was to pay the traditional ‘protection money’ tax. In addition, two further conditions addressed religious issues: Jews were to attend Christian services, and were prohibited from participating in disputations about their religion.142 On 17 December 1538, Philip’s officials sent him the clergy’s Ratschlag (‘advice’), with which they declared themselves to be in complete agreement. While this document 74

DASHED HOPES purported to be the work of his theologians, it has since been universally accepted that it was written by Martin Bucer, who had been living in Hesse since October, having been invited there to advise the landgrave on how to deal with the Anabaptists. Bucer began the Ratschlag by reviewing the precedents for tolerating the Jews, but also the arguments in favour of expelling them, devoting rather more time to the latter.143 He concluded that the Jews should be tolerated on account of their history, tradition and special status; at the same time, he noted that it was the duty of the Christian authorities to ensure that this did not harm the Christian religion. To that end, therefore, he set out four demands. First, Jews should be forbidden from blaspheming Christianity, and should be expected to adhere to religious practice of the sort set out in the Old Testament; Talmudic practices were not to be allowed. Second, they should not be allowed to erect new synagogues. Third, they should not be permitted to engage in disputes over religion with Christians, except in specially controlled circumstances. Finally, they should attend the Christian services which would be arranged for them, and which were intended to encourage conversions. As for economic issues, Bucer proposed two further regulations. Jews should be prohibited from usury and all types of trade. His argument here drew on both social and theological arguments. Referring to the Jews as ‘enemies of Christ’ and reminding Christian rulers of their obligations to both ‘religion and good government’, he noted that ‘as God commanded, they are to be at the bottom, and not on top, the tail and not the head’ (an allusion to Deut. 28.13). They ought not to engage in any trades which depended on the trustworthiness of the practitioner. More than that, they should be relegated ‘to the most despicable, burdensome and unpleasant jobs’, such as mining, breaking stones and chopping wood, and so forth.144 Indeed, he argued that rather than being harmful for the Jews such work would be ‘advantageous’ for them and would demonstrate ‘the true love that we owe them that we put them in their place, and into the lowest and most burdensome place, as God himself has commanded, so long as we keep them in this place with compassion and mercy’.145 Only six days after receiving this advice, Philip wrote a brief reply to his officials in which he rejected its harsh approach. He pointed out that Christians and Jews were bound together and described the Jews as a ‘magnificent race’ on the grounds that Christ and the apostles were Jews, and it was Jews who had been entrusted with God’s revelation.146 He also noted, rather more practically, that if Bucer’s plan were implemented, the Jews would be forced to leave Hesse as it would prove impossible for them to sustain themselves under the proposed conditions. For this reason, Philip sent with his letter the draft of a new set of rules for the Jews which would permit them to 75

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION engage in trade where they were not in direct competition with the guilds, and to lend money, though interest rates should not exceed 5 per cent.147 Though Philip of Hesse rejected Bucer’s advice at this stage, his policy towards the Jews did start to become harsher. In 1539, he issued a decree in which he restricted their trade, forbade them to build in any new areas, and urged them not to resist efforts to encourage them to convert. This was then repeated and extended in 1543, including the requirement that Jews listen to conversionary sermons. Following Philip’s death in 1567, his territories were divided between his successors, who adopted quite different policies from each other, and thus demonstrate, once again, that it is simplistic to associate individual confessions with consistent policies. In Hesse-Kassel, he was followed by William IV (‘the Wise’), a Lutheran, who annulled Philip’s repressive policies; his toleration was continued by Maurice I, a Calvinist. By contrast, in HesseDarmstadt, George I (‘the Pious’) increased the pressure on the Jews in his territories, including increasing the financial exactions that he made of them. Bucer’s recommendations were not as harsh as those which Luther would put forth only a few years later, discussed above, but it is nonetheless apparent that he did still seek to reduce further the status of the Jews. In Bucer’s case this seems rather more out of keeping with his other attitudes. Whereas Luther wrote against a wide range of groups, Bucer generally adopted a policy of irenicism and compromise. It has been suggested that Bucer’s approach reflected his social status, and the experience of those he knew who had suffered at the hands of Jewish moneylenders.148 Clearly while his arguments do reflect a principally theological response, there is a strong social dimension; more than that, however, it is notable that there are not the disagreements over interpretation of the Scriptures which were at the root of Luther’s objections to a Jewish presence. So, although they arrived at broadly similar conclusions, they got there by rather different means.

R It is apparent that during the 1530s, a growing sharpness started to characterise Christian attitudes towards Jews, particularly in Protestant Germany. In part, this was a consequence of Judaeo-Christian relations themselves. In Luther’s case specifically, the initial hope that the Reformation would lead to the rapid conversion of large numbers of Jews was met with disappointment. There was no evidence that this was happening, which pushed him towards endorsing the view, regularly expressed by churchmen through the Middle Ages, that the Jews were blind or stubborn in their continuing refusal to acknowledge that the Messiah had already come. Luther’s 76

DASHED HOPES readiness to repeat all the allegations which had been made against the Jews in the medieval period perhaps best embodies his regression to that earlier position, particularly given the contrast with his earlier work, where he had done so much to criticise this approach. But even more of a concern for Luther than the fact that Jews were failing to convert to Christianity was the parallel discovery that Christians were themselves apparently turning to Judaism. This was related to a second issue, which was more connected to the internal politics of the Reformation movement. While Protestantism had shown great interest in the Old Testament, which was increasingly being approached in its original language, there were alarming examples from the radical end of the Protestant community of individuals and groups who were demonstrating undue enthusiasm for elements of practice which seemed too closely grounded in Jewish behaviour. Even though those groups continued to believe that they were Christian (and none questioned Jesus’s messiahship), their behaviour often elided the gap between the two faiths, in a way that could look alarming to the magisterial reformers, and to the political authorities. It became necessary for mainstream reformers to demonstrate that they were above reproach in this regard. This in turn explains the apparent contradictions in Protestant attitudes towards Jews in these years. They were highly interested in their ideas, and in many instances were willing to treat them sympathetically, particularly on an individual basis. But as the examples of Strasbourg and Hesse both indicate, it was at the same time necessary to demonstrate that Jews occupied a marginalised and inferior position within Christian society. As we will see in the next chapter, members of the Reformed faith had to wrestle with a very similar set of concerns.

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4

R PEOPLE OF THE BOOK The Reformed Church and Judaism

On 26 August 1546, Ami Chappuis, a barber in Geneva, brought his son to church to be baptised. The family wanted the child to be called ‘Claude’, but the minister, enacting for the first time a new policy initiated by the Company of Pastors (as the body of Reformed ministers in Geneva was known), rejected this choice, and baptised the infant with the name ‘Abraham’ instead. Ami immediately took his son back, insisting that the baptism was invalid, and announcing that he would wait until his son was fifteen, when he could choose his own name.1 Over the next few years, there were numerous similar incidents, as the Genevan clergy began to interfere more systematically with the names given to children born in the city.2 Specifically, their intention was to eradicate any names which they felt were tainted by their association with Catholicism. Most obviously, given that Protestants had rejected the cult of saints, those included the names of local saints such as Martin and Claude. Instead, they promoted the use of biblical names, whether from the New Testament, or, as in the case of ‘Abraham’, from the Old. The Genevan population, however, felt that this was an unreasonable imposition of power by a clergy that was largely regarded as foreign (most were immigrants from France), and which was trampling rough-shod over familial identity and long-standing cultural associations. Claude had until this point been the third most popular name in Geneva.3 Suddenly, numerous Claudes discovered that they were not permitted to pass their names on to their sons because of this policy. Many members of Geneva’s ruling elite felt humiliated by this imposition, and it was a source of recurrent conflicts over a period of almost a decade. Nonetheless, by the mid-1550s, the policy had largely been enforced. Indeed, in the 1560s, 64 per cent of boys’ names, and 70 per cent of girls’ came from the New Testament, while 33 per cent of boys’ names, and 28 per cent of girls’, came from the Old Testament.4 This issue has, in the first instance, been seen as a means by which the Calvinist leaders asserted their control over a sometimes reluctant population. It was also an 78

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK early flashpoint in the process by which the Reformed Church (as historians now commonly refer to the church once more narrowly identified as ‘Calvinist’5) sought to demonstrate its difference from Catholicism. In fact, this was a more widespread phenomenon. For instance, one can identify a similar pattern in various parts of France, the Netherlands and England.6 Huguenots, as French Protestants were known, also frequently rejected names associated with Catholicism, preferring others with more desirable religious connotations. Indeed, this practice seems to have been more pronounced in Rouen than in Calvin’s city. In 1565, for instance, no Protestant child received the previously popular (saints’) names of Guillaume or Nicolas. Rather, among the most common names were Abraham (forty-two children), Isaac (forty-one) and Daniel (thirty-three) among the boys, and Judith (thirty-eight) and Sara (thirtyone) among the girls. There was even a Melchizadeh and a Roboam.7 All of these names were derived from the Old Testament. The choice of children’s names might, at first glance, seem a relatively insignificant matter. In fact, though, it takes us right to the heart of a fundamental issue associated with the Reformation: that of identity. In adopting these names, the Protestants of Geneva, Rouen and elsewhere were making a bold and public statement though which they sought to distance themselves from Catholicism. Indeed, the decline of this practice in France in the last decades of the century can at least in part be explained by the fact that these naming practices immediately made their holders stand out as Protestants, and consequently more likely to be the victims of Catholic assault. But it was more than simply rejecting practices which had been sullied by their association with a church they now rejected; the choice of names was still intended to demonstrate their piety. In this context, their use of names associated with the Old Testament was particularly telling. Not only did such names embody Protestants’ great enthusiasm for the Bible (as of course did their use of names from the New Testament), but they also encouraged an identification more specifically with the people of Israel. Even among the various strands of Protestantism, all of which set great store by the Bible, the Reformed Church demonstrated the highest regard for the Old Testament. Moreover, we should appreciate that these names were intended to convey a clear set of messages about those who bore them: it is striking that most of the Old Testament figures whose names they adopted were renowned as obedient servants of God, rather than kings or lawgivers. As we will see later in this chapter, this identification had several levels: whether Protestants associated themselves with the Jews of the Bible, or felt that they had replaced them, it was apparent that they remained a critical reference point. 79

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION John Calvin John Calvin (1509–64) was a generation younger than Luther, and in various respects he was able to build on the older man’s achievements and experiences as a reformer.8 As leaders of the two largest movements associated with the Reformation, it is unsurprising that historians have frequently sought to compare the two, and this is also the case in relation to their attitudes towards the Jews.9 In this regard, Calvin has generally been considered the more sympathetic, though it must be said that a significant reason for this is that Calvin did not write anything to compare with the substantial and vicious texts which Luther produced in his last years.10 In fact, there is good reason to believe that Calvin was at least aware of what Luther had written about the Jews, if he had not actually read those later works himself. In May 1561, Ambrosius Blarer (1492–1564), who had helped bring the Reformation to the city of Constance in southern Germany, wrote a letter to Calvin, asking for his views regarding the toleration of Jews. He went on to remark, ‘I know you are not unfamiliar with what Luther wrote in 1543 in a thoroughly sharp way against the Jews, where he demanded with numerous arguments that they in no way be tolerated among Christians, unless they would be exposed to an extremely severe degradation’.11 Later in the letter, however, Blarer remembered that Luther’s writings had not been translated from German, and so conceded that Calvin may not have read that work after all, and therefore provided a brief summary. Frustratingly, Calvin’s reply to Blarer has not survived, so we can neither confirm whether Calvin had read this text, nor discern what he thought of its main arguments. It is possible that Calvin’s failure to write at length on the Jews was in part a product of circumstance. As discussed previously, although Eisenach, Erfurt and Wittenberg were all places which did not have Jewish populations, Luther does still seem to have encountered Jews quite regularly through his career. For Calvin, the evidence is rather less clear. In his Commentary on Daniel, published in 1561, Calvin asserted that ‘I have often spoken with Jews’, but he does not elaborate on that claim there or elsewhere.12 Jews had been expelled from France, where he spent the first twenty-five years of his life, in the fourteenth century, and from Geneva, where he would spend the last twentyfive, at the end of the fifteenth.13 Nonetheless, there were several occasions on which he spent time in locations known to have had Jewish populations.14 In 1536, for instance, he spent several weeks in Ferrara (which had a Jewish population of 2,000 or so), visiting the city’s evangelically-minded duchess Renée de France, the daughter of King Louis XII.

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PEOPLE OF THE BOOK Towards the end of the decade, following his temporary expulsion from Geneva in 1538, Calvin spent almost three years in Strasbourg.15 Not only did this town permit Jews to enter on a daily basis, as we saw in the previous chapter, but from there Calvin also travelled to Frankfurt am Main, Hagenau and Worms, all of which had Jewish communities. During this period, moreover, Calvin came under the influence of Martin Bucer, and met figures including Wolfgang Capito and Andreas Osiander (whose Jewish sympathies have already been noted), with whom he might well have discussed Jewish matters. It is also possible that Calvin encountered Josel of Rosheim during this period of his career, but once again the evidence remains circumstantial.16 Calvin did know some Hebrew. François Vatable, professor of Hebrew at the Collège de France in Paris, Sebastian Münster in Basel, and Wolfgang Capito in Strasbourg are all people from whom he might have learnt, but there is no proof to substantiate any of these suggestions.17 It is likely that Calvin’s strongest direct link to Jews and Judaism was provided by the Jewish convert, Immanuel Tremellius (whom we earlier encountered in relation to Bucer, see p. 74). It is almost certain that the pair first met each other in Strasbourg in 1543.18 Tremellius had only recently arrived there, following his conversion and departure from Italy, and had begun teaching Hebrew at the Academy. Calvin and Guillaume Farel, the Frenchman who had famously persuaded Calvin to lead the Genevan Reformation, stayed in Strasbourg for a period of six weeks over that summer, and presumably met him then. Over the next couple of years, Valérand Poullain, a Frenchman, and Hilarius Guymonneus, a student from Geneva who resided with Tremellius, both wrote to Calvin from Strasbourg conveying his good wishes.19 Thereafter, there were various occasions on which Calvin sought to assist the convert. When Charles V brought the Schmalkaldic War to a successful conclusion in May 1547, allowing for the reassertion of Catholicism in the empire, Tremellius was among those who felt it was no longer safe to remain in Strasbourg. Calvin and Farel both devoted efforts to finding alternative employment for him. In one letter, Calvin expressed his regret that although Louis Budé had recommended Tremellius highly, he did not currently have a post to offer him in Geneva.20 Three months later, Pierre Viret, the Swiss reformer and founder of the Academy in Lausanne, explained that it would be difficult to find a post for him in Lausanne because Tremellius was an Italian and a Jew, both groups viewed with suspicion there.21 In 1554, while Tremellius tidied up his affairs in England, following the accession of Mary Tudor, his wife returned to the continent, heading to Geneva: Tremellius asked Calvin to look after her in his absence.22 Then, in 1558, Calvin attempted to bring 81

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Tremellius to Geneva to act as professor of Hebrew.23 Tremellius was unable to get out of his current position, which upset Calvin greatly. He wrote: The grief for having been unable to secure your service prevents me from fully congratulating you on the subject of the situation which you have obtained. And if, even now, it should be in your power to come among us, you would have a much wider field here for your labours in promoting the welfare of the church. But in the present uncertain and almost hopeless state of affairs, I dare not entreat you.24

It does seem that Tremellius was keen to accept this invitation. Calvin noted in a letter written about six months later to François Boisnormand, who also hoped to fill this post, that Tremellius ‘had written two or three times that nothing would be more consonant with his wishes than if he received permission to come and settle here’.25 In the event, though, the duke of Zweibrücken, Tremellius’s current employer, ‘gave us a courteous reply, that he could not possibly part with Tremellius except to the great detriment of his academy’. Two further episodes also shed light on their relationship. In 1551, Tremellius produced a translation of Calvin’s Genevan Catechism into Greek and Hebrew. In 1554, he produced a second edition, which was published in Geneva by Robert Estienne, and to which he added both a preface in Hebrew, addressed to Jewish readers, and a Latin one for Christian readers, in which he discussed Judaism.26 The purpose of this work will be discussed more fully below (pp. 95–6). It is not clear whether Calvin actually commissioned Tremellius to produce this work, but he was certainly aware of it from the outset: Tremellius wrote to Calvin in March 1551 to announce that the work was about to be published.27 At the very least it demonstrates their unity of purpose; it also suggests that Tremellius was trusted to represent Calvin’s views appropriately. This trust was also evident when Tremellius produced a commentary on the book of Hosea, which was published by Nicolaus Barbirius and Thomas Courteau in Geneva in 1563.28 Before it could be published, Calvin was required to confirm the orthodoxy of the work, which he was happy to do. Indeed, he subsequently wrote to Tremellius directly, noting: ‘And I think it is absurd, as if this was to make a judgement about a doubtful matter. For if it is done in relation to your knowledge, who would assume the part of censor? For the sincerity of your faith has been proved to us, and there is no need for an inquisition.’29 He went on to express the hope that Tremellius would produce further works dealing with the other prophets. Especially as a convert from Judaism, the significance of having someone like Calvin confirm his orthodoxy can hardly be overstated. 82

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK Calvin frequently spoke of the Jews of the Old Testament in very high terms. In his most famous work, the Institutes of the Christian Religion, he described them as the ‘first born in the family of God’, for which reason he argued that it was right that they should have been offered the Gospel first.30 Consequently, he continued, Christians ought to maintain a degree of sympathy in their treatment of contemporary Jews: ‘Nor, however great the contumacy with which they persist in warring against the gospel, are we therefore to despise them. We must consider that, in respect of the promise, the blessing of God still resides among them; and, as the apostle testifies, will never depart from them.’ Such views were quite conventional, and drew on the theological tradition which stemmed from Augustine. At the same time, one can find ample evidence of equally conventional anti-Jewish sentiments in Calvin’s writings. For instance, in a letter written in 1539 from Strasbourg to Farel, Calvin related a conversation he had recently had with Philip Melanchthon in which Calvin had expressed his dislike of the many ceremonies used within the Lutheran Church, noting ‘that it seemed to me the form which they observe was not far removed from Judaism’.31 Protestants regularly drew parallels between Catholicism and Judaism on similar grounds. In addition, Calvin repeatedly chastised the Jews for their refusal to acknowledge Christ. On occasion, his criticisms became broader still. In his commentary on the Book of Daniel he remarked: ‘I never saw the least speck of godliness, never a crumb of truth or honesty, not even discerned any common sense in any Jews whatsoever.’32 Similarly, and later in the same work, he went on to assert: ‘And if I wished to persist in refuting their errors, there would be no end’.33 Certainly, Calvin was sensitive to the differing interpretations offered by Christians and Jews of particular biblical passages. On several occasions in his biblical commentaries, he argued that one should be cautious about interpreting passages in the Old Testament as relating to Christ, as that risked providing an easy point of attack for Jewish critics. In his commentary on Psalm 72, for instance, he rejected a Christological interpretation on the grounds that it stretched the meaning of the original too far, noting that ‘We must always be wary of giving the Jews the opportunity of making an outcry, as if it were our purpose sophistically to apply to Christ those things which do not directly refer to him’. Similarly, he noted that the traditional Christian interpretation of Jeremiah 31.22 is ‘deservedly laughed at by the Jews’. And again, in his commentary on Psalm 16, he argued that one should follow the simple meaning of the text so ‘that we may not make ourselves objects of ridicule to the Jews’.34 This wariness was especially apparent in Calvin’s interpretation of the so-called ‘messianic Psalms’: these are the eight Psalms to which direct reference is made in the 83

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION New Testament, and which were widely regarded as literal prophecies of Christ, not to mention sources for other doctrines, notably the Trinity and the dual nature of Christ.35 As the historian G. Sujin Pak has shown, whereas other Protestant reformers such as Luther and Bucer followed their medieval predecessors in interpreting these Psalms Christologically, Calvin, in his Commentary on the Psalms of 1557, tended to make far less of their Christological significance, and indeed, in some cases rejected it outright.36 Luther and Bucer both followed medieval interpreters in using their discussion of these Psalms to attack Jews, especially identifying the enemies mentioned in the Psalms with Jews, and criticising them for their blindness because of their failure to interpret these passages as relating to Christ.37 Calvin, by contrast, largely avoided this opportunity. Instead, he preferred to provide a more literal reading, placing emphasis especially on King David (to whom he famously compared himself in the preface), as a model for Protestant piety.38 Though he did not refer to any Jewish exegetes by name (unlike Bucer), Calvin’s interpretation did bring him close to that of David Kimhi, the distinguished French medieval rabbi and exegete.39 All of this would lead to accusations of Judaising on Calvin’s part. For instance, the Spanish heretic Michael Servetus, who we will discuss later in this chapter, alleged: ‘You place the Christians on a part with the vulgar Jews’.40 Likewise, later in the century, as we will see in Chapter 6, several Lutherans wrote works in which they accused Calvin of demonstrating undue sympathy to the Jews in his biblical interpretation. We get a further, albeit oblique, insight into Calvin’s attitudes in a work on JewishChristian relations, the Response to Questions and Objections of a Certain Jew.41 Frustratingly, we do not know the circumstances in which this text was produced, and it was only published in 1575, eleven years after Calvin’s death. The text takes the form of a dialogue between Calvin and ‘a certain Jew’, who asks a series of twenty-three theological questions, to which ‘Calvin’ gives fairly substantial answers. Of course, the format of a debate between a Christian and a Jew had a long pedigree in the Adversus Judaeos tradition, and such opponents were often figments of the authors’ imaginations. While it was once suggested that Calvin had Josel of Rosheim in mind, it has been persuasively argued that he was in fact responding to the unknown author of the Sefer Nizzahon (‘Book of Victory’).42 As we saw in Chapter 1, this was one of the two Jewish books which Reuchlin deemed unacceptable, and indeed it was notorious in polemics between the two faiths. In that event, this text could perhaps be seen as a part of a broader, almost timeless, competition between Christianity and Judaism. The text was incomplete at the time of Calvin’s death: it lacks an introduction and conclusion, which might have allowed us to place it in a more specific historical context, 84

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK and which might also have allowed it to work more effectively as a piece of literature. This presumably explains the decision not to publish it during his lifetime. In the course of asking his twenty-three questions, the Jewish figure identifies various apparent contradictions in the New Testament (incidentally demonstrating an impressive familiarity with that work). To each, Calvin responds with a parallel question of his own, relating to the Old Testament, before then moving on to provide a resolution to the issue. For instance, in the sixth question, the Jewish character asks, ‘what did Jesus do that was greater than the ancient holy men? For Enoch and Elijah ascended to Heaven. Moses turned water into blood, he made bitter water sweet, he led Israel through the middle of the sea . . .’ Calvin responds by asking, ‘did Moses bring back a man from the dead, as did Elisha, who was inferior to Moses?’, and noting that ‘it is wrong to make a judgement about the excellence of a person from miracles alone’.43 Turning to the broader issue which the question raises, Calvin then elaborated his position: ‘Moreover this childish objection is easily resolved, because we should ask not only what miracles the prophets performed, but how they performed them.’ He notes further that the miracles performed by the apostles, and by Moses, all proceeded from Christ, before taking a further swipe at his opponent: ‘If there were any healthy discernment amongst the Jews, they would immediately recognise how far the excellence and dignity of Christ exceeds that of Moses, even in miracles’.44 Without a broader context it is impossible to know why Calvin wrote this work. As noted above, there were no Jews in Geneva, so there was less likelihood that he can have envisaged his arguments might be used against real Jewish interlocutors (as Luther had evidently anticipated for some of his writings). This may also explain why it was not published during Calvin’s life, as it did not address an issue which was deemed to be so urgent. More than that, though, this text would seem in some ways to be consistent with Calvin’s attitudes towards the Jews more broadly. For him, they were a group with whom it was helpful to be in dialogue, not because their views were to be considered equally valid, but rather because they occupied a position against which Christian understanding could be tested and sharpened. But perhaps because Jews were so limited a presence in Calvin’s career, they do not really emerge as genuine enemies, as they had been for Luther and Bucer: they did not pose a societal threat, as far as Calvin was concerned, and consequently he did not feel it necessary to provide guidance on how they should be treated. Because of this absence, Calvin’s views undoubtedly appear more benign than those of the other two, but we must acknowledge that while this might reflect a genuine difference of opinion between these reformers, 85

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION it is equally possible that it is more a product of the different circumstances in which they were working. Michael Servetus It was also in Calvin’s Geneva that the Spanish heretic Michael Servetus met his end on 27 October 1553, the event which did most to establish Geneva’s reputation for intolerance.45 The execution was the product of a long-running dispute between the two men, which had involved, most notoriously, Servetus sending to Calvin a copy of the latter’s Institutes, to which he had made various corrections. Given this dispute, it seems rather bizarre that Servetus, who had been living in France for the past twenty years, should travel to Geneva (he claimed that he simply stopped en route to Naples), and even more so that he should attend Geneva’s church, where he was promptly recognised by one of Calvin’s allies; one can only imagine that he thought it would be less suspicious for him to attend church than to stay away in such a pious town. On the other hand, if Servetus had not been executed in Geneva, it is quite possible that he would have been killed elsewhere. Before he came to Geneva he had been imprisoned in Catholic Vienne, in the southeast of France; following his escape, he was condemned to death in absentia and burnt in effigy. Likewise, before the Genevans executed Servetus, they ensured they had widespread support from ministers and city councils in Switzerland and beyond. Philip Melanchthon, for instance, wrote that ‘your magistrate did right in punishing, after a regular trial, this blasphemous man’.46 His execution was one of the rare things on which the various Christian confessions could agree: this was because he had, over more than two decades, undermined two of the beliefs that were seen as fundamental to mainstream Christianity: the Trinity and infant baptism. Indeed, not to execute Servetus would only have provided more evidence to those who wanted to present Geneva as a threat to sixteenth-century values more broadly.47 Servetus was one of the most remarkable figures of the sixteenth century, and one of its most original thinkers. He was born Miguel Serveto in Villanueva de Sijena in Aragon, Spain, and spent the first two decades of his life in that country. A polymath who studied languages, theology, law, astrology and medicine, and wrote on these subjects and many others, he is renowned among other things for his contribution to the understanding of the circulation of the blood. In 1531, he published his On the Errors of the Trinity in Hagenau in Alsace.48 The following year he published two further pamphlets: the Dialogues on the Trinity in Two Books, and On the Righteousness of Christ’s Kingdom.49 After a period practising medicine, he helped edit the third edition of the Bible of Santes Pagninus (1542), to which he contributed a preface and 86

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK notes.50 This work brought him back to the idea, first raised in his works on the Trinity, of restoring Christianity to its original purity. In 1546, under the barely cryptic name of Michel de Villeneuve, he began corresponding with Calvin, who himself used one of his pseudonyms, Charles d’Espeville. At the end of 1552, Servetus published his Restoration of Christianity, though all but three of the 1,000 copies were destroyed before they could be sold.51 While it was the publication of this last work which accelerated Servetus’s path towards execution, his earlier works on the Trinity had already earned him notoriety. Johannes Oecolampadius, the Basel reformer, for instance had explained to Calvin in 1531 that he felt the book On the Errors of the Trinity ‘contained some good things’ but given the current situation advised that access to it should be strictly controlled.52 In this work, Servetus had argued that the Trinity was not biblical, and instead had emerged from the writings of Greek philosophers.53 He advocated a return to Christianity of a form which had existed before the First Council of Nicaea of 325 ce (at which belief in the Trinity had been affirmed). Though explicit textual evidence for this doctrine was slight, it had in the intervening centuries become so central to Christian belief that Servetus’s rejection of it immediately put him beyond the limits of what was acceptable.54 For this reason, in 1554, shortly after Servetus had been put to death, Calvin felt obliged to publish a work in which he defended the Trinity, and justified the decision to execute the Spaniard.55 Even though Servetus failed to win over many supporters, and was executed for his beliefs, it is still important to understand both why and how he came to adopt this position. At his trial in Geneva he denied having Jewish heritage, but he had spent the first twenty years of his life in Spain and at the very least he would have been sharply aware of the tensions between Judaism and Christianity, as reflected in the large number of conversos who came before the Inquisition in the period of its greatest antiJewish activity. He also contended that the issue of the Trinity was one of the biggest obstacles to Jewish conversion. In On the Errors of the Trinity, his most famous work, written when he was only twenty, for example, Servetus remarked: Furthermore, and worse than all this, how much this tradition of the Trinity has, alas! been a laughing-stock to the Mohammedans, only God knows. The Jews also shrink from giving adherence to this fancy of ours, and laugh at our foolishness about the Trinity; and on account of its blasphemies they do not believe that this is the Messiah who was promised in their law. And not only Mohammedans and Hebrews, but the very beasts of the field, would make fun of us did they grasp our fantastical notion.56 87

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Servetus’s approach was syncretic: he drew on Jewish, Christian, patristic and pagan sources, and was especially well versed in ancient Greek philosophy. However, it was his use of Jewish sources which was the most problematic. In his writings, Servetus demonstrated familiarity not only with the best known medieval Jewish authors, such as Maimonides, Rashi and David Kimhi, but also more than a dozen less well-known authors, some of whom were only available in manuscript and within the Jewish community. These included Eleazar of Worms, who had lived in the thirteenth century, but also more recent authors such as Yom Tov Lipmann-Muelhausen (d. 1420), Isaac ben Moses Arama (d. 1494), and Abraham Saba (d. 1508).57 As his use of these sources became more pronounced through his career, it has been suggested that he augmented the works he encountered in Spain with ones to which he was introduced by the French humanists Symphorien Champier and Jacques Lefèvre d’Étaples.58 This is certainly possible, though an alternative explanation would simply be that he gradually became more willing to make direct use of these sources. For Servetus, knowledge of Hebrew and familiarity with the Jewish context was essential for a proper understanding of the Bible. For instance, he noted of one difficult passage in John’s Gospel that it would be ‘far more easy if we do not overlook the Hebraisms here, seeing that John was a Hebrew’.59 Indeed, he advised those who wished to understand the Bible to ‘get a knowledge of Hebrew in the first place, and after that to diligently apply yourself to the study of Jewish history before you enter upon reading the prophets’.60 These sources also provided a means of expressing ideas and concepts, such as those concerning the ‘persons’ in the Trinity, that were not otherwise available to him.61 While he may not have envisaged Jewish readers for his works, he evidently located them at least in part within the debates between the two religions. On several occasions he asked rhetorically how one might persuade the Jews on this issue, but acknowledged that their perspective was in fact well supported. For instance he noted: ‘The Hebrews are supported by so many authorities that they naturally wonder at the great division of Gods introduced by the New Testament’.62 By instituting a form of Christianity without the Trinity, he believed, it would not only be more authentic, but more appealing to Jews. That said, it is highly doubtful that, even had the Trinity been removed from Christianity, there would have been many conversions from Judaism: the issue was more than one simply of different intellectual perspectives. Servetus’s engagement with Jewish materials was a cause of particular concern. He evidently hoped he might find a way of reconciling Judaism and Christianity; for his less radically-minded opponents, however, it looked like he was fundamentally 88

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK undermining Christianity. As early as 1531, Oecolampadius had complained that Servetus was Judaising biblical passages which foretold Christ’s coming.63 Among the charges brought against him in Geneva in 1553 was that ‘that his doctrine was pernicious, considering that he favours Jews and Turks, by making excuses for them’.64 In the event, it was his denial of the Trinity that sealed Servetus’s fate, but as we have seen, at the root of this was his sympathy for Jewish lines of interpretation, and his desire to restore Christianity to an earlier, purer form. In that, he had much in common with the more mainstream reform movements of the Reformation era, but he developed it in such a way that made it acceptable to almost none of them. Especially in the heated context of the confessional conflicts of the mid-sixteenth century, it was necessary for Geneva to demonstrate that it would not countenance such views. The Reformed Leadership As with the focus on Luther in the Lutheran context, there has been a tendency in the Reformed setting to focus on Calvin almost to the exclusion of all else. It is important, however, to broaden our scope, and to think about other members of the Reformed leadership, and also to consider the Reformed culture which developed more generally. The wider enthusiasm for Hebrew in Geneva was, in the first place, demonstrated by the establishment of the Academy in 1559.65 Although it was only created in the last years of Calvin’s life, the Academy was one of the crowning achievements of the Genevan Reformation, and would play an important role in training pastors who would lead the Reformation in France and elsewhere in the second half of the sixteenth century. As with Luther’s university in Wittenberg forty years previously, in Geneva it proved particularly tricky to find a professor of Hebrew.66 The Genevans first attempted to get Jean Mercier, then a lecteur royal in Paris, but he was unable to take on the post.67 They then approached Immanuel Tremellius, the Jewish convert, who had previously been professor of Hebrew at the University of Cambridge;68 as noted above however, the duke of Zweibrücken refused to let him go.69 François Boisnormand, one of the chaplains of the king of Navarre, was also in the running, but in the event, the post went to Antoine Chevallier, one of the substantial group of professors who came to Geneva following the closure of the Academy in Lausanne. According to the institution’s records, five of the eight hours a week that Chevallier was required to teach should be focused on Hebrew grammar.70 In addition, the Academy accumulated a range of relevant materials: by 1572 the library contained at least twenty Hebrew works, including four Bibles, five dictionaries, five grammars and a book of Kabbalah.71 However, arguably more important than any individual piece of 89

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Hebraic scholarship to emerge from the Genevan Academy was the steady stream of students, who had acquired knowledge of Hebrew as part of their theological training, and took that back with them to their native communities.72 Even if he did not end up teaching at the Genevan Academy, one of the most striking contributions to Judaeo-Christian relations in the Calvinist context was made by the Jewish convert, Immanuel Tremellius, who, among other roles, taught Hebrew at the universities of Cambridge, Heidelberg and Sedan, in France.73 Yet while this was, in hindsight, a highly distinguished career, it was far from guaranteed that, as a convert, he would have been able to enjoy this. However, Tremellius had at least two things going for him. First, there was his undoubted expertise as a Hebraist. Having been immersed in the study of Hebrew since his infancy, Tremellius came to be regarded as one of the most proficient Hebrew scholars of his age. Second, he enjoyed a circle of influential friends who were ready to support him. Peter Martyr Vermigli, Martin Bucer and John Calvin all made recommendations on his behalf, or otherwise sought to advance his career. This is particularly noteworthy, given both Tremellius’s status as a convert, and Bucer and Calvin’s attitudes towards Jews. Clearly they felt that Tremellius’s conversion had been genuine, and were ready to accept him fully into their midst. We should remember here, by contrast, the considerable scepticism that was often directed at conversos in Iberia. The fact that there had been no coercion behind his decision to convert, and the far smaller numbers of converts in Switzerland, presumably both made it easier to accept him on his own terms. As noted above (p. 81), there were rare occasions on which his Jewish background was held against him (most obviously in 1547 when Viret was unable to find him a job in Lausanne, mentioned above). But it is perhaps more striking that there were not more instances of that kind. This was especially the case, given that Tremellius did not follow the conventional path of a convert and start attacking his former brethren, which was the classic method used to demonstrate the sincerity of a conversion (as exemplified by Pfefferkorn and Margaritha, for instance – see above, p. 1 and p. 61), while still allowing the convert to deploy their knowledge in a Christian environment. Using this expertise in a constructive fashion was not unprecedented – various converts became professors of Hebrew at Christian universities for instance, and not all of them turned against the Jews – but it was still uncommon. And no convert enjoyed as long or successful a career in the Reformation as did Tremellius. In addition to his work providing instruction in the Hebrew language, and on Old Testament exegesis, to students in Germany, England and France, he also wrote a range of works of Christian Hebraica. These included his translation of Calvin’s Genevan Catechism 90

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK into Hebrew, a Syriac grammar, a translation of the New Testament made from Syriac, a translation of the Old Testament produced in conjunction with Franciscus Junius, a commentary on Hosea, and a translation into Latin of Chaldaean paraphrases of the prophets written by Jonathan ben Uzziel, a first-century rabbi.74 This kind of output was quite typical and demonstrates the range of activities commonly undertaken by Hebraists in the service of the Reformation. The works themselves were not necessarily polemical in content, but importantly they provided the essential materials on which the polemicists within their confession might build their arguments. A different perspective again is provided by Theodore Beza (1519–1605), who became leader of the Genevan Reformation in 1564, following Calvin’s death.75 He clearly promoted Hebrew studies, not least as rector of the Genevan Academy, where he was also a professor of Greek and theology. In his famous Icones (pen portraits of leading scholars of the period, dedicated in 1580 to James VI of Scotland), moreover, he included six Christian Hebraists, which again suggests his sympathy for this endeavour.76 These were Immanuel Tremellius himself, Johann Reuchlin, Johannes Forster (a student of Reuchlin’s and a professor of Hebrew at Wittenberg), Sebastian Münster (a professor at the University of Basel), Paul Fagius (a professor at Strasbourg and then Cambridge), and François Vatable (chair of Hebrew at the Collège de France). These were six of the most renowned Hebrew scholars of the sixteenth century, but equally worthy of mention is that they were drawn from across the confessional spectrum: while Reformed scholars perhaps inevitably dominate, given Beza’s own position, he also saw fit to include the Catholic Vatable and the Lutheran Forster. The various confessions were in competition with each other, but they were also united in some ways in the same broad enterprise: the study of Hebrew and Jewish materials was one area where competition and collaboration intersected. At the same time, it is apparent that for Beza there were limits as to what he felt was appropriate for Christian Hebraists to be involved with. We can see this from his brief intervention in discussions concerning the publication of an edition of the Talmud by Ambrosius Froben in Basel in the late 1570s. In fact, Tremellius had been involved in creating the text for production. He read through the various volumes of this work, and identified all the sections which he felt were blasphemous, providing justifications for his decisions. He also wrote a short introduction for the work in which he expressed his reservations about the Talmud, but noted that it did still have some merit in a Christian context.77 However, as Tremellius reported to Beza in a letter of 1579, several people had raised objections about his involvement; he hoped that Beza would come to his aid, but 91

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION he was to be disappointed.78 Beza believed that Christians should have no need for a version of the Talmud, even if the offensive material had been removed from it.79 In the event, Froben completed his volume with the assistance of Pierre Chevallier, a native Genevan who had taught Hebrew there, representing the Reformed camp, and Marco Marino, the papal inquisitor of Venice acting as censor working in the interests of the Catholics. This approach was intended to ensure that the work met the standards required by both the Protestant city council and the Catholic empire; unfortunately under their twin attack, the resulting edition was theologically acceptable but thoroughly mangled.80 Nonetheless, Beza does seem to have held a remarkably positive view as regards the salvation of the Jews. In his discussion of Romans 11, the classic text which sets out that ‘all Israel will be saved’, Beza criticised Christians for their poor treatment of ‘the holy nation of the Jews’, before going on to note that ‘I pray daily with all my heart for the Jews in this manner: “Lord Jesus, truly you judge in your righteousness that one not scorn you, and this ungrateful people deserves to be severely punished. But, Lord I pray that you will have regard for your covenant and look with kindly eyes on this forsaken and unfortunate people for your name’s sake . . .” ’81 Such sympathy, expressed in as prominent a place as his edition of the New Testament, is quite remarkable, and does offer a contrast with, for example, the major utterances of Luther’s later years. While Geneva emerged as the focal point of the Reformed religion in the midsixteenth century, a second significant centre was provided by Zurich. In fact, until the rise of Geneva, the city had been the dominant force within Swiss Protestantism.82 During the 1520s, Zurich had been led by Huldrych Zwingli, a contemporary of Luther’s who mounted a parallel but independent challenge to the Catholic Church; the Mass was replaced by a new liturgy in 1525.83 There were few Jews in Switzerland during this period, and there is no evidence that Zwingli had personal contact with any, but biblical study, including Hebrew, was central to his reform programme. This was certainly apparent in relation to his own trajectory. Zwingli seems to have spent some time studying Hebrew with Thomas Wytenbach, at the University of Basel.84 Shortly before he began preaching in Zurich in 1525, he obtained a copy of Reuchlin’s Hebrew Grammar to help him read the Psalms in the original.85 Indeed, he attached great value to reading the Old Testament in Hebrew. As he explained in his commentary on Isaiah: ‘For understanding holy scripture, [Latin] is of less value than Hebrew and Greek, but for other purposes it is equally useful.’ He went on: ‘I put Hebrew last because Latin is in general use and Greek follows most conveniently. Otherwise I would willingly have given Hebrew the precedence for in many places . . . those who are ignorant of 92

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK Hebrew forms of speech have great difficulty in attempting to draw out the true sense of scripture’. But if one properly understood Hebrew, he continued, ‘then we should have penetrated into the knowledge of the ideas and tropes, the images and figures of speech which meet us at every turn in the books of Scripture, so that there is scarce a single sentence of the Bible that can be opened up by any other key but such as these’.86 In his translations and commentaries on books of the Old Testament, moreover, Zwingli consulted a range of rabbinic authors, particularly David Kimhi; at the same time, though, he attempted to limit that influence to linguistic issues.87 The study of Hebrew was also important to Zwingli’s programme for the city. As early as September 1523, the Zurich city council passed a decree in which they insisted that a ‘learned, skilful and upright man shall lecture on, and expound, the Bible publicly every day, devoting one hour daily each to the Hebrew, Greek and Latin texts, very necessary for the proper understanding of the divine word’.88 From a very early stage, a kind of theological college, known as the Prophezei, was set up. Every day, except Friday and Sunday, two public lectures – one first thing in the morning, the other in the middle of the afternoon – were delivered to a group of twenty to thirty individuals, fairly evenly divided between ministers and students.89 Jacobus Ceporinus of Dynkarten, one of Reuchlin’s students, was the first to provide this instruction. These sessions evidently involved dealing with the same text in Latin, Greek and Hebrew, one after the other, though the latter two elements most likely focused on matters of grammar.90 In due course, this ambitious programme was simplified, with Ceporinus lecturing in Hebrew and Greek on alternate days, while Zwingli gave the Latin lectures himself. Following Ceporinus’s death in 1525, the work was further divided, with the distinguished Konrad Pellikan succeeding him as Hebrew lecturer.91 This arrangement would then be put on a more formal basis with the creation in 1525 of the Carolinum, an academy in Zurich. In due course, the Zurich Bible would emerge from this sustained biblical study. In the meantime, the format of the Prophezei would be picked up by other churches of the Reformed confession.92 Heinrich Bullinger succeeded Huldrych Zwingli as leader of the Reformation in Zurich following the latter’s death in October 1531 in a battle between Zurich and a confederation of Catholic Swiss cantons.93 In 1543, Bullinger was among those to express his dismay at Luther’s writings of that year, in a letter to Martin Bucer.94 Bullinger was particularly concerned because he regarded Luther’s attack on rabbinic exegesis as constituting a broader challenge to the Hebrew text of the Bible. At the same time, Bullinger does not seem to have advocated complete Jewish toleration. In May 1572, he received a letter from one of his most frequent 93

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION correspondents, the Augsburg patrician George von Stetten, in which von Stetten asked for Bullinger’s views on the issue,95 making it clear that he was not necessarily opposed to the idea of toleration, not least because he believed that to expel the Jews completely would undermine Pauline ideas about their ultimate conversion.96 In his response, however, Bullinger argued that the Jews’ adherence to the Talmud made converting them very difficult. He therefore explained that he felt one should only tolerate the Jews if this was mandated by a superior power, such as the emperor. He then proceeded to argue that Jews were harmful to Christian interests, before repeating some of the classic accusations made against them. He wrote: ‘It is absolutely indisputable that in their daily prayers they desire the banishment of our religion and curse us. Equally undisputed is that they call our Saviour Christ the son of a Whore and the Godly Virgin a maid.’97 Thus, like Calvin and Beza, Bullinger offered rather contradictory statements on the Jews. All three were strong supporters of Hebrew study, but their attitudes towards contemporary Jews were considerably more ambivalent. The Jewish Mission The conversion of the Jews was, as we saw in Chapter 1 (p. 4 ff.), an aspiration of Christianity from the outset. During the Middle Ages, a number of authors had written works intended to draw Jews towards Christianity.98 This initiative was given a new impetus with the Reformation.99 As discussed in Chapter 2 (pp. 45–7), Luther’s That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew was written at least in part in the hope that it might bring Jewish readers to embrace the new form of Christianity that he was advocating. The desire to convert Jews was expressed by adherents of each of the principal Christian confessions, but it does seem that it was members of the Reformed Church who most frequently wrote works with that aim in mind. Several of the Christian Hebraists singled out by Beza in his Icones made particularly noteworthy contributions to this genre. These included Sebastian Münster (1488–1552) who, in 1529, wrote a dialogue between a Christian and a Jew.100 It was written in Hebrew, and generally adopted a conciliatory attitude towards its intended Jewish readers. At the same time, not much of the text was devoted to explaining Christian doctrines. As much as anything, the Christian participant was keen to get the Jewish figure to explain Jewish ideas about the Messiah and the Apocalypse. While this work might have promoted a degree of sympathy between members of the two faiths, its potential for bringing about conversion was limited.101 Perhaps more likely to have an impact in this regard was Münster’s translation of Saint Matthew’s Gospel into Hebrew, which he produced in 1537.102 Remarkably, this was the first time that any part of the 94

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK New Testament had been published in that language. However, this text was preceded by a 120-page Latin introduction in which Münster discussed both the Christian and Jewish religions. His discussion of Christianity included an exposition of key beliefs such as the Trinity, the nature of the Messiah, and the new Covenant, but his tone was considerably more hostile than his earlier dialogue.103 Similarly, in the early 1540s, Paul Fagius (1504–49) published in both Latin and Hebrew a Book of Faith, the conceit of which was that it had originally been written by a Jew, who set out core Christian beliefs, which were then translated by Fagius into Latin.104 According to the title page at least, this work was intended to serve a missionary purpose. The work was dedicated to Andreas Masius, a renowned Hebraist and advisor to the bishop of Constance. Fagius wrote: ‘You certainly know, O best man, what a hostile race of men is the Jewish people to our Christian religion, and how it is hardly able to tolerate books of this kind which are published to refute their errors and to show the glory of Christ our only Saviour’. This work, he goes on, is intended to reveal to the Jews their ‘deplorable blindness’ by providing arguments taken from the Scriptures. It is worth recalling that Masius was a Catholic: Fagius here draws connections with a Catholic against a common Jewish enemy. Fagius also produced a book of Jewish prayers, which he justified on the grounds that it would aid the understanding of Scripture: these were Jewish prayers used at the time of Christ, so could throw light on the prayers that Christ would have used at the Last Supper. Also in this tradition was Immanuel Tremellius’s translation of Calvin’s Genevan Catechism into Hebrew, of 1551, mentioned above (p. 90). The Genevan Catechism set out the essentials of the Calvinist faith, and so producing a version of it in Hebrew presented an introduction to that confession which might be of interest to any Jews who read it. In a letter to Calvin, Tremellius explained that ‘my hope is that some benefit to my people will also come from it’.105 In the dedication of the 1554 edition, addressed to Christopher, duke of Württemberg, Tremellius explained that ‘no one ought to doubt that the vast majority of [the Jews] hate our religion on account of its customs, since they do not understand them, and since they have never been explained to them’.106 While Jews might be dismissive of works written in Latin, they were likely to be more receptive to works written in Hebrew, which might in turn lead them to engage with Christianity more broadly: ‘For having been provided with it in the Hebrew language, they will not only be able to be instructed in the teaching and holy meanings which are contained in the holy Scriptures, but also to observe and learn from my little book those purer sayings, expressions and figures of speech which the Divine letters 95

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION use, and from that they can be made ready for other arguments of piety and religious discussion.’107 In his Latin preface, Tremellius acknowledged that ‘it is highly likely that I will incur the displeasure of many’ because he had produced this work. Tremellius’s benign approach was unusual for the time, but his work did arguably mark something of a turning point: other converts would subsequently produce works which adopted a more welcoming attitude when they addressed Jewish audiences.108 In the introduction to this work, addressed to his Hebrew readers, he says: ‘I await the salvation [of Israel] and all my desires are for the redemption of Israel and therefore I have written this small book’. Like Fagius, Tremellius sought to distance himself from the contents of the work. In his case, he sought to conceal his Christian identity, even referring to himself as a rabbi. In the preface, he adopted a friendly tone: Bountiful and ever increasing greetings to all descendants of Jacob from Immanuel Tremellius. Dear Brothers: I have seen the books among our people, [especially] the prayer books used to teach children to pray to the Lord and to thank Him for his blessings . . . I wanted to write a single short book including the order of the prayers and other aspects of devotion practised by our ancestors Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, and which were commanded by God.109

As a convert himself, Tremellius was no doubt sincere in his desire to bring about further Jewish conversions, but whether or not he, Münster and Fagius really intended their works to be used in this way is harder to ascertain. It has been suggested that Fagius used the Jewish mission as a pretext for composing works whose more controversial content might have led to charges of Judaisation.110 It is also possible that Münster and Tremellius envisaged their works being used by Christians learning Hebrew, as much as by Jews. In Tremellius’s case, for instance, he had provided a Hebrew text, the orthodoxy of which could hardly be questioned (as the original had been written by Calvin himself ); there was consequently no risk that those Christian students of Hebrew who translated the text back into Latin would encounter provocative Jewish ideas, and they could focus entirely on the language instead. A Chosen People As discussed at the start of this chapter, members of the Reformed Church, particularly from the middle decades of the sixteenth century onwards, took on names drawn from the Old Testament. But in fact this process of identification with the people of Israel was much broader. Calvin, in the preface to his Commentary on the Psalms, the most 96

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK autobiographical part of his extant writings, took the opportunity to identify himself with David, the author of that book. With perhaps a hint of false modesty he began by noting that ‘I follow David at a great distance, and come far short of equalling him’, but nonetheless, ‘if I have any things in common with him, I have no hesitation in comparing myself with him’. He goes on to indicate that it has ‘been of very great advantage to me to behold him as in a mirror, both the commencement of my calling, and the continued course of my function; so that I know the more assuredly that whatever that most illustrious king and prophet suffered, was exhibited to me by God as an example for imitation’.111 In this way, Calvin presented David as a model whose example he could follow, but also as a source of reassurance. In fact, the Psalms played an especially important role in this regard for the Calvinists. The Genevan Psalter (a volume containing the Psalms, set to music, produced under the direction of Calvin) was principally the work of the French poet, Clément Marot (1496–1544). Although Marot did not know Hebrew himself, he still sought to translate the Psalms in light of the original Hebrew text, and drew on a range of sources to allow him to do so (perhaps most notably Bucer’s commentary).112 Indeed, his engagement with rabbinic exegesis in his translation of Psalm 110 (one of the messianic Psalms discussed above in relation to Calvin) was so strong that he played down its Christological potential to such an extent that it was rendered unacceptable to the Genevans.113 Meanwhile, Theodore Beza, who completed the Genevan Psalter following Marot’s death, used David as a model in whom the French Huguenots could find inspiration: in Beza’s portrayal, David exemplified a policy of political resistance, and thus justified the removal of the Valois king.114 The centrality of the Psalms to Huguenot culture was further demonstrated by the fact that they were sung by soldiers as they went into battle, and by individuals as they faced martyrdom.115 The Old Testament was also used as a central reference point in order to interpret contemporary political developments. Political leaders who supported or obstructed the Reformed cause were often presented as modern versions of biblical figures. William of Orange (also known as William the Silent, 1533–84) in the Netherlands, and subsequently his son Maurice, were variously portrayed as David, Moses and Gideon, while Philip II of Spain and the duke of Alva (who led an army from Spain to put down the Dutch rebels in 1567) were compared with figures like Saul and Goliath. For instance, in 1581, the engraver Hendrick Goltzius placed William in a series of scenes from Moses’s life, including receipt of the Ten Commandments and leading his people through the Red Sea.116 Josiah, who had overseen significant religious reform during his reign in the seventh century bce proved a particularly convenient model for royal 97

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION comparison. For instance, the French and Dutch communities of London welcomed the accession of James VI and I to the crown of England, in 1603, with various allusions to the reign of Josiah; in 1617, on the centenary of the Reformation, Abraham Scultetus from Heidelberg University praised Frederick V as a new Josiah; in his 1626 work The Mirror of Kings, the Hungarian Reformed preacher János Pataki Füsüs expressed the hope that the Calvinist prince Gábor Bethlen would be Hungary’s Josiah.117 However, the allusion was perhaps most frequently applied to Edward VI of England, presumably because of the parallels in their career: Josiah had become king at the age of eight, while Edward was only ten when his father Henry VIII died.118 Even at his coronation, Archbishop Thomas Cranmer referred to Edward as a ‘second Josiah’ who would destroy idolatry and institute true worship.119 The historian and churchman John Bale in his Apology Agaynste a Rank Papyst (1550), which he dedicated to Edward, catalogued the religious reforms of Jehu, Ezekias, Asa, Jehosaphas and Josiah, the last of whom ‘in like case restored again ye decaied religion through ye laws of the Lord to light, commanded the people diligently to observe them, put doun the false religions which had done sacrifices to the hoste of heaven . . . and removed all other abhominacions of the ungodlie, reducynge the people to the true service of God’.120 Bale then went on to underline his point at the end of his preface: ‘Sufficient are these most worthy examples of the scripture, to declare what the duty of a king is concerning the affairs of our Christian religion’.121 It is important to appreciate that allusions of this sort had a number of complementary intentions. Of course they reflected the biblicism which was especially apparent in Protestant groups in this period (though it should equally be noted that biblical allusions had a much longer history, and in this period were by no means the exclusive preserve of Protestantism), and indeed could thus serve as a kind of shorthand, as each allusion brought with it a series of associations which did not necessarily need to be further explained. Their use again reflected the view that the Bible was not merely history; it was also a ready guide to the current world. But more than this, they could be used to convey an important message: calling a king such as Edward VI ‘Josiah’ could be a means of complimenting him, by linking him with an inspirational figure, but it was also a subtle way of admonishing the king to live up to the model of that distinguished predecessor. In fact, these associations of individual reformers and rulers, much like the naming practices in Geneva and Rouen, all reflected a more general readiness to associate with the people of Israel which seems to have been most pronounced within Reformed circles (though as we saw in the previous chapter, it was also a feature of some radical groups too). The reasons for this merit fuller exploration. 98

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK As already noted, this was in part a product of the biblicism, and particularly the interest in the Old Testament, which characterised the Reformed confession more than other Christian groups at this time. Given the attention to the Scriptures, and the resulting familiarity, it was hardly surprising that it should become the dominant point of reference.122 It was a very diverse set of texts with a vast array of characters and episodes which could be presented as analogous to the circumstances in which one found oneself. Especially in a society which felt that history repeated itself, and was – partly encouraged by biblical analysis itself – able to be read typologically (that is, from the point of view that events prefigure later developments in some way), it provided a valuable resource for better understanding how to behave in a given situation. This could sometimes take unexpected forms. Perhaps most strikingly, Jean de Léry, a Reformed pastor who had helped establish a Protestant community in Brazil, explained the cannibalism to which a handful of his fellow Protestants were reduced during the siege of Sancerre, by drawing a comparison with the cannibalism of unfaithful Israel.123 But there were two further, interlinked, ideas which also help to explain this readiness to draw connections with the Old Testament. The first of these related to the position in which members of the Reformed faith found themselves. It was only in 1555 that Calvin had firmly established himself in Geneva, but the Calvinist movement expanded rapidly on an international level thereafter.124 In France, there were perhaps as many as 2,000 Protestant communities established by the early 1560s. Scotland accepted Reformation of a Reformed hue in 1560, while other churches were established in places in the Netherlands, Poland and Hungary.125 Yet after this burst of activity, and the rapid inroads which had been made, matters seemed to stagnate. In Calvinist theology, great emphasis was put on the idea of providence, according to which it was believed that God was the cause of absolutely everything that happened, from the most minor episode in the life of an individual, through to the successes or misfortunes of a nation.126 While it was accepted that one would not necessarily be able to understand God’s purpose, that did not prevent people from trying, nor from viewing major political developments within a providential framework. Successes, or positive developments, were thus seen as signs of divine favour, while significant setbacks, such as the killing of substantial numbers of Huguenots in the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 (see below, p. 132), often became prompts for reflection on why God had turned against their cause. In light of this providential reading, the apparent stagnation in the fortunes of the Reformed faith were a source of concern: did this mean that God had forsaken its 99

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION adherents? But the history of the people of Israel provided them with a helpful model to explain their experiences. Just as the Israelites had suffered a series of hardships and difficulties, so too did the Calvinists in the sixteenth century. The doctrine of predestination, apparent in the first edition of Calvin’s Institutes, but elaborated by him over the course of his career, and further by his successors, held that the world was split between the true adherents of God’s message (‘the elect’), and those who were not (‘the reprobate’). It was further assumed that the elect would constitute a minority, compared with the many false Christians, and also that this group would face suffering. It seemed all but inevitable that people, when confronted with the true church, would react with violence. Indeed, this combination of beliefs served to invert the situation in which they found themselves: rather than success indicating the truth of their cause, it presented suffering as evidence of their piety. This was potentially a rather complicated position to adopt, at least in terms of its implications for Judaeo-Christian relations. On the one hand, Calvinists looked for and sought to emphasise affinities between themselves and the Jews. On the other they were seeking to position themselves as the heirs of the Jews, which made it necessary to disparage them. This in turn involved a new way of thinking about the relationship between Christianity and Judaism. In the medieval church, Catholics had looked to their numerical supremacy as evidence of the truth of their message. The falseness of Judaism was demonstrated, it was contended by writers from Augustine through to Luther, by the fact that Jews constituted a dispersed minority, which lacked political power. For the Calvinists, however, this was rarely an explanation open to them. Many of their communities, especially in the 1560s and 1570s, were obliged to exist ‘under the cross’: that is, they operated in secret in order to avoid suppression by the Catholic authorities.127 But it was more than that. Calvinists saw themselves as the New Israel, engaged in a similar kind of battle. The Catholic Church was regularly presented as one or more of the enemies of the Israelites: Egypt, Canaan and Sodom. This provided an interpretative framework for explaining their circumstances. It also served as a means of galvanising the faithful, by providing them with a message of hope. According to this interpretation, the Calvinists were presented as the righteous, with God on their side, and ready to deliver them in due course. This was a model which expected both conflict and suppression. It was an ingenious way of turning an apparent weakness into a real strength, and the identification with Israel was fundamental to that. Not only was this manifested in the naming practices discussed at the outset of this chapter, but it coloured other patterns of behaviour and ways of thinking too. We can 100

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK see this for instance in the martyrology of the Frenchman Jean Crespin.128 In his account of the martyrdom of A. de la Voye, a Reformed pastor who faced execution in a small town in Bordeaux for heresy, Crespin records him quoting Psalm 114 against his opponents: ‘When Israel went out of Egypt, the house of Jacob from a people of strange language; Judah was his sanctuary and Israel his dominion . . . Tremble thou earth . . . at the presence of the God of Jacob’.129 In so doing he implied that he was among the righteous, while his opponents were associated with the heathen of the Old Testament. In fact, the historian Charles Parker has demonstrated that Old Testament imagery was regularly used in martyrdom accounts written by Crespin (and approximately four times as often as New Testament imagery).130 That is to say, the sixteenth-century martyrs explicitly identified themselves with the people of Israel, often with a view to reflecting on their own deliverance in due course. For instance, Claude Monier from Auvergne, who would be martyred in 1551, reflecting on the situation of Calvinists in Lyon, remarked, We are under even greater distress than when Israel was under Pharaoh. Poor Israel was constrained for the pleasure of a tyrant . . . but we for the pleasure of Satan are forced to commit all kinds of villainy. Israel was strongly forbidden a holiday in the desert in order to serve and sacrifice to their God. And Christians [now] do not so much as have permission just to praise their Saviour or even to meet together.131

The history of Israel seemed particularly applicable to those Calvinists facing oppression in France: it described what felt like an analogous situation, but it also contained a message of hope; at the same time, it placed the Huguenots on the same level as God’s chosen people in the Old Testament.

R This Calvinist identification with the people of Israel had, as we have seen, several origins. It reflected a greater explicit endorsement of the Old Testament than was the case in Lutheranism (though one should avoid overplaying that contrast), and was perhaps also influenced by Calvin’s interests as a lawyer. The readiness to return to the past as a means of understanding the present was also hardly new. In the Renaissance, for instance, numerous writers had looked to the ancient world as a source of precedents and analogies for contemporary situations. History, after all, was generally understood as one of the best teachers. And nor was the history of the Israelites an exclusively 101

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Reformed interest: as we saw in the previous chapter, a number of the radical groups to emerge from the Reformation had likewise identified themselves in that way. Nonetheless, it is apparent that this association with Israel was particularly pronounced and long-standing for the Reformed. To a large extent this reflected their developing sense of collective identity. It was part of the process by which they emphasised their distinction from, and opposition to, the Catholic Church. By placing their conflict within that wider framework, they positioned themselves within a longer tradition of conflict between good and evil, between right and wrong. They found a means of providing themselves with reassurance that they had God on their side and that, despite the hardships they currently faced, could acquire some confidence that they would ultimately triumph. This was reflected both in quite practical ways, such as the naming practices with which we began this chapter, or the way that Huguenots interpreted specific events, but it could also be demonstrated in more theoretical ways too, as for instance in the political writings which emerged especially in the wake of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 (see Chapter 6, p. 133), in which Jewish ideas about how a state should operate were frequently cited in support of arguments for overthrowing the political leaders in France.132 At the same time, this was not entirely straightforward. Contemporary Jews were regularly vilified, while those of the Old Testament had, at the very least, been superseded in Christian eyes. It was arguably risky to make connections too strongly with a nation that had been rejected by God for their failure to follow the correct path. More than that, the distinction between ancient and contemporary Jews, while neat in theory, could be more complicated in practice. The idea of identification, and the circular understanding of history from which it took its inspiration, spoke to a world of timeless rivalries. Many of the accusations which had proliferated in the Middle Ages took their strength from the belief that Jews always acted in a particular way with regard to Christians. The obvious continuities between the two groups of Jews – reflected in their own naming practices, for instance – can only have served to further blur this line. Calling a Huguenot child Abraham might have been done in emulation of the Old Testament, but it surely also called to mind contemporary Jews. This pattern of identification with the Jews was then augmented by the biblical study undertaken by the Reformed leadership. Again, as has been noted, this was far from unique to this confession, but it was nonetheless a significant characteristic. This included the first-rate scholarship of men like Münster, Pellikan and Tremellius, which displayed real familiarity with, and sensitivity to, the Hebraic tradition; it also took in 102

PEOPLE OF THE BOOK the exegesis of men like Bucer and Calvin who, more or less explicitly, drew on rabbinic ideas, sometimes to the extent of rejecting more conventional ‘Christian’ lines of interpretation, with the risks of being accused of Judaising which that entailed; and it also incorporated the more general deployment of Hebrew learning by the pastors who received their training in Reformed Academies, such as Geneva, and the Bibles produced in cities like Geneva and Zurich which also drew on that same learning.

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5

R A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE The Catholic Church and the Jews

On 1 March 1577, a certain Marcantonio wrote a letter from Monza to Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, the illustrious reforming archbishop of Milan, asking for his help. Describing himself as a ‘Jew made Christian’ (‘hebreo fatto cristiano’), he explained that it had been four months since his conversion from Judaism, when he had ‘learned that the true law is the new one instituted by Christ our saviour’. He had first been welcomed by Hieronimo Magiolino, a priest, who had allowed him to stay in his house and provided him with Christian instruction. However, Magiolino had since died, and while Pietro Brianza, another priest, was keen to continue his education, illness in Monza had meant that it had not been possible for the pair to make contact, which had left Marcantonio facing an existential crisis. As he explained: ‘I find myself ambiguous in my own mind, as I am not a Christian and even less am I a Jew, though I will never be a Jew again. As I believe that I am in a bad state, but ever wish to be a Christian, I only desire that your Illustrious Lordship grant me the favour of a brief conversation.’1 Unfortunately, it is not known whether Borromeo ever replied, let alone whether he granted Marcantonio an audience. Nonetheless, this letter provides an illuminating insight into the uncertainty that conversion could provoke. In the most famous accounts of conversions – such as those of Paul, Augustine and Luther – even if it had been preceded by a period of crisis, the conversion itself tended to be a decisive moment of spiritual awakening, and its recipient was thereafter clear in their new religious identity.2 While these figures remained models, the reality was rarely so clear cut. Even if the conversion had been undertaken voluntarily, the convert might well experience doubt and even regret.3 Indeed, in one remarkable case, Custodio Nunes, from Evora in Portugal, claimed before the Inquisition in the early seventeenth century that he regarded himself as both a Christian and a Jew.4 It is difficult to know whether Marcantonio was trying to reassure himself or the archbishop when he insisted ‘I will never be a Jew again’, but he would have appreciated that he was now entirely subject to the strictures of the Catholic Church, and this 104

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE would remain the case even if he chose to return to Judaism. Conversion was always one of the contentious issues in the relationship between Catholicism and Judaism, as we have seen in earlier chapters, but in the second half of the sixteenth century it was given renewed attention as a different atmosphere emerged within the Catholic Church. Traditionally, scholars spoke of a ‘Counter Reformation’, but this terminology has somewhat fallen out of favour, on the grounds that it implies the developments within the Catholic Church in the sixteenth century and beyond were primarily reactions to the Protestant challenge. Now, historians generally prefer the term ‘Catholic Reformation’, which is both more neutral and better able to accommodate the range of initiatives witnessed in this period.5 While it is important to acknowledge that reform efforts did predate the Protestant challenge, it is nonetheless clear that in the middle of the sixteenth century, a new ethos developed within the Catholic Church.6 The Council of Trent (1545–63) was the most obvious element of this: over twenty-five sessions, spread over almost two decades, the fathers of the council sought to address a wide range of issues relating to belief and practice.7 But the ‘Tridentine’ decrees – as they were known, after the Latin name for Trent, Tridentum – need to be seen alongside various papal initiatives, and efforts at the local level, whether by the state, the laity or the clergy, such as Carlo Borromeo, who were responsible for implementing (or not) the new policies. The impact of this was felt in virtually all areas, including attitudes towards, and treatment of, Jews. As this chapter will demonstrate, however, many of the new initiatives had only a limited impact in Italy, and still less in other areas of Catholic Europe. Nonetheless, the range of measures and approaches illustrate clearly the way that the Catholic Church built on existing ideas, but adapted these to the new circumstances of the Reformation era. Converting the Jews A particular and recurrent concern for the Catholic Church was the conversion of the Jews. The consequences of the effectively forced conversions in Spain in the 1490s had been apparent in the significant number of conversos who had been brought before the Spanish Inquisition in the first decades of the sixteenth century, as discussed in Chapter 2. Historians have failed to agree over the extent to which those conversos retained an attachment to their Jewish identity, but it is clear that the authorities remained sceptical.8 If Jews could be brought to embrace Christianity voluntarily, by contrast, their commitment to their adopted faith might be rather stronger. For that reason, therefore, considerable efforts were devoted to that objective. 105

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Catholic attempts to bring about voluntary conversion were focused primarily in Italy. There was nonetheless a clear link back to Spain: Ignatius of Loyola, the Spanish founder of the Jesuit order and fully committed to its global missionary work, was a strong advocate of employing converts from Judaism (and Islam).9 His secretary, Juan de Polanco, and his successor as leader of the Jesuits, Diego Laínez, were both conversos, for instance, and this was a marked feature of the early stages of that order. Indeed, it was only in 1593 that it was agreed that nobody of Jewish or Muslim heritage should enter the Jesuits.10 Pedro de Ribadeneyra, Loyola’s biographer (and a crypto-converso himself ), recorded Loyola’s response when ‘purity of blood’ was discussed on one occasion: ‘One day when many of us were dining together, [Ignatius], speaking of himself about a certain topic, said that he would take it as a special grace from our Lord to come from Jewish lineage; and adding the reason, he said: “Why imagine! That a man could be a kinsman by blood of Christ our Lord and of our Lady the glorious Virgin Mary!” ’ When his friend Pedro de Zárate heard Loyola speak sympathetically of the Jews, he was shocked and spat on the ground. ‘Our Father said to him: “Now Señor Pedro de Zárate, let us be reasonable; listen to what I have to say”. And then he gave him so many reasons for this that he really persuaded him to wish to be of Jewish lineage’.11 Paul III (r. 1534–49), himself a supporter of Hebrew scholarship, was influenced by Loyola on this issue. Under his papacy, Rome acted as a refuge for Jews expelled from Iberia, and, from 1541, from the Spanish Kingdom of Naples. But Pope Paul also laid the foundations of a concerted Jewish missionary campaign. On 21 March 1542, Paul issued the bull Cupientes Judaeos (‘Wishing the Jews’), which was intended to encourage Jews to convert, by ensuring that those who did would not lose out materially: they would retain their property while gaining full citizenship rights, and they would not be subject to any greater taxation. In addition, new converts were to be separated from Jews, encouraged to marry Christians, and arrangements were made to ensure they were properly instructed in the faith.12 Then, on 19 February 1543, with the bull Illius qui he established a domus catechumenorum (‘house of converts’) in Rome, in which would-be converts were to live, as they received instruction in preparation for baptism.13 As the introduction set out, ‘We should incessantly take upon ourselves diligent cares, so that Jews and infidels should be able to convert from their Hebrew blindness to the recognition of the light of truth, and so that, converted, they can be instructed in the Catholic faith.’14 The establishment of this house, which was located near the church of San Giovanni near the foot of the Capitoline Hill, was intended to make sure that these converts did not relapse by breaking their contact with other Jews. Moreover, the Jewish population was 106

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE obliged to pay to maintain this building. The substantial costs involved may themselves have encouraged further conversions: some wealthy Jews chose to convert rather than to bankrupt themselves to pay this fee.15 Similar institutions were established in a number of other Italian cities, including Venice in 1557, Bologna in 1568, Ferrara in 1583, and Mantua in 1588.16 As the historian Peter Mazur has shown, generally central to this proliferation were individual rulers who introduced the institutions in the territories under their control, as an expression of their religious attitudes. As a result, this development may be regarded as a direct consequence of the Catholic Reformation which had encouraged this heightened (and often quite personal) piety to emerge. A good example of this is provided by Eleanor of Austria, the duchess of Mantua from 1561 to 1594, who introduced a domus catechumenorum in 1588, the year after her husband died. Members of the duchess’s family and court contributed financially to this enterprise. This allowed Eleanor to expand the building through the addition of a grand hall in which compulsory conversionary sermons were delivered to the Jews of the city every week.17 Antonio Folcario, her contemporary biographer, presented this almost as a personal crusade, as the duchess went out of her way to facilitate the passage of individual, especially female, Jews, to Christianity: she provided them with a range of materials and financial gifts, and even sent one convert to Ferrara, to foil the efforts of other Jews to win her back to Judaism. Folcario noted further that Eleanor was motivated by great zeal not just towards Jews, but also to Turks and Muslims, whom she again hoped to convert to Christianity.18 Indeed, this example neatly demonstrates the contingency of projects of this kind. Eleanor initiated this activity in her kingdom only following the death of her husband, when she was in her mid-fifties. She would die herself six years later. Though Eleanor had been renowned for her piety throughout her life (and particularly for her devotion to the Virgin Mary), the timing of her commitment here suggests that the death of her husband encouraged her to dedicate herself more fully to the service of the church in her final years. Presumably this was a product of her own piety, in the first instance, but it also chimed with the broader atmosphere in the Catholic Church in the late sixteenth century, which was then making efforts to strengthen and extend the influence of Catholicism in Europe and beyond.19 These institutions were carefully managed to ensure that the converts were properly brought into their new faith.20 This was quite an elaborate process. The convert had first to demonstrate the sincerity of their desire to convert. Assuming that this was accepted, they were then required to remain in the domus catechumenorum for a period 107

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION of forty days (unless with express permission), and to have contact with no Jews during this period, including members of their close family. At the end of that period, a ceremony – often involving a procession – was held to mark their acceptance into the Christian community. Throughout this time, the converts would have been receiving Christian instruction. One set of instructions, written for the domus in Milan in the 1630s, reveals how carefully choreographed this whole process was. This institution housed only boys between the ages of seven and eighteen. All were expected to rise when they heard a bell ring in the morning, following which ‘they will spend half an hour in prayer, after reciting all together the litanies of the lord and the Madonna’; they were required to do the same in the evening. After making their beds and clearing the dormitory, ‘those who are engaged in study will study until it is time to go to school’. The rector was responsible for ensuring that they all confessed every fifteen days. It was also noted that ‘if there were anyone who was baptised a short time ago, and does not understand our language, a spiritual father who understands his language shall be found, who will confess him and instruct him until he is sure to be able to confess elsewhere’. These regulations even specified the amount of food and drink that the domus’s inhabitants could expect to receive at different times in the day.21 Perhaps unsurprisingly, the numbers of converts who passed through these institutions remained relatively small. Just under 2,000 Jews are recorded as having received baptism in Rome across the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries; in Naples, between 1583 and 1664, more than 2,300 did. In smaller places, the numbers were of course much lower: 287 baptisms in Modena between 1629 and 1796, for instance, and forty baptisms in Pesaro, across the entire seventeenth century.22 Given the emphasis placed on the voluntary nature of the conversions, and the care with which they were overseen, this was surely to be expected: the numbers may have been low, but the conversions were more likely to be genuine. Moreover, the numbers are not in themselves insignificant – in Pesaro, for instance, this may have equated to about 7 per cent of the total Jewish population – but arguably more important is that the effort was made in the first place. These institutions were heavily regulated, and involved considerable effort on the part of the Christians who staffed them. This commitment, more than the actual number of converts, demonstrates the aspirations of the Catholic Church during this period. Ghettoisation This was not the only means to convert Jews deployed by the Catholic Church in the latter half of the sixteenth century. A much harsher approach was also inaugurated 108

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE which ran in parallel with the domi catechumenorum. To an extent this reflected a tension right at the heart of the Catholic Church, and especially prevalent in Italy between the 1530s and the 1550s. On the one hand, there were the so-called spirituali: this rather fluid group, which included the cardinals Gasparo Contarini and Reginald Pole, as well as various other churchmen, demonstrated sympathy for some of the ideas associated with the Protestant Reformation, and an emphasis on inner reform, in their reformist programmes.23 During the 1540s, however, this group began to break up: some figures died, some fled to northern Europe, and others retreated to a more conventional position. In the meantime, a rather more dogmatic group – variously termed the zelanti and the intransigenti – began to dominate.24 This shift was perhaps best exemplified by the rise of Gian Pietro Carafa, who reigned as Pope Paul IV between 1555 and 1559. Only two months into his papacy, Paul issued a bull, Cum nimis absurdum (‘Since it is absurd’), in which he addressed the question of how to deal with the Jews.25 Indeed, the timing itself demonstrates that this was a matter of some urgency for him. The bull opened by denigrating the Jews and reminding them of their place in society: Since it is absurd and improper that Jews – whose own guilt has consigned them to perpetual servitude – under the pretext that Christian piety receives them and tolerates their presence, should be ingrates to Christians so that they attempt to exchange the servitude they owe to Christians for dominion over them . . . considering that the Roman Church tolerates the Jews in testimony of the true Christian faith and to the end that they, led by the piety and kindness of the Apostolic See, should at length recognise their errors, and make all haste at the true light of the Catholic faith . . .26

The bull then went on to set out a series of measures aimed at enforcing greater control over Jews. Henceforth, wherever Jews were permitted to reside, they were obliged to live together in designated areas, ‘and they should have one entry alone, and so too one exit’. While the term ‘ghetto’ was not used, this was what was being described. Only one synagogue was permitted in each area: if there happened to be more than that, ‘they must demolish and destroy all their [other] synagogues except for this one alone’. ‘[S]o that they be identified everywhere as Jews’, Jewish men and women were required ‘to wear in full view a hat or some obvious marking, both to be blue in colour, in such a way that they may not be concealed or hidden’.27 In addition, Jews were forbidden from associating with Christians, having them as their servants, or acting as their physicians. They were to use Latin or Italian when they conducted their business with 109

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Christians (so that they could not use a Jewish language as a means of deception). They were required to respect the Sabbath and Christian holidays. Should they fail to follow these rules, the Jews ‘should be punished according to the nature of the transgression, either as rebels or perpetrators of the crime of lèse majesté, and as those who have renounced their allegiance to the entire Christian people’.28 Most of these were well-established components of papal policy, and even the ghetto was not unprecedented. However, the historian Kenneth Stow has argued that what made this a radical shift in papal policy was the fact that it made the conversion of Jews a much more explicit intention.29 While previous papal policy had aimed at preserving the Jewish population in reduced circumstances (in line with Augustine’s recommendations), with the aspiration that Jews might in due course be inclined to convert, this bull asserted that Jews should be tolerated ‘to the end that they . . . should at length recognise their errors, and make all haste to arrive at the true light of the Catholic faith’.30 Of course, as discussed earlier in this chapter, Paul III had begun to make more obvious steps towards conversion, though this was done largely by means of the carrot of the domus catechumenorum; Paul IV added the stick of the ghetto. The Jews of Venice would almost certainly not have chosen to live in a ghetto but, as we saw in Chapter 2 (pp. 33–6), it provided a means for balancing the conflicting pressures then apparent in Venetian society. That said, as the ghetto was incorporated into this broader papal policy, the intention was to make life as uncomfortable as possible for the Jews, in order to accelerate their conversion, and thus ultimately the eradication of Judaism. This policy would be endorsed by all Paul IV’s successors through to the end of the century and beyond.31 With bulls of 1577 and 1584, Gregory XIII (r. 1572–85) augmented this policy by decreeing that preachers should be appointed to deliver conversionary sermons in synagogues every week, ideally in Hebrew (though most of the surviving sermons are in Italian).32 These took place on Saturday afternoons, as this was the Jewish Sabbath, on which Jews were prohibited from working, and therefore had no excuse not to attend. At least one third of Jews over the age of twelve were required to attend these; if they did not, they would not be allowed to interact with Christians. Recent converts were trained to deliver these sermons, which typically lasted for around two hours. The sermons were expected to cover the same Torah readings that had been covered in the Jewish sermon earlier in the day, in order to contradict the rabbinic interpretations. Andrea del Monte (originally a rabbi, Joseph Moro, from Fez, who had been baptised by Pope Julius III in 1552) was appointed as the first preacher to the Jews in 110

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE 1576, though he was forced to give up this role in 1582 because his preaching was so offensive that the Jews demanded his departure.33 He would be replaced by Evangelista Marcellino, a prolific writer and popular preacher.34 As the historian Emily Michelson has contended, these sermons were arguably as much for Christians as they were for Jews: not only did Christians regularly attend but there was a general acknowledgement, even from those who did most to promote the conversionary sermons, that conversion was more likely to occur through gentle persuasion than by insult and polemic.35 This view was not universal, however. In February 1593, Clement VII, by the bull Caeca et obdurata (‘Blind and obdurate’ – the terms with which he described the Jews) expelled the Jews from the Papal States on the grounds that they had abused the privileges which had been granted to them in the expectation that they would convert: all Jews were to leave within three months, or face confiscation of their goods and be sent to the galley, except those in Rome, Ancona and Avignon, who were to be kept under close supervision.36 Pius V had similarly issued an expulsion order in February 1569. It is possible that these expulsions were shock tactics, intended to encourage immediate conversions, but equally they may simply have reflected papal impatience. Either way, the advent of the Catholic Reformation had still made a significant difference in the way that Jews were presented in official Catholic policy in the second half of the sixteenth century.

R Cum nimis absurdum had advocated the creation of ghettos wherever there were significant Jewish populations, but assessing their impact is far from straightforward. The Jewish communities of Italy appear to have had little to say about it, though it has been argued that this in itself demonstrates the extent to which Jews had been scared into silence.37 On the other hand, over 800 Jews received baptism in Rome in the second half of the sixteenth century, out of a population of between 22,000 and 30,000 (roughly 3 to 4 per cent).38 This is not an insignificant number, but nor it is vast; and of course, it is impossible to establish the extent to which this repressive policy was responsible, given the other means then being used to bring about conversions. As has already been mentioned, ghettos were not unprecedented in Italy, but the second half of the sixteenth and first half of the seventeenth centuries saw their implementation in a number of places in the peninsula. Rome’s ghetto was established in 1555.39 This was followed by Florence and Siena, both in 1571, Verona in 1602, Padua in 1603, Mantua in 1612, Ferrara in 1624, Urbino in 1634 and Modena in 1638.40 111

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Ghettos would continue to spring up in various further Italian urban centres through the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Especially when one moves beyond Rome, it is clear that implementation of the papal policy could be rather more equivocal. That is not necessarily to doubt the religious commitment of those who did introduce a ghetto in their territory – after all they could in theory have chosen not to do so – but rather to appreciate that this needed to be set against other commitments. The introduction of a ghetto was a divisive gesture, guaranteed to alienate the local Jewish population, and likely to chase away some of its (wealthier) members. The fact that this policy of ghettoisation was introduced piecemeal only encouraged this: if Jews felt they were being treated unreasonably they could move to other states within Italy where they might be treated more favourably. A good example of the competing pressures is provided by Florence. The Florentine ghetto was created in 1571 by the city’s Medici rulers, and soon became home to all the Jews then living in Tuscany.41 A piece of legislation the previous year, expelling Jews from the entire region and explaining that a ghetto would be created, had been sufficient to encourage many of the wealthier families to leave the area, while a small number chose to convert rather than face being restricted in this way.42 The ghetto was created by Cosimo (r. 1537–74), the second duke of Florence, and his son, Francesco I (r. 1574–87), during the last years of the reign of the former.43 Relations with the papacy, and more broadly the new religious atmosphere in the wake of the Council of Trent, undoubtedly constituted important elements of the context in which this development should be seen. In the decree with which they established their ghetto, the Medici rulers justified their decision on religious grounds. They began by noting their awareness of ‘the difference between the abominable laws and customs of the Jews and those that are desired and required from true Christians’.44 They went on to remark ‘how easy it is for these Jews, through continuous intercourse and assiduous familiarity, to lure the souls of simple Christians into their own vain superstition and execrable perfidy’, all of which ‘results in great dishonour to God and the loss of souls and also to the total disparagement of the Christian Faith, which as religiously devout princes they are compelled to guard with all possible care and attention’.45 This was then endorsed by the message that was inscribed on the gate which led into the ghetto: ‘Cosimo Medici, Grand Duke of Etruria, and Prince Francesco Most Serene, utmost in piety to all therefore have desired that the Jews should be in this place, segregated from the society of Christians but not, however, expelled’.46 The point that this was a decision made on 112

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE religious grounds, and in the interests of the Christian faith, could hardly have been made more clearly. At the same time, there do seem grounds for doubting the extent of the religious zeal of the Medici rulers. For a start, the decree creating the ghetto inadvertently acknowledged that Jews had hitherto been well integrated in Florentine society: ‘The intolerable licentiousness of the Jews has in recent times introduced a great and abominable confusion. Due to their similar and even identical dress, it has become virtually impossible for human judgement to discern between Jews and Christians’.47 For this reason, they insisted that all Jewish men should wear a yellow hat, and all women a yellow sleeve. Evidently the standard injunction that Jews should be distinguished by their attire – as required by the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, for instance – had fallen into abeyance, with the result that very little distinction was made between members of the two faiths. Indeed, for the first thirty years of his rule, Cosimo had pursued a generally benevolent policy towards the Jews in his territory. In fact, his only anti-Jewish action during this period was to comply in 1553 when the Inquisition demanded that all copies of the Talmud should be collected and burnt.48 That this action was out of the ordinary is highlighted by a letter which Lelio Torelli, the duke’s secretary, wrote to him four years later. In response to Paul IV’s request that Florence should adhere to the expectation that Jews be distinguished by what they wore, Torelli wrote: ‘As regards making the Jews wear yellow hats, I don’t even want to talk about it – a ridiculous notion! And His Holiness will have to let His Excellency [i.e. Cosimo] have your subjects dress and shoe themselves according to his own manner’.49 Torelli was clearly confident that the duke shared his view. The contrast with his statement fourteen years later is thus all the more striking. In light of this, the apparent shift in Cosimo’s attitudes requires further explanation. It is certainly possible that the new atmosphere following the Council of Trent, and the new tenor of papal Jewish policy, as reflected in Cum nimis absurdum, contributed to this. But there was more to it than that. It was also an opportunity to win favour with the new pope, Pius V (r. 1566–72), who had endorsed the anti-Jewish policies of Paul IV. Pius IV, who had come between the two of them, had relaxed the rules, but Pius V tightened them again and sought to have them applied in territories beyond papal control.50 Ensuring papal favour was all the more important as Cosimo prepared to hand power over to his son. In fact, Cosimo had received the title of grand duke from Pius V in 1569, only two years before the creation of the ghetto. There is no surviving 113

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION evidence to suggest that this was seen by either party as a direct exchange, but it seems reasonable to assume that the two developments were at least loosely connected, as part of a broader process of negotiation and alignment.51 All that said, it does seem that Francesco had more strongly anti-Jewish feelings than his father: it has been suggested that these were at least in part the result of his marriage, in 1565, to Giovanna of Austria, the daughter of Ferdinand I and sister of Maximilian II, successive Habsburg Holy Roman Emperors.52 Unlike Rome, where, as we have seen, Paul IV and his successors saw conversion as a major objective of ghettoisation, there was no mention of conversion in relation to the creation of the Florentine ghetto. A house for converts, called the Casa Pia, was only created in 1636, sixty-five years after the founding of the ghetto, which hardly suggests that it was a major priority.53 Control, rather than conversion, was evidently the principal aim. And indeed, over the longer term, Medicean policy seems to have facilitated the expansion of the Jewish community, rather than curtailed it. In 1570, Florence had fewer than 100 Jewish inhabitants (though there were other communities spread throughout Tuscany). Just over fifty years later, in the 1622 census, the Florentine ghetto had 495 inhabitants.54 Out of a population of just over 60,000, this equated to less than 1 per cent, but it was still five times larger than it had been two generations earlier. As in Venice, moreover, there were numerous occasions when the formal restrictions of the ghetto were modified. On 27 August 1618, for instance, a fairly standard request was made and approved: Prospero Marino, a Jewish banker from Rome, wishes to come and do business in the state of His Most Serene Highness. Since wearing a badge could be detrimental to this activity, he requested an exemption extending to his family and his designated agent. The petition came back from His Highness [Cosimo II] with the following rescript, ‘Grant this to him and his son’ . . . Prospero Marino and his son Davitte are therefore granted an exemption from the badge normally worn by Jews.55

Exemptions of this sort were far from being a new phenomenon, but they demonstrate the constant balance between a general religious conformity and a more specific political and economic pragmatism. In the context of the Catholic Reformation, rulers like the Medici could not simply ignore the demands of the church, but in most cases nor was their compliance absolute. The fluidity of the situation was also demonstrated by the career of Benedetto Blanis (c. 1580–1647), a Jewish scholar and businessman, and a resident of Florence’s 114

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE ghetto. Between 1615 and 1621, he sent 196 letters to Giovanni de’ Medici, the second youngest of Cosimo’s fifteen children.56 In the first of these, written shortly after they had parted, Blanis exclaimed: ‘At your Excellency’s departure, as you know, I was so overcome by anguish as to be rendered speechless. Seeing myself deprived of your noble and divine presence, I felt my heart burst from my breast and my soul depart from my body.’57 He went on to express the hope that Giovanni might be able to find him employment. Giovanni, who knew at least enough Hebrew to be able to copy out passages from the Bible in that language, used Blanis as a source of Kabbalistic texts, found him a job as the Medici librarian, and also tried to find him a role as a teacher of Hebrew to Carlo Medici, a brother of the grand duke who was destined for a career in the church.58 The somewhat ambiguous position of the Medici was further illustrated by their impact on their territory beyond Florence. In 1570, Pisa had been home to the largest Jewish community in Tuscany, with ninety-four inhabitants, but that community had ceased to exist when the Florentine ghetto was instituted.59 Only a handful of years later, however, Grand Duke Ferdinando, who succeeded his older brother Francesco in 1587, sought to encourage the Pisan community to re-establish itself, and then in the early 1590s, he also attempted to attract Jews to Livorno.60 He was, moreover, happy to acknowledge his economic motives. He wrote: ‘We are moved . . . above all by our desire to act for the public good by encouraging and facilitating foreigners who might participate in business and commerce in our beloved city of Pisa and our port and depot of Livorno’.61 According to the census of 1622, Pisa had by that point built a community of 394 Jews, while Livorno had 711, over 200 more than in Florence; significantly, neither community was required to live in a ghetto.62 This was a particularly bold move because many of the Jews had come from Iberia, and so had at one stage been conversos, before they had resumed their Jewish status, which meant that they were technically answerable to the Inquisition. Ferdinando, however, sought to protect them from investigation, while also granting them various privileges, including exemption from wearing the badge of identification.63 Medici policy was thus shaped by both religious commitment and political expediency. The former does not mean that the Medici had suddenly taken against their Jewish inhabitants (though it has been suggested that Francesco’s views were more antagonistic than his father’s). Rather, the creation of a ghetto provided an opportunity which they could exploit as they sought to strengthen their control over their city-state. By addressing the issue of how to deal with the Jews in their midst, the Medici 115

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION aligned themselves more closely with key powers within a resurgent Catholic Church, including the pope and the Holy Roman Emperor. At the same time, though, they showed to their own citizens that they were rulers who were able to ensure that a correctly ordered Christian society could be maintained. This included dealing with potentially harmful elements. This did not require, they felt, the expulsion of the Jews; instead, by putting them into a ghetto they demonstrated their power over them. The Inquisition On 21 July 1542, by the bull Licet ab initio (‘It is allowed from the beginning’) Pope Paul III established the Roman Inquisition. Despite its name, its remit extended throughout the Italian peninsula, and other territories, such as Avignon, under papal control. This was only three months after his bull which sought to encourage Jews to convert, and was another indication of the changing atmosphere within the Catholic Church. Unlike in Spain where the Inquisition, as we saw in Chapter 2, was intended primarily to deal with converts from Judaism, the Roman Inquisition from the outset was intended to deal with a much wider range of issues.64 Technically, Jews were not answerable to the Inquisition, whose authority only covered members of the Christian faith (relapsed conversos thus did fall within its remit, as they had, at least at one stage, embraced Christianity). However, this remained a bone of contention. Thomas Aquinas had argued in the thirteenth century that the church might require Christians to cease conducting business with Jews if they posed a threat, while Nicholas Eymerich, the Spanish inquisitor-general (the head of the institution which preceded the one introduced by Ferdinand and Isabella) contended that there were cases when Jews might be subject to the Inquisition, for instance if they denied beliefs that were common to both faiths.65 By the mid-sixteenth century, the view that Jews could be punished if they blasphemed or sought to win Christian converts had taken root. In 1581, Gregory XIII issued the bull Antiqua Judaeorum improbitas (‘Ancient wickedness of the Jews’), which listed ten different grounds on which inquisitors might proceed against non-Christians: these included undermining common beliefs, attempting to win converts to Judaism, demonic sacrifices, and various forms of blasphemy, including possession of an uncensored Talmud.66 In clause 12 of this bull, it was noted that inquisitors were to be assigned for every location, whose duty it was ‘to diligently make enquiries and institute proceedings about these matters against the Jews and any other heathens, together or separately, in the cause of the faith’.67 As time passed it became more generally accepted that the Inquisition could exercise authority over the Jewish population. 116

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE Anxieties about the Jewish presence in Italy did still manifest themselves. For instance, during the night of 17 April 1559, someone pinned a notice to the door of Cremona’s cathedral bearing the following injunction: ‘People of Cremona: do not fail to ensure that these Jewish dogs are expelled from this blessed city, for otherwise you will suffer ruin; if you knew the great blasphemies that these impious dogs are saying against our Saviour Jesus Christ, you would realise that just one of their blasphemies would be sufficient to ensure ruin for ten cities, or even for one thousand.’68 Of course, while the author of this notice might have been responding to the new atmosphere within the Catholic Reformation, and particularly the renewed hostility towards the Jews, such attitudes were hardly unprecedented. Nonetheless, cases against Jews and Judaisers were not especially frequent, even in places where there were a large number of Jews. While the Inquisition of Lisbon dealt with almost 2,000 such cases in the second half of the sixteenth century, the Inquisition of Venice dealt with only seventy cases in the same period, while the Inquisition in Naples dealt with thirty-eight cases between 1564 and 1599: in both instances, this constituted less than 5 per cent of the cases which came before the tribunal.69 Given the change in policy adopted by Paul IV, this is quite striking, though it does perhaps also demonstrate that other issues facing the Catholic Church in Italy during the last decades of the sixteenth century, such as witchcraft and a range of moral crimes, were felt to be more pressing.70 More than that, it is apparent that religious aspirations could be compromised by other considerations. This was especially clear with regard to Venice.71 We have already seen in relation to the introduction of the ghetto there how an effort was made to strike a balance between the desire to maintain a Christian identity and to find a place for the city’s Jewish inhabitants, and this was also apparent with regard to the Inquisition. On the one hand, religious purity was an important strand of the so-called ‘myth of Venice’.72 On the other, the Venetian authorities resented the intervention from Rome that the Inquisition represented. In the main they were happy to comply with papal initiatives, but on occasion they would stand up against them. This rivalry was exemplified by Venice’s excommunication in 1509 (by Julius II during the War of the League of Cambrai, which had led to the creation of the ghetto in the first place), and the fact it was placed under interdict in 1605–7 (by Paul V, who resented the assertion of civic power over the clergy and church property in Venice).73 Another example is provided by the experience of the Jews in Modena.74 In 1598, following the death of Duke Alfonso II and the annexation of Ferrara by Clement VIII, Duke Cesare d’Este moved his capital to Modena. Many of the Jews who had 117

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION lived in Ferrara followed the Este family to that city: by 1638, when a ghetto was introduced, the Jewish population had reached about 750 inhabitants out of a total population of roughly 30,000.75 Also in 1598, Giovanni de Montelfalcone was appointed the first inquisitor-general of Modena. Over the next two centuries, almost 400 cases against Jews would be heard by the Modenese Inquisition, compared with almost 5,000 cases against Christians.76 While this constitutes a little less than 10 per cent of the cases heard, this was quite disproportionate, given that Jews constituted less than 3 per cent of the population. The expansion of the Inquisition’s activities to include Jews as well as converts marked an important development in the attitudes of the Catholic Church more broadly. Specifically, the incorporation of the Jews within those who were subject to the Inquisition reflected an effort on the part of the Catholic Reformation to bring about a comprehensive reform of society. Again, it is noteworthy that in Modena there was no desire to expel the Jews, and nor was much effort directed at converting them. As in Florence, it was more a case of better managing and controlling the Jewish presence within Christian society than had been the case before. Similarly, there was an evident tension between the church and the ruling family: while their interests often did align, there were jurisdictional conflicts, and also different priorities. It is striking, for instance, that Jews should follow the Este family from Ferrara to Modena, which clearly indicated that they regarded them as benign rulers. In the forty years between the introduction of the Inquisition and the creation of a ghetto in Modena in 1638, there were 186 trials involving Jews: again, this constituted approximately 10 per cent of the cases which came before the Inquisition.77 Among the most frequent offences were employing Christian servants, blasphemy, stopping others from being baptised, possessing prohibited books, and desecrating Christian images.78 Only about 40 per cent of the accused Jews were actually punished, which was comparable to cases brought against Christians, and therefore suggests that they were not treated more harshly.79 While torture was used in a small number of cases, it seems the inquisitors preferred to impose fines rather than to inflict physical punishment. For instance, the punishment of Mosé Tedeschi, who was found guilty of trying to dissuade someone from accepting baptism, was changed from a five-year period of galley service to a substantial fine, when the inquisitors realised that he would be able to pay.80 On the other hand, the evidence of the Modenese Inquisition testifies to the generally good relations between the Christian and Jewish communities. In June 1603, the Inquisition published in all churches and synagogues of Modena an edict, Contra gli abusi del conversare de Christiani con Hebrei, which set out a range of abuses relating to interaction 118

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE between members of the two faiths: among other things, they sought to discourage Christians from attending Jewish events, such as weddings, parties and circumcisions.81 As with similar legislation, this edict tells two contradictory stories: it both suggests the desire of the authorities to enforce separation, but it also acknowledges indirectly that previous attempts to keep Christians and Jews apart had been unsuccesful. This was also apparent in the prosecution of particular cases before the Inquisition. For instance, in 1625 Moisè da Modena, a Jewish banker, refused to pay protection money demanded by representatives of the Christian state during the festival of Purim, which resulted in an accusation that he was thereby trying to win converts to Judaism. Not only did Moisè employ a Christian lawyer to defend him, but he also brought carefully chosen Christian witnesses to support his case. For instance, Guideri, a Christian in his late fifties who owed him 10 lire, asserted: ‘Moisè has a very good reputation throughout the city, and if he had wished to displease Christians over money transactions he could have done. I have never heard him say anything against the Catholic religion.’82 The Inquisition of Modena was clearly active against the Jews under its dominion: they were disproportionately represented in trials, and there were more cases against them than was the case in somewhere like Venice, which had a larger Jewish population. Over the forty-year period leading up to the creation of the ghetto, roughly five cases were brought against Jews each year. The Inquisition thus provided a means by which Christians in Modena might channel animosity against their Jewish neighbours. On the other hand, it is perhaps more striking that there was not more of this. The sympathy of Cesare d’Este (d. 1628) for his Jewish subjects may well have been a factor here. The generally good relations between Christians and Jews also contributed to this. In light of this, the creation of the ghetto in 1638 seems less a response to a perceived need, and more a statement of religious conformity. Censorship Alongside these various efforts to impose religious control through the institution of the Inquisition in a growing number of locations, there was a parallel attempt to restrict people’s encounters with potentially dangerous ideas through censorship. This, of course, was also not new. Previous chapters have discussed the efforts to restrict access to Jewish books, for instance after the Disputation of Paris in 1240, and Pfefferkorn’s attempts to destroy them in parts of Germany in the early sixteenth century. The invention of printing in the middle of the fifteenth century had done much to expand the production of, and audience for, books; but it was almost a 119

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION century before adequate methods of censorship were instigated.83 In the early part of the sixteenth century, this had generally been a local affair, but thereafter there were attempts to deal with matters more systematically. It was not long before Jewish books were also affected by these initiatives. Venice was a particular focus for some of the tensions which surrounded censorship.84 The city had rapidly emerged as a major publishing centre, with more than 200 printing houses active in the late fifteenth century, including distinguished printers of classical works such as Nicholas Jenson and Aldus Manutius.85 The city’s sizable Jewish population, combined with the growth in Christian interest in Jewish texts from the turn of the sixteenth century, also made Venice an ideal location for Hebrew printing. A key role in the early stages was played by Daniel Bomberg, a Christian originally from Antwerp, who, with the assistance of Felix Pratensis, a Jewish convert who had become a Dominican, produced more than 200 titles, intended for both Jewish and Christian readers.86 His first publication was an edition of the rabbinic Bible, including the Hebrew text, a version in Aramaic, and several rabbinic commentaries, published in four volumes between 1515 and 1517. He produced two slightly different versions. For his Christian readers, Bomberg omitted the anti-Christian comments of David Kimhi’s commentary on the Psalms, thereby enabling him to receive the approval of Pope Leo X; in the version for Jewish readers, the papal dedication was omitted, while the offending passages were added as a supplement.87 Between 1519 and 1523 Bomberg also published what would become the definitive edition of the Babylonian Talmud; this would become a standard point of reference for a substantial number of Protestant Hebraists, including Martin Bucer, Paul Fagius and Philip Melanchthon.88 He had produced this with the permission of both the papacy and the Venetian Senate, but when he sought to renew his licence in 1525, the senate refused four times. However, payment of a fee of 500 ducats helped them finally to overcome their reservations.89 By the middle of the sixteenth century, attitudes had shifted somewhat, though in Venice the same range of factors were in operation. In theory, from 1548 Jews were not supposed to work on Hebrew books, but it seems the authorities were generally ready to turn a blind eye when they did, realising that their participation was all but essential.90 Nonetheless there was a growing concern about some of the Jewish books which were being produced. This was brought to a head by a commercial dispute between the two principal Hebrew presses in the city, run by Marcantonio Giustiniani and Alvise Bragadino respectively.91 Both had recently published editions of the Mishneh Torah (‘Repetition of the Torah’), compiled by the great rabbi Maimonides in the late twelfth 120

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE century, and had accused the other of publishing blasphemous material as part of their competitive practices. When the Giustiniani press then produced an edition of the Babylonian Talmud in 1551, this provided an opportunity for the authorities to intervene.92 In August 1553, the Talmud was declared blasphemous by papal order, and it was forbidden to own it.93 Copies of the Talmud, and other Jewish works, were burnt in Rome. A few weeks later, this policy was extended to the rest of Italy. As a result, hundreds of thousands of Jewish books were destroyed, in locations including Florence, Bologna and Venice.94 The following year, however, Julius III relaxed this policy in response to Jewish requests: he agreed that Hebrew books, other than the Talmud, could be owned as long as those passages which had been deemed offensive had been removed. Nonetheless, the impact on Hebrew printing was substantial: Venice ceased printing Hebrew books entirely until 1563; other publishing centres, including Cremona, Ferrara and Mantua, expanded to fill the gap in the market.95 In the meantime, as the Council of Trent progressed, censorship gradually came to be dealt with in a rather more systematic fashion, with the compilation of an Index Librorum Prohibitorum (‘List of Forbidden Books’).96 In the Index of 1554–55 the Talmud was banned for the first time.97 In the much expanded Pauline Index of 1559 (named after Pope Paul IV), the Talmud was again prohibited, as were works based on it.98 Importantly, this Index was intended to be enforced throughout Catholic Europe. The Tridentine Index, which was issued by Pope Pius IV in the wake of the Council of Trent, largely replicated the Pauline Index, but there was an important change with regard to the Talmud. In 1562, the Jews submitted a request that they be allowed to publish the Talmud expurgated of any passages which were deemed offensive.99 The pope agreed, and the Tridentine Index permitted its publication, ‘provided they are published without the name of Talmud and without offence and contumely against the Christian religion’.100 This however did not prevent further, more localised, attacks on Jewish books. Towards the end of the 1560s, tensions provoked by the Jewish presence in Venice started to build again.101 There were particular concerns that the Jews there were collaborating with the Turks. In 1567, a letter in coded Hebrew was intercepted: it contained information about a plot involving Jews in Constantinople and Venice who apparently intended to bribe a Venetian ambassador. Then, when a fire broke out at the Arsenal in September 1568, the Jews were an obvious scapegoat. Following the Venetian victory against the Ottoman Navy at Lepanto in October 1571, there were various attacks on the Jewish inhabitants. By chance, this was also the point at which 121

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the current period of Jewish toleration came to an end. In the discussions over whether to renew their toleration, the majority of senators argued in favour of expelling them, one describing them as ‘the scum of the earth, spies for the Turks, [and] internal enemies’.102 In December 1571, the decision was taken to expel the Jews from Venice, but in the event it was not enforced when the costs of doing so were calculated.103 All of this, though, provided the context for renewed pressure to be brought to bear on the Hebrew publishers. The Catholic city was anxious about the twin threats of Islam and Judaism, and sought to address these concerns by dealing with the Jews in their midst. Hebrew publishers had begun producing works again in the mid-1560s, but now their works were subjected to much more rigorous censorship: substantial passages, and indeed entire pages, were deleted. Even then, the censors who worked on behalf of the Inquisition were still unhappy, and feared the Jews and their printers were publishing unacceptable works. In September 1568, therefore, they seized about 20,000 volumes, which had been published over the previous two years. About a third of these were destroyed, while the eleven Jews who were held responsible for commissioning them were collectively fined more than 1,800 ducats.104 Censorship was made harder by the fact that there were relatively few people with the requisite linguistic ability to determine whether the materials were heterodox or not. For this reason, the role often fell to Jewish converts, such as Giacomo Geraldino who, in the 1550s, was given the unenviable task of scrutinising all Hebrew manuscripts then in the Papal States.105 The formation of the Sacred Congregation of the Index in 1571, a companion body to the Inquisition, was intended to bolster the censorship process. Again, though, this had only a limited impact in relation to Jewish books, both because other matters were more pressing, and because of the lack of relevant expertise within this body. Towards the end of the century, however, Domenico Gerosolimitano, a recent convert from Judaism, arrived from Jerusalem in Rome, where he became expurgator of Hebrew texts for the Inquisition. In 1596 he compiled an index, the Sefer ha-Zikuk (‘Book of Expurgation’), which listed 336 Hebrew works, and identified the offensive sections in each. This volume also contained some general principles: attacks on Christianity, references to messianism and idolatry were among the topics to be avoided.106 Censorship, though, involved much more than simple judgements over what was, or was not, acceptable in the eyes of the Catholic Church, particularly when it came to the creation of new works.107 In this context, Jewish authors increasingly sought to produce texts which they hoped would not fall foul of the inquisitor’s eye. This led to the development of a range of strategies.108 In some cases, the simplest option was to 122

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE omit the offending words or phrases, without otherwise changing the layout of the page, so that there were clear gaps where they would have been. Especially when these were relatively familiar texts, it was easy enough for the owner to add in the problematic words themselves at a later date, should they wish. In other instances, it is clear that Jews became quite adept at self-censorship, for instance by avoiding those topics which were most likely to cause offence (such as the assertion that Judaism was superior to Christianity).109 A further strategy was simply for the Jewish authors to emphasise the extent to which they were ready to engage with the process of censorship itself. For instance, in April 1637, Leon of Modena, the renowned Venetian rabbi, provided the manuscript of his History of the Rites of the Jews to the Venetian inquisitor, Paolo Mauroceno, ‘submitting myself and my work to the censorship of this most holy tribunal, so that should it contain anything whatsoever directly or indirectly contravening reverence for, or the interests of, the Christian religion, the Holy Office may think of a suitable remedy’.110 This kind of deference, and the apparent acceptance of Christian superiority, presumably did much to win over the sympathies of the over-worked censors, especially if the most egregious material had already been removed. In addition it emphasised the sense of dialogue between the two faiths. At the same time, it potentially allowed the Jewish authors to push the boundaries of what was acceptable: they could always remove the most contentious material if it provoked a reaction. Iberia All of the measures discussed so far in this chapter – papal injunctions, decrees from Trent, even the Roman Inquisition – were meant, at least in theory, to apply to the entire Catholic world. In practice, however, it was rather easier (if still not guaranteed) to ensure that they were followed in the Italian peninsula. Beyond that, however, there was always a balance to be struck: the papacy required the cooperation of the secular rulers in other territories who might be inclined to follow Rome’s lead, but equally may have felt there were other more immediate local pressures to which they had to respond. A first good example of this is provided by Iberia, and particularly Portugal, where, during the course of the sixteenth century, one can see the growing influence of the Catholic Reformation shaping the ways in which Jews were treated. Remarkably, Portugal had largely been able to maintain its own Jewish policy through the first decades of the sixteenth century, despite its proximity to Spain and the growing influence of its larger neighbour. During the later Middle Ages, Portugal had been 123

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION mostly free from the growing anti-Jewish sentiment which had manifested itself in Spain. It has been estimated that there were 30,000 Jews in Portugal in the mid-fifteenth century, with the largest communities in major urban settlements including Lisbon, Evora and Porto; this constituted approximately 3 per cent of the kingdom’s total population.111 They seem to have been well integrated, holding a wide array of roles in many of these centres. In addition, the absence of repressive policies of the sort seen in Spain meant there was not a group of reluctant converts, with all the difficulties that they brought with them.112 Indeed, there was only one significant outburst of antiJewish violence in the fifteenth century. This took place in Lisbon in December 1449, in response to the severe treatment of a number of Christian youths for insulting Jews. Soon thereafter, a large group of Christians ransacked the Jewish area of the city, and killed a number of its inhabitants; the King immediately came to the defence of his Jews, and possibly as many as seventy Christians were punished.113 Jews from Spain had already begun heading across the border into Portugal from the 1480s, following the establishment of the Inquisition there, but the expulsion order of 1492 accelerated this migration: within a decade, the Jewish population of Portugal had more than doubled. These new arrivals, moreover, were among those most committed to their faith: after all they had preferred exile over conversion. King John II (r. 1481–95) granted them asylum on their expulsion, in return for a substantial fee. At the same time, it does seem that John was also motivated by religious considerations. Some of the children of the less wealthy families were separated from their parents, and sent to São Tomé, an island off the west coast of Africa under Portuguese rule, to be raised as Christians.114 While his successor, Manuel I (r. 1495–1521), may have been personally sympathetic to the Jews, one of the conditions of his marriage in 1497 to Isabella of Aragon, the daughter of Ferdinand and Isabella of Spain, was that he should follow their religious policy towards the Jews in his kingdom.115 On 5 December 1496, therefore, he issued an order that all Jews (and Muslims) living in his kingdom should leave within ten months. In March 1497, however, he superseded this with the demand that all Jews in his realm should convert, rather than leave his kingdom. When he was reminded that forcible conversion was against canon law, he argued – rather unconvincingly – that his devotion to Catholicism permitted him to do this. Later the same year, he issued a decree of expulsion, but rather than the three months which the Spanish monarchs had allowed, he offered a grace period of twenty years, during which the church was forbidden from investigating these new converts. This was subsequently extended through to 1534. 124

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE Compared with Spain during the first decades of the sixteenth century, where the Inquisition was at the height of its anti-Jewish activity, Portugal proved a much more hospitable home for Jews. That is not to say that this period was entirely without incident. There were attacks on conversos and their property in Lisbon in 1504 and 1506. Indeed, the second incident was one of the most ferocious of the sixteenth century. Anti-Jewish preaching undertaken by Dominicans in the lead-up to Easter led to 3 days of rioting between 19 and 21 April, during the course of which between 1,000 and 4,000 conversos were murdered.116 According to Isaac ibn Faradj, a converso who had been forcibly converted to Christianity in 1497 (he would later revert to Judaism when he escaped Portugal for Salonica in the Ottoman Empire) and was in Lisbon at the time: ‘It was while the King and the Queen were absent from Lisbon . . . on account of the plague . . . that a priest with a cross stood up, and wicked men with him, murderers and scoundrels, and they killed more than 1,400 Jews [i.e. converts], and burned their bodies, men and women, pregnant women and children. They burnt them in the streets of the city for three days on end, till the bodies were consumed and became ashes.’117 In the aftermath, there was an effort to restore the Jews to their previous position. Sixty of the rioters were executed, as were two of the Dominicans who had done so much to stir up the attacks through their preaching. In 1507, the law granting the conversos freedom from religious investigation was reiterated, while a second law, which had prevented them from selling their property, was revoked. As mentioned above, these conversos’ adherence to Judaism had been sufficiently strong for them to decide to leave Spain in the first place, so it is highly probable that there were a number of Judaisers among this group. It is also quite likely that they were wealthier than those who had remained, given that this was generally a prerequisite for travel, except where desperation necessitated it. Pressure to introduce an Inquisition in Portugal on the Spanish model gradually built. In 1531, John III (r. 1521–57) approached Pope Clement VII for a bull which would permit this. While the pope was ready to issue this, leaders of the Portuguese Jewish community successfully intervened and prevented anything from happening. Five years later, Paul III issued a bull by which he established the Portuguese Inquisition, but following further lobbying by the Jews, he agreed to suspend the body. Indeed, it was only in 1547 that the Portuguese Institution was finally established. In the period through to 1580, roughly 2,000 conversos were brought before the Inquisition, of whom only about 150 were executed.118 In addition, pardons were frequently issued to Jews suspected of Judaising, which suggests that the authorities sought to avoid 125

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION threatening their economic contribution. This was, thus, a much more benign institution than its Spanish counterpart. In Spain, meanwhile, anti-Jewish feeling continued to develop during the course of the sixteenth century. In December 1571, León de Castro and Bartolomé de Medina, professors at the University of Salamanca, accused three of their colleagues, Luis de León, Gaspar de Grajal and Martín Martínez de Cantalpiedra, of Judaising. León, who had converso heritage, and was renowned as a theologian and poet, was the particular focus of their attack. Among the charges against him were that he questioned the accuracy of the Vulgate, preferred the Hebrew version of the Old Testament, and suggested that scholasticism hampered biblical study. Shortly after his arrest, he wrote: ‘I have great suspicion that false testimony has been laid against me, for I know that in the last two years people have said and still say many things about me that are transparent lies, and I know that I have many enemies’.119 He would spend almost five years in prison, as would Cantalpiedra; Grajal died before his release.120 The increased anti-Jewish sentiment within Iberia echoed developments within the Catholic Church more broadly. It is particularly striking that the Portuguese Inquisition, which led the assault on conversos, was founded only two years after the Council of Trent opened. But these were parallel developments, rather than cause and effect. The treatment of Jewish converts depended heavily on the attitudes of individual monarchs, who enforced their policies inconsistently, depending on the circumstances in which they found themselves. The Holy Roman Empire Similar tensions were apparent in the Holy Roman Empire. While Charles V had generally followed a very sympathetic policy towards the Jews, his younger brother Ferdinand I (1503–64), who succeeded him as emperor in 1558, was rather more hostile. It may be that this reflected his upbringing (he had spent the first fifteen years of his life in Spain when the converso problem was at its peak), or indeed his subsequent position as king of Bohemia, Hungary and Croatia, areas which were, from the late 1520s onwards, coloured by an increase in anti-Jewish feeling which accompanied the emergence of the Reformation.121 This had manifested itself in, among other things, a number of pogroms, and also the expulsion of Jews from many cities. In 1541, several fires broke out all over Bohemia, for which Jews were blamed: several confessed under torture and were executed, while many others were expelled. On that occasion, Ferdinand held an inquest at which he was persuaded of their innocence, and the Jews were allowed to return.122 However, in 1557, Ferdinand gave his assent to the request 126

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE of Prague’s city council to expel its Jews.123 In the event, this decree was not fully enforced: while many Jews did leave, some successfully requested permission to delay their departure until they could settle their affairs. During the early stages of the Reformation, Ferdinand had sought to handle the Protestant princes in his territories quite carefully, and continued to believe throughout his life that the differences between Catholics and Protestants could be resolved. Nonetheless, by the 1540s, the situation had become rather more confrontational. Ferdinand and his son Maximilian participated in Charles V’s campaign against the Protestants in 1547, and in the same year, defeated a Protestant revolt in Bohemia. In addition, Ferdinand increasingly sought to strengthen the position of the Catholic Church there, overseeing the installation of the Jesuits in Vienna in 1551 and in Prague five years later. Maximilian II (1527–76) succeeded his father as Holy Roman Emperor in 1564, at which point Jewish life in Bohemia was arguably at its lowest ebb.124 He was a very different man from his father. There were serious doubts about his commitment to Catholicism. In 1555, before his accession, rumours had circulated that he was refusing to hear Mass, and in the same year he delayed the publication of the catechism of the Jesuit Peter Canisius.125 In 1559, Ferdinand even threatened to disinherit his son if he could not demonstrate a stronger commitment to the Catholic Church.126 Pope Paul IV already held Charles and Ferdinand personally responsible for the concessions which had been granted to the Protestants in the empire; for Ferdinand, having a son whose religious outlook was so equivocal was a real source of tension. In 1562, Maximilian finally promised his father and brothers that he would not leave the Catholic Church. Towards the Jews, Maximilian apparently felt some sympathy. His accession as king of Bohemia in 1562 was met with optimism by his Jewish subjects. During the festivities which took place in Prague, representatives of the Jewish community stood on a bridge over the river Vltava in the Castle District, holding an elaborate canopy over the Ten Commandments carved in stone.127 He cancelled the Jews’ expulsion from Bohemia in April 1567, and granted the Jews of Prague the right to stay there indefinitely. By 1570, there were more than 400 Jewish families (equating perhaps to 2,000 individuals) in the kingdom of Bohemia. In his Zemah David (‘The Branch of David’, 1592), the Jewish scientist and chronicler of Prague’s Jewish community David Gans recorded that in 1571 the emperor personally visited that community: ‘In his great love for the Jews, and in order to demonstrate his benevolence towards them, the pious Emperor Maximilian [II] together with his wife the Empress Mary [i.e. Maria of Austria], daughter of the Emperor Charles, and the highest dignitaries among his princes and counsellors passed through the Street of the Jews in the City of Prague.’128 127

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Then in 1574, ‘a year of countless massacres and afflictions for the Jews in many regions’, Maximilian demonstrated his readiness to come to the aid of the Jews of Moravia, where many had been executed: ‘The pious Emperor Maximilian, of blessed memory, had to intervene and after careful enquiry those Jews that remained were snatched from the lions’ mouths, and placed beneath his protective wings’.129 These various acts of protection clearly endeared him to his Jewish subjects. This benevolent policy towards the Jews was then pursued by his eldest son, Rudolf II, who became emperor in 1576.130 Rudolf ’s court was ostensibly Catholic in a largely Protestant territory, but it had a reputation for irenicism and cosmopolitanism.131 This tolerant attitude also extended to the Jews under his authority. In February 1577, Rudolf issued a charter to the Jews of Bohemia, awarding them new privileges, promising they would not be expelled from Prague, or indeed the entire kingdom, though they were still excluded from a number of other crown cities.132 This encouraged the rapid growth both of Prague’s Jewish community, and also of various smaller communities in some of Bohemia’s towns and villages; in addition, Jewish communities were reconstituted in Vienna and Innsbruck, though these remained quite small. Rudolf allowed the Jews to engage in a range of crafts, including working with jewellery, gold and silver, thereby challenging the monopoly of the Christian guilds. This in turn further facilitated the rapid expansion of Prague’s Jewish community: by 1600 it had around 3,000 inhabitants which made it the second largest Jewish community in Christendom after Rome. Rudolf ’s intellectual interests included astrology and the Kabbalah. Indeed, in 1587, Johann Pistorius, his confessor, published the first volume of his Artis cabalisticae, a compendium of Kabbalistic texts.133 But the presence of a substantial number of Jews in Prague also helped him in pursuing these interests. That community included Rabbi Judah Loew, a scholar and Kabbalist, who had been the chief rabbi of Moravia in 1553, before he came to Prague in 1573, where he earned a reputation as a man of great wisdom and special powers.134 Of the various legends about him which began to circulate in the nineteenth century, the most famous was that he created a golem out of mud from the river Vltava, which then became a protector of the Jewish community. Emperor Rudolf apparently heard Loew deliver a sermon in which he argued that all religions ought to collaborate in the quest for universal peace; he subsequently invited Loew to his castle in 1592 for an audience. According to David Gans’s chronicle: Out of his beneficence, and out of his desire to learn the truth, our sovereign, the Emperor Rudolph, a just ruler, the source of great and brilliant light, may his glory 128

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE be exalted, called to him the Gaon, our teacher Rabbi Loew ben Bezalel, and received him most graciously, speaking to him face to face as a man speaks to his equal. As for the substance and purpose of this dialogue, it remains a secret which the two men decided not to disclose.135

The closeness of Maximilian and Rudolf to their Jewish citizens was clearly exceptional, and hardly in line with the aspirations of the Reformation-era Catholic Church, as reflected either in the papal policy of Cum nimis absurdum or the initiatives emanating from the Council of Trent. At the same time, it is important to acknowledge their sympathy, not least because it serves to demonstrate the spectrum of opinions held within the Catholic Church during the latter part of the sixteenth century. As emperors, of course, they were in a rather ambiguous position in relation to the institutional church. On the one hand, they were expected to adhere to the official party line; failure to do so could be a source of tension at the very least. On the other, they were still secular rulers who had to balance a different set of competing pressures. Particularly as Catholics in a territory with a substantial Protestant population, political expediency was arguably more of an immediate concern. Support for their Jewish inhabitants, who might help economically, may in part have been a consequence of this. But it was surely more than just that. Both Maximilian and Rudolf demonstrated their readiness to adhere to religious outlooks which set them at odds with their natural allies. Just because they were not zealots does not mean that they were less religiously conscious; indeed, their more nuanced positions may in fact have reflected a greater piety and commitment to their faith. Irenicism, of course, did not automatically manifest itself in universal toleration. But their commitment to the Jewish community of Prague does seem to have been genuine, and well appreciated. It was also significant in terms of the fortunes of the Jews more broadly, with the population of that community rising from a few dozen to around 3,000 in only two generations. It is, further, quite striking that the two largest Jewish communities in Europe at the end of the sixteenth century should be in Prague and Rome, under the authority of Holy Roman Emperor and pope respectively.

R It does not really make sense to speak of a monolithic ‘Catholic’ attitude towards the Jews in the latter half of the sixteenth century. Clearly the official position of the church, as reflected in papal policy, sharpened, though it is important to emphasise that this was part of a broader shift in attitudes. To an extent this represented an attempt by 129

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the Catholic Church to get its own house in order, so that it could better serve its parishioners, and indeed so that it might win people back to the cause. In this project, Cardinal Carlo Borromeo, archbishop of Milan and the recipient of the letter from the convert Marcantonio discussed at the beginning of this chapter, was one of the leading early examples: through his twenty-year stint in Milan, between 1564 and his death in 1584, Borromeo thoroughly overhauled the Catholic Church there, demonstrating through his very presence (many of his predecessors had not resided in the city) and activity his commitment to the spiritual welfare of the city: he delivered endless sermons, established schools to provide basic Christian teaching to the laity, and seminaries to enhance the quality of the clergy, all in accordance with the injunctions which had come out of the Council of Trent. Indeed, he was made a saint in 1610, just twenty-six years after his death, reflecting the popular enthusiasm for him and honouring his many achievements in the role.136 Alongside this process of internal reform, however, the Tridentine Catholic Church also sought to clamp down on practices, individuals and groups which threatened its mission. Jews and Jewish books were not necessarily the principal targets of the Inquisition and the Index, though both institutions could easily be applied to them. But the threat posed by Judaism was one of a series of issues which Catholicism was then seeking to bring under control, along with heresy (including Protestantism), Islam, witchcraft, and a range of moral and sexual crimes. In the event, the solutions that were arrived at were compromises, reflecting the distinctive qualities of Jews and their books. In Italy at least, Jews were never formally subjected to forced conversions, and nor were they fully expelled from the peninsula, even if the locations where they were permitted to dwell did decline. Heretics, for instance, would be required to give up their beliefs or face death; Jews, by contrast, could generally continue to adhere to their beliefs without punishment. Furthermore, Jews were the only group actively involved in censoring their own literature. Indeed, as we have seen, it was politically expedient for them to engage in this practice with a degree of enthusiasm, to demonstrate that they had nothing to hide. The implementation of ghettos was, however, a more targeted activity against the Jews. The subtle shift in intention identified by Kenneth Stow – that these were created in order to encourage Jewish conversion – undoubtedly reflected a new attitude in the papacy, but its impact was significantly less than might have been hoped by those who advocated for ghettoisation. In Rome and elsewhere, the formation of ghettos seems in some ways to have nurtured the development of Jewish culture: from a Catholic perspective this must have felt counter-productive to say the least. Moreover, in many 130

A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE locations the construction of a proposed ghetto was either much delayed or simply did not happen at all. It was far from guaranteed that individual rulers would follow papal policy on this issue, particularly if it risked threatening their financial well-being. Even if they did so, it was also not certain that they would continue to maintain the arrangement with particular rigour. All that said, it is still noteworthy that individual rulers should create ghettos, or domi catechumenorum, in their territories: it is easy to assume that secular leaders were only motivated by money or power, but there were many instances when it was more complicated than that. Beyond Italy, finally, we have seen that approaches could vary, again depending on the attitudes of individual rulers, and the circumstances in which they found themselves. In the religious conflicts of the sixteenth century, the Catholic powers, notionally aligned against the Protestants, nonetheless experienced important disagreements between themselves. Philip II in Spain, successive popes, and some Holy Roman Emperors might place greatest emphasis on their roles as defenders of Catholicism from internal and external threats, but others were not necessarily so committed to this ideal. As we will see in the next chapter, the confessional fault lines which increasingly ran across the continent, only served to further heighten awareness of the threats posed by other forms of Christianity in the last decades of the sixteenth century.

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6

R FAULT LINES Jews in a Confessionally Divided Christendom

The Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, of 24 August 1572, perhaps the most famous episode of the so-called French Wars of Religion, epitomises the tensions that were generated by the existence of competing Christian confessions in the same polity, and the outbursts of extreme violence which they could provoke.1 As their name implies, the French Wars of Religion comprised a series of civil wars which pitched the Huguenots (as the French Protestants were known) against the Catholics, the first of which broke out in March 1562; apart from a brief hiatus during the reign of Henry IV at the turn of the century, these would continue through to 1629. The Peace of StGermain, which concluded the third war in August 1570, had ushered in a period of compromise and peace: the Huguenots were in a stronger position than they had been after the first two wars, while their most ardent Catholic opponents, led by members of the Guise family, had been sidelined, allowing more moderate Catholics to come to the fore. In an attempt to consolidate this new situation, plans were made for a marriage between Margaret of Valois, the sister of King Charles IX (r. 1560–74), and Henry of Navarre (one of the leading Protestants who would, in due course, become Henry IV of France) on 18 August 1572.2 However, the prospect of this marriage troubled many Catholics, who resented the idea of compromise with the Protestants. Tensions were further heightened by the appearance of many leading Protestants in Paris in the build-up to the wedding itself. On 22 August, in the immediate aftermath of the wedding, Gaspar de Coligny (1519– 72), the admiral of France, one of the country’s leading noblemen and a high-profile Calvinist, was shot in the street. While the assassination attempt itself failed, it served as the trigger for widespread violence: perhaps 2,000 Protestants (including Coligny) were killed in Paris, and a further 3,000 in the provinces.3 This wave of destruction had several main repercussions. In the immediate term, it eliminated most of the leading Huguenots; among the Protestant nobles, only Henry of Navarre survived, presumably both because of his marriage to the king’s sister, and 132

FAULT LINES because he immediately agreed to return to Catholicism. Indeed, many other Protestants in Paris and elsewhere abandoned Calvinism at this time, decisively ending the period of expansion that faith had enjoyed over the last decade. The massacres were also a trigger for the fourth war, which was swiftly concluded with Catholic victory, and the imposition of much harsher terms on the Protestants. Finally, the events of August 1572 encouraged more sustained reflection on the part of the Protestants on how they should proceed. Several Protestant writers, including François Hotman, Theodore Beza and Philippe du Plessis-Mornay, were prompted by this episode to write ‘monarchomach’ works, in which they called for the king to be killed, and for lesser magistrates to take responsibility for running the kingdom.4 This, then, was the context in which Jean Bodin (1530–96), a distinguished French jurist and writer on matters of law, history, political philosophy and sorcery, was working. His experiences of life in France during the Wars of Religion no doubt contributed to the development of his political philosophy, which found fullest expression in his most famous work, The Six Books of the Republic (1576).5 In this work, Bodin responded to the challenge of the monarchomach authors, and argued that the sovereign prince should be given absolute power in order to restore peace to a divided kingdom. This debate, and the massacre which prompted it, give an indication of the tensions and issues to which the division of Europe into competing confessions gave rise. Bodin produced a Latin edition of this work in 1586, while Spanish and English translations appeared within the next twenty years. Rather less well known, at least at the time, was a further work by Bodin, which he completed in his final years. This was the Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime (c. 1588).6 Sounding rather like the premise for an elaborate joke, this work took the form of a discussion over six books, between seven imaginary figures, each representing a distinct religious or philosophical position: these were Paulus Coronaeus, a Catholic living in Venice, in whose house the discussion takes place; Fridericus Podamicus, a Lutheran; Antonius Curtius, a Calvinist; Salomon Barcassius, a Jew; Octavius Fagnola, a Muslim convert from Catholicism; Diegus Toralba, a philosopher; and Hieronymus Senamus, a sceptic. Despite their very different perspectives, the discussion proceeds in a civilised and respectful fashion throughout. Bodin emphasised that they all hope to learn from each other, rather than simply to advocate for their own position: ‘they were not motivated by wangling or jealousy but by a desire to learn; consequently they were displaying all their reflections and endeavours in true dignity’.7 At the beginning of the work, the Muslim Octavius tells a story about a ship caught in a storm. The terrified captain had demanded that his crew – a diverse group, attached 133

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION to a range of different religions – each pray to their own God to save them. Eventually the storm passed, and the ship was able to return to port. When Octavius had finished his narrative, the Catholic Coronaeus then asked: ‘with such a variety of religions represented, whose prayers did God heed in bringing the ship safely to port?’8 This question provided the prompt for each of the contributors to the discussion to advocate their respective religious positions. Bodin’s text was already relatively unusual in that it included non-Christians among its seven speakers, but even more remarkable is the fact that they are treated on equal terms with the Christian participants. Perhaps inevitably, the group are consequently unable to reach a consensus on matters of doctrine. At the same time, though, the text puts forward rather broader messages. For a start, it suggests that religious truth has many dimensions, rather than being absolute. Moreover, Bodin makes the case that the individuals in the discussion all come to a better understanding of their own truths through comparison with the views of their interlocutors.9 At the same time, Bodin seems to cast doubt on the value of religious discussion in the first place. The text finishes with a comment that ‘afterwards they held no other conversation about religions, although each one defended his own religion with the supreme sanctity of his life’.10 Bodin’s text is appealing to a modern reader, as it acknowledges the value of the philosophical and theological viewpoints of its protagonists. In the sixteenth century, however, this was a much more controversial position to take. Although the text circulated quite widely in manuscript in the seventeenth century (which does suggest there was an audience for such ideas), it was not published until the nineteenth century.11 Similar ideas were expressed, at around the same time, by the miller known as Menocchio, who twice came before the Inquisition of Friuli, in north-east Italy, in the late sixteenth century, on charges of heresy.12 In his testimony of 1599, he alluded to a well-known tale from Boccaccio’s Decameron, in which a father who had three sons whom he loved equally was required to give a ring to his favourite son, who would become his heir. Unable to choose, the father had two other rings made, and gave one to each of his sons so they might all believe themselves to be his favourite. The Jewish narrator of Boccaccio’s tale explained that these three were a Jew, a Muslim and a Christian, all of whom believed themselves to be God’s favourite.13 From this, Menocchio concluded: ‘I believe that each person holds his faith to be right, but we do not know which is the right one.’ He elaborated on this point: ‘the majesty of God has given the Holy Spirit to all, to Christians, to heretics, to Turks, and to Jews; and he considers them all dear, and they are all saved in the same manner’.14 Menocchio was 134

1. Replica of statues, portraying ‘Ecclesia’ and ‘Synagoga’ (embodying Christianity and Judaism respectively), located on the exterior of Strasbourg Cathedral. Statues of these two characters were to be found on a substantial number of churches in northern Europe, and were intended to demonstrate the relationship between the two faiths. Ecclesia is shown adorned with symbols to denote her rule while Synagoga wears a blindfold, signifying Judaism’s rejection of the Christian message.

2. One of the most famous accusations of ritual murder occurred in Trent, northern Italy, where the body of two-year-old ‘little Simon’ was discovered at Easter 1475. Several Jews were executed for their supposed involvement. Simon, to whom numerous miracles were attributed, soon came to be regarded as a martyr.

3. One of the most offensive anti-Jewish images of the Middle Ages, the Judensau (examples of which appeared as reliefs on the outside of churches – including Luther’s church in Wittenberg – among other places) showed discernibly Jewish figures suckling from a pig and kissing its hind quarters.

4. This image, taken from the Nuremberg Chronicle (1493), depicts a group of Jews being burnt alive following an accusation of Host desecration. Such accusations were predicated on the belief that Jews sought to acquire and cause damage to a ‘host’, the bread used in a Catholic Mass.

5. An auto da fé (‘act of faith’) was a highly ritualised event overseen by the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions in which heretics and other offenders were punished for their sins (often by death), while the power of the Catholic authorities was emphasised, and the religious character of the community reaffirmed.

6. Martin Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies (1543) is the most famous work written by a Protestant reformer on the issue of contemporary Jews. In it, Luther criticised Jewish interpretation of certain biblical passages, before recommending that the Christian authorities should treat Jews in their lands with great hostility.

7. In 1614, during a period of wider social upheaval, Vincenz Fettmilch led an assault on the ghetto of Frankfurt am Main. In 1616, once order was restored, the Jews were returned to their ghetto, Fettmilch’s house was destroyed and a ‘Pillar of Shame’ was erected in its place to commemorate the episode.

8. The Complutensian Polyglot (1522), overseen by Cardinal Francesco Ximénes de Cisneros at the University of Alcalá (Latin: Complutum), was the first complete polyglot Bible to be printed. Alongside each other can be found the Greek Septuagint (with Latin translation interwoven), the Latin Vulgate, Hebrew and Aramaic versions and a translation of the Aramaic. The marginalia contain Hebrew and Aramaic roots. Such works demonstrated the renewed interest in Jewish learning.

9. Portrait of Pope Paul IV (Gian Pietro Carafa), by Onofrio Panvinio. Paul, pope between 1555 and 1559, was a notorious hardliner, often held to embody the repressive dimension of the Catholic (Counter) Reformation. Most notably, he advocated the use of ghettos as a means of encouraging Jewish conversions to Christianity.

10. Portrait of San Carlo Borromeo (1538–84), by Orazio Borgianni. Borromeo, the archbishop of Milan, is often regarded as typifying the more constructive dimension of the Catholic Reformation. He was sent a letter in 1577 by Marcantonio, a convert from Judaism, but unfortunately we do not know the cardinal’s response.

11. The Triumph of Mordecai, by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1641). This painting is of a scene taken from the Book of Esther, which recounts how Esther and Mordecai foiled the attempts of Haman the Agagite to kill all Jews in the Persian Empire. The Jewish feast of Purim celebrates this reversal.

12. Belshazzar’s Feast, by Rembrandt van Rijn (c. 1635-38). In this scene, taken from the Book of Daniel, King Belshazzar of Babylon is terrified by the appearance of a disembodied hand which writes on the wall behind him. Rembrandt, who lived in the Jewish quarter of Amsterdam, frequently painted Old Testament scenes.

13. Portrait of Menasseh ben Israel, after Salomo d’Italia (1642). Ben Israel, originally from Lisbon, came to Amsterdam where he became a significant point of intersection between Christians and Jews, not least as an author and printer. He was also critical to the efforts to bring about Jewish readmission to England.

14. Portrait of Oliver Cromwell, after Robert Walker (c. 1649). Cromwell, an English military commander, became Lord Protector of England (1653–58) during the Interregnum. He oversaw the Whitehall Conference (December 1655) at which Jewish readmission to England was discussed. While no decision was reached at the Conference, Jews were informally accepted shortly thereafter.

FAULT LINES unusual in many respects, and would ultimately be burnt at the stake for continuing to espouse heretical beliefs. Nonetheless, it is striking that he was prepared to insist that adherence to a faith could be as much a matter of collective identity as it was of absolute religious truth; at the very least his example demonstrates that such ideas were not limited to philosophers like Bodin. Moreover, the divisions within Christendom had also undermined some of the certainties which had defined the previous era. The sense of unease which this would have generated must have been especially pronounced in those areas where the religious affinity had fluctuated most markedly. For instance, in England, the Protestant Edward VI was succeeded by the Catholic Mary Tudor, who was in turn followed by the Protestant Elizabeth I: all of this happened across a period of a dozen years around the mid-century.15 Likewise in the Palatinate, the Lutheran Elector John II was followed by the Calvinist Frederick III (in 1559) who was in turn followed by the Lutheran Ludwig VI (in 1577) and the Calvinist Frederick IV (in 1583).16 In these circumstances, attachment to a particular confession must have appeared to some as an increasingly arbitrary choice, dependent on the whim of a ruler. In his classic study of Jews in Europe between 1550 and 1750, the historian Jonathan Israel has argued that the period after 1570 marked a significant turning point in Jewish fortunes. In particular, he has suggested that in the final decades of the sixteenth century, ‘both Reformation and Counter Reformation lost their former momentum and the hitherto universal Christian foundations of western culture began to crack and contract’.17 It is certainly the case that in the wake of the Reformation, there was something of an epistemological crisis, as the idea of absolute religious truth was called into doubt. Scepticism and atheism came to be expressed more widely.18 This was reflected, for instance, in the renewed interest in the sceptical writings of the thirdcentury Greek physician Sextus Empiricus, whose Outlines of Pyrrhonism was published in Latin translation by Henri Estienne in 1562. This was then popularised by the great essayist Michel de Montaigne, who referred to this work in his Apology for Raymond de Sebond, the centrepiece of his famous collection of essays.19 For Israel, moreover, religious considerations swiftly gave way to a concern with ‘reason of state’ and ‘mercantilism’, which he has defined as ‘the deliberate pursuit of the economic interest of the state, irrespective of the claims of existing law, privilege, and tradition, as well as of religion’.20 That said, one might question both the speed and extent of this transformation. While it is true that far fewer people changed their religious allegiance after 1570 than in the decades immediately before, and that a degree of equilibrium was introduced, it 135

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION was hardly the case that religious commitment declined in a meaningful way. Indeed, there seem good grounds, as we will see, to suggest that this commitment in fact sharpened during the last decades of the sixteenth century, perhaps at least in part because of the stalemate that was starting to emerge. It was, after all, in this period that the process described as ‘confessionalisation’, according to which the various branches of Christianity consolidated their distinct identities, took place.21 A religiously divided continent was seen as problematic, not least because it threatened the purity of different communities, and the chances of salvation for their members.22 In addition, a growing body of research has sought to cast doubt on the idea that religious commitment simply gave way to a growing rationality.23 The Reformation had split a Christendom which had been united for more than a thousand years; in the last decades of the sixteenth century, and the first decades of the seventeenth, these religious divisions became still more entrenched, splitting the continent as a whole, but also individual polities. In that context, the religious and secular authorities, and also the people, had to decide how best to deal with those inhabitants whose religious views they did not share. On the one hand, this led to an increase in conflict, both physical and intellectual. On the other, it encouraged the development of ideas of compromise. Religious pluralism was increasingly a fact of life for a growing proportion of Europe’s population. Jews were often caught in the middle of Christian rivalries, but those religious conflicts could, at the same time, provide some level of relief, as Christian religious anxieties were directed at a growing number of targets. Religious Division, Religious Pluralism By the last decades of the sixteenth century, Europe was divided like never before. Protestantism, in its various forms, had been accepted by large swathes of the population of many territories; moreover, many political leaders had adopted the Reformation, whether out of genuine commitment or as a means to achieving other goals. Importantly, though, many other people – again rulers and ruled – had remained loyal to the Catholic Church. In some places, including England and Scotland, the introduction of the Reformation was achieved with relatively little bloodshed; similarly, in places where the impact of Protestantism was fairly minor, such as Spain and Italy, stability was largely maintained.24 However, there were also places where the tensions which were generated led to sustained armed conflict. In France, the Wars of Religion (discussed at the beginning of this chapter) dominated the political and religious landscape of that country through 136

FAULT LINES the second half of the sixteenth century, and into the early seventeenth.25 Similarly, in the Spanish-owned Netherlands, the Dutch Revolt began in the ‘Wonderyear’ of 1566– 67, and would only formally be concluded as part of the Treaty of Westphalia of 1648, which also brought to a close the Thirty Years War, a conflict which had involved most of the major powers of Europe.26 Europe as a whole, and individual territories, were divided along religious lines through the second half of the sixteenth century. Efforts at compromise and negotiation foundered; likewise, neither side was sufficiently strong to enforce its viewpoint on the other. It is clear that a range of factors, including nascent nationalism and a desire for greater political power or economic improvement, motivated participants on both sides, but it would be unwise to follow those contemporaries (as have some historians) who accused their enemies of using religion as a mere smokescreen for baser motives, and to assume that religion played no part. Indeed, it is important that we ‘put religion back’ into our interpretations of these conflicts.27 This is the only way we can properly understand why people were ready to kill or be killed for their faith on the battlefield, or to die, as martyrs, at the stake.28 Likewise, it is only in a religious context that the ritualistic dimensions to recurrent features of these conflicts make sense. These include the ‘rites of violence’, the carefully choreographed destruction of objects associated with one’s enemy, which were often purged through fire or water, and accompanied by some kind of devotion, in order to purify an environment which it was felt had been contaminated.29 Similarly, considerable effort was made to ensure that key locations were suitable for the members of a particular religious group (for instance through the removal of images from Catholic churches to make them acceptable to Reformed congregations): this conflict over ‘sacred space’ was another manifestation of the same concerns.30 Even if very few were motivated by specific doctrinal beliefs, the sense of being part of a religious community and the desire to maintain its purity were both strong factors.31 At the same time, religious pluralism came to be a feature of life for a growing number of inhabitants of Europe. This was, of course, especially the case for those in the most confessionally divided parts of the continent, but it was also true in many cities which welcomed, and indeed often provided homes to, people from elsewhere of different religions. It was hardly surprising that Bodin should have chosen Venice as the setting for his dialogue discussed above: as a commercial centre, and a link between northern Europe and the Mediterranean, and between western Europe and the Near East, it was a location with an especially diverse population. But it was far from being unique in this. 137

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Up to a point, religious pluralism contributed to a growth in arguments for, and experience of, toleration. Here, though, it is important to acknowledge that there are two quite distinct ways in which the concept of ‘toleration’ is understood. The one which is now more familiar to us regards toleration as a virtue, according to which the beliefs and ideas of others are accepted on their own terms. The writings of various political philosophers – such as Erasmus, Bodin and John Locke – have been examined in order to trace the ‘rise of toleration’: in this framework, the Protestant Reformation and the Enlightenment are commonly identified as important milestones on the journey towards ‘modernity’.32 While this is in many ways a comforting story, it is problematic too. For a start, as Menocchio’s testimony before the Inquisition indicates, it was quite possible for ordinary people to accept others with different religious beliefs. Second, we should acknowledge that such writers were often acting out of self-interest. For instance, in his famous Letter on Toleration (1685), John Locke advocated the toleration of various Protestant non-conformist groups (to one of which he himself belonged), but did not intend to extend this privilege to Catholics.33 As a consequence, it is quite rare that nonChristians should be mentioned: Bodin’s text, discussed above, is an exception, but here we should recall that he did not publish it during his lifetime. Third, and most problematically, such discussions did not necessarily bear any relation to life as it was actually lived at the time. By contrast, the second, older, meaning of ‘toleration’ is more closely linked to the Latin root of the term, and conveys ideas about a willingness to bear or put up with those who believed differently, usually for a fixed period of time.34 Rather than being a virtue, this form of toleration was a pragmatic solution to an otherwise unresolvable state of affairs. In particular, work in this area has served to draw attention to the extent of interaction between people of different religious affiliations, and some of the compromises that they made.35 The historian Benjamin Kaplan has demonstrated, for instance, how different religious communities could share the same city (with one group going elsewhere to worship), the same church (co-ordinating timetables to ensure they worshipped at different times), or even the same liturgy (with different groups involved in different parts of the same church service).36 One of the most striking compromises was that adopted by some mixed-religion couples, where they made the decision to alternate the religion in which each child was raised.37 Inevitably, current scholarship has focused principally on the ways in which different groups of Christians found solutions which would allow them to live alongside each other, but Jews were also affected by this. In previous chapters we have already 138

FAULT LINES considered, for example, the ways that the ghetto of Venice, the regulations of Strasbourg, or the quotas of Alsatian villages, all provided means of limiting the potential threat posed by a Jewish presence. These measures made it possible to accommodate Jews within the Christian community, while still reminding both groups of their relative status. On top of that various practices and rituals were adopted which further reinforced this hierarchy. There were frequently expectations that Jews would remain within their homes at times of particular significance to the Christian community, especially Easter. This was certainly a period of heightened tensions, and problematic incidents could occur. In 1518, in Empoli in Italy, Zaccaria d’Isaaco, a Jewish moneylender, was arrested for pouring the contents of his chamber pot onto the canopy which was used to protect the Host during a procession to celebrate Corpus Christi; though he claimed this had been an accident, he was still fined 10 florins. Similarly, in Frankfurt in 1712, an old Jewish woman was arrested for having spat three times at a crucifix which was being carried through the streets as part of a funeral ceremony; she was sentenced to be flogged and put under house arrest.38 Conversely, as the historian Daniel Jütte has demonstrated, attacks on Jews and Jewish houses were also quite common: while some of these attacks were evidently spontaneous, others had a more ritualistic character, occurring at specific times, and taking particular forms. The breaking of windows, for instance, not only caused material damage, but also had symbolic meaning, as windows constituted a boundary between the public and private, and were also a prime location for interaction between Christians and Jews.39 In the face of pressures of this kind, Jews had two main strategies they could deploy. First, they could seek to cause as little offence as possible. This approach was used quite widely, as the leaders of local Jewish communities sought as much as possible to keep their members within acceptable behavioural norms. This might involve keeping indoors at specific times, or avoiding behaviours which might be seen as antagonistic. Equally, the communities often ensured that their place of worship was discreet, so as to cause minimal offence. The second strategy was to have designated spokesmen who would seek to maintain or advance the privileges enjoyed by the different communities. Josel of Rosheim did this in the empire, while Leon of Modena, the rabbi of Venice, wrote his work History of the Rites of the Jews in 1637 to demonstrate that they were not a threat.40 Jonathan Israel has highlighted the emergence of ideas about ‘reason of state’ (the notion that the well-being of the state should take precedence over all other considerations, including religion) as one of the principal factors which led to enhanced 139

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION circumstances for the Jews of Europe.41 It is certainly the case that these did come to be expressed increasingly from the 1560s. One of the best known examples is provided by France, where a growing number of individuals, often described as politiques, began to emerge. These men were often intellectuals and jurists, most notably Michel de L’Hôpital, the chancellor of France; some were also drawn from the nobility.42 Especially in the face of the rising costs of the French religious wars, and the concern that these were simply making the nation more vulnerable to its enemies without providing realistic hope of a solution to the underlying religious issues, these individuals began to argue for a strong monarchy, and a commitment to the values of the state as a political entity, as a means of dealing with the religious divisions.43 It is worth noting though that while this position may seem forward-thinking to a modern reader, in the sixteenth century it had quite different connotations. The term ‘politique’ was more commonly used as an insult. Louis Dorléans, a pamphleteer working on behalf of the Holy League (an association of Catholics established in 1576 to counter the Protestant threat), described L’Hôpital in 1594 as ‘the author and patron of the Politique error’, while in the same year the royal historiographer Pierre Matthieu, in his History of the Recent Troubles in France (1594), wrote that the League preachers who ‘belch out an Iliad of insults and vile words against the King . . . pounce upon these poor Politiques’.44 Etienne Pasquier, the lawyer and writer, reflecting on the various groups involved in French politics, remarked in his Recherches de la France: ‘Only in our most recent troubles was the Catholic party subdivided into the Politique, considered worse than the Huguenot, because he advocated peace’.45 Indeed, for many the main problem with members of the politique faction was that they did not share the religious convictions of their more zealous contemporaries. Moreover, the duration of the various wars during this period demonstrates the great difficulties this party had in imposing its political philosophy, no matter how well intentioned.

R In medieval Europe, the vast majority of people were members of the Catholic Church: those small groups who were not, including Jews, Muslims and heretics, were very obviously not part of this and were often marginalised accordingly. With the Reformation, however, the monopoly of the Catholic Church over religious life was ended. As a consequence, it was no longer so straightforward to identify who was not part of the one true church: each group believed that of the other. More than that, the rival Christian confessions arguably constituted a greater and more immediate threat to each other: they were more widely dispersed across the 140

FAULT LINES continent than the Jews, more numerous and more powerful. Most obviously there were the many episodes of religious warfare which pitched the Christian groups against each other. But even in peacetime, relations between the different confessions could be fraught. In these circumstances, religious processions, a word spoken out of turn, or even the ringing of a bell at the wrong moment, could be considered a provocative act, and might lead to the further escalation of tensions, or even to another outburst of violence.46 In other situations, where Jews were one of several religious groups, it is possible that they were spared some of the worst of the animosity. It is noteworthy that many of the cities which hosted the largest Jewish populations – such as Venice, Rome, Frankfurt and Prague – were predominantly Catholic, but also had members of other religions or Christian confessions living in them: Muslims in the case of the Italian cities, Lutherans and Calvinists in the case of the two northern European ones. Again, such religious diversity could itself be a source of tension. But it is equally likely that the animosity was diluted, given that it was spread out between more than one group of outsiders. More than that, in these more multicultural cities, experience of ‘foreign’ groups was much more commonplace and thus easier to accept. However, it is impossible to quantify this, and there were flashpoints in each of these cities which did prompt attacks on their Jewish populations. Moreover, hostility towards the Jews was also deployed in the polemical disputes associated with Reformation conflicts. This was certainly the case in the French Wars of Religion. One anonymous writer claimed of the Saint Bartholomew’s Day Massacre of 1572 that such violence had never been used against the Jews, though they were the ‘worst blasphemers of the name of Christ’.47 Moreover, as part of the anti-Spanish rhetoric which emerged during the later stages of the war, a number of pamphlet writers portrayed all enemies of France as Jews: indeed, one even cast the pope as a rabbi, not least on the grounds that he continued to tolerate the Jews in Rome. This sentiment was not restricted to the pamphlet literature. Pierre de L’Estoile, the prolific Parisian diarist, recorded that on two occasions in August 1590 he saw written on a wall in the city ‘Pereat Societas Judaica, cum gente Ibera’ (‘May the Jewish community perish along with the Spanish people’).48 Similarly, Protestant demands for toleration in France were frequently justified on the grounds that Jews were already tolerated. For instance, Protestants submitted a request to a meeting of the Assembly of Notables at Fontainebleau in August 1560, for a place to worship, ‘just as the Jews have a temple or some other place to worship, even though they are an abomination 141

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION before God’.49 The Protestants used the same argument later that year when they asked Charles IX to tolerate them, ‘since the Jews are allowed, and the Turks’.50

R Not only did the Reformation era witness the emergence of religious pluralism; it also saw the so-called ‘witch-craze’ reach its peak.51 The complex relationship between Jews and witches, and their treatment by the Christian majority, also merits discussion here.52 Of course, the two groups were quite different in a number of ways. Most obviously, while the Jews absolutely did consider themselves to be a distinct group, with its own collective identity, the same was not the case for witches: in the majority of cases, the people who were accused of being witches (more commonly females) were isolated on the margins of society. Secondly, Jews were consciously and explicitly different from Christians, and did hold beliefs that were incompatible with Christianity. On the other hand, while a handful of people may genuinely have believed themselves to be witches, they were very much the exception: most had the status of witch applied to them by their neighbours and enemies, and did not hold the beliefs of which they were accused. Nonetheless, despite these significant differences, Christian attitudes towards the two groups had much in common. Above all, both groups were seen as the enemies of Christianity, conspiring relentlessly to undermine it; accusations against them thus frequently involved the inversion of Christian practices. Jews were not merely identified as ‘Christ-killers’, but the classic accusations made against them, such as Host desecration and ritual murder, were presented as forms of re-enactment of the crucifixion, with Host desecration specifically focusing on the misuse of one of the key elements of the Eucharist. Witchcraft allegations also frequently involved the misapplication of Christian holy items, but perhaps most strikingly often involved the participation of the devil or his minions at a witches’ sabbath.53 Not only that, but both Jews and witches were accused of trying to cause harm, whether through poisoning wells, instigating bad weather, harming crops and livestock or killing children.54 More specifically, by the start of the Reformation era, Jews were believed to have particular expertise in magic.55 Some of this derived from their engagement with the Kabbalah, in which words and letters were believed to be endowed with considerable supernatural power. Hebrew amulets, talismans and magical forms of words were all commonplace in the later Middle Ages. It does seem that there was also an awareness among Christians that Jewish magic, much like Christian magic, was not exclusively intended to cause harm (‘maleficia’); it also included forms of healing and folk 142

FAULT LINES medicine.56 On the other hand, in allegations of Host desecration and ritual murder, it was generally assumed that the practitioners sought to use the Host or the blood of the Christian infant as a means of achieving some magical outcome. At the same time, it is also important to consider both groups in relation to the Reformation. While the Christian conception of a witch could trace its origins back to the Old Testament (and drew on ideas which preceded even that), the Catholic Church started to demonstrate significant concern about witches especially in the fifteenth century. This concern was thus not a product of the Reformation, though as with other developments of that period, such as the establishment of the Inquisition in Spain, it may have reflected the broader religious anxiety which had provided the context for the Reformation to take place. Nonetheless, it does seem that the Protestant and Catholic Reformations did much to encourage the proliferation of such accusations. This was reflected both in terms of chronology (in that the greatest number of accusations were made between 1570 and 1650) and geography (in that accusations were above all associated with the heartlands of the Reformation, and thus where tensions between religious confessions were their most pronounced).57 Allegations of witchcraft were to some extent simply manifestations of these tensions: the Reformation had brought with it a new attention to the piety of the individual, a concern with behaviour which threatened the purity of the community, and a growing anxiety about divine punishment. This activity, incidentally, further undermines the suggestion that religious commitment was diminishing in this period. Nonetheless, it is striking that life did become easier for Jews, at least in some respects, at the same time as so-called witches were being treated with greatest ferocity. If we take a step back and think briefly about what was actually going on with accusations levelled against both Jews and witches in this period, a further factor comes into play. On most occasions, something bad had happened: a child had gone missing, someone had become ill or had died, a harvest had failed (though it is worth noting that at times of greatest anxiety accusations could be made without any evidence, as was the case with the Santo Niño de la Guardia, discussed in Chapter 2, p. 26). While it may now seem ridiculous to us that Jews or witches should be blamed for such events, in the context of the late medieval and early modern periods, this was rational, given what was believed about them: they held anti-Christian views, wished to cause harm to Christians, and there were previous cases where it was believed that they had done so.58 We would, of course, now identify this as scapegoating. Importantly, for scapegoating to work, those making the accusations do need to believe that the people they blame are responsible. As we have seen, there were large parts of Europe from 143

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION which Jews were absent by the time of the Reformation, and others in which they lived in very small and scattered communities. In light of that, it was less plausible to attribute instances of misfortune to them. By contrast, someone who could be identified as a witch existed in every community: this was especially the case if one appreciates that not every ‘witch’ corresponded to the stereotypical image of the defenceless, isolated, older woman with an interest in folk medicine.59 Jews had, through the Middle Ages, often acted as the perfect scapegoat, but in the Reformation era, by which time they had been removed from large parts of the continent, this was no longer so convincing; in that situation the figure of the witch could fulfil much the same function. At the same time, it is important to appreciate that the threat supposedly posed by the Jew did not disappear, even when the Jews themselves did. In various places, Jews continued to act as the archetypal ‘other’, against which Christian norms could be established.60 This was especially evident in England, from where Jews had been expelled in 1290. Despite this, however, the late sixteenth century witnessed the appearance of Christopher Marlowe’s Jew of Malta (c. 1590) and William Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice (c. 1596), both of which featured sinister Jewish characters: Barabas and Shylock.61 Both plays are, necessarily, set in foreign locations, given the official absence of Jews in England (in practice there were at times small numbers of Jews there), but these two figures neatly encapsulate the way in which the ‘Jew’ might be held to embody a range of qualities – the desire for financial gain, adherence to the letter of the law, harmful influence on their own families, and a desire to cause harm to Christians, to name but a few – which Christians found particularly distasteful. There is, moreover, a particular irony in the fact that these texts, among the most famous expressions of anti-Jewish sentiment, should appear in a context where the Jewish presence, and hence any potential threat, was negligible. Religious pluralism also contributed to undermining some of the accusations which had traditionally been made against Jews. This was especially evident in relation to the accusation of Host desecration. While under Protestantism the Eucharist was in some ways given even greater prominence – in the sense that it was one of only two Catholic sacraments which Protestants retained – the role of the Host was significantly changed.62 In Lutheranism, the idea remained that the bread changed into the body of Christ (even if the exact understanding of what happened altered), but it was consumed by everyone, rather than just the clergy, and it was no longer revered, as had been the case in the medieval Catholic Church, as an entity in itself.63 In the other branches of the Protestant Church, the fact that the Eucharist was recast as having a memorial purpose still further reduced the value attached to the elements that were used in it.64 In 144

FAULT LINES this context, there would be far less concern should any harm be caused to the bread that was intended to be used in the Eucharist. But in Catholic areas, too, such accusations seem to have become less frequent. In some ways, Poland is a particularly telling example. Poland remained a largely Catholic country, but the Protestant Reformation did nonetheless make an impact.65 Rivalry between the Christian confessions had various consequences, including for the Jews. Indeed, as the historian Magda Teter has argued, attacking the Jews for Host desecration was one way in which the Catholic Church chose to respond to the Protestant challenge.66 Among other things, accusations of Jewish theft were frequently interwoven with anxieties about, and legends of, Host desecration.67 Nonetheless, even in Catholic Poland such accusations seem to have declined over time; this was part of a broader move away from a world which gave such credence to miracles.68 A similar pattern can be identified in relation to the other major accusation levelled against the Jews, that of the blood libel. As we saw in Chapter 3 (p. 68), Philip Melanchthon had intervened in one case, arguing that the accusation made against Jews in the electorate of Brandenburg had been false. A more sustained Protestant effort to undermine accusations of this sort was provided by the Nuremberg reformer Andreas Osiander in 1540.69 Osiander was prompted to write by an episode which had taken place in Pösing, Hungary (modern Pezinok, Slovakia), in 1529: the local count, Ferenc Wolf, who was heavily indebted to Jewish lenders, accused the Jews of killing a Christian child for his blood. Thirty Jews were arrested and killed, while the remainder were expelled. The boy who had been presumed killed was subsequently found alive. Osiander’s tract had circulated in manuscript, but it was brought to a wider public in the wake of a further allegation in Sappenfeld, Germany, in 1540.70 In this text, Osiander expressed his great incredulity in relation to the allegation: ‘I have not been able to find, to think of, or to hear of anything which could have moved me to believe such suspicion and accusation.’71 This meant that there were only two explanations: ‘Either the Jews are slaughtering Christian children most cruelly, or the Christians are slaughtering innocent Jews most shamefully’. In his work, Osiander listed twenty separate points to demonstrate that such accusations were based on lies. Among other things, he cast doubt on the implication that Jews need Christian blood to live (given their survival in places where there are no Christians), noted that similar allegations were made against Christians in the early church, and reminded his readers that Jewish laws forbid the spilling of blood. He also raised concerns about the ways in which the 1529 case had been handled. There was no body, statements made by witnesses were unreliable, the whole case had been prosecuted 145

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION with unreasonable haste, and the punishment had been unnecessarily harsh: women and children were among the substantial number of Jews who were executed. The following year, Luther’s great adversary Johann Eck wrote a lengthy work, entitled Refutation of a Jewish Booklet, in which he took issue with what Osiander had written.72 The work was dedicated to the bishop of Trent, in memory of the child who had supposedly been killed there by Jews in 1475 (see p. 14), and addressed to the ‘evangelical scoundrel’ who had seen fit to defend Jews against the wider accusation.73 Over the course of the treatise, Eck built up a substantial catalogue of crimes committed by the Jews, from examples of murder in the Old Testament, through to the numerous accusations of anti-Christian violence perpetrated by Jews that were recorded in Christian histories and chronicles. He even claimed to have been an eye witness to a case which occurred while he was a student at Cologne: ‘I saw the child with my own eyes, about four weeks after the murder; and with my fingers I held and touched the prick wounds. I also saw the execution of the father [who was accused of selling his four-year-old son to two Jews]; he died confessing that the Jews had stabbed his child to death’.74 Eck also used this as an opportunity to attack the Reformation, suggesting that Jews and Protestants were both enemies of the true church, that the latter were wrong to insist on the need to know Hebrew, and that Osiander’s readiness to defend the Jews on this charge served to highlight their interdependence. Further accusations of ritual murder were made within the Holy Roman Empire, in the last decades of the sixteenth century, in places including Grumbach, Worms and Frankfurt. However, successive Holy Roman Emperors consistently condemned these accusations: Charles V in 1544, Ferdinand I in 1562, Maximilian II in 1566 and Rudolf II in 1577.75 As a result, it became ever harder to turn an accusation into a formal case, as the courts were increasingly sceptical. On the other hand, allegations continued to be made especially in eastern Europe. Perhaps as many as 100 ritual murder trials took place in Poland–Lithuania between 1540 and 1790, including twenty-five trials in the seventeenth century.76 Such accusations were harder to eliminate at the local level, and evidently remained an element of popular culture. Johann Jacob Schudt, the son of a Lutheran clergyman, and a professor of Jewish studies at the Academy in Frankfurt noted, in a work of 1714–17, that Christians still believed that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children (though he made sure to distance himself from this belief ).77 Elsewhere such beliefs persisted at least into the twentieth century. Despite the clearly fanciful nature of these allegations, they have had a wide currency, from the ancient world through to the present day.78 This is not necessarily entirely surprising, given that they are 146

FAULT LINES concerned with one of the greatest fears: the loss of a child. It is understandable that individuals and communities should take recourse in irrational explanations, when confronted with such a devastating and seemingly otherwise inexplicable event. Confessional Scholarship When one thinks of the confessional divisions of sixteenth- and seventeenth-century Europe, one tends to think first either of the military conflicts (discussed earlier in this chapter), or the polemical attacks launched by representatives of the different religious groups against each other. By contrast, the realm of scholarship is often imagined to remain detached from battles of this sort. Certainly, scholars were often less predisposed to attack those with whose views they disagreed, and shared intellectual interests could often be a reason for collaboration or discussion. At the same time, it would be wrong to imagine that the academic endeavours of the Reformation era were impervious to the tensions afflicting society at large. Indeed, the world of scholarship provided another, and in some ways a more highly valued, setting in which these rivalries might be played out. In these scholarly conflicts, moreover, the relationship with Judaism was a recurrent and significant theme. As discussed earlier, those who worked with Hebraic materials always ran the risk that they might be accused of Judaising; such accusations took on an even greater significance in the confessionalised world of the later sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. One of the clearest examples of this is provided by the accusations levelled against John Calvin. This was in fact part of a wider confessional campaign. Calvinism had made considerable inroads in Saxony, under its elector, Christian I. Following his death in 1591, however, there was an effort to remove Calvinist influence, and to reassert Lutheranism. In 1592, Aegidius Hunnius, who had been professor of theology at the University of Marburg for fifteen years, transferred to the University of Wittenberg.79 He was responsible for various works in which he elaborated Lutheran theology, but in 1593 he wrote The Judaizing Calvin, a polemical work in which he attacked Calvin for his dependence on Jewish scholarship.80 In the lengthy subtitle to this work, Hunnius referred to the ‘Jewish interpretations and corruptions by which John Calvin has, in detestable fashion, shamelessly corrupted the clearest passages and testimonies of Holy Scripture’, particularly those relating to the idea of Jesus as the Messiah, and in his letter of dedication he described the ‘treachery of Jewish unbelief ’ and ‘Jewish perversions’ which he claimed fatally undermined Calvin’s biblical exegesis.81 As we saw in Chapter 4 (p. 84), in his interpretation of the so-called ‘messianic Psalms’, Calvin did make less 147

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION of their Christological potential than had some of his predecessors, but in this work Hunnius subjected a wider range of extracts from Calvin’s writings to scrutiny, in order to support his central contention. In each example, Hunnius quotes directly from Calvin, and then adds his own rather sarcastic critique, noting how he differs from the interpretation of Paul, for instance, or makes his interpretation more palatable to the Jews. For example in relation to Calvin’s interpretation of a line from Haggai 2, Hunnius comments: ‘This is frivolous reasoning by which he allows himself to be dragged away from the former sense – which is the sense of Christians – to this Jewish alternative’.82 There was in addition a recurrent tendency for Christian confessions to equate their rivals with Judaism. In this respect Judaism served at least in part as a short-hand. For Protestants, in particular, it was what they perceived as the legalism of Catholicism, the sense of following a set of rules without much concern for inner spirituality, that encouraged such comparisons. But it was not only Protestants who could make these kind of accusations. Juan Martínez Silíceo, the archbishop of Toledo, who introduced the ‘purity of blood’ laws in his archdiocese, and who would be made a cardinal by Paul IV, claimed in 1547: ‘It is said, and is considered true, that the principal heretics of Germany, who have destroyed all that nation and have introduced great heresies, are descendants of Jews.’83 For members of each Christian confession, undue closeness to, or sympathy for, Jewish ideas made them a potential target for attack. Conversely, however, insufficient expertise with Hebraic materials could also provoke an intellectual assault. A good example of this is provided by Isaac Casaubon (1559–1614), a classical scholar who had studied Greek at the University of Geneva.84 His parents were both Huguenots, though his commitment to Protestantism was rather less strong. Nonetheless, in his vast Exercitationes (it is 800 pages long, yet still incomplete), he offered a highly detailed and aggressive forensic analysis of the Annales ecclesiastici (a history of the church from the time of Christ to the present day) written by Cardinal Cesare Baronio (in fact Casaubon focused entirely on the part of Baronio’s work covering the life of Christ in his response).85 A key part of his critique was that Baronio’s ignorance of Hebrew meant that many of his judgements were incorrect. As he remarked scathingly: ‘he is a blind man making judgements about colours’.86 Indeed, in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries an array of theologians, Protestant and Catholic, wrote on topics pertaining to the Jews. Various Catholic authors continued to perpetuate allegations of ritual murder in their writing. For instance, Matthaeus Rader (d. 1634), a Jesuit from Tirol, included several such accounts in his four-volume Bavaria sancta (1615), a compilation of lives of holy men and women.87 Similarly, Hippolytus Guarinoni (d. 1654), the physician of a cloister in 148

FAULT LINES another town in Tirol, conducted extensive research into the case of a local boy who was alleged to have been murdered by Jews in the fifteenth century. Guarinoni did such a good job of promoting the cause of this young boy that in 1670 a pilgrimage church was built in his honour.88 Other scholars approached Judaism in rather different ways. Catholic scholars including Cardinal Cesare Baronio (1538–1607), Bishop Jacques-Bénigne Bossuet (1627–1704) and the Abbé Claude Fleury (1640–1723) looked to bolster elements of Catholic worship by demonstrating that they drew on the Israelite tradition. Conversely, Jacques Basnage (1653–1723), an exile from France who became a Calvinist minister at Rotterdam, used Jewish history as a means to attack Catholicism.89 In his History of the Religion of the Jews, which was first published in Rotterdam in 1706–7, and appeared in London in English translation in 1708, Basnage portrayed Catholicism as akin to rabbinic Judaism: much as the rabbis had corrupted Judaism, he argued, Catholics had corrupted apostolic Christianity.90 Although Basnage used the work as a means of developing a sustained critique of Catholicism, it was also a remarkably sympathetic history of the Jews. He wrote, for instance: ‘These first Misfortunes were attended with so dismal Calamities, that even those who think it their Duty to hate the Jews, because they are not of the same Religion, cannot unconcernedly read the History of so hard and lasting a Misery.’91 More broadly, the Christian study of Hebraica had continued to develop. Indeed, by the early seventeenth century, some knowledge of Hebrew was becoming relatively common. Many people were able to read the Bible in Hebrew, at least to some extent. A range of scholars, including Johannes Buxtorf in Basel, Constantijn L’Empereur at Leiden, and John Selden in England all helped to make a range of post-biblical literature available to a wider reading public.92 There nonetheless remained questions over how reliant scholars should be on such Jewish materials. On the other hand, this was a period in which collaboration between those of different religious outlooks became possible. Indeed, in many ways the development of the ‘Republic of Letters’ was a response to the religious conflict which had come to dominate the sixteenth century.93 For instance, the French Catholic antiquary NicolasClaude Fabri de Peiresc (1580–1637), a figure with connections at the papal court, also collaborated with a Jew, Salomon Azubi, with whom he was able to discuss matters of astronomy and to decipher ancient Jewish inscriptions.94 Likewise, Alessandro Magno, a Catholic physician in Mantua, exchanged several letters in the last two decades of the sixteenth century with a Jew, Abraham Portaleone, over various medical matters including the birth of a deformed infant, a so-called ‘monstrous birth’.95 149

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION In many respects, engagement with Christian Hebraica was not divided along confessional lines, but one possible exception to this was interest in the Kabbalah. Remarkably few mainstream Protestants seem to have devoted much attention to Kabbalistic studies, but there was rather more enthusiasm in Catholic circles.96 This was the case, for instance, for Paul Rici (1480–1541), a convert from Judaism who rose to fame as a humanist scholar, and later became the physician of Emperor Maximilian I, for whom he may well have produced a Latin translation of the Talmud. Rici wrote several works relating to the Kabbalah and indeed believed that it could be used to confirm various Christian doctrines including the Trinity. It has also been suggested that it was the interest in the Kabbalah which led Johann Pistorius of Nidda (1546–1608) to convert from Lutheranism to Catholicism in the 1580s; he would certainly write works on this topic after his conversion as discussed in the previous chapter (p. 128). By contrast, the French Huguenot André Rivet deemed the Kabbalah nonsense. Similarly, the Dutch Calvinist Philippe de Marnix de Sainte-Aldegonde (1540–98) criticised the Italian Franciscan Pietro Colonna’s use of the Kabbalah (along with various Talmudic sources) to defend ideas relating to the Virgin Mary. Both Catholics and Protestants engaged in the study of contemporary Jewish beliefs and practices. The products of such study, often described as ‘ethnographies’ were especially valued because they provided a different means of improving Christian understanding of the biblical origins of their faith, though it should be noted that many of these works also contributed to the rivalries between the two faiths, and were frequently characterised by anti-Jewish sentiment, which often manifested itself in a tendency to portray Judaism in a negative light.97 As we saw in Chapter 2 (p. 61), Antonius Margaritha’s The Whole Jewish Faith made a particular impact in the first half of the sixteenth century, influencing Luther but also provoking an imperial enquiry. However, authors continued to produce such works through the early modern period.98 One of the best known of these ethnographies was De synagoga judaica, written by the Hebraist Johannes Buxtorf and first published in 1603.99 In this work, like others of the genre, Buxtorf discussed Jewish customs, prayers and the forms of worship which they followed, both privately and collectively. In part these were works of scholarship produced by experts in this field. Buxtorf, for instance, spent almost four decades as a professor of Hebrew at the University of Basel, and among his other writings were a Hebrew grammar and a dictionary. On the other hand, his Protestant credentials were clear: he had studied with Bullinger in Zurich and with Beza in Geneva.100 In producing his compendium of Jewish practice – the researching and writing of which involved considerable interactions with Jews, sometimes in his own house – he did his fellow 150

FAULT LINES religionists a real service. Above all, it allowed them to come to a better understanding of their own Christian faith by better understanding the biblical era, but the knowledge which he provided, and indeed the enterprise itself, could be used as a way of demonstrating the intellectual superiority of Protestantism over Catholicism. At the same time, though, it should be acknowledged that Buxtorf, like most other writers of such works, contrasted contemporary Jews with those of the bible. Moreover, as Aya Elyada has shown, the study of Yiddish, a German-Jewish vernacular language, was undertaken with similar intentions.101 Perhaps, inevitably, this area of scholarship lagged somewhat behind the study of biblical Hebrew. Yiddish was regarded as a degenerate language by Christians, used by thieves and others who wished to deceive Christians; Jews too held it in lower esteem, as the language of daily life, while Hebrew was the language of religion.102 Nonetheless, as a language which was related to Hebrew it was studied by various Christian Hebraists who hoped thereby to better understand the Bible, but also as a possible means of converting contemporary Jews to Christianity.

R The study of the Bible was yet another area in which the tensions between scholarship and confessional rivalries were played out. The people involved in producing translations of the Bible, in particular, were often more linguistically minded, and relatively few of them were also responsible for works of polemic. Nonetheless, as the sixteenth century progressed, Jewish learning was increasingly weaponised: possession of the most accurate version of the biblical text was absolutely fundamental to the claims to religious truth advanced by each of the competing Christian confessions.103 The Renaissance, with its enthusiasm for a return ad fontes (‘to the sources’) and the Reformation, with its emphasis on sola scriptura (‘by Scripture alone’) combined to encourage a renewed attention to the Bible, so that its message might be better understood. This was far from straightforward, however. First, there was the immediate difficulty of finding scholars adequately immersed in the theology of their confession, but also sufficiently familiar with the languages from which it was to be translated, who could be entrusted with such a task. Second, working with the Jewish text and drawing on Hebrew scholarship made biblical translators especially vulnerable to accusations of Judaising.104 Third, there were still questions as regards which books of the Bible should be considered canonical. Martin Luther, for instance, disapproved of Esther and 2 Maccabees on the grounds that ‘there is too much Judaism in them and not a little heathenism’. Similarly, Andreas Karlstadt raised doubts about Moses’s authorship of 151

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION the Pentateuch on the reasonable grounds that he could not have written a description of his own death.105 Famously, medieval biblical exegesis had used the so-called fourfold method: this involved subjecting the text to literal, allegorical, moral and anagogical (i.e. mystical) analysis. This approach, which had originated in the fourth and fifth centuries, was still used into the Reformation era. The historian Steven Ozment has suggested that this method might be considered an ‘instrument of aggression’, by means of which Christian writers were able to assert their control over non-Christian material.106 In this context, the Hebrew Bible was understood, among other things, as a prophecy of Christianity: this, in turn, made the text essentially ‘Christian’. It was assumed by Christian authors that the Old Testament could only truly make sense when it was read in conjunction with the New Testament. As was discussed in Chapter 1 (pp. 19–20), the Vulgate, the translation of the Bible made from Hebrew by Saint Jerome in the fourth century, had come to hold the central position in biblical study by the Middle Ages. Yet this was potentially problematic. On the one hand, it enjoyed considerable prestige: it had been translated by a church father who was believed to have had divine inspiration, and who had subsequently been canonised, it had been used for more than 1,000 years, and its position was formally endorsed in the sixteenth century at the Council of Trent. On the other hand, as a growing number of scholars had shown, the translation was flawed in various ways, prompting various attempts to exculpate Jerome. New translations of the Bible, whether Catholic or Protestant, produced in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries had to deal with this rather complicated legacy.107 The first significant Catholic revision of the Vulgate might best be understood as a product of the same reforming culture which had also led to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain. This was the Complutensian Polyglot Bible (1510–22), produced at the University of Alcalá in Spain, under the direction of Cardinal Francesco Ximénes de Cisneros. Begun before Martin Luther made his initial protest, but completed after, its authors had compared the text of the Vulgate against the Hebrew and Greek originals. Other Catholic editions of the Vulgate followed at regular intervals, and from countries across the continent. Robert Estienne, the French royal printer before his move to Calvin’s Geneva, produced his first Latin Vulgate Bible in 1528, and followed this with more than half a dozen further editions in the 1530s and 1540s. These were followed in turn by other editions from scholars such as the Frenchman Jean Benoît (1541), the Italian Isidoro Chiari (1542) and Jan Henten from Louvain (1547 and many further editions).108 152

FAULT LINES Towards the end of the century, and stemming from the Council of Trent (though there had not been an official pronouncement to this effect at the council), there were efforts to institute an officially approved revision of the Vulgate. The first of these was the revision overseen by Pope Sixtus V in the late 1580s. It was not a success. Not only did the pope make a late intervention which required a lengthy list of errata to be included, but he also insisted on rejecting the traditional way of numbering verses, which made it almost impossible to compare it with other editions. A second edition was published under the auspices of Clement VIII in 1592, but was circulated under the names of both Sixtus and Clement (the Sixto-Clementine edition). This would become the official and definitive edition: versions of it were published in Antwerp, Cologne and Rome.109 In parallel with these revisions of the Vulgate, a substantial number of new translations of the Bible were also produced. The first new Latin Bible was produced by the Italian Dominican Santes Pagninus, who had learnt Hebrew from a Jewish convert, Clemente Abramo. Pagninus claimed in the preface that he had worked on the translation of the Old Testament for twenty-five years.110 This work was published – with papal approval – in Lyon in 1528. Pagninus remained deferential to Jerome and the Vulgate, while emphasising that his own was a highly literal translation (he said he translated ‘verbum verbo’ – ‘word for word’) intended for scholars; its literary qualities have often been criticised but it was an important milestone in the process of better understanding the Hebrew text. Protestant scholars were also responsible for an array of translations of their own. Among the most significant were Sebastian Münster’s Biblia Hebraica, published in Basel in 1534–35. This edition placed the Hebrew text taken from Bomberg’s Rabbinic Bible alongside Münster’s own Latin translation. It was again a literal translation, intended to take his readers as close as possible to the original. In the annotations with which he supported his translation, he drew heavily on rabbinic exegesis, though somewhat inevitably he was widely criticised for doing so.111 The Zurich Bible of 1543, which has been described as ‘the greatest intellectual achievement of the Zurich church’ to that point, in fact had its origins in the Prophezei, the biblical study group which met in the 1520s in that city (discussed in Chapter 4, p. 93).112 The first product of this group – which involved distinguished Hebraists such as Leo Jud and Konrad Pellikan – had been a complete German translation of the bible which was published by Christoph Froschauer in 1531: while much of the translation had originated with this group, for some books of the bible they also drew heavily on Luther’s translation.113 It was also Leo Jud who was principally responsible for producing the Latin Bible of 1543.114 Not only did this volume provide an elegant 153

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Latin translation, but it was supported by two sets of annotations: the first discussed individual Hebrew words, offered variant readings, and provided contextual information, while the second helped explain how the text should be understood. The first edition was swiftly followed by further editions in quarto and octavo formats; but the text was also incorporated into several Catholic polylglot editions, produced in France and Spain, with its origins concealed.115 Arguably the greatest of all the Protestant Latin editions of the bible to emerge from the Reformation era, however, was the one produced by the Jewish convert Immanuel Tremellius and Franciscus Junius, which was first published in five volumes in Frankfurt between 1575 and 1579.116 The pair did not explain their division of labour, beyond noting that Junius alone had translated the Apocrypha. It seems likely that Tremellius, the senior partner, took principal responsibility for the philological annotations, while Junius dealt with matters of exegesis. Following Tremellius’s death in 1580, Junius issued various further revised editions, in which the introductory materials for each book and the supporting materials were substantially expanded. In the translation there is an attempt to balance elegance with fidelity to the text. There are, in addition, elements of Hebraising, as for instance in the use of Hebrew names, such as Mosche for Moses. This was the most successful version of the Bible to emerge from the Reformation: it went through more than thirty editions between the late sixteenth and early eighteenth centuries.117 Of course, Hebraists were principally concerned with the Old Testament, because it had been written in Hebrew. However, in the second half of the sixteenth century, it also became possible for a number of Hebraists to approach the New Testament. The occasion for this was the appearance of an edition of that work in Syriac, a dialect of Aramaic, quite similar to ancient Hebrew. While it has since been established that the Syriac texts of the New Testament were in fact derived from Greek texts, in the sixteenth century some believed that the Syriac versions were older, and therefore more authentic. Indeed, it was occasionally asserted that Matthew’s Gospel and the Letter to the Hebrews had been written in Syriac, and even that God had spoken in that language.118 The circumstances which made it possible for Christian scholars to become familiar with the Syriac New Testament were rather unusual. In the early 1550s, Ignatius III, the patriarch of Antioch, sent a scribe, Moses of Mardin, to Rome with a manuscript copy of the text, hoping to make use of the presses of the west to facilitate its wider dissemination.119 As attitudes towards the Jews in Rome were becoming more hostile at this time, as discussed in Chapter 5, the project was soon moved to Vienna, where Emperor Ferdinand I gave it his backing. Moses was assisted in this work by the Hebraist and kabbalist Guillaume Postel, and Johann Widmanstetter (1506–57), a 154

FAULT LINES distinguished German orientalist.120 A thousand copies of this work were produced in 1555, with 500 of them retained in the west. In 1569, Immanuel Tremellius then produced a Latin translation of this work, checking Widmanstetter’s text against a manuscript of the Syriac which he found in the library of Heidelberg University.121 Alongside this translation, Tremellius produced a Syriac grammar. The continuing value of the Syriac translation of the New Testament is demonstrated by the fact that it was appended to many editions of the Tremellius and Junius Old Testament, ordinarily sitting alongside the translation of the New Testament made from the Greek by Theodore Beza. However, after 1630, it was only Beza’s translation which was included, which suggests that the interest in the Syriac tradition had by then begun to wane.122 The first edition of Tremellius’s translation of the New Testament and the Syriac grammar were dedicated respectively to Elizabeth I of England and to Matthew Parker, her archbishop of Canterbury.123 Dedications like this serve to highlight further the confessional context in which biblical works of this kind were produced. Queen Elizabeth and Parker were emerging as leading Protestants in England, and Tremellius evidently wanted to strengthen the links holding together the ‘Calvinist international’ (something he had also attempted to achieve in 1568 when he had served as the ambassador of the Elector Palatine to the English court).124 Translations of the Bible were first and foremost pieces of scholarship, and so they had to be able to withstand close scrutiny in terms of their academic credentials. At the same time, though, they played a fundamental role in bolstering the Christian confession from which they emerged, by provision of the biblical text and, often, a panoply of supporting material that ensured its linguistic, historical and cultural dimensions could all be properly understood. The continuing importance attached to the Vulgate complicated this endeavour. Even in various Protestant polyglot editions, the Vulgate was often included. While its errors were increasingly acknowledged, its long service in the history of the church meant that few authors were willing to remove it completely. Nonetheless, through the provision of a succession of Latin Bibles, Hebrew and Jewish learning more generally were central to the conflict between the competing Christian confessions in the sixteenth century. Confessionalisation It was not just conflict – whether on the battlefield or via the printing press – that determined relations between the different branches of Christianity in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Alongside this we can detect a process to which historians have 155

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION given the rather inelegant term ‘confessionalisation’.125 By this is meant, in essence, the range of practices by which the different Christian confessions sought to establish themselves more fully, and to distinguish themselves from their rivals. Paradoxically, in doing so, they often ended up using many of the same methods. These included establishing a clear religious position, to which all adherents of the confession were expected to subscribe. Statements of those core doctrines, known as Confessions of Faith, were written up, and then supplemented by catechisms (a series of questions and answers), which were used to ensure that the laity understood the key components of their faith. Adherence to these doctrinal statements was often given considerable significance: for instance, students and staff at universities were often required to swear allegiance to a confession of faith before they joined. Greater attention was then devoted to scrutinising the behaviour of parishioners. The consistory of the Reformed Church (a council which consisted of pastors and lay elders and took responsibility for maintaining morality within the community) was the clearest example of this, but it had echoes within the other churches:126 the Catholic Inquisition in particular sought to address problematic elements within a community. At the same time, there were growing efforts to strengthen the organisational structures of these churches. Particular efforts were made to ensure that the clergy adhered to various criteria, including that they were old enough, had undergone appropriate training and were sufficiently committed to their role, so that they would be able to perform their duties appropriately.127 The creation of seminaries, academies and universities discussed previously was among the most obvious ways by which churches devoted greater efforts to the training of their representatives at the local level.128 Furthermore, regular visitations by representatives of the church hierarchy were instituted in order to evaluate the state of the physical church and other material objects, the quality of the clergy, and the understanding of the laity in the local churches under its control.129 In addition, confessionalisation saw a greater alignment between church and state. This contributed to the emergence of national churches. It meant that the pulpit was increasingly used as a mouthpiece of the state, through which national and political messages might be disseminated to the inhabitants. In some places, religious nonconformity came increasingly to be regarded as a form of treason: as much a crime against the state as it was against the church.130 Jews were to an extent caught in the middle of these developments, as the political authorities sought to impose greater uniformity on the territories under their control. Jews remained a rather unusual group in this context. As non-Christians they were more obviously separate from the outset, and sometimes could be accommodated 156

FAULT LINES rather more easily as a result; indeed, from the 1570s onwards, Jews were permitted to return to various territories in the Holy Roman Empire, including Hildesheim, Essen and Halberstadt.131 At the same time, with renewed attention on the question of maintaining the spiritual purity of the Christian community, their continued presence was a constant reminder that not everybody fitted within this, which could in turn lead to expulsions, including, most famously, the expulsion of Jews from Vienna by Emperor Leopold I, who was responding to strong pressure from his Catholic clergy.132 The model of confessionalisation is especially associated with the three major Christian confessions: Catholicism, Lutheranism and Calvinism/Reformed. This is because there were political authorities which embraced each of those religions, and so their political weight could be added to those attempts to instil religious uniformity. For religious groups which lacked that political authority, including the Anabaptists and the Jews, that element was missing. At the same time, as Dean Phillip Bell and Yosef Kaplan have recently contended, there are still grounds for applying the model of confessionalisation to the Jews as well.133 While they did not have political authority over specific territories, Jews did still have a religious leadership, in the form of the rabbinate, which attempted to ensure conformity of behaviour and practice, both at the local and international level.134 In Frankfurt, for instance, considerable efforts were directed to ensuring that members of the Jewish community adhered to acceptable forms of behaviour; those whose behaviour fell short were subject to a wide array of punishments.135 Just as in Christian communities, there was a renewed emphasis put on education, and efforts to ensure greater consistency in that area. There was, moreover, a concerted attempt to strengthen the bureaucratic processes which Jewish communities followed, including a proliferation of record keeping, greater scrutiny being applied to rabbinic ordination, and more control exercised over community members.136 Especially for recently formed Jewish communities, however, it was also necessary to address more fundamental questions, including the very nature of their members’ faith. In the case of those communities which emerged in the early seventeenth century, such as that of Amsterdam, and which largely comprised people who had previously lived as conversos, their members had arrived from countries where Judaism had been forbidden, and even practising it covertly had been very difficult – Jewish books had been banned, and practitioners thus depended on word-of-mouth; this of course meant that the religion might have come to be diluted or even corrupted. When such new communities began to emerge, it was necessary in the first instance to ensure that their members understood of what their faith consisted. To that end, a range 157

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION of books – a ‘bookshelf ’ as Kaplan has called it – were produced.137 While there was less call for a confession of faith per se (Judaism as a religion is more focused on matters of law and practice), various Jewish authors did compile ‘Treasuries of Commandments’ in which they catalogued all the commandments and laws, and explained how they should be observed. Typical of this genre was the Book of the 613 Commandments, written in Portuguese by Abraham Farrar, and published in Amsterdam in 1627.138 In exactly the same way, Juspa Hahn of Nordlingen, a leading figure of the Jewish community of Frankfurt, wrote Sefer Josef Ometz (1630), which drew on a range of works then in circulation to provide a summary of the laws and customs of the Jews, to which then were added the particular customs of the community of Frankfurt.139 In addition, the Spanish translation of the Old Testament, published in Ferrara in 1553, became the standard version for Amsterdam’s Jewish community; it was important for the Jews to have their own Bible, as Christian versions of the Old Testament generally sought to emphasise the Christological interpretations, which made them unsuitable in a Jewish context. Thus there are good grounds for suggesting that the Jews were both the victims of, but also contributors to, the process of confessionalisation in early modern Europe.

R While it is certainly the case that the rapid advances made by Protestantism in the first half of the sixteenth century were not matched in the second half, and a growing sense of stalemate was emerging, that did not necessarily translate into a new and more relativistic approach to other confessions. For many the sense of religious division can only have enhanced the sense of existential crisis, which manifested itself for instance in a greater readiness to accuse others of witchcraft. Religious affiliation was a core component of both individual and group identity, and the divisions triggered by the Reformation only served to highlight this. Indeed, by providing clear and threatening opponents, that sense of identity can only have been enhanced. This seems the best way to explain both the length and severity of the religious conflicts in this period. Of course, Jews, who had been a long-standing religious ‘other’, were rather separate from these confessional divisions, even if they were often caught in the crossfire. Jews could benefit from the fact that Christians had turned against each other, but they could also be drawn into these conflicts: Judaism provided a series of reference points which could be drawn upon in religious arguments. At the same time, though, Jews were a qualitatively different religious opponent; their presence was in some ways more acceptable than that of members of the other Christian confessions, who were regarded as degenerate. 158

7

R CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE Jews and Christians in the Era of the Thirty Years War

On 22 August 1614, Vincenz Fettmilch, an immigrant gingerbread-maker who had only settled in Frankfurt am Main some twelve years earlier, launched an attack on the city’s ghetto, at the head of a large band of disgruntled journeymen and apprentices.1 In many ways, this was the culmination of a rather broader challenge to the established order. Like most free imperial cities, Frankfurt had an oligarchical form of government, which meant that most of the city council was drawn from the upper ranks of society. Underlying resentment at this from the lower orders was then aggravated by the high levels of taxation, and rumours of magisterial corruption.2 From 1612 onwards, a growing number of people demanded constitutional reform (including an expansion of the city council, in order to dilute the influence of the elite), a clearer expression of the rights of its citizenry, and transparency with regard to the civic finances. In May 1614, frustrated by their lack of progress towards these goals, Fettmilch and his supporters took control of the city hall, forced the existing councillors to resign, and set themselves up as the new government.3 Within three months, this group would turn their attentions to the Jews, whose perceived success was another source of resentment. The Jewish ghetto was located outside the city’s east wall, in the so-called Judengasse (‘Jews’ Lane’), a single, slightly curved street, 300 metres or so in length, near the river Main.4 When it had been founded by the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick III in 1462, it contained about twenty households and roughly 150 residents. By the early seventeenth century, this figure had risen to more than 2,000 inhabitants who lived in fewer than 200 houses.5 This dramatic population increase had not been matched by any great expansion to the territory occupied by the ghetto, however. Instead, a second row of houses was built on both sides of the road immediately behind the existing houses, so that there were now four rows; extra floors were added on top, placed more towards the centre, to the extent that the buildings on either side were in touching distance of each other; and all of the living space was divided into smaller portions. This was, then, one of the largest Jewish 159

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION settlements in Europe at the time, and also one of the most cramped living areas on the continent. Indeed, during the book fair in 1545, forty Jewish visitors apparently found lodgings in the same house.6 When the Christian rioters entered the Judengasse, a street fight ensued, during which at least one Jew was killed.7 The Jews were driven from their homes into the adjacent cemetery, and in their absence, the entire ghetto was ransacked. Only after several hours of plundering did the mayor of the city give the order to soldiers to go in and disperse the looters. The following day, Fettmilch, the ringleader and effectively the leading authority in this period of chaos, ordered that all the Jews should leave the city.8 They departed, mainly by boat, heading for other Jewish communities located along the river Main. It was not long before the established order began to reassert itself, however. In July, the Holy Roman Emperor, Matthias, whose recent accession to that role, in 1612, had contributed to the political uncertainty, issued a sentence against Fettmilch and his supporters, placing them under an imperial ban: effectively they were now outlaws.9 In September, Johann, the elector of Mainz, and Ludwig V, the landgrave of HesseDarmstadt, sent troops into Frankfurt to enforce the ban. Prominent citizens, who had previously numbered among his supporters, pre-emptively arrested Fettmilch and handed him over to the imperial commissioners. The movement collapsed, and the old council was restored. Fettmilch and his associates were imprisoned for over a year, before he and six others were executed on 28 February 1616. His head and those of three others were placed on spikes on top of Frankfurt’s most prominent gatetower.10 On the same day, the entire Jewish population was readmitted to the city. According to Elhanan ben Abraham Helen, a Jewish witness who wrote an account of this episode in Hebrew and Yiddish verse, known as Megillas Vintz, the Jews were accompanied back to their houses by the Christian inhabitants of the city: ‘On every street we walked, the trumpets blew forcefully. All the townsfolk within earshot wished that they had let us stay’.11 Fettmilch’s house was razed to the ground, and a column was erected on the spot as a warning to future generations. Above the gate which led into the Judengasse, a stone imperial eagle was set up, on which were inscribed the words: ‘Protected by the Roman Imperial Majesty and the Holy Empire’. The Jewish community of Frankfurt would commemorate their delivery every year; ben Abraham’s verse account of their expulsion and return became a central component of the celebrations.12 The attack on the ghetto was the most traumatic element of an episode which has come to be known as the Fettmilch Uprising. And it was not an isolated event. On Easter Monday 1615 (once again, it is striking that this should happen at Easter), after 160

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE two years of anti-Jewish activity in the city, the Jewish community of Worms was also expelled by a mob acting in defiance of the city council.13 While they were gone, their synagogue and cemetery were both destroyed. The Jews would only be permitted to return eight months later, again at the behest of the emperor.14 On this occasion, the ringleaders of the attack were whipped and banished, rather than executed. As in Frankfurt, though, the rights of the Jewish community were reaffirmed. It is apparent that this was, at least in part, a copycat incident: Worms, home to one of the oldest and largest Jewish communities in the empire, was only 40 miles away from Frankfurt, and this expulsion came only seven months after the one from that city (but before the status quo had been restored there). In addition, the two incidents were products of broadly the same set of circumstances. The socioeconomic and political factors have already been discussed, but it is evident that religious considerations also played a significant role. These took various forms. First, Frankfurt and Worms were both religiously divided cities. Frankfurt was mainly Lutheran, but there were also sizable Catholic and Reformed communities. Indeed, according to a local saying, ‘in Frankfurt, the Lutherans have the power, the Calvinists the money, and the Catholics the churches’.15 Relations between the two Protestant groups, in particular, were often strained. In 1596, the practice of the Reformed religion was prohibited in the city, as punishment for the Wechel press publishing a new edition of the Tremellius–Junius Bible there; it was only permitted again five years later. In 1608, the Calvinist church was burnt down. Under this pressure, many members of the Reformed community left the city for more welcoming towns in the area, with the result that their numbers had roughly halved by 1614.16 There were also religious tensions in Worms: most recently, the local Catholic bishop had, in 1613, despite the opposition of the city council, permitted the Jesuits to establish a mission in the city.17 Both, moreover, were predominantly Protestant cities ruled over by a Catholic emperor. The presence of the Jewish communities in these cities further complicated matters. In Frankfurt, there were perhaps as many as 2,000 Jews, which constituted roughly 10 per cent of the city’s population; in Worms there were roughly 700 Jews out of a total population of 6,000.18 The Jews of Frankfurt were resented because of the sheer size of their community, their supposed influence over the city council, and their role as moneylenders and pawnbrokers. Fettmilch evidently sought to capitalise on antiJewish sentiment by arranging to have Luther’s On the Jews and Their Lies reprinted in the city in 1612.19 There is, perhaps, a slight irony in the fact that Fettmilch, at least ostensibly a Calvinist, should turn to this Lutheran text as a means of fomenting rebellion against the Lutheran civil authorities, particularly when this is contrasted 161

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION with the fact that the Calvinist authorities in the neighbouring areas were generally more sympathetic to their Jewish inhabitants. In fact, the presence of Jews in Frankfurt had been a recurrent point of contention in the disputes which had preceded the attack on the Judengasse. For the rebels, the Jews were an obvious focus for their complaints, but the city authorities simply refused to expel them, on the grounds that they were there with imperial permission, and so it was not in their power to deal with them. There was some movement over this issue, however. Towards the end of 1612, the rebels demanded the removal of all but the twenty richest Jewish families; the council countered this by proposing to expel the sixty poorest families.20 While the inhabitants of Frankfurt would presumably have preferred not to allow Jews to remain there at all, they acknowledged their financial contribution, and so discussions focused on which Jews should be retained. In the event, it did not matter: the representatives of the emperor found both suggestions unacceptable, as the Jews were directly under his authority, and therefore should all be allowed to remain. Nonetheless, anti-Jewish sentiment remained to the fore. This was especially clear when the Christian mob in Worms attacked the Jewish parts of the city. Not only did the violence take place on Good Friday, but the attackers sought to justify their actions in religious terms. When members of the city council arrived in the Jewish quarters and asked on whose authority the mob was destroying the synagogue, they were informed: ‘It is the command of the whole citizenry that idolatry should be eradicated so that not a single stone remains on top of another.’21 Similarly, Hans Valtin Thomas, one of the ringleaders of the uprising there, defended the actions of those who had ransacked the Jewish cemetery: The whole honourable citizenry has ordered us to do this, since this is not a Christian churchyard, but a field of blood; the people who lie here are not worthy to have such fine and permanent memorials; all Jews are to be uprooted from the city, and every citizen, in order to demonstrate his true Christianity, will work with his own hands to tear down their idolatrous devilish churches, cemeteries, schools, synagogues, and houses of purification . . .22

It is striking to see such language being used: even if the circumstances were exceptional, one still gets a clear impression of the strong desire of the Christian community to maintain its purity. There is little sense that religious commitment was starting to waver by the seventeenth century. 162

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE In the aftermath of these attacks on the Jewish communities of Frankfurt and Worms, moreover, the different Christian communities placed events in a confessional context. An anonymous anti-Catholic pamphlet written once the Jews had been readmitted to Frankfurt sought to defend the rebels, and instead attacked the Jews and Catholics, insisting that ‘No Jew in the world is so worthy that a single Christian should be executed on his account’.23 A Catholic pamphlet challenged this interpretation and instead blamed the Calvinists’ political ambitions: ‘It is clear that this matter was not between the citizenry and the Jews, but between the citizenry and the council; nor did it begin chiefly on account of the Jews, but rather to get the patricians out of the seats of power and bring the newcomers in’.24 As these conflicting statements suggest, the Jews were not merely the targets of Christian animosity, but they were also the victims of intra-Christian rivalries. Contemporaries remained unable to determine whether the Fettmilch Uprising was a product of political or religious concerns, and they have been followed by historians in this.25 In fact, it is perhaps simplistic to suggest that it was one or other in an era where religion and politics were so closely intertwined. Indeed, as we discussed in the previous chapter, there were some respects in which the process of ‘confessionalisation’ had further strengthened the connections between the two during the second half of the sixteenth century. The episodes in Frankfurt and Worms were fortunately quite rare examples, at least for western Europe, of violence of a sort which had been much more prevalent in the Middle Ages, but they still demonstrated that anti-Jewish sentiment was present, and might burst forth at moments of particular stress. They also serve as reminders of the fact that the emergence of ‘reason of state’ as an ideology did not automatically lead to a better situation for Europe’s Jews. This chapter is concerned with relations between Jews and Christians in the first half of the seventeenth century. This was the era of the Thirty Years War. Often regarded as the last of the major religious wars of the early modern period, it drew in all of the major, and many of the minor, powers of Europe. This conflict, moreover, provided the backdrop to further religious and political developments, which in turn shaped Jewish experiences in this period. In some respects, there was a consolidation of ideas and processes which had begun in the previous century. In various places, including the Holy Roman Empire, a more combative form of Catholicism took shape in the wake of the Catholic Reformation. Similarly, around the turn of the century, increased pressure was applied to the conversos in Iberia. Conversely, parts of northern Europe, especially Germany and the Low Countries, began to be more welcoming to Jewish populations. At first glance, this pattern might suggest a straightforward 163

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION contrast between a repressive Catholicism and a more welcoming Protestantism (and especially Calvinism), but, as we will see, it was not necessarily quite so straightforward. Jews and the Thirty Years War The Thirty Years War (1618–48) was, at least in part, a religious conflict, although it soon became tangled up with issues of dynastic politics. This religious dimension was especially apparent at its outbreak. In 1617, Ferdinand of Styria, a member of the Habsburg dynasty who had been educated by the Jesuits and was a staunch supporter of the Catholic Church, was elected the king of Bohemia, a region which had fully embraced the Protestant Reformation. Ferdinand was also the next in line to become the Holy Roman Emperor (he would become Emperor Ferdinand II in 1619), which was a source of further concern for the Protestant cause. In May 1618, a number of the leading Protestants of the area attended Ferdinand’s castle in Prague. Discussions became heated, and the Protestants threw two of the Catholic representatives out of the window: this was the famous ‘Defenestration of Prague’, which served as the trigger for civil war in Bohemia. Before long, that conflict spiralled out into a war which involved most kingdoms on the continent.26 Jews frequently became collateral damage in this war. The communities of Frankfurt and Worms, two of the largest on the continent, had only just recovered from the attacks discussed at the start of this chapter, but they demonstrate well the kind of pressure to which the Jews were subjected. The community of Frankfurt had in fact slightly increased in size during the first years of the war, but in the mid-1620s it began to stagnate, and then to fall away: in 1635 alone, 200 Jews died from plague and disease, both of which were the consequences of war.27 Moreover, the Jewish community there was subjected to an endless round of taxes and enforced loans, while many of the people to whom they had lent money were unable to pay them back. Similarly, in Worms, around 200 Jews died from the plague in 1635, out of a total population of about 1,500.28 Nonetheless, shortly therafter, and despite this substantial reduction in size, that Jewish community was forced to pay almost 40,000 florins to cover the costs of accommodating imperial troops. In Prague, meanwhile, the Jews were a direct target for Christian violence: almost as soon as the war had begun, Calvinist rebels in Bohemia captured the city in 1619, pillaged the Jewish quarter, and subjected the Jews to forced loans. Prague’s Jews were therefore delighted when Emperor Ferdinand recaptured the city in 1620, and placed their quarter under imperial protection. Indeed, in April 1623, the entire community took part in an elaborate procession as part of the celebrations held to welcome the 164

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE emperor to the city.29 Ferdinand II fully embraced the values of the Catholic Reformation, strengthening the position of religious orders such as the Jesuits in Prague, and prising out not only Protestants but also those whose commitment to Catholicism was insufficiently strong.30 His treatment of the Jews was thus exceptional. Indeed, by 1627, Judaism was the only non-Catholic religion permitted in the city.31 At the same time, though, there were renewed efforts by the Reformation-era Catholic Church to convert the Jews within the Holy Roman Empire. In 1630, Cardinal Melchior Klesl, the bishop of Vienna, issued instructions that the Jews of Vienna and Prague should attend conversionary sermons, which were delivered by a Jesuit preacher in German, on the Jewish Sabbath.32 Jews were forbidden to sleep or talk through the sermons, and anyone who failed to attend was subject to a fine. In addition, Jewish presses in these cities were closed down for several years, and the Talmud was once again subjected to scrutiny.33 Importantly though, in Bohemia Jews were seen as significantly less of a threat than Protestants, and were treated accordingly. In return for substantial annual contributions, the emperor granted the provincial Jewish communities of Bohemia and Moravia exemption from all other forms of taxation, allowed them to make full use of all markets, insisted that Jews should not be charged more than Christians, and demanded that the Jews not be troubled when they conducted their business. Ferdinand III (r. 1637–57) would, in due course, confirm and extend these privileges.34 At the same time, the financial demands of the Thirty Years War opened up new opportunities for certain Jews. As both merchants and financiers, they were able to offset the many costs of war. Indeed, during the conflict, and even more so in its wake, the so-called ‘court Jew’ emerged.35 One of the earliest examples of this phenomenon in fact dated from the end of the sixteenth century: Mordecai Meisel of Prague (d. 1601) was rewarded for his many services to the Holy Roman Emperor in 1593 with a range of privileges including being put directly under the emperor’s protection. He was permitted to build a new synagogue in Prague which was named after him. David Gans, the contemporary Jewish historian of the city, described Meisel as ‘one of the walls and pillars of the synagogue, a prince of givers, a father to the poor’ and recorded many of his achievements.36 However, despite his good treatment during his life, the emperor confiscated all his property as soon as he died, as a newsletter circulated by the distinguished German banking family the Fuggers recorded: ‘Notwithstanding that he had left his Imperial Majesty ten thousand florins, and much cash also to the hospital for poor Christians and Jews, his Imperial Majesty on the following Saturday, viz., the 165

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Sabbath of the Jews, ordered Herr von Sternberg, at that time President of the Bohemian Chamber, to enter the Jew’s house forcibly, and to seize everything there was.’37 The Push from Iberia As the sixteenth century came to a close, Iberia had become a far less welcoming environment for Jews and Jewish converts. As discussed in Chapter 2 (p. 32), after its initial assaults on the conversos, the Spanish Inquisition began, from roughly 1530 onwards, to direct its attentions towards other groups. These included Moriscos (converts from Islam), heretics including a couple of clusters of Protestant sympathisers, and those accused of a range of moral crimes. Although Charles V, who was both king of Spain and Holy Roman Emperor, acted as protector to the Jews of the empire, he was less sympathetic to those converts in Spain; even so, he does not seem to have gone out of his way to root out every instance of crypto-Judaism at home. Philip II, who succeeded his father as king of Spain in 1556, inherited his predecessor’s religious zeal, but lacked much of his guile, or any great sympathy for the Jews. In 1596, Philip II wrote directly to the governor of Milan to demand that he expel the small Jewish community from that state, threatening that ‘If this is not done at once, it will be necessary to send someone from here to do it.’ Clearly the governor did not act on this, as Philip wrote a second letter three months later, in which he insisted he would ‘discover and punish whoever is to blame for these delays’.38 At the same time, it is difficult to conclude from this snippet that Philip was particularly troubled either by Jews or converts from Judaism. Again it is possible that the combined impact of the expulsion of 1492 and the Inquisition was sufficient to ensure that the Jews were not a high priority for him. Meanwhile, as discussed in Chapter 5, Portugal had, by and large, tried to maintain a more generous policy towards its Jews. Spanish Jews had gone there following the expulsion of 1492, and while Manuel I had been obliged to follow the Spanish policy towards the Jews, he had done so in a very lackadaisical manner. The expulsion order was not enforced, and the Jews were given a substantial grace period before they were obliged to convert. While there were various occasions when it was intimated that the Inquisition would be introduced in Spain, this kept being put off, and it was only finally instituted in 1547. Even then, its impact was initially quite limited. However, in 1580, following a succession crisis, Portugal was annexed by Spain, and for the next sixty years it was ruled by its larger neighbour. This was a significant turning point: suddenly the Portuguese Inquisition became much more repressive, and brought that kingdom more in line with the aspirations of the Catholic Reformation. 166

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE In the final two decades of the century, more than fifty autos da fé were held in Lisbon, Evora and Coimbra, during the course of which around 3,000 conversos received punishment, and 212 were condemned to death.39 In response to this new pressure, several thousand Portuguese conversos migrated back to Castile in Spain, to commercial cities like Madrid, Seville and Málaga, where – perhaps rather ironically – they hoped that the Spanish Inquisition would be more benign than its Portuguese counterpart. The death of Philip II in 1598 brought the accession of his son, Philip III. He inherited a substantial empire, but one that was in a financially precarious position. Not only were the costs of running that empire and pursuing an aggressive foreign policy substantial, but famine and plague had both befallen the country in the last years of the sixteenth century.40 His commitment to Catholicism was clear: most obviously, in 1609, he was responsible for expelling the Moriscos from the Iberian peninsula, just as Ferdinand and Isabella had dealt with the Jews 120 years previously.41 Nonetheless, Philip III was more flexible in religious matters than his father, and he evidently saw in the conversos at least a partial solution to his financial difficulties. It had long been illegal for conversos to leave the peninsula, but in 1601, the duke of Lerma, the king’s favourite, proposed that this ban should be lifted in return for a payment of 170,000 cruzados.42 While this made a substantial difference to the royal coffers, it also triggered an alarming exodus, as many of the conversos took the opportunity to move to somewhere they could practise their religion more openly. Although the lifting of the ban was declared to be permanent, the conversos had little confidence that the situation would remain static, and so many sought to leave as soon as they could. Philip’s readiness to compromise on his religious principles for financial gain then drew in the papacy. In August 1604, he received permission from Pope Clement VIII (under whom the philosopher, astronomer and kabbalist Giordano Bruno had been executed for heresy in 1600)43 to release more than 400 Portuguese conversos, and to pardon them for their offences, in exchange for a eye-watering payment of almost 2 million ducats.44 Many of these conversos descended on the court, where they found various ways of buying their freedom: they made loans to the royal treasury, offered bribes to important ministers (including the duke of Lerma), and more generally provided their financial and entrepreneurial expertise. For a short while, they enjoyed considerable freedom from persecution: virtually no conversos were brought before the Spanish Inquisition in the period between 1604 and 1610. However, this remained a precarious situation. The conversos were already aware of the ways that the Moriscos were then being treated. Philip II had tried unsuccessfully to drive them out during his reign, and Philip III embraced this policy following his 167

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION accession. In April 1609 he issued a decree expelling these people from his kingdom; this was timed to coincide with the twelve-year truce with the Netherlands (forced on him because of his financial difficulties). Somewhere between 200,000 and 300,000 former Muslims left the kingdom between 1609 and 1614; as with the Jewish expulsion previously, a proportion of those who left would return in due course.45 This had a significant financial impact on Spain, but it also demonstrated the readiness of the monarchy to take a hard line on religious matters, which was, of course, a concern to the Jewish converts who had only recently arrived. This situation was compounded in 1610 when the concessions that had been granted to them only six years before were withdrawn, and they became subject to renewed persecution from the Inquisition. The reign of Philip IV (r. 1621–40) also began with the monarchy in a financial crisis, which gave an extra impetus towards a policy of tolerating the Jews. Even in 1619, Martín González de Cellorigo, an employee of the Inquisition of Toledo, where he was in charge of confiscated property, wrote a Plea for Justice (Alegación en que se funda la justicia) in which he argued that Portuguese ‘New Christians’ should be tolerated on the grounds that they were vital to the interests of the Spanish economy.46 Philip concurred with this position, and in 1626–27 he persuaded the Inquisition to provide those Portuguese financiers suspected of crypto-Judaism with temporary pardons, so that they might continue to do business. Indeed, by the end of his reign, half of the loans owned by the crown were owed to Portuguese New Christian bankers.47 Philip made his position on these converts quite clear when he remarked: ‘Considering how well I am served by these people and how satisfied I am with their good behaviour, I order that they be treated like other natives of these kingdoms, and not as they have been treated up to now. They must not be vexed or harassed.’48 In 1634, moreover, the first minister, Gaspar de Guzmán, count-duke of Olivares, put forward a plan to allow exiled Jews to return to Spain, in the hope that this might make it possible for Spain to recapture the Netherlands as part of a highly ambitious foreign policy.49 These various developments of course concerned the Inquisition and also Catholic traditionalists within the kingdom, who saw religious ideals being rejected in favour of a much more economically minded pragmatism from the government. During the early seventeenth century, debates about limpieza de sangre – ‘purity of blood’ – resurfaced. The limpieza statutes were regarded by many in Spain as unfair, in that they might be used to discriminate against people who had even quite distant Jewish antecedents. For Portuguese New Christians, the situation was even worse: they had been Jews much more recently, and it was thus far harder to conceal these careerhindering connections. 168

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE This period witnessed several significant attacks on New Christians led by the Inquisition. In July 1632, the Inquisition held an auto da fé in Madrid, where six of the seven Judaisers who were burnt at the stake were of Portuguese origin. Alongside this there were attacks on Portuguese financiers. In 1630, Juan Núñez Saravía, who had helped to broker a loan of more than 2 million ducats for the crown three years earlier, was accused of crypto-Judaism before the Inquisition of Toledo. He was found guilty, fined 20,000 ducats, and emerged from prison six years later with his career in ruins. In 1636, Manuel Fernández Pinto, another important financier, was also charged and convicted: more than 300,000 ducats’ worth of goods were confiscated from him.50 The pressure on the Portuguese New Christians in Spain only increased after Portugal’s secession from Spain in 1640. They were now more clearly identified as political enemies, and consequently were less likely to receive sympathetic treatment. Various financiers who had previously served the crown now came under attack. In the 1640s and 1650s, there was a significant increase in the number of trials of crypto-Jews in Toledo and Cuenca. For instance, Diego de Saravía, another member of that very wealthy family, was called before the Inquisition in 1641, and was fined more than 250,000 ducats’ worth of gold and silver.51 The Inquisition was, at least officially, motivated by the desire to protect the Catholic faith, and to save the souls of those who came before it; but it is difficult not to deduce from fines of this scale that its officers also saw an opportunity with the conversos to raise considerable revenues, and also perhaps to drive them back out of the kingdom. Indeed, in the face of this renewed pressure, many converso families decided that it was no longer tolerable to remain in Spain. The diarist Jerónimo de Barrionuevo observed in June 1655 that ‘the Cardosos have fled to Amsterdam, taking 20,000 ducats in wool and 250,000 in gold. It is said that this was because the Inquisition wished to arrest them, and so they are in search of a land where one lives in greater freedom than in Spain’. In September he commented further on the campaign being waged against this group of New Christians: ‘Since last Saturday the Inquisition in Madrid has imprisoned seventeen Portuguese families . . . In the street of the Peromonstenses they are hurriedly building a prison big enough to hold all the people that fall every day into the trap. It is said for certain that there is not a Portuguese of high or low degree in Madrid who does not judaise’.52 The statistics certainly support the view that conversos had again become a principal target for the Inquisition. Sixty-one per cent of the trials held by the Inquisition of Cuenca (which included many of the cases which had emanated from Madrid) in the 1650s and 1660s concerned crypto-Judaism. Likewise in Toledo, more than three 169

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION quarters of the cases heard in the 1650s related to this charge, compared with around 12 per cent of cases in the first decade of the century.53 In 1680, this campaign reached its climax with a major auto da fé held in Madrid on 30 June: fifty-six Judaisers were ‘reconciled’ (severely punished), of whom twenty-two, mostly of Portuguese origin, were executed. Thereafter the persecution tailed off, and by the end of the century this group of New Christians had been largely eliminated from Spanish society. Thus, in the late sixteenth century, and the first half of the seventeenth, the treatment of the New Christians fluctuated considerably. At times, especially when the crown was in particular financial difficulty, they might be treated relatively generously, receiving permission to conduct business and protection from the Inquisition. Not only were the costs of this protected position exorbitant for the conversos, but it cannot have seemed likely that those privileges would remain in place any longer than it was expedient for the monarchy to support them. The expulsion of the Moriscos in 1609 perhaps most clearly illustrated the countervailing desire to strengthen Catholicism in Iberia, by removing non-Christians; this was then complemented by the greater activity against conversos by the Inquisition in Portugal in the late sixteenth century, and that in Spain in the seventeenth century. Perhaps most fundamentally, in order to remain in Iberia, these conversos had to present themselves as Christians. In the face of such relentless pressure, it is hardly surprising that they should look to move elsewhere if the opportunity arose. The Netherlands One of the most distinctive features of the Jewish experience in the seventeenth century was the shift to northern Europe, and especially the emergence of the Netherlands as a refuge. Given the contrast with the growing pressures on Jews in Spain, discussed in the previous section, and the association between the Dutch Republic and Calvinism, it can be tempting to attribute the growth in size of the Dutch Jewish community to the sympathy of the Reformed faith, and also to draw a stark contrast between Catholic and Protestant attitudes towards the Jews. Such an approach is, however, simplistic. Not only were Iberian attitudes towards the Jews in practice more mixed, as we have just seen, but also, as we will suggest in this section, the acceptance of Jews in the Netherlands was, to an extent, achieved despite the Reformed presence, rather than because of it. The Dutch Revolt had broken out for a number of reasons. The Holy Roman Emperor Charles V had inherited lands in Burgundy in 1515, and over the succeeding decades brought more of the surrounding area under his control. In 1548, Habsburg 170

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE sovereignty over the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands was confirmed.54 While Charles did seek to bring greater unity to this state, he made a point of respecting their individual privileges, in order to maintain their support. His son Philip II, who succeeded him in 1555, had been born in Spain and lacked his father’s advantage of being considered a local (Charles had been born in Ghent, spent the first fifteen years of his life in the Netherlands and spoke Flemish). He then compounded this by trampling over the rights of the Dutch provinces, which only served to exacerbate their sense of being ruled over by an unsympathetic foreign ruler.55 These political tensions provided the backdrop against which Protestantism made a decisive impact on the Netherlands. While only some elements of the local elites were personally sympathetic to Protestant ideas, many more believed in the principle of religious freedom, and resented the imposition of a strident Catholicism from Spain.56 Matters came to a head in the spring of 1566 when Margaret of Parma, Philip II’s halfsister and regent in the Netherlands, relaxed the anti-heresy laws to placate the local nobility, a move which provoked a furious reaction from Philip.57 Exploiting this breakdown of the political order in the so-called ‘Wonderyear’, Protestant preachers began delivering large open-air sermons during the summer of 1566. These were then followed by a period of iconoclasm in the autumn and winter, as the Protestants sought to make certain Catholic churches suitable for Protestant worship by removing Catholic imagery.58 Philip II responded by sending the duke of Alva with a substantial army to restore Catholic order. Alva’s Council of Troubles (also known as the ‘Council of Blood’), tried more than 12,000 people for their involvement in these events, over 1,000 of whom were executed.59 This violent response pushed Protestantism temporarily back underground, but in 1572 a wider conflict broke out; this would continue for almost eighty years, finally achieving resolution in 1648, as part of the wider peace negotiations which brought the Thirty Years War to an end.60 This, then, was the landscape in which Jews making their way to the Netherlands found themselves. Given the subsequent flourishing of the Jewish community there, it can perhaps seem inevitable that Iberian Jews should have ended up in the Netherlands, but of course that was not the case. Jews and conversos, in Iberia and elsewhere, may well have known that there was no Inquisition in the Netherlands (though the threat that this might be imposed from Spain remained), but they would likely also have known that the practice of Judaism was still prohibited.61 During the late sixteenth century, Antwerp had been the most welcoming city in the Netherlands for Jews, but many of its Jewish inhabitants had been driven out in 1571, while the Sack of Antwerp in 1576 caused some of the remaining Jews to leave for places like Cologne.62 Attempts 171

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION by the Christian authorities to build this community up again, for instance by inviting in Jews from Frankfurt, came to nothing. Instead, in the last years of the sixteenth century, the Jews looked elsewhere and established communities in places such as Hamburg, Emden, Rouen and Amsterdam.63 Jews, bringing with them trade links with the Levant, Morocco and the Caribbean Antilles, had begun to arrive in Amsterdam, especially from Portugual, from about 1595. In fact, the location was largely a matter of chance. The initial settlers had already been rejected by Middelburg and Haarlem. Moreover, as Jonathan Israel has noted, Amsterdam specialised in trade in large, low-value produce, which was not the area in which Jews typically had expertise.64 Nonetheless, it provided a welcoming home: the city was during this period emerging as a haven for religious refugees, acting as home to Protestants from elsewhere in the Netherlands, Huguenots from France and dissidents from England. A key early role in nurturing the nascent Sephardic Jewish community was played by Moses Uri Halevi, a rabbi who had previously served the Ashkenazi Jews of Emden, the city just over the German border which had been so important in sustaining the Dutch Revolt in its early stages.65 Halevi first started holding small Jewish services in his home from 1603. By 1608, the Portuguese Jewish community of Amsterdam had reached about 200 inhabitants, and a second congregation was formed.66 The start of the Twelve Years’ Truce (1609–21) between Spain and the Netherlands encouraged considerable and immediate migration towards Amsterdam, not least because the Iberian conversos were not sure for how long this agreement would hold. By 1614, when better documentation begins, there were 164 Jewish families in Amsterdam, constituting between 500 and 600 people, out of a total population of around 100,000 (roughly 0.5 per cent).67 More Ashkenazi Jews would arrive, particularly in the wake of Chmielnicki Uprising (1648–57) in Poland–Lithuania, and the restoration of peace to the Holy Roman Empire following the 1648 conclusion of the Thirty Years War (which, among many other things, saw equality established between the three main Christian confessions – Catholicism, Lutheranism and the Reformed faith – in the empire, many national borders being redrawn, and the Spanish give up their claims to the Dutch Republic). By the middle of the century, there were perhaps 3,000 Jews in Amsterdam, and by 1674, this may have reached 7,500 (of whom around 2,500 were Sephardim, and around 5,000 Ashkenazim), constituting approximately 4 per cent of the city’s population.68 Alongside this expansion in size, the Jewish community also gradually gained recognition. Initially, its members had to present themselves officially at least as 172

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE Christians (as they had been before they arrived). However, in the rather more relaxed atmosphere, they were able to start the process of embracing a Judaism they had never truly known. This was often symbolised by the adoption of a Hebrew name: for instance, Diogo Nunes Belmonte, a wealthy merchant who arrived from Lisbon in 1607, became Jacob Israel Belmonte.69 Especially in the early years, considerable discretion was necessary for Amsterdam’s Jews. According to a resolution of 1598, they were allowed to buy burgher rights ‘on the condition that before making their oath they be warned that in this city no other religion can nor may be practised than that practised publicly in the churches’.70 Clearly the burgomasters who wrote this instruction appreciated that the new arrivals might wish to practise Judaism, which suggests their pretensions to being converts were not especially persuasive. In light of that, their statement actually seems quite moderate: perhaps they felt – as, for example, had the civic authorities in Strasbourg discussed above (pp. 71–2) – that it was sufficient simply to have asserted the principle of Christian conformity. They may have been less inclined to ensure that this instruction was followed in practice. The ambiguity of their position is revealed, for instance, in the various concessions that they were prepared to grant to the Jews, presumably in acknowledgement of their economic contribution. In January 1612, a contract was concluded that arranged for the building of a synagogue, right in the centre of the Jewish quarter, behind the Breedestraat.71 It was only to be 60 feet by 30 feet in size, but symbolically this was still a significant development, as it sanctioned a place for the Jews to worship more formally. At the same time, it is worth noting that this synagogue could only be built on the condition that a Christian would own it, and lease it to the Jews.72 This neatly encapsulates the spirit of compromise that characterised the early development of this community. In addition, in 1614, the Jews bought land in Ouderkerk, just outside the city walls, which they intended to use as a cemetery. Since 1607, they had been obliged to use land they had purchased some 25 miles north of the city at Groet, near Alkmaar.73 Two previous requests to use land closer at hand had been turned down, and this one also met with a protest, ultimately unsuccessful, from the local people, who wanted to prevent the Jews from burying their dead there.74 The failure of that protest does perhaps suggest that the city leaders were becoming progressively more sympathetic to these Jewish arrivals. This ambiguity also shaped the way that the Amsterdam Jewish community remembered its origins. According to a story that circulated later in the century, while Rabbi Halevi was conducting a service for Yom Kippur, the house in which it was 173

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION taking place was raided by the civil authorities, who believed a secret Catholic service was being held, and Halevi and his son were both arrested.75 In their defence they emphasised their opposition to Catholicism, and assured the city authorities that their international trade would be of great benefit to Amsterdam, whereupon the Court of Justice permitted them to settle. While the service and arrest did occur (though in 1603, not 1595 as the story maintained), they were in fact arrested for receiving stolen goods and circumcising adults. It nonetheless suited the interests of the Jewish community to believe that their predecessors had adhered to its principles right from the outset, and also to maintain that they were perceived as far less of a threat than Catholicism.76 Even once they had received recognition, Amsterdam’s Jews still sought to behave discreetly. One of the rabbis wrote in 1616 to a correspondent in Salonica, extolling the secure circumstances in which the Amsterdam community found itself. He continued: ‘Among other things they permit every man to believe in God as he pleases, and each lives according to his own faith, on condition that he not vaunt it about in the streets that he rejects the faith of the city’s inhabitants.’77 Especially in the earliest years, worship took place within private houses. Like the Catholics alongside them, the Jewish communities used schuilkerken (‘clandestine churches’) which were intended to fulfil their religious needs without causing undue offence to their Protestant neighbours.78 The location of the synagogues were not themselves a secret, but their understated appearance, at least in the early years, was intended to help preserve the outward appearance of a Reformed city. The synagogue built in 1612, mentioned above, for the Neve Shalom congregation, certainly adhered to this principle: it was both small and discreet.79 In 1639, the Beth Israel congregation’s synagogue was completed: while it was less discreet, it was designed in the style of the palace of Prince Johan Maurice van Nassau-Siegen in the Hague, and so did not have the appearance of a synagogue per se.80 Further, the Mahamad – the community’s governing body – passed various pieces of legislation that were intended to mitigate their presence. In 1639, for instance, it was established that ‘bridegrooms or mourners must not travel in procession, to avoid the problems which can occur with crowds and to avoid being noticed [in an unfriendly way] by the inhabitants of the city’.81 Similarly, in 1690, the Mahamad decreed that members of the community should not appear in costumes or masks in public during Purim, ‘since some of our enemies use this [custom of] masquerading to demonstrate their ill intent toward us’.82 All of this demonstrates that tensions between Jews and Christians were still present, and also that the Jewish leadership was ready to regulate the behaviour of the community when necessary. 174

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE The emergence and development of the Jewish community in Amsterdam was shaped in large measure by the context of the Dutch Revolt and, more specifically, by the ways the Reformation had impacted on the Netherlands. A sizable group had wished to be able to practise Calvinism freely: this desire first found expression in the ‘Wonderyear’ of 1566–67, discussed above. Many more of the Dutch, however, simply resented the imposition of Catholicism, and potentially the Inquisition, from Spain.83 This desire for religious freedom, which had been among the causes of the Dutch Revolt, then found expression in the Union of Utrecht, the formal statement issued by the seven northern provinces of the Netherlands in 1579, in which they declared that they had thrown off the Spanish yoke.84 Article 13 of that treaty asserted that ‘each individual enjoys freedom of religion and no one is persecuted or questioned about his religion’.85 The authors of this decree were, of course, thinking about relations between Christian confessions, but by phrasing it as broadly as they did, they introduced at least an element of ambiguity: were Jews also to be entitled to this freedom of religion? Moreover, this assertion of religious freedom as an essential principle of the nascent Dutch Republic was merely the most recent in a broader range of factors which meant that animosity towards the Jews was less pronounced than in many other parts of the continent. First, there was the Netherlands’ well-established reputation for toleration, perhaps most famously exemplified by the great humanist Desiderius Erasmus (though, as discussed in Chapter 1, he does not seem to have escaped the anti-Jewish sentiment of the era), but also in a broader culture of acceptance of different religious viewpoints which had meant that the Netherlands were a fertile place for the Reformation, including some of its more radical elements.86 Second, there had been very few Jews in the Netherlands in the Middle Ages, so there was no tradition of anti-Jewish legislation or writing against them. Consequently, Catholics, rather than Jews, seem to have been regarded as the greater threat: their churches, rather than synagogues, were more likely to be attacked in riots.87 Third, the relatively small size of the Jewish communities meant that, so far as we can tell, they were not generally perceived as a great threat. Also of significance was the somewhat precarious position which the Calvinist Church occupied in these areas in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries.88 In 1581, Catholic worship was prohibited in the Dutch Republic. Calvinism was the formal church of the northern provinces, but it remained a minority religion: it has been estimated that, in the early seventeenth century, only between 10 and 20 per cent of the population were members of the Calvinist Church.89 Lutheranism and Anabaptism both continued to have their own supporters, but more of an issue was the high standard set for entry to the Reformed Church. Full membership was only open to those who 175

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION submitted to the confession of faith and the discipline of the consistory. The vast majority, by contrast, were liefhebbers (‘sympathisers’), who attended sermons and so forth, without fully committing to the church’s strictures. There was a very clear contrast between this voluntary arrangement and the complete acceptance that characterised the Calvinist community of Geneva. All of this meant that it was rather harder for the Calvinists to determine how the Jews should be treated. The early treatment of the Jewish community in Amsterdam involved considerable negotiation between the political and religious authorities. As noted above, when the first Portuguese New Christians bought their rights as burghers, they were reminded that they were expected to behave as Christians.90 Similarly, when the Jewish community bought a house which was to be converted into a synagogue, the city council, having been alerted to this situation by members of the Reformed Church, insisted ‘that no one of that [Portuguese] nation may live in that building and that no gatherings may be convened there nor any ceremonies of their religion practised, under penalty of demolition, to the ground, of that house or building and the prohibition to practise their religion in any other places within this city and its jurisdiction’.91 As a result, ownership of this building was transferred to Nicolaes van Campen, a member of the city council: this arguably made it easier for the Jews to claim that this remained private worship, while also making it harder for the Reformed Church to continue to oppose this initiative. Perhaps most striking of all was that Jewish worship was never formally approved or condemned in Amsterdam. Rather, there was simply a growing, if still tacit, acceptance of the Jewish presence. In 1616, a ‘Jewry Statute’ was passed, according to which Jews were not allowed to speak or write against the Christian religion; they were not to attempt to convert (or circumcise) Christians; and they were not to have sexual contact with Christian women.92 Indeed, the Reformed Church had fairly consistently sought to oppose Jewish advances in the Netherlands. This had been apparent even in the sixteenth century. William of Orange (‘the Silent’; 1533–84), who had been appointed stadtholder (‘governor’) of the provinces of Holland, Zeeland and Utrecht by Philip II of Spain in 1559, but who had since converted from Catholicism to Lutheranism and then to Calvinism, largely for political reasons, sought to invite Ashkenazi Jews to the Netherlands in 1578, but he was prevented from doing so by the Reformed clergy. In 1608, Abraham de Coster, a Reformed minister, published his History of the Jews in an effort to undermine the Jews’ request for a synagogue.93 He spoke of the Jews as an ‘unclean people’ who sought to establish a synagogue ‘in which they can perform their evil and foolish ceremonies and spew forth their gross blasphemies against Christ and 176

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE his holy Gospels, as well as their curses against the Christians and Christian authorities’.94 This work, which drew heavily on Margaritha’s Whole Jewish Faith (1530) and Johannes Buxtorf ’s De synagoga judaica (1603), sought to provide a summary of Jewish beliefs, customs and rituals.95 In fact, many of the leading Calvinist theologians advocated a more repressive policy towards the Jews. For example, de Coster argued that limits should be imposed on Jewish migration to the city.96 Gisbertus Voetius (1589–1676), professor of theology at Utrecht, argued more strongly that all of the Jews’ synagogues should be closed down, their books censored, the Jews dispersed through the city, and no further Jews admitted.97 Nicolaus Vedelius (1596–1642), a professor at Deventer, attacked Judaism, insisting that a Jew could not be pious, and that Judaism was little more than idolatry.98 In addition, Constantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648) and Johannes Cocceius (1603–69) were appointed professors for ‘Jewish controversies’ at the University of Leiden in 1633 and 1651 respectively, which meant they had responsibility for responding to the challenges presented by Judaism.99 The conversion of the Jews remained a particular aim. In his ‘Remonstrance’, a set of proposals for how the Jews should be treated, the famous jurist Hugo Grotius (1583–1645) had touched upon this theme: The ministers of the Christian religion will be allowed to enter the assembly of the Jews, with the knowledge of the Magistrate and after the worship of the Jews, to instruct and admonish them in the Christian religion, while the Jews are obliged to listen and remain present; under a penalty of 100 gulden for every person who leaves. This is being practised in Rome, to wit: the Jews are forced to listen to Christian sermons . . . And truly this is the only means to make these poor people understand their error, provided that one uses for this purpose learned and wise people well versed in the Hebrew language.100

Cocceius believed that the mass conversion of the Jews would be greatly beneficial for the Reformed Church, and allow them to return to the Holy Land.101 Similarly the Frenchman, Pierre Jurieu (1637–1713), who studied in the Netherlands, saw the conversion of the Jews in apocalyptic terms, believing that the Jews, like the convert Paul before them, would become among the most enthusiastic Christians in the Last Days.102 The records of the Amsterdam Reformed Church contain many anti-Jewish comments and allegations about Jews’ rude behaviour and blasphemy, but the church unable to prevent public Jewish worship, or to impose restrictions on Jews’ daily life. 177

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION For instance, the church sought to restrict the number of synagogues in the city, and to limit what the Jews could read. But in these efforts they were generally hindered by the civil authorities, who seem to have tried to do the minimum necessary to keep the clergy on side. In 1619, for example, the government of Holland (the province in which Amsterdam is located) prohibited the imposition of a ‘distinguishing sign’ (such as a hat or badge) on the Jews in that area. Later, when one pastor complained in 1645 that ‘he had noticed that streets and bridges were decorated with large branches in honour of the Jewish Feast of Tabernacles’, the burgomasters promised to investigate, but in fact did nothing until the festival was over.103 Thus, while the Calvinist city of Amsterdam did provide a welcoming home for Jews, it is apparent that this was much more the product of the pragmatism of the city elders, whose actions only ever partially intersected with the desires of the Reformed clergy. In large measure, moreover, this reflects the relatively weak position that the clergy occupied during this period.

R At the same time as the Dutch Republic, and Amsterdam in particular, provided a new home for Jews, one can also see Dutch Calvinists increasingly using the history of Israel as a model to help explain their own circumstances. While we have already looked at this as a phenomenon within Reformed culture more broadly, in Chapter 4, this association seems to have been particularly strong in the Netherlands from the late sixteenth century onwards.104 As early as 1567, when support for the Reformation collapsed in the face of Catholic repression following the ‘Wonderyear’, the lyrics of one popular song presented the Sea Beggars, privateers working in support of the Reformed cause, as the people of Israel when they faced exile, and saw this as a cause for optimism: ‘And, to conclude, we hope still/ To rise like Israel from shame/ And see Pope Leo brought to ruin/ Although at the moment we are playing/ a foolish game in Babylon,/ ‘twas also the same with Israel’.105 Likewise, in a ‘New Song’ of 1575, its author warned: ‘You princes should know/ And remember at this time,/ Read through all the Prophets/ To see how Israel fared.’106 As mentioned previously, in many writings of the time, Protestant leaders such as William of Orange and his son Maurice were portrayed as David, Moses and Gideon; the duke of Alva and the king of Spain were portrayed as Pharaoh, Goliath and Saul. Such analogies worked as a source of consolation and encouragement for a group of people facing difficulties and hardship. But these parallels could also be made in more specific fashion. For instance, in a pamphlet published in October 1574, in the aftermath of the relief of Leiden, the 178

CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE author referred to events in the history of Israel in which towns were liberated in a way that seemed almost miraculous: ‘Yet the Lord has now placed us in a century that we can live through and see with our own eyes these very same things. We regard these things with no less wonder and because of this believe that the Lord’s hand has not been shortened, and is no lesser in power and miracles than in the Old Testament’.107 This was, argued the pamphlet’s author, proof that ‘He is the same unchanging God, who has always stayed the same, and that He carries out today just the same wonderful punishments and just the same wonderful deliverance according to His justice and mercy’.108 In the context of the Dutch Revolt especially, this notion that the same God that had delivered the Israelites was now on their side was clearly a source of considerable support and encouragement. Moreover, it also provided an intellectual framework through which the Dutch could understand their predicament. For instance, Jacobus Revius (1586–1658), a Dutch preacher and poet, drew the following analogy in relation to the Twelve Years’ Truce, which began in 1609: ‘The Jews marched through the desert for forty years/ In trouble, danger and want of everything:/ But in the end and after that sad time/ Joshua led them into the promised land./ The war forced us to march through the desert for 40 years/ Now the Truce opens to us the promised land.’109 More than that, the model of Israel provided a further encouragement to battle. In a poem of 1571, Laurens Reael (1583– 1637) encouraged the Dutch to wage war against the Catholic forces: ‘Set forth you who escaped the gallows/ Remember what crimes Babylon has committed against my people,/ Wreak vengeance as my faithful envoys,/ Repay twofold the wrongs done to you’.110 This message was well suited to justifying the conflict with Spain, and encouraging those who were involved in it. It was, however, arguably less effective when it came to describing the situation in which the Dutch church found itself following the separation of the northern provinces. As we have seen, there was a clear tension between the Calvinist clergy, to whom the image of Israel meant a great deal, and the secular leaders, who may have been sympathetic to some of its ideals, but were more concerned with maintaining public order. As Jodocus von Lodensteyn of Utrecht pointed out in his Contemplation of Sion, ‘a man may be learned and wise, and possess God’s spirit (an example to all, leading a godly life, hard working and labouring fruitfully in Christ’s Church), but he has only to make a small mistake, and that is in the view of the authorities, and the church is in trouble and will certainly perish if that man is not debarred and judgement pronounced within a few days’.111 As one historian has commented, the Reformed clergy were like Old Testament prophets, advocating their message of reform, but watching it often fall on deaf ears.112 179

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R The Treaty of Westphalia of 1648 brought to a close the Thirty Years War, which had dominated Europe’s political landscape for the previous three decades; it has often also been regarded, more symbolically, as bringing the end to a period of almost 150 years of religious conflict. That is perhaps a little too neat: religion did continue to act as a motive in conflicts in the second half of the seventeenth century. At the same time, though, religious identity was becoming increasingly bound up with the nature of the nation-state, as a result of which it was not always easy to separate religious from dynastic concerns. In this world, the Dutch Republic was rather anomalous. It was officially a Protestant nation, but one in which only a minority of its inhabitants were fully-fledged members of the Reformed Church. Most of its civil authorities were similarly sympathetic to the cause, rather than fully committed. It was this situation, as much as longer traditions of toleration, which made it possible for Jews to find a place in the Netherlands. While it has often been suggested that it was Protestantism which encouraged a more tolerant outlook, in some ways the reverse was the case: Jews were permitted to settle in Amsterdam and elsewhere principally because the secular authorities appreciated the economic benefit that the Jews could provide, in the face of opposition from the Protestant clergy. This in turn reveals the importance of the strength of the religious authorities in relation to the state. In Spain, the Inquisition continued to wield considerable power, and played an important role in driving a growing number of Iberia’s conversos to other parts of the continent, where they felt they might find a more welcoming home. This involved more than just Spain’s long-time Dutch enemy: as we have seen, groups of Sephardi Jews were increasingly welcomed in Italy, and began to establish communities in France and Germany as well. The situation was certainly more complicated than simply a hostile Catholicism and a welcoming Protestantism. Indeed, it is also worth noting that Amsterdam was exceptional, even within the Dutch context. While a handful of other locations in the Netherlands did start to admit Jews, none did so with anything like the same level of enthusiasm as Amsterdam. It would be unwise, therefore, to suggest that Amsterdam embodied a Dutch, let alone a Protestant, attitude towards the Jews. At the same time, though, this was a remarkable community, and one which was in turn able to take a lead in promoting the return of the Jews to England, as we will see in the next chapter.

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8

R HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS Messianism, Millenarianism and the Hope of Israel

Sabbatai Zevi (or Tzevi) was one of the most remarkable figures of the seventeenth century.1 He was born in Smyrna (now Izmir in Turkey) in the Ottoman Empire in 1626, the son of Mordecai Zevi, a successful merchant who had moved his family there from Greece. In around 1644, he began to study various kabbalistic texts, most notably the Zohar (‘Radiance’), a collection of mystical writings which had been compiled in the thirteenth century.2 Possibly suffering from some kind of mental illness – which manifested itself in great emotional highs, but also recurrent depression – Sabbatai also started to break various Jewish laws at about this point.3 Most provocatively, he began to utter the Tetragrammaton: ‘YHWH’, the ‘ineffable name’ about which Luther had written just over a century before (see above, p. 66), was meant only to be spoken aloud by the Jewish high priest in the Temple in Jerusalem on Yom Kippur.4 One passage from the Zohar was interpreted by some to mean that the Jewish Messiah would appear in 1648. In June of that year, when he was still not yet twentytwo, Sabbatai started to believe that he was the Messiah. According to Baruch of Arezzo, who wrote a biography of Sabbatai shortly after his death, this realisation caused him great anguish. Baruch records how one day while he was studying the Torah with the rabbis, Sabbatai began weeping. When the rabbis asked him why this was, he replied: ‘I know I am the messiah, and that against my will I will perform strange acts against the Lord and his Torah, therefore do I weep.’5 Nonetheless, Sabbatai’s assertion that he was the Messiah (not to mention other claims, including the ability to levitate), antagonised the local rabbinate who banished him from Smyrna in the early 1650s.6 He spent much of the next decade travelling widely, managing to get himself expelled from both Salonica (Thessaloniki) and Constantinople during this period. He returned briefly to Smyrna in the early 1660s, before journeying to Rhodes, Jerusalem and then Cairo, where he would stay during 1663–65. While he was there, Sabbatai started to hear stories about an individual reputed to have miraculous powers who he hoped might be able to help him: this was 181

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Nathan of Gaza (1643–80) who, although he was only twenty years old, was already renowned for his kabbalistic learning. Sabbatai travelled to Gaza to meet him, hoping that Nathan would relieve him of the belief that he was the Messiah. Instead, the opposite happened: Nathan had already had a vision that Sabbatai was indeed the Messiah, and therefore sought to persuade him of this.7 In May 1665, Sabbatai departed from Gaza, leaving Nathan who immediately embarked upon a campaign to publicise Sabbatai’s Messiahship more widely. For instance, in a letter of September 1665 to Raphael Joseph Halabi, a wealthy Jew who worked for the Ottoman government in Cairo, Nathan set out his messianic vision: ‘A year and a few months from today, he [Sabbatai] will take the dominion from the Turkish king without war, for by [the power of] the hymns and praises which he shall utter, all nations shall submit to his rule.’8 He went on to explain that ‘there will be no slaughter among the uncircumcised [i.e. the Christians] except in the German lands’ (it seems likely that this exception was made in light of the recent Chmielnicki massacres in Poland–Lithuania, in which perhaps more than 50,000 Jews had been killed). At the same time, ‘the ingathering of the exiles will not yet take place at that time, though the Jews shall have great honour, each in his place’.9 Meanwhile, Sabbatai continued on his travels. Wherever he went, he was met by enthusiastic crowds. By September 1665, he was back in Smyrna, but seems then to have remained quiet for a time. On 12 December, however, again according to Baruch of Arezzo’s account, he launched an attack on the Portuguese synagogue there, breaking down its doors (which had been closed against him) with an axe, berating the congregation who were then at prayer, before appointing one of his brothers the king of Turkey and another brother the emperor of Rome.10 Then, at the end of the month, he left Smyrna for Constantinople where Nathan of Gaza had prophesied that he would assume the sultan’s crown, and take his kingdom.11 But, as soon as he arrived, in February 1666, he was arrested and imprisoned.12 Before long he was moved from his cramped prison to a fortress in Gallipoli, where he was able to entertain visitors (his jailers seem to have been quite ready to accept payment to permit these visitors to have an audience with Sabbatai, even if they did not share the belief that he was the Messiah), while stories of miracles circulated. During this period, Sabbatai’s fame continued to spread across Europe. For instance, Henry Oldenburg, the secretary of the Royal Society in London, wrote to Baruch Spinoza, the radical Jewish-Dutch philosopher, ‘Here [in London] everyone spreads a rumour that the Jews having been dispersed for more than two thousand years are to return to their country. Few in this place believe it, but many wish for it’.13 182

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS There was, moreover, widespread interest from the Jewish communities of Europe. According to one Christian source, in March 1666 the Jews of Avignon in France were making plans to relocate to Palestine.14 Meanwhile, in Frankfurt am Main it was reported that ‘The Jews eagerly received the vain reports and rumors that came from Vienna, Prague, Amsterdam and Poland. They truly believed in their deliverance and spoke about it in Christian houses as well as in the ghetto and in the synagogues, where they prayed for it’.15 Everything changed, however, in September 1666. The Sultan, Mehmed IV, had Sabbatai brought to his court at Adrianople (modern Edirne), where he was presented with an ultimatum: he should prove his divinity by enduring a volley of arrows and emerging unscathed, risk death, or convert to Islam.16 He chose the last of these options, immediately assuming the name Aziz Mehmed Effendi. The Sultan, who presumably appreciated it was better to treat his high-profile visitor well, rather than create a martyr, rewarded Sabbatai with an honorary position at his court.17 Even so, Sabbatai’s apostasy was a crushing blow for his many followers, the Sabbateans, though some, like Sabbatai himself, preferred to believe his conversion was part of the divine plan. Eventually, the Sultan tired of Sabbatai, who was believed to have resumed practising Judaism, and was no longer concealing his contempt for Islam, and in 1673 he was sent into exile in Ulcinj, in modern Montenegro, where he remained until his death in 1676, ten years and one day after his apostasy.18 Though his conversion and death largely brought the movement to a close, groups of Sabbateans continued to exist in Turkey, Italy and Poland. The Sabbatean movement was, in fact, the most significant messianic movement since the first century bce. Much of its success reflected the context in which Sabbatai emerged, and the particular stresses which were apparent in the middle of the seventeenth century. While 1648 marked the end of the Thirty Years War, it was also the year in which Bogdan Chmielnicki led an army of Cossacks in a series of attacks against Jewish communities in Poland–Lithuania, as part of a wider assault on the established order of that society.19 Closer to home, in August 1648, the ruthless and highly unpopular Sultan Ibrahim (‘the Mad’) who had been Ottoman ruler since 1640 was deposed and killed by his Janissaries.20 But the appearance of, and enthusiasm for, Sabbatai also drew on longer traditions of messianic thought. In fact, beliefs concerning the Messiah arguably constituted the most important division between Christians and Jews. For Christians in this era, both Catholic and Protestant, the Messiah had already come, in the form of Jesus of Nazareth. The failure of the Jews to acknowledge this fact, they believed – whether 183

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION through ignorance or stubbornness – was their greatest flaw, and the main reason why they should be subject to Christian rule. Jews, on the other hand, regarded Jesus as a ‘false Messiah’, and still awaited the true Messiah, who would deliver them from the low position in which they currently found themselves. It is, in fact, striking that the era of the Reformation should see both a heightened Jewish messianism but also greater Christian millenarianism. Members of both faiths saw many signs around them which suggested that the day of deliverance was near at hand. For Jews, the arrival of the Messiah would initiate an age of peace, which would also see them return to the Holy Land. For Christians, the advent of the millennium would see the second coming of Christ and the world enter its Last Days, a period which would be marked, among other things, by the conversion of Jews across the world to Christianity. The initial outbreak of the Reformation had prompted greater eschatological thinking on the part of both Christians and Jews. For some (especially Protestants), the Reformation was at least in part a response to millenarian anxieties prompted by a crisis in the Catholic Church (above all, reflected in the idea that the Papacy was the Antichrist); for others, including many Jews, the Reformation was in fact further evidence that Christianity was nearing collapse, and that the millennium was near at hand. Such concerns reappeared in the middle decades of the seventeenth century: indeed, with what some believed to be the discovery of some of the ‘lost tribes’ of Israel in the New World, the two narratives intersected, as both Christians and Jews envisaged that the world would enter its final era. This, moreover, was the context in which Jewish readmission to England was achieved. Jewish Millenarianism Messianism was a recurrent idea in Jewish thought.21 While there were references to a Messiah (‘anointed one’) in the Hebrew Scriptures, the full understanding of the concept was developed subsequently. According to this idea, a Messiah would appear who would redeem the Jews, usher in a new era of peace in which all of mankind would worship one God, and restore the Jews to Israel. While the emergence of Christianity had been a product of this belief (in that Jesus of Nazareth was considered the Messiah by those who would become the earliest Christians), Jews considered him to be a false Messiah, and therefore continued to await his arrival. For Maimonides, writing in the twelfth century, belief in the future appearance of the Messiah was, in fact, one of thirteen principles required of every Jew. As he wrote in his discussion of the laws: ‘The Messiah will arise and restore the kingdom of David 184

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS to its former might. He will rebuild the sanctuary and gather the dispersed of Israel. All the laws will be reinstituted in his days as of old . . . But whoever does not believe in him or does not await his coming denies not only the rest of the prophets, but also the Torah and our teacher Moses’.22 The upheavals of the Reformation era inevitably gave renewed attention to these ideas. Above all, the expulsion of so many Jews from Spain in 1492 – incidentally, a year in which many expected the redemption to begin23 – was pivotal. Such a massive displacement was traumatic, not just for those Jews who were expelled from Spain (as we saw in Chapter 2) but also for communities across the continent and beyond, who were reminded once more of their vulnerability in Christian society. This upheaval inevitably encouraged some Jews to resort to mystical thinking and messianic traditions as a means of making sense of their experience; but the fact that so many Jews from Iberia – which had one of the strongest kabbalistic traditions – were then spread across communities around the Mediterranean can only have further encouraged this development.24 Safed, a town in Galilee, soon emerged as a particular centre for the development of kabbalistic thought in this period. Not only had Safed been home to a number of distinguished Jewish scholars in the past, but there was also one line of thought which held that the Messiah would first reappear in Galilee, and quite likely in Safed itself.25 One of the most distinguished figures associated with Safed was Moses Cordovero (1522–70), whose surname suggests that his family may have come from Córdoba, which may in turn suggest that his presence in Safed was a product of the expulsion from Spain.26 Among his many writings, he produced a very substantial commentary on the Zohar, and contributed a great deal to the systematic understanding of kabbalistic thought. By contrast, Isaac Luria (1534–72), known as ha-Ari, ‘the Lion’, who only spent the last years of his life in Safed, wrote very little, but exerted a great influence on those kabbalists who came after him. A particular feature of his thought was a concern with the cosmos, which had been broken following God’s withdrawal from it; mystical thought, in his view, provided the means by which the cosmos might be repaired.27 Many of the Jews who engaged with the Kabbalah during this period sought to establish when the Messiah might arrive. To do this, they frequently made use of ‘gematria’, according to which the letters of the words in the Torah are ascribed numbers, from which calculations can be made. All of this was based on the idea that the Scriptures convey multiple messages, only some of which have yet been understood. The mystical ideas of the Kabbalah purported to offer a means of uncovering more of those meanings. 185

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION For Luria, the arrival of the Messiah was imminent: he seems to have believed that this might occur in 1575. On one occasion, he asked his followers to travel with him to Jerusalem on the Sabbath. When they proved reluctant, he blamed them for delaying this event: ‘Woe unto us that we have not proved worthy to be redeemed. Had you promptly and unanimously replied that you were ready to go, Israel would have then and there been redeemed. For the hour had come but you were not ready’.28 As discussed in Chapter 2, Isaac Abravanel (1437–1508), a wealthy Portuguese Jew who in exile found his way to Venice, believed that the Messiah would most likely arrive in 1503, or at least that signs of his imminent return – such as the destruction of Rome – would occur by then, though he did subsequently revise this calculation several times, finally alighting on 1591. At the same time, in his Salvation of the Annointed, he argued against those who claimed the Messiah had already come.29 Likewise, the German Asher Lämmlein, who also travelled to Italy at the start of the sixteenth century, evidently anticipated the imminent arrival of the Messiah. According to the sixteenth-century Jewish historian David Gans, Rabbi Lemlin announced the coming of the Messiah in the year 360 (1500/1 [sic]) and his words were believed all through Israel’s dispersion. Also among the Gentiles were rumours, and many of them also believed him . . . And I, the author, heard from my old teacher, Rabbi Eliezer Trevis of Frankfurt, that he spoke the truth, and performed signs and miracles, and that probably our sins caused His failure to come.30

But through the course of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, further Jewish authors made other predictions. Abraham ben Eliezer Halevi (c. 1460–1530), a Spanish mystic and kabbalist, who believed the Ottoman conquest of Constantinople in 1453 had been the first sign of the beginning of the messianic age, which would soon be followed by the fall of Rome, believed the Messiah himself might then arrive in around 1530.31 Mordecai ben Judah Dato (1525–91?), an Italian rabbi and kabbalist, suggested that 1575 might witness the arrival of the Messiah. According to Azariah dei Rossi, ‘a famed kabbalist and scholar, Mordecai Dato, wrote a special book, named after his brother, Migdal David, in which he convincingly proved that the great hope of Israel for the beginning of redemption and the building of the temple will be fulfilled in the year 1575.’ Dei Rossi went on to acknowledge that ‘a whole group of the “sons of prophets” . . . are waiting for the year 1575 as the day of God, in which God will lead forth his people in joy 186

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS to everlasting salvation’.32 David ben Solomon ibn Abi Zimra, meanwhile, calculated that the messianic age would begin in 1640.33 This activity also encouraged the appearance of several false messiahs. Perhaps the most striking of these was David Reubeni (also Reuveni), who claimed to be ‘the son of King Shlomo, may the memory of the righteous be a blessing, and my elder brother, Yosef, sits on the throne in wilderness of Habur and rules over thirty myriads, over the tribes of Gad and Reuben and the half-tribe of Manasseh’.34 His real name is unknown, though it has been suggested that he had been a Jew who had been captured by Muslims and then released. His mission, he claimed, was to hasten the redemption. In 1523, he arrived in Venice, where he appealed to the Jewish community to aid him in gaining access to the pope; while many doubted his claims, some did give him assistance. In February 1524, according to his memoirs, he arrived in Rome ‘mounted on an old white horse . . . I entered the house of the pope, still riding on the horse, and then entered the presence of the cardinal, Gudio [Egidio da Viterbo] and all the cardinals and officers came to see me.’35 With the support of the Hebraist Cardinal Egidio, Reubeni was then able to arrange a meeting with Pope Clement VII, through which the pope ‘listened to what I had to say politely and said “This matter has come forth from God!” ’.36 Reubeni requested that the pope broker a deal between Reubeni’s forces and the Christian world in a compact against the Ottomans, and asked for letters of introduction to Emperor Charles V and Francis I of France. While Clement was concerned by the Ottoman threat, he delayed and only after a year did he provide letters of introduction to the kings of Portugal and Ethiopia. He then headed to Portugal. As a near contemporary Jewish historian wrote: ‘In those days [1525] there appeared at the court of the king of Portugal a Jew, David by name, from a distant land, India. And David said to him, “I am a Hebrew and I fear the Lord God of the heavens. My brother, the King of the Jews, has sent me here to you, my lord king, for help.” ’37 John II of Portugal welcomed him, apparently believing that his claims about the Messiah were correct, though he refused to provide him with the ships or weapons that he requested.38 While he was in Portugal, Reubeni met Diogo Pires (d. 1532), a converso from Lisbon who had become an official in the court of appeals. Pires was so impressed by Reubeni that, following a vision, he asked to be circumcised by him; when Reubeni refused the request, Pires circumcised himself, converted to Judaism, and took the Hebrew name Solomon Molko.39 Reubeni, who was held responsible for the conversion, was forced to leave Portugal, and suggested Molko come with him. Molko travelled to Salonica where he undertook study of the Kabbalah, and started to build a group of 187

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION followers around him. He regarded the sack of Rome in 1527 as evidence that the delivery of the Jews was near at hand, and so headed to Italy in 1529, where he preached about the Messiah.40 By this time, Molko had come to believe that he was the Messiah. Remarkably, Clement VII protected him, even defending him against accusations of Judaising. In 1530, Molko reconnected with Reubeni in Venice, and the pair of them then travelled to Charles V, whose help they sought against the Turks. But Charles V was rather less sympathetic than the pope: he had Molko arrested and transferred to Mantua, where he was burnt at the stake for refusing to accept Christianity.41 Many of his followers refused to accept that he had died, and continued to regard him as the Messiah. In the context of the Reformation it is striking that these false Messiahs should have received a sympathetic reception from Catholic leaders, and particularly from the papacy; at the same time, it is equally noteworthy that it was Holy Roman Emperor Charles V, the great protector of the Jews, who should take responsibility for resolving the situation and putting Molko to death. Christian Millenarianism Christians, too, anticipated the end of the world. Such ideas had been uttered periodically in the middle ages. Of particular note was the Cistercian Joachim of Fiore (1135–1202). Significantly, he argued that the millennium would occur within human history, rather than signalling its end.42 He divided history into three ages on the model of the Trinity: the age of the Father corresponded to the era of the Old Testament; the age of the Son began with the birth of Christ; and the age of the Spirit, which would begin, he calculated, in 1260, and would last for a thousand years. In this period the church would be overthrown, and instead those friars who devoted themselves to spiritual and mystical study would rule. His views were condemned at the Fourth Lateran Council, but they remained influential on subsequent millenarian thinking.43 Similar was Girolamo Savonarola (1452–98), a Dominican monk from Ferrara. Having made a number of what appeared to be successful prophecies (such as the French invasion of the Italian peninsula by France in 1494), he was swept to power in Florence on the wave of great popular acclaim, displacing the renowned Medici family as he did so: in his sermons he condemned the corruption of the church and the decadence of the Renaissance.44 Most famously, his puritanical campaign involved the so-called ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ of 1497, when his supporters burnt thousands of objects which might be considered sinful (such as specific books, works of art and playing cards) or which reflected an unnecessary attention to one’s appearance (such as mirrors and cosmetics). 188

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS Also central to Savonarola’s brief hold on power in Florence were his millenarian predictions.45 As he explained in a book summarising his visions and prophecies, since his first arrival in Florence, ‘I preached to the people of Florence, continually stressing three things: first, the future renovation of the Church in these times; second, the great scourge that God would bring on all Italy before such a renovation; third, that these things would come soon . . .’.46 In his sermons, moreover, he increasingly presented Florence as a new Jerusalem, which would become the focal point for the new age.47 In one famous sermon delivered in January 1495 and immediately turned into a pamphlet to help disseminate his message further, he insisted: ‘But you, Florence, heard with your ears not me but God . . . and therefore, you, Florence, will not have the slightest excuse, if you do not mend your ways’, before going on to demand, ‘all of Italy must be turned upside down, Rome as well, and then the Church must be renewed . . . You should believe . . . for God has said it to you rather than I’.48 The advent of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, with its renewed attention to the Scriptures and heightened concern with salvation and spirituality, revitalised millenarian thinking.49 The Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster was characterised especially by the fact that its leaders anticipated the world’s imminent end. Unwisely perhaps, however, those leaders gave clear indications of dates on which this would happen. When the world did not come to an end at Easter 1533, as they had said it would, their claims to divine inspiration began to seem increasingly flawed. Likewise, it is evident that millenarian expectation was one of the main factors which added particular urgency to Luther’s reform campaign. The conversion of the Jews was often a critical component of Christian millenarian thinking.50 This was clearly a consideration for Martin Luther in writing That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew with a view to converting Jews to the Christian cause. As the Reformation developed, numerous theologians devoted considerable efforts to determining how Romans 11 (‘and all Israel shall be saved’) should be interpreted. In the seventeenth century, this theme received renewed attention, particularly in England. Again, this was in large measure a response to external events and a growing sense of impending crisis. These included the apparent discovery of one of the lost tribes of Israel in the New World, the continuing conflicts in Europe, and, closer to home, the Civil War (1642–51). The last of these involved the execution of King Charles I in 1649, and the replacement of the monarchy with a republican Commonwealth, which was overseen by Oliver Cromwell, the Lord Protector between December 1653 and his death in September 1658, and then his son Richard, before the Stuart monarchy was reestablished with Charles II in May 1660. These events 189

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION contributed to a breakdown of order which included, most obviously, the collapse of censorship, making it much easier for controversial ideas to be published in popular pamphlets and works of theology and thus to reach a wider audience.51 One of the most striking developments of the civil war era, was the emergence of various radical groups, particularly in the late 1640s, including the Diggers, the Fifth Monarchy Men, the Quakers and others.52 While these groups all had their own agendas, they were linked in both their desire for social reform and their readiness to draw on the Bible for inspiration. It has been calculated that almost three quarters of the works written by Presbyterian and Independent authors published between 1640 and 1653 in England expressed millenarian expectations.53 Not only that, but a number of their authors also tried to calculate when the millennium might begin.54 For some, 1656 seemed likely, on the basis that Noah’s Flood was believed to have happened when the world was 1,656 years old, while Matthew’s Gospel was interpreted as meaning that the millennium would be of the same length.55 The astrologer Simon Forman sought to analyse the Bible with reference to the restoration of the Jews, the Antichrist and the end of the world. The astrologer William Lilly (1602–81) used the stars to predict in 1651 that ‘we Christians’ would liberate Palestine from the Turks so that the Jews might return. Indeed, the idea that the time would soon be right for the Jews to return to Israel achieved quite wide circulation in the seventeenth century.56 This was often regarded as one of a series of phenomena by which the impending millennium would be signalled: this model involved the collapse of the Catholic Church (under pressure from Protestantism), the collapse of the Ottoman Empire (and hence the collapse of Islam) and the ‘restoration’ of the Jews to Jerusalem, all of which would be followed by the arrival and spread of the kingdom of Jesus Christ throughout the world.57 Such views were especially expressed by Puritans, in England and America, though this idea resonated more widely, finding expression, for example, in Milton’s Paradise Regained, where he has Jesus say: ‘Yet he at length, time to himself best known/ Rememb’ring Abraham, by some wondrous call/ May bring them back repentant and sincere . . ./ While to their native land with joy they haste . . .’58 For many Protestants, though, Jews were viewed with quite mixed emotions. This ambiguity is exemplified by the Quakers. Margaret Fell (1614–1702), known as the ‘mother of Quakerism’, is a particularly good example. As she lived in Northumberland, in the north-east of England, it is unlikely that she had met any Jews herself, but in 1656 and 1657, in the immediate aftermath of the Whitehall Conference (see below, p. 195 ff.), she wrote several pamphlets with which she hoped she might convert Jews to Christianity. Several were translated into Hebrew, quite likely by Spinoza.59 In one of 190

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS these texts, for instance, she asserted her conviction that England had a pivotal role to play in the apocalypse. She describes England as ‘a Land of gathering, where the Lord God is fulfilling his promise’ and goes on to remark that God ‘assembles the out-casts of Israel: and gathers together the dispersed of Judah, from the foure corners of the earth, and this is fulfilled in this our day in this Nation’.60 In addition, as the historian Claire Jowitt has shown, the Jews also played an important metaphorical role in Fell’s thinking about what constituted true faith.61 In her writings, she made a distinction between ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ Jews. By the former term, Fell meant those believers who focused on outward, ritualised religious practices: these included not only Jews, but also non-Quaker Christians. Inward Jews, by contrast, were those who followed their faith spiritually, and here she had in mind the Quakers specifically.62 This illustrates quite effectively the way in which the Quakers, like various Protestant groups before them, identified with the Jews: as a persecuted minority in seventeenth-century England, they found parallels in the sufferings of the people of Israel. Samuel Fisher, another early Quaker who had studied Hebrew at Oxford, travelled to the Netherlands in 1657 where he began attending a synagogue and interrupted the service as he would have done at a Quaker meeting; while discouraged from continuing to do this, he still accepted the invitation from Jews in the community to discuss religious matters with them further in their own homes, often for several hours at a time.63 Subsequently he lived in various Jewish communities in Germany and Italy, including that of Livorno, where his assimilation was sufficient for him to be allowed to stay in the ghetto. That is not to say that the Quakers’ attitudes towards the Jews were universally positive. For instance, George Fox (Fell’s husband), addressed his A Visitation to the Jews (1656), a work intended to convert Jews into Quakers, to ‘the Jews scattered, who are the seed of God, to whom the promise belongs, who have long had the words, but mist the promise’. Then, even in the first paragraph, he asserted that the Jews ‘put Christ to death and slew him’, before going on to insist that their current state was largely deserved.64 Similarly, Fell, in her later writings from the 1660s, took a much harsher line towards the Jews. In A Call to the Universal Seed of God, for instance, she attacked the ‘unbelieving Jewes’ of the Bible who encountered Jesus but failed to respond appropriately to his message.65 In these later works, moreover, Fell was more concerned to demonstrate that Jesus was the Messiah. It seems these works were intended for an exclusively Christian audience; there was no attempt made to translate them into Hebrew, which does suggest that Fell had given up any realistic hope of Jewish conversion.66 191

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Puritans and Jews In her religious settlement of 1559, Elizabeth I had attempted to heal the religious divisions in England prompted by the Reformation by adopting a position of compromise: a degree of religious freedom was granted, so long as people demonstrated themselves to be loyal to the state. A small but vocal minority, who regarded themselves as the ‘godly’ or the ‘elect’ (but whose enemies dubbed them ‘Puritans’), however, complained that England was ‘but halfly reformed’ and pressed for further religious change.67 The accession of Charles I in 1625 only served to increase the concerns of this group about the religious future of the nation. Not only was he married to the Catholic Henrietta Maria of France, but also, in 1633, he appointed William Laud (1573–1645) as archbishop of Canterbury. Laud would introduce a range of religious reforms intended to impose greater uniformity and clerical authority upon the kingdom; especially to the Puritans, however, it looked like he was attempting to reintroduce Catholicism.68 Like the Calvinists, with whom they had much in common, the Puritans engaged in rigorous Bible study, devoting particular attention to the Old Testament.69 In addition, millenarianism also played a rather more significant role in their theology. Most mainstream Protestants in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries assumed either that the millennium referred to a period in the past (whether before the corruption of the apostolic church by Catholicism or the whole Christian era) or else was a purely spiritual phenomenon.70 For some Puritans, however, the millennium was an altogether more immediate concept; and for many of them, the Jews would play a critical role.71 In fact, the first signs of this aspect to their thought appeared in the late sixteenth century. In 1590, Andrew Willett (1562–1621), a clergyman who would go on to become a prolific author, wrote a full-length work in Latin on the ‘calling of the Jews’.72 In the early seventeenth century, he was then followed by a number of other authors. For instance, Thomas Brightman (1562–1607), another cleric, wrote several works in which he interpreted the Song of Songs, Daniel and the Book of Revelation.73 According to Brightman, the millennium had already been underway for around 300 years, and would soon enter its final phases. These would involve the fall of Rome, the conversion of the Jews, and the destruction of the Turkish Empire.74 He anticipated that the conversion of the Jews would take place in 1650, and the Day of Judgement before the end of the century.75 The idea of the conversion of Jews received particular attention from Puritan authors. For example, in 1608, Thomas Draxe (d. 1618) wrote a commentary on Romans 11, entitled The World’s Resurrection, or the Calling of the Jews, in which he asserted that

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HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS the Jews’ conversion ‘is like to follow the burning and destruction of Rome, for then the stumbling blocks that the Papists offer them by their imagery, invocation of Saints, Latin service, and abominable and most senselesse transubstantiation, shalbe removed and taken away’.76 He then went on to note that ‘there shalbe some reasonable distance of time betweene the burning of Rome and the end of the worlde, in which it is most consonant to truth that the [Jews] shalbe called for their conversion in the last generall signe and fore-runner of Christs second comming so far forth as the scripture revealeth unto us’.77 Similarly, Sir Henry Finch (d. 1625), a lawyer, published anonymously The Worlds Great Restauration. Or The Calling of the Iewes in 1621, in which he claimed that it would not be long before Christ came to reign on earth, and that the Jews would convert and govern with Christ.78 William Gouge, a Puritan preacher, published the work and contributed a letter to the reader. However, this work was interpreted as a challenge to the monarch, James I: as a consequence, Finch and Gouge were imprisoned and the text was suppressed. For many Puritans, there was, moreover, a belief that England had a special part to play in the divine plan.79 Since the break with Rome and the establishment of the Church of England under Henry VIII in the 1530s, it was believed that England was not just ‘a chosen nation, but chosen above all nations’, as Edmund Calamy, the Presbyterian and historian put it in 1642.80 But, as the literary scholar Achsah Guibbory has shown, this view had important implications for how the English viewed the Jews of the Old Testament: on the one hand, again like the Calvinists, there was a strong motive for identifying with the people of Israel; but on the other, there were obvious tensions between two nations, both of whom regarded themselves as ‘chosen’.81 Alongside this, the Puritans – like many of their Protestant counterparts in continental Europe – demonstrated a heightened interest in the Hebrew language, not least as a means of better understanding the Old Testament.82 Indeed, several authors produced Hebrew grammars, including William Robertson’s Gate to the Holy Tongue (1654–55) and John Davis’s A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Tongue (1656), which was in fact a translation of Buxtorf ’s Hebrew grammar.83 Particularly notable is that both of these works were written in English, rather than Latin, with the intention of maximising the number of people who would have the opportunity to learn Hebrew. In the scholarship on this subject, this attitude is often described as ‘philoSemitism’.84 This terminology is rather problematic, for at least two main reasons. First, just as ‘anti-Semitism’ is rather anachronistic when applied to the early modern period (in that it relies on a racial/genetic understanding of Jewishness, which emerged 193

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION only in the nineteenth century), so too does this counterpoint. Second, the term implies a more positive attitude towards the Jews than was actually the case. Most of the figures who are generally described as philo-Semites valued the Jews not on their own terms, but rather because of the role they could perform. Wanting Jews in the country in order that they could convert to Christianity, thereby heralding the Last Days, could hardly be construed as genuinely sympathetic. Nonetheless, because of their enthusiasm for the Old Testament, some of their religious practices, and also their advocacy of Jewish readmission, Puritans were frequently accused of Judaising by their opponents. Even in the sixteenth century, John Whitgift (c. 1530–1604), who would subsequently become archbishop of Canterbury under Queen Elizabeth I, had accused the Puritan churchman and academic Thomas Cartwright (c. 1535–1603) of Judaising. This was on the grounds that he had defended the Presbyterian model for the Church of England, in light of the fact that Moses had appointed ‘elders’ among the Israelites (despite the fact he had sought to distance himself from Judaism in other respects).85 In the early seventeenth century, the Sabbath again became an issue which prompted accusations of Judaising (as it had been for some of the more radical elements of the Reformation on the continent – see above, pp. 53–9).86 The Puritans insisted that the sanctity of the Sabbath should be maintained by avoiding any inappropriate activities. In 1617, King James I issued his Book of Sports, which listed the sports and recreations which one could undertake on Sundays and other holy days. In the first instance, this pertained only to Lancashire, where there was a dispute over the issue between Puritans and the clergy (many of whom were Roman Catholic).87 The following year its remit was expanded to the whole country. In 1633, the text would then be reissued by James’s son and heir, Charles I (r. 1625–49). In the wake of the publication of the Book of Sports, various accusations of Judaising were made against Puritans. For instance, John Traske (c. 1585–1636), a Puritan clergyman, was arrested in 1618, on the grounds that he had preached that various Jewish laws – including those which prohibited the consumption of blood and pig flesh, and those which endorsed the Saturday Sabbath – had not been ended by the advent of Christ; instead, he had asserted that the Christians should continue to adhere to them.88 Traske was expelled from the ministry, fined £1,000, sentenced to life imprisonment, and had the letter ‘J’ burnt into his forehead to demonstrate to all who met him that he had been found guilty of putting forward Jewish opinions.89 In 1620, he wrote Libertie from Judaisme in which he sought to distance himself from those charges.90 194

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS In fact, Traske’s case was one episode in a broader discussion of Sabbatarianism in seventeenth-century England.91 Lancelot Andrews (1555–1626), the bishop of Ely and a Hebraist himself, argued against Saturday sabbatarianism. As he explained: ‘It is good work to make a Jew a Christian, but to make Christian men Jews, hath ever been holden a foul act, and severely to be punished.’92 The renowned statesman Francis Bacon (1561–1626) expressed concern that the attention generated by Traske’s case was encouraging ordinary people to learn Hebrew, presumably in order to read the Scriptures in their original languages.93 In a Brief Refutation (1618), ‘B.D.’ (John Falconer) had characterised Traske as a ‘Puritan minister lately grown half a Iew in his singular opinions concerning the old Sabaoth, and Moysaical difference of meates’ and insisited that his ‘only learning is a litterall knowledge of Scriptures, and some little Hebrew and Greeke lately learned for the understanding of them: which alone he holdeth sufficient’, on the basis of which ‘he deduceth . . . strange Conclusions and Distinctions’.94 This was in fact a recurrent idea in writings of the time. Thomas Rogers (d. 1616), chaplain to Richard Bancroft, the Archbishop of Canterbury, wrote a commentary on the 39 Articles (the key doctrinal statement of the Church of England) in which he argued that Puritan Sabbatarians were Judaisers.95 Similarly, in his satire Bartholomew Fair (1614), the playwright Ben Jonson presented a character with a stereotypical Puritan name: ‘Zeal-of-the-land Busy’; not only do the other characters refer to him as ‘Rabbi busy’, but he demonstrates a particular enthusiasm for pork, which he eats in great quantities in the final scene of act 3. In so doing, Jonson draws attention to the supposed connection between the two groups, while also attacking their hypocrisy.96 Oliver Cromwell and the Whitehall Conference At least officially, there had not been any Jews in England since their expulsion in 1290. In practice, however, at different times various small groups of Jews had lived in the country covertly.97 These included some of the Italian musicians at the court of Henry VIII, while in the second half of the sixteenth century there was a small community of crypto-Jews in London, and another even smaller community in Bristol.98 In the 1630s, there were a number of Jewish merchants living in London, who were obliged to behave as if they were Catholics (occasionally attending Mass in the chapels used by Catholic ambassadors in the city), even if their Jewish affiliation was effectively an open secret.99 Following the execution of Charles I in 1649, and the brief rule of Parliament, Oliver Cromwell (1599–1658) became lord protector of England in 1653. Cromwell’s 195

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION religious outlook is a complex and somewhat elusive subject. Having undergone a religious conversion in the 1630s, possibly following some kind of spiritual crisis,100 from that point on Cromwell would refer to religion with great regularity, in his many sermons and speeches. The exact nature of his religious attachment was quite opaque, but it does seem that he embraced a form of Puritanism.101 He considered himself to be among the elect, whom God had chosen for eternal salvation,102 and increasingly came to think of himself as serving a greater, divine purpose.103 This in turn manifested itself in a providential outlook: every victory was seen as evidence of divine approval, but when his plans failed, he wondered what he had done to provoke God’s anger.104 Cromwell was strongly anti-Catholic in some regards, viewing the pope as the Antichrist, and justifying the invasion of Ireland in 1649 as revenge for the Catholic violence of the Irish rebellion of 1641. Yet when he was lord protector, he did not attempt to suppress Catholicism in his kingdoms.105 Similarly, he was ready to accommodate a wide range of Protestant groups, though he drew the line at those radicals who, for instance, denied the Trinity. Indeed, one can discern in his attitude a general readiness to tolerate those who held different religious views from his own. As he wrote in 1648: ‘I have waited for the day to see union and right understanding between the godly people (Scots, English, Jews, Gentiles, Presbyterians, Independents, Anabaptists, and all)’.106 It is striking that Cromwell should include Jews in that list, but not Catholics. Discerning his attitudes towards Jews is again not straightforward, though there are fragments of evidence which suggest that he was sympathetic to their cause. For instance, in February 1655, Cromwell wrote to the king of Portugal on behalf of Manuel Martinez Dormido (also known as David Abravanel), who had arrived in England a few months earlier, requesting the return of his property which had been confiscated by the Inquisition following his arrest for practising Judaism in secret in the 1630s.107 In addition, Cromwell is known to have used Jewish spies for intelligence gathering at various stages through the 1650s. And, most significant of all, he was responsible for calling the Whitehall Conference, at which the question of the readmission of the Jews would be discussed. This sympathy for the Jews may well have been encouraged by his Puritanism, but it is difficult entirely to rule out the possibility that he was also acting out of pragmatism. The Whitehall Conference would take place in 1655, but it was the product of a gradual build-up. To some extent the ground had been prepared by the various Puritan writings of the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries discussed above. Momentum began to build, however, from the late 1640s. On 5 January 1649, Johanna Cartwright, and her son Ebenezer Cartwright, two English Baptists who were then 196

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS living in Amsterdam, sent a petition on behalf of the Jews to Sir Thomas, Lord Fairfax, the commander-in-chief of the Parliamentary Army during the Civil War, and the Council of War, in which they wrote that ‘your Petitioners humbly pray that the inhumane cruel Statute of banishment made against them, may be repealed, and they under the Christian banner of charity, and brotherly love, may again be received and permitted to trade and dwell amongst you in this Land [England], as now they do in the Nether-lands’.108 In the printed version of the petition, which appeared almost immediately, it was claimed that it had been ‘favourably received’ by the council. At the same time, it also encountered strong opposition. In an article in the weekly Royalist newspaper the Mercurius Pragmaticus, its author complained that it was ‘No marvell that those which intend to crucifie their King, should shake hands with them that crucified their Saviour.’109 However, the real driving force behind the Whitehall Conference was Manoel Dias Soeiro, better known as Rabbi Menasseh ben Israel (1604–57).110 Originally from Portugal, his family had arrived in the Netherlands in 1610, as part of the exodus from Iberia discussed in the previous chapter. In 1626, at the age of twenty-two, Menasseh established the first Hebrew press in Amsterdam, publishing a wide range of Jewish books in Hebrew, Latin, Spanish, Portuguese, Dutch and English, intended for both Jewish and Christian readers. Indeed, he was soon the most famous Jewish publisher in the world.111 Many of the works for Jewish readers were intended to help them to come to terms with the religion with which they were reacquainting themselves; as discussed in the previous chapter, many of those Jews who arrived from Iberia in Amsterdam (and elsewhere) had not been able to practise their Judaism in public, and often had only a very rudimentary grasp of its procedures. At the same time, though, Menasseh also had many Christian contacts and readers. He sought to demonstrate to them, whether they were sympathetic or hostile, that Judaism was not blasphemous, and that Jews were not the enemies of Christianity. A significant step towards the Whitehall Conference occurred in 1644, when Menasseh received a visit from Antonio de Montezinos, also known as Aaron Levi, a Portuguese converso. According to the account that was written following his return, Montezinos had travelled to the province of Quito in New Spain (now Ecuador) in 1642, where he claimed to have met a group of people who lived in the remote mountains but spoke Hebrew, could recite Jewish prayers, and declared themselves to be descendants of Reuben, the founders of one of the twelve tribes of Israel.112 According to the Hebrew Scriptures (2 Kings 17), the Northern Kingdom of Israel had in the eighth century bce been overrun by the Assyrians, driving out ten of Israel’s 197

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION original twelve tribes, leaving only the people of Judah and Benjamin. It had been prophesied that their reappearance would be another signal of the millennium.113 It would only be in 1650 that Montezinos’s account was brought to a wider audience, but the idea that the indigenous people of America were descended from the tribes of Israel gradually took hold. For instance, John Dury, a Calvinist minister from Scotland who had spent time in the Low Countries and Germany, subsequently recalled that ‘I was told of a Jew who came from America to Amsterdam, and brought to the Jewes residing there newes concerning the ten Tribes; that hee had been with them . . . and had conversed with some of them for a short space, and seen and heard remarkable things . . . whereof then I could not learn the true particulars.’114 A few years later, Dury was then consulted by Thomas Thorowgood, an English Puritan who was in contact with Puritans in New England, and who was just completing a work, Jewes in America, in which he argued that the indigenous Americans whom the Puritans were then trying to convert were descended from the ancient Israelites; a version of Montezinos’s narrative, written by Menasseh, was included in the volume.115 Thorowgood’s initial enquiry had prompted Dury to write directly to Menasseh for more information. Not only did Menasseh write back to Dury,116 but this exchange also prompted Menasseh to write his Hope of Israel, which was published in Latin, Spanish and English versions in 1650.117 In this work, the English-language version of which was dedicated to the English Parliament, Menasseh related Montezinos’s account, evidently hoping that this would encourage the English to invite the Jews to return to their country.118 Menasseh endorsed Montezinos’s claims that the people he had encountered were descended from the lost tribes, and argued further that others had found their way to China, Ethiopia, the Levant and the West Indies.119 Alluding to Isaiah, Menasseh asserted that the Messiah would gather all twelve tribes ‘from all quarters of the earth’ and bring them to Jerusalem where they would live under the ‘Fifth Monarchy’.120 He was reluctant to indicate when he thought this might happen, but the discovery in the New World, and the tribulations suffered by Jews – he singled out the Spanish Inquisition for particular criticism – were signs that this event was not far off.121 In September 1655, Menasseh travelled from Amsterdam to London, evidently at Cromwell’s invitation (Menasseh’s son Samuel having previously visited England to prepare the ground for him), and took up residence in an expensive part of the city near the Thames, quite likely at Cromwell’s expense.122 While in England, Menasseh wrote and published his Humble Addresses to the Lord Protector (1655), in which he argued that the change of government and Cromwell’s rise provided a new opportunity for the readmission of Jews to England. Referring again to ideas raised in the Hope of Israel, he 198

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS insisted that England was now the only part of the world without Jews: ‘We know how our Nation at the present is spread all about, and hath its seat and dwelling in the most flourishing parts of al the Kingdomes and Countreys of the World . . . except onely in this considerable and mighty Island.’123 In this work, Menasseh also countered the various charges that were often made against Jews, including their practice of usury, supposed ritual murder and their desire to convert Christians to Judaism. Conversely, he argued that Jews could make an important economic contribution to the kingdom. A few weeks later, Menasseh was invited to meet Cromwell personally, during the course of which he presented the Lord Protector with letters from Jewish communities elsewhere, and then set out a short list of conditions which would be necessary for the Jews to live in England, including the freedom to conduct their own business, to worship in synagogues and permission to buy land for a cemetery. Cromwell listened to Menasseh’s requests sympathetically, and recommended to his Council of State that it consider them more fully. To that end, they convened a group of twenty-eight men – including members of the clergy, politicians, lawyers, businessmen, and even Ralph Cudworth, Cambridge’s Regius Professor of Hebrew – who would reflect different perspectives on the key questions. The Whitehall Conference, as this became known, met over five sessions between 4 and 18 December. Henry Jessey (1603–63), a Baptist clergyman and scholar, and a strong advocate of Jewish readmission, wrote a short account of the Whitehall Conference, ‘because many good people in divers parts of this Nation, who have often prayed heartily for the Jews Conversion, have heard a Rumor of a late Debate at White-hall about the JEWS having a liberty to return into England, and are very desirous to know the Truth of things in those Proceeds, and what is the issue of those Debates’.124 As an appendix, purportedly to fill the remaining pages which would otherwise have remained empty, Jessey included Menasseh’s seven points, which were read out early in the discussions. These were: that the Jews should be accepted and protected from all wrongs; that they should have public synagogues; that they should have a cemetery; that they should be able to conduct trade, just like any other foreigners; that someone should be appointed by the Lord Protector to check their passports and receive their oath of loyalty; that Jews should be permitted to deal with any internal community issues themselves; and that any laws against them should be repealed.125 According to Jessey, Cromwell began the Whitehall Conference by directing the discussion towards two key issues: ‘1. Whether it be lawful at all to receive in the Jews. 2. If it be lawfull, then upon what tearms its meet to receive them’.126 In answer to the first question, the lawyers present reasoned that the original expulsion of the Jews in 199

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION 1290 had been issued by King Edward I, rather than by Parliament, and so, as the monarchy had been cast aside, that edict was no longer applicable. Consequently, they concluded, ‘there is no Law that forbids the return of the Jews into England’.127 Resolving the second question was rather harder, however. As Jessey’s account makes clear, opinions were widely divided. There were some, he noted, who felt that it was their Christian duty to yield to the request to readmit the Jews, not least because of the great adversities Jews currently faced on the continent, but also because in England it was most likely that Jews might be persuaded to convert to Christianity.128 On the other hand, ‘the most did fear, that if they should come, many would be seduced and cheated by them, and little good would be unto them’.129 Both sides interwove economic, social and religious arguments in support of their respective positions.130 One preacher, for instance, argued, ‘Though the Jews are now in hardness of heart, and worthy of punishments; yet we had need beware lest we be occasions of hardening them, or instruments of punishing them.’131 He then went on to refer explicitly to Theodore Beza’s commentary on Romans 11.18 to demonstrate his support for the idea of Jewish conversion. Another noted that the current situation meant that Jews were presently treated worse than Muslims.132 Other participants, by contrast, expressed anxiety that permitting Jews into England might lead to conversions from Christianity to Judaism. The fifth and final meeting was open to the public, and was intended to review proceedings before leading to a resolution. According to Paul Rycaut (1629–1700), who attended the meeting, and who would later lobby for the expulsion of the Jews under Charles II, the clergy reiterated their strong opposition to the idea of readmission.133 Then the merchants offered a summary of their position, expressing their concerns that Jews would behave dishonestly, and provide unreasonable competition for English traders. Rycaut went on to claim that Cromwell agreed with them, and also spoke against the Jews, but given his role in bringing the Conference about in the first place, this does not seem especially likely; at most, perhaps, he may simply have expressed sympathy with their views. All of this left Cromwell in a difficult position. According to Jessey, in the face of these objections, he ‘professed, that he had no engagement to Jews, but only what scripture holds forth; and that he had hoped by these Preachers to have had some clearing the case, as to conscience’.134 Nonetheless, he continued to hope for the conversion of the Jews in the fullness of time, and advocated that preaching should be used to bring this about. The Whitehall Conference thus closed inconclusively, though Cromwell evidently hoped that the issue might be resolved at a future date. 200

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R In the aftermath of the Whitehall Conference, both sides in the debate sought to further advocate for their respective positions. William Prynne, a Presbyterian and lawyer who had prosecuted Archbishop Laud in 1644 and who opposed Jewish readmission, wrote his Short Demurrer in 1656, and followed this up with a second enlarged edition which included a new second part.135 In these works he gathered together huge amounts of material, especially relating to the period before the Jews’ expulsion in 1290, in which he attempted to prove that it was impossible for Christians and Jews to live alongside each other. For instance, he claimed that many Jews had been ‘found guilty of all sorts of wickednesses, poysonings, the murder of many Children, forging of Letters, counterfeiting and corrupting of moneys, thefts, deceipts, and other villanies, whereby they offended the Divine Majesty’.136 In the same year, William Hughes produced his Anglo-Judaeus, in which he also attempted to draw on history to argue that Jews, ‘despised by all, and hated by most’ were not only anti-Christian but ‘Monsters and enemies of mankind’.137 In the same year, an anonymous pamphlet, The Case of the Jewes Stated, appeared which also attacked Jewish morals.138 Only six pages in length, this was clearly intended for a more popular readership. Again, it focused on the accusation of child murder: ‘When they were in England . . . the Jews used every year to steal a young Boy, the child of a Christian, and to circumcise him, and then in their synagogues sate in a solemn assembly, chusing one of themselves to be Pilat, who out of their Devilish malice to Christ and Christians condemned the child, and crucified him to death’.139 Jews, its anonymous author also alleged, ‘use filthy blasphemous words when they go out of their chamber to the stool’.140 He then went on to claim that they disparaged both Christians and Jewish converts. The text portrayed Jews as following endless rules, and superstitions, such as lying in bed with their heads facing south and their feet facing north, to increase the chance of having male children. ‘And their chamber morals are so lascivious . . . as is unfit for chaste ears’.141 Especially in a setting where Jews had for so long been officially absent, it is perhaps unsurprising that their possible readmission should have provoked such strong, if ill-informed, responses. Joseph Copley, an otherwise little known figure, issued a direct response to this pamphlet almost immediately. Copley noted that ‘a man would admire to find so much venome in the body of so little a Spider . . . this Fellows heart is filled with envy and malice; so his noddle is as well gifted with a goodly talent of beastly ignorance’, before proceeding to work through the accusations in the first pamphlet systematically, 201

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION pointing out errors or problems with the logic. For instance, in his discussion of the ritual murder allegation, he noted that it would hardly make sense for Jews to bother circumcising the child if they were just going to murder him, and nor would one of them take on the role of Pilate ‘when none of them that I ever spake with believe there was any such person’. He then went on to argue in favour of Jewish readmission, stating that to do otherwise would be to follow Catholic practice.142 Menasseh also responded to the various allegations made against the Jews in his Vindiciae Judaeorum (‘Vindication of the Jews’), a treatise of some forty pages, published in 1656.143 In particular, he sought to address six of the main accusations which were often levelled against Jews, working through these in turn. Almost the entire first half of the work was directed to addressing the first of these, namely ‘that strange and horrid accusation . . . that the Iewes are wont to celebrate the feast of unleavened bread, fermenting it with the bloud of some Christians, whom they have for this purpose killed’.144 In the remainder of his Vindiciae he rejected the idea that Jews were idolaters (instead explaining how they worshipped in the synagogue), denied that they cursed Jews, contradicting Johannes Buxtorf ’s claims (made in his De synagoga Judaica, which would be translated into English in 1663),145 as well as rejecting the accusations that Jews proselytised for their faith, or approached their business transactions in a deceitful manner. Finally, he denied the widespread rumour that the Jews wished to buy St Paul’s Cathedral to turn it into a synagogue. Readmission While Menasseh and his delegation hoped for a swift resolution to the matter, Cromwell, who appreciated that there was considerable opposition to readmission both within the Whitehall Conference and among the public at large, was more inclined to let the matter cool off. Cromwell died in September 1658, almost three years after the Conference had concluded, without returning explicitly to the question of Jewish readmission. That said, informal acceptance of a Jewish presence soon came into being. The context for this inadvertent decision was provided by the resumption of war between England and Spain in 1654 (this conflict would continue until 1660). As mentioned above, a small community of Sephardi Jews had been in existence in London for about two decades: while its members practised Judaism covertly in their own homes, they maintained the public pretence of being Catholics.146 In March 1656, Antonio Rodrigues Robles (c. 1620–88), a member of this group, was arrested on the grounds that he was Spanish, and so his goods might be confiscated by the crown. Initially, it seems, 202

HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS he attempted to claim that he was Portuguese (and so not an enemy), but when that failed he then insisted that he was a member ‘of the Hebrew nation’, rather than being Spanish. Later the same month, this community submitted a ‘Humble Petition’ to Cromwell in which they sought his protection. Again there was no formal response to the petition, but on 16 May 1656, Robles’s goods were returned to him. Effectively, this response implied that while being Spanish was unacceptable in England at this point, being Jewish was not. In the meantime, existing members of the crypto-Jewish community requested permission to worship as Jews, and to establish a cemetery. Once more, formal permission was not granted, but it seems likely that informal assurances may have been provided.147 In December 1656 the group rented a house which they intended to use as a synagogue; they began to hold ceremonies there from January 1657. The following month, Antonio Ferdinando Carvajal (c. 1590–1659), originally from Portugal, and Simon de Caceres (d. 1704) who had been born in Amsterdam, acquired land to be used as a cemetery. By the time that the monarchy was restored in May 1660, therefore, the London Jewish community had started to put down roots. The absence of formal legislation did perhaps mean that they were in England on a precarious basis; on the other hand, it also meant that there was no legislation for the new king to overturn, should he wish to reverse these advances. In fact, Charles II showed no particular interest in altering the situation. Indeed, by 1663, more than fifty more Portuguese Jews had joined the London community; these included Duarte de Silva and Rodrigues Marques, both of whom had accompanied Catherine of Braganza, the daughter of the king of Portugal, when she arrived in England to marry Charles II in 1662.148 In 1664, Sir Henry Bennett, the secretary of state, responded on behalf of the king to a further petition of the Jews, saying that the Jews might ‘promise themselves the effects of the same favour as formerly they have had so long as they demeane themselves peaceably and quietly with due obedience to his Majesties Laws and without scandal to his Government’.149 Jacob Sasportas (1610–98), the rabbi of the London community, similarly reported to a friend in Rotterdam that ‘we are free to practise our own true religion . . . a written statement was issued from him [Charles II] duly signed, affirming that no untoward measures had been or would be initiated against us, and that they should not look towards any protector other than his Majesty’.150 The readmission of the Jews to England, even if it was tacit rather than the product of a formal declaration, has been regarded as one of the most important moments in the history of Jews in the country; it has also been held up as one of the best exemplars 203

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION of English toleration. The reality, as this discussion has shown, was much more complicated. Religious arguments, for and against readmission, were interwoven with political and economic ones. None of them was sufficiently compelling to win the day in 1655. At the same time, it seems highly probable that the readiness of Puritans to argue in favour of readmission, at least in part influenced by their millenarian hopes, helped make the Jews’ return more acceptable. More than that, though, it demonstrates how the Jews continued to have a relevance for various Christian communities well into the seventeenth century.

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By the end of the seventeenth century, the Jews of Europe were in a very different position compared with where they had been at the start of the sixteenth. Spain had still not reversed its policy on Jews, but most other parts of Europe had become rather more welcoming to them in the interim. The Jewish communities of Amsterdam, Frankfurt am Main, Prague and Venice all exceeded 2,000 people for the first time in the seventeenth century, joining other cities, such as Rome, Cracow and Salonica which had already achieved that size in the sixteenth century.1 Jewish communities had also sprung up in places which had not traditionally been a home to Jews, especially in eastern Europe, while England and France, which had been the first territories to expel their Jewish populations back in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, had begun to reverse that policy. At the same time, it would be unwise to conclude that the position of the Jews in Europe was necessarily as positive as these trends might suggest. Anti-Jewish activity was still quite commonplace. The Spanish Inquisition embarked upon a new wave of persecution of conversos in the early eighteenth century in order to demonstrate its continuing relevance to the new Bourbon king, Philip V, who had taken the throne after the Spanish War of Succession. But even in places where Jews had been welcomed, there could be counter-reactions. Emperor Leopold I expelled the Jews from Vienna in 1677; the Empress Maria-Theresa expelled the Jews from Prague in 1745. The attempt to introduce the Jewish Naturalisation Act in England in 1753 – the so-called ‘Jew Bill’ – was also met with considerable popular opposition, and was repealed in 1754. In addition, patterns which had been established previously often continued to hold. Most obviously, numerous places did not overturn their expulsion orders, while many of the ghettos which had been a product especially of the sixteenth century survived into the eighteenth century. Although the regulations had often been somewhat relaxed, or at least were no longer enforced so rigorously, it was not until the time of Napoleon that the gates of many Italian ghettos were actually brought down. 205

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION In other words, while the situation had improved in various regards, it would be difficult to make the case that attitudes had been entirely transformed by 1700. The principal aim of this study has been to gauge the extent to which the Reformation affected the Jews of Europe, and Judaeo-Christian relations more broadly. In this regard, it is important to keep in mind that developments that happened in the wake of the Reformation did not necessarily happen because of the Reformation. There were many other factors in operation, some of them indirect consequences of that religious reform, but others that were quite separate. This inevitably means that it is not always possible to argue that the Reformation was the only, or even the principal, cause of particular developments; nonetheless, it is essential that due attention should be given to the Reformation as one of the contributing factors. The discussion presented here is intended to complement existing analyses of the changes which occurred in this period. Jonathan Israel, in particular, has argued for the significance of ‘mercantilism’ in bringing about a change in attitudes towards the Jews.2 It is undeniable that political philosophers did start to discuss ideas of ‘reason of state’, and that a growing appreciation emerged that the religious conflicts provoked by the Reformation were not going to be easily resolved. Likewise, rulers in need of money evidently were tempted to look towards Jews, whether as moneylenders and financiers or traders with often international networks. But while this general picture is persuasive, various caveats are necessary. First, it was hardly new that rulers should turn to Jews for financial assistance. This had, after all, been a major factor in the invitations extended to Jews into many cities in northern Europe in the tenth and eleventh centuries (and later). More broadly, we can see that there was an underlying tension which characterised rulers’ attitudes towards the Jews, between their piety (or, at least their desire to appear pious) and their pragmatism in seeking to maintain their states effectively. Second, the religious wars of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and especially the Thirty Years War, put significant pressure on the emerging nation-states, but this was not an inevitable or universal shift. That religion remained a concern is evident, for instance in Louis XIV’s expulsion of Protestants from France in 1685 following his Revocation of the Edict of Nantes, or the overthrow of James II in England in the ‘Glorious Revolution’ of 1688, and the subsequent insistence that British monarchs should not be Catholic. In both these instances, religious affiliation was absolutely central to the image of the monarch and his country. Indeed, the discussions around ideas of religious toleration were in large measure a product of these ongoing tensions. One cannot simply suggest therefore that a religious era had been replaced by a secular one. 206

CONCLUSION Third, it is not quite so straightforward to separate religious and secular motivations in this way. For a start, an individual might cite one while being motivated (whether consciously or not) by the other. These factors, moreover, were closely interconnected. A pious ruler of the right religion was an essential element in the running of an effective state. In the Middle Ages, the idea had prevailed of a state bound together with a single religion, which sought to demonstrate the inferiority of religious outsiders. This model had to be adapted to operate in a religiously plural world, but the ideal did not disappear. There is, further, a danger of adopting a Whiggish perspective, both in the belief that one can easily separate the two factors (a perspective which betrays a much more modern outlook), and in the assumption that the latter replaces the former, and without significant resistance. As we have seen, moreover, a complex set of themes were interwoven in the ways that Jews were treated and viewed by Christians in the wake of the Reformation. These included attitudes to contemporary Jews, which were in turn linked to the role that Jews had played in the Old Testament and also the role it was believed they would play in the future, as part of the Last Days. At the same time, their language and learning were of particular value in the confessional disagreements which were at the heart of the Reformation era. Indeed, their views on these subjects also help us better understand what was of most importance to the different Christian confessions. Alongside this, though, it has been important to emphasise the diversity of views expressed by members of each of the major Christian confessions. A first theme concerned how contemporary Jews should be treated. Augustine had insisted that Jews should be allowed to live among Christians because of their key role in the divine plan: they had looked after the Scriptures in an earlier age, and subsequently served as a reminder of what would happen if Christians failed to live a suitably holy life. This position had increasingly come under attack in the later Middle Ages, as clerics and rulers increasingly argued that Augustine’s injunctions no longer applied. Jews no longer adhered only to Mosaic Law, but had augmented this with the Talmud; for some, this justified treating them quite differently. Especially in the middle decades of the sixteenth century papal policy attempted to engineer Jewish conversions, whether through persuasion or by making their lives as hard as possible. In many other instances, policies had broadly the same effect: whenever a community was expelled, some of its members would look to convert; Luther and Bucer both advocated the greater subjection of the Jews; Pope Paul IV hoped that the greater use of ghettos would force Jews to convert. This increase in pressure on the Jews was the product of a range of factors. Many of these were theological: Jews were portrayed as ‘Christ-killers’, who stubbornly 207

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION refused to accept what seemed self-evident to Christians, namely that the Messiah had already arrived, and sought to cause harm to Christians or to convert them, and to insult Christianity. Other factors were social and economic: in particular, many were concerned by the apparent financial exploitation of Christians by Jews, particularly through moneylending, but also that their partial assimilation into Christian society could mean that they ceased to occupy the second-class position which many felt they deserved. Moreover, these two strands were often interwoven: it was believed that all efforts by Jews to cause harm to Christians – whether financially, physically or spiritually – were the product of an underlying anti-Christian sentiment. At the same time, though, we have seen much evidence that does not fit this pattern. A considerable part of the anxiety of religious and secular leaders was evidently a product of the fact that Jews were frequently well integrated into Christian society. In many parts of the continent, Jews and Christians collaborated on intellectual projects, they conducted business with each other, and even socialised and had sexual relations with each other. Inevitably the historical record has generated the largest amount of materials in relation to events that were traumatic and antagonistic, but it does seem that these were more the exception than the rule. One of the major strands in this study has been how Christianity dealt with a Jewish presence (if at all). As we have seen, a range of different approaches were adopted, as the authorities sought to get the balance right between maintaining the purity of the Christian community while, potentially, finding a place for the Jews in their midst. Because Jews did often find a place, it can perhaps seem that religious principles were secondary, or expendable, but this risks being simplistic, and demands an unreasonable attachment to preserving the integrity of that Christian community. After all, many other groups that were seen as problematic – including heretics, members of other religious groups, the impious and criminals – were also in practice members of every community. It was unrealistic to eliminate these elements entirely, but it was possible to implement measures which would minimise their impact. As we have seen, there were various mechanisms used whereby the dominant Christian society sought to regulate the Jewish presence. In some places, strict quotas were introduced: by keeping Jewish numbers at a very low level, the threat they posed was thereby minimised. Elsewhere – and Strasbourg is the clearest example of this – Jews were subject to strict regulation which made it possible for them to be present under certain conditions, but for the city still to be able to consider itself a pure Christian community free from Jews. The ghettos of Italy and the Holy Roman Empire fulfilled a similar function: rather than letting Jews live wherever they wished through 208

CONCLUSION the city, they were gathered together in one place, which made it easier to maintain the separation between the two faiths, and gave physical expression to the power relationship between the two. At the same time, these forms of compromise often allowed for a greater Jewish presence than would otherwise have been the case – indeed these were often among the largest Jewish communities in the continent – and hence a more radical solution to the issues that they raised. As in the medieval period, there were periodic explosions of anti-Jewish activity and violence: these included intermittent accusations of ritual murder, but also assaults on the ghettos of Frankfurt and Worms in the early seventeenth century, and in Poland in the middle of that century. But it is important to keep in mind that these were relatively small in number, and it would therefore be unwise to consider these as characterising Judaeo-Christian relations. That is not to deny that there was a tension to this relationship, which had the potential to boil over in particular circumstances. But it is worth noting that in these most famous examples of anti-Jewish activity, such events tended to be wrapped up in a broader range of factors, in which Jews were only one of several targets. This did mean that they continued to occupy a vulnerable position: Jews were there generally at the grace of Christian authorities, and there was always the possibility that their privileges might be taken away. The status of the Jews of the Old Testament – the people of Israel – was also a matter of concern for the various Christian churches. In light of the thinking of Paul and Augustine there was general acknowledgement of the important role that they had played in the divine plan. But through their failure to follow God’s injunctions, and especially to recognise the Messiah, they had lost their favoured position, as their current dispersal further proved. Each of the Christian churches sought to position itself as the rightful heir of the Jews, who had superseded the Israelites, and with whom God’s new Covenant had been made. At the same time, the readiness of certain groups – most obviously certain radicals and significant parts of the Reformed Church – to identify with the people of Israel added an extra dimension to this relationship. This identification provided a psychological and emotional encouragement, indicated the truth of their path and provided historical models from which they could draw comfort. At the same time, it did in a number of ways help to valorise that people in a way that had not been seen before. Likewise, the Christian confessions had to think about the role that Jews would play in the future. In particular, their conversion to Christianity became a significant issue. As we have seen, some were keen to encourage Jewish conversion in the near future, whether simply to remove the perceived threat posed by Jews in their midst or, 209

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION in the case of a figure like Luther, as endorsement of the religious path that he had embarked upon. A range of techniques were used in the attempt to bring this about, whether through the use of persuasion (for instance through the domi catechumenorum) or the application of force (for example through ghettoisation and the use of obligatory conversionary sermons). More widespread though was reflection on the role that the conversion of the Jews would play in the Last Days, a concern heightened by the increased millenarian thinking of the Reformation era. Given the discussion of this idea in Paul’s Letter to the Romans, few would reject the idea outright, but the timeframe for this, and the number of Jews who might be involved, were open for discussion. This hope for Jewish conversion was also advanced as a reason for readmitting Jews to places from which they had previously been removed. A key argument of this volume is that the attitudes towards the Jews form only one element of the equation. These attitudes also tell us about the Reformation and its priorities. The idea of sola scriptura has been widely acknowledged as a major challenge to the various authorities used by the Catholic Church, but far less attention has been given to the implications of this development. Biblical scholarship can seem far less controversial when compared, for instance, with the vitriol of the polemical debates which are often held to characterise the Reformation era. However, without that underlying biblical scholarship – which depended on knowledge of Hebrew and the rabbinic traditions – such debates would have fallen apart. This was a collaborative effort: it was often one group of people who were principally engaged in the biblical scholarship, and another group which took responsibility for writing disputational works, but the two roles were complementary. The great proliferation in the study of Hebrew, as reflected for instance in the vast number of Hebrew (and later Yiddish) grammars and dictionaries, was one manifestation of this. So too was the widespread institutionalisation of Hebrew as a subject in the academies and universities of Europe. A growing number of people had some familiarity with the language. Importantly, moreover, for the vast majority this was practical knowledge. Rather than simply gaining expertise for its own sake (as a number of scholars did), pastors and priests acquired familiarity with Hebrew so they could better understand the Old Testament: this insight was then conveyed much more widely, through their sermons and religious writings. Even if the vast majority of Europeans never learnt a word of the language, a substantial number benefited from the work of those who had. More than that, the relationship with Jews and Judaism played a constructive role in the various attempts of the churches of the Reformation to distinguish themselves from each other. This had not been necessary when Christianity took one main form: 210

CONCLUSION it could accept minor variations, but anything beyond this was deemed heretical, and treated accordingly. The situation was very different in a world where there were multiple confessions all in direct competition with one another. Each was, in a sense, going back to the drawing board, hoping to construct a religion which was the most authentic that they could manage, both for their own benefit, but also as a means of maintaining or winning support. What was most authentic was, of course, to some extent a subjective judgement, but there was general agreement that this should involve a high level of conformity with the practice of the early church, as reflected especially in the Scriptures and other writings from that period. The Reformations (both Protestant and Catholic) drew greater attention to Jews and the Hebrew language and scholarship, all of which contributed to a process by which Jews gradually became more familiar to Christians. Especially in the wake of the expulsions at the end of the Middle Ages, Jews were absent from large parts of the continent. This made it all the more easy for them to become the embodiment of Christian fears and anxieties. They were a group who worshipped and lived separately, and who spoke languages (such as Yiddish) which Christians could not understand, all of which prompted suspicion or worse. Indeed, it is surely telling that the works which did most to present the Jew as an alarming ‘other’ – Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice and Marlowe’s Jew of Malta – were both products of a kingdom which had been officially without Jews for the longest period of time. Ethnographic studies of the Jews, in particular, gradually helped to counter this. While these works were often written with a clear anti-Jewish intent, emphasising the hostility of Jews to Christianity and so forth, they were also intended to provide accurate information, not least so that Christians could better understand the Jewish culture in which Christ had lived. Over time, it was inevitable that the least grounded allegations made against the Jews should have been undermined. Alongside this, moreover, there were other forms of interaction. Not only did Jews and Jewish converts become more common across Europe, but Christians also began to demonstrate a growing interest in Jewish culture: there are numerous accounts of individuals visiting ghettos or synagogues during this period for instance. While this may well in part reflect a broader interest in different cultures – similar to the interest shown in various parts of the New World – the Jews constituted an alternative, and more accessible, ‘exotic’ other. As a means of better understanding the origins of Christianity, moreover, they held an extra appeal. In this book, we have considered the ways in which different religious confessions – Catholic, Lutheran, Reformed, radical – regarded Jews and Judaism. In traditional 211

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION accounts, there is a tendency to present the growth of toleration as a product which is intimately connected to the Protestant Reformation. At a superficial level, the fact that England and the northern states of the Netherlands were among those countries which welcomed Jews back, in contrast to Spain where they were not permitted, or Italy where they were consigned to ghettos, might seem to demonstrate that fundamental point. However, as we have seen, the reality was often quite different. For all that we might instinctively consider ghettos to be a harmful construction, they could provide a means of facilitating a Jewish presence in cities where this might not otherwise have been possible. Indeed, so successful was this approach that cities with ghettos were frequently those with the largest Jewish populations. Moreover, the ghettos did provide a measure of protection for the Jews who inhabited them, and provided a setting in which their culture could flourish. Conversely, in those Protestant territories, it is apparent that Jewish readmission largely occurred despite the efforts of the Protestant clergy: in both Amsterdam and in England at the Whitehall Conference, the orthodox clergy were among the most vocal in arguing against reducing restrictions on the Jews. There is a natural desire, which may in part be prompted by modern identification with those different confessions, to attempt to evaluate the various confessions against each other. This in turn is influenced by modern ideas relating to toleration as a virtue, and an understandable urge to find the roots of this. As we have seen, there have been attempts to excuse Luther’s views in particular, given how distasteful they now seem to us. However, it has also been asserted that we should not reduce a given confession to the views of its founder, particularly on an issue such as this. That is not necessarily to say that all were as good or bad as the others, but to appreciate the variety of opinions in evidence, within each of the confessions. These views were moreover highly contingent on the specific circumstances in which people found themselves. In many ways, we have seen a range of parallel developments, hence the broadly chronological framework that has been used here, although these did not progress with identical trajectories or timelines. We can identify, for instance, particular efforts, both Catholic and Protestant, to put pressure on their Jewish populations, as part of a broader effort at strengthening piety. Occasionally this happened at an international level, as in the Catholic Reformation, but more commonly it occurred at a local level in response to local initiatives. To some extent the patterns of treatment reflect both the shifting strength of the church compared with the power of the state, and the respective positions of the confessions in relation to each other, in the context of the wider dynamics of power politics convulsing the continent. On top of that, it is clear that the fortunes of Jews in those different areas were interconnected, in particular through 212

CONCLUSION figures like the pope and successive emperors, but also through the ripple effect that saw the harsh treatment of Jews in one area push them towards another more sympathetic territory. The patchwork effect produced by the Reformation only served to make this more pronounced. The relationship with Judaism was a fundamental component of Christian identity. It was inevitable that this should come in for close scrutiny in the Reformation era, as the nascent Protestant churches looked to bolster their challenge to the Catholic Church, while it, in turn, sought to reassert its supremacy. At the heart of this was scholarship, as the competing confessions attempted to come to a better understanding of their foundational texts: this involved not merely linguistic study, but also frequently a deep engagement with rabbinic exegesis, and a wide array of cultural studies. Especially because of its somewhat specialist nature, this work has often been regarded as being of secondary importance, particularly when compared with the theological – and often more combative – writings of the leading reformers; in fact, though, it is important to appreciate that these were complementary activities. The theological writings could only bear scrutiny if they were based on a solid foundation. This new enthusiasm for Hebrew and the biblical text, moreover, had significant implications for the treatment of Jews too. For those Christians who devoted themselves to the study of the Bible, the Jewish failure to acknowledge what they felt to be the self-evident truth that Jesus had been the Messiah was endlessly exasperating, and a key element of the continuing animosity. At the same time, this was balanced by an appreciation of the Jews’ signal importance in the history of the world: past, present and future. All the Christian confessions agreed that the Jews’ time as God’s chosen people had now passed, but they fought among themselves to claim the position as their rightful successors. This competition, moreover, involved contradictory impulses: Christians sought to emphasise the similarities between themselves and the Jews, but also to highlight ways in which they were different. Catholic and Protestant attitudes to the Jews in the Reformation era were highly complex and multivalent. Fortunately, few were quite as hostile towards Jews as was Luther; on the other hand, there were relatively few who could be considered genuinely tolerant either. The Reformation had made Europe a religiously pluralistic society, but the place of Jews in this world was far from secure. They were not simply another religious group, however: they occupied a unique position in the Christian mindset, with a special role in the divine plan for the world. They remained a constant reference point for Christians: at times they merited emulation, while at others they could serve as a mirror. But that symbiotic relationship also helps us better to understand what the 213

THE JEWS AND THE REFORMATION Reformation considered most important. Jews served as both a reminder and a warning to those churches as they sought to assume from the Jews the position of God’s chosen people; Jews’ language and culture provided them with the means by which that might be achieved. It was a difficult and problematic undertaking, and one whose importance has often been overlooked, but it is essential to acknowledge this activity for us to really understand the central concerns of the Reformation.

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ENDNOTES

INTRODUCTION 1. This account draws on Martin Gilbert, Kristallnacht: Prelude to Destruction (London: HarperCollins, 2006), 24–5. 2. Ibid., 36. 3. Ibid., 138. 4. Richard J. Evans, The Third Reich in Power: How the Nazis Won over the Hearts and Minds of a Nation (London: Penguin, 2006), 222. 5. Christopher J. Probst, Demonizing the Jews: Luther and the Protestant Church in Nazi Germany (Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012), 123. 6. Daniel J. Goldhagen, Hitler’s Willing Executioners: Ordinary Germans and the Holocaust (London: Little, Brown and Company, 1996), 111. 7. On the morning of 29 April 1946, Streicher claimed that ‘Anti-Semitic publications have existed in Germany for centuries. A book I had, written by Dr. Martin Luther, was, for instance, confiscated. Dr. Martin Luther would very probably sit in my place in the defendants’ dock today, if this book had been taken into consideration by the Prosecution. In the book The Jews and Their Lies, Dr. Martin Luther writes that the Jews are a serpent’s brood and one should burn down their synagogues and destroy them . . .’; Nuremberg Trial Proceedings, vol. 12, 317; available online at http://avalon.law.yale.edu/imt/04-29-46.asp (accessed 22 August 2019). Streicher was executed on 16 October 1946. 8. See on this theme especially the magisterial survey of David Nirenberg, Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking (London: Head of Zeus Ltd, 2015). 9. Gavin I. Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), 311–15. See also Jeanne Favret-Saada, ‘A Fuzzy Distinction: AntiJudaism and Anti-Semitism’, Hau: Journal of Ethnographic Theory 4, 3 (2014), 335–40. 10. Gavin I. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), esp. ch.14, ‘Toward a Definition of Antisemitism’, 311–52. 11. For an excellent survey, see Diarmaid MacCulloch, Reformation: Europe’s House Divided, 1490– 1700 (London: Allen Lane, 2003). 12. Andrew Pettegree, Brand Luther: 1517, Printing and the Making of the Reformation (New York, NY: Penguin, 2015), esp. 143–63. 13. E.g. Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics, and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993); Carter Lindberg, The European Reformations (Oxford: Blackwell, 2005). 14. On these themes, see Sergiusz Michalski, The Reformation and the Visual Arts: The Protestant Image Question in Western and Eastern Europe (London: Routledge, 1993); Susan C. KarantNunn, The Reformation of Feeling: Shaping the Religious Emotions in Early Modern Germany (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010); Alexandra Walsham, The Reformation of the Landscape: Religion, Identity and Memory in Early Modern Britain and Ireland (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012).

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NOTES to pp. xv–1 15. Indeed, many historians have doubted whether it is meaningful even to speak of an early modern period in relation to the Jews. For a recent argument in favour of the concept, however, see David B. Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry: A New Cultural History (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2010), esp. 207–26. 16. E.g. Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson (ed.), A History of the Jewish People (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1976), 646–58. Luther is the only Protestant reformer whose views are considered here, 648–52. 17. Gavin I. Langmuir, ‘Majority History and Post-Biblical Jews’, Journal of the History of Ideas 27, 3 (1966), 362–3. 18. This point is made especially well in Debra Kaplan and Magda Teter, ‘Out of the (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews and the Reformation’, Sixteenth Century Journal 40, 2 (2009), 365–94. 19. Classic accounts of the Reformation and toleration include W.E.H. Lecky, History of the Rise and Influence of the Spirit of Rationalism in Europe, 2 vols (London: Longmans, Green and Co., 1865) and W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932–40). 20. E.g. Lyndal Roper, Martin Luther: Renegade and Prophet (London: Bodley Head, 2016), 389–96. 21. Robert Bonfil, ‘Aliens within: The Jews and Antijudaism’, in Thomas A. Brady Jr, Heiko A. Oberman and James D. Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance and Reformation, vol. 1 (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans, 1994–95), 263–302. 22. One of the clearest examples of the growing attention given to this theme is provided by the three successive editions of a classic reference work, Reformation Europe: A Guide to Research. While in the first edition, ed. Steven Ozment in 1982, Jewish history did not merit an article, the second edition, ed. William S. Maltby in 1992, contains an article by Jerome Friedman (‘Jews and New Christians in Reformation Europe’), as does the third, ed. David M. Whitford in 2008 (‘Jewish History and Thought’ by Matt Goldish). 23. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G. Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in SixteenthCentury Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2006) and Achim Detmers, Reformation und Judentum: Israel-Lehren und Einstellungen zum Judentum von Luther bis zum frühen Calvin (Stuttgart: Kohlhammer, 2001) are the two volumes which have done most to focus attention on Reformation attitudes towards the Jews. 24. E.g. Paolo Bernardini and Norman Fiering (eds), The Jews and the Expansion of Europe to the West, 1450–1800 (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2001); Jonathan Israel, Diasporas within a Diaspora: Jews, Crypto-Jews and the World of Maritime Empires (1540–1740) (Leiden: Brill, 2002); Jonathan Schorsch, Jews and Blacks in the Early Modern World (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004). 25. On this theme see especially Alexandra Walsham, ‘The Reformation and “The Disenchantment of the World” Reassessed’, Historical Journal 51, 2 (2008), 497–528. 26. See especially Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007); Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 1500–1700 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). 27. Róbert Dán, ‘ “Judaizare”: The Career of a Term’, in idem and Antal Pirnát (eds), Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century (Budapest: Akademiái Kiadó; Leiden: Brill, 1992), 25–34. CHAPTER 1 A CONTESTED INHERITANCE: JUDAEO-CHRISTIAN RELATIONS ON THE EVE OF THE REFORMATION 1. Lupold Federfusius to Ortwin Gratius, in Erika Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin: Religious and Social Controversy in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2002), 116–17. 2. Ulrich von Hutten et al. [attributed], On the Eve of the Reformation: ‘Letters of Obscure Men’, trans. Francis Griffin Stokes, with an introduction by Hajo Holborn (New York, NY and London: Harper & Row, 1964).

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NOTES to pp. 1–6 3. On Pfefferkorn, see especially David H. Price, Johannes Reuchlin and the Campaign to Destroy Jewish Books (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2011), 95–112. 4. Remarkably, one of these texts was also translated into Danish in 1516. See Jonathan Adams, Lessons in Contempt: Poul Ræff ’s Translation and Publication in 1516 of Johannes Pfefferkorn’s The Confession of the Jews (Copenhagen: Universitets-Jubilæets Danske Samfund, 2013). 5. Johann Pfefferkorn, The Jews’ Mirror [Der Juden Spiegel], trans. Ruth I. Cape, with a historical introduction by Maria Diemling (Tempe, AZ: Arizona Center for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2011), 73. 6. Johann Pfefferkorn, The Confession of the Jews, in Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 70, 76. 7. E.g. Pfefferkorn, Confession of the Jews, in Adams, Lessons in Contempt, 246–51; The Enemy of the Jews, in Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 53–5. 8. E.g. Pfefferkorn, Confession of the Jews, in Adams, Lessons in Contempt, 246–7. 9. E.g. Pfefferkorn, Jews’ Mirror, 81–5; Pfefferkorn, Confession of the Jews, in Adams, Lessons in Contempt, 250–57. 10. E.g. Pfefferkorn, Jews’ Mirror, 92–7. 11. Ibid., 88–9. 12. Avner Shamir, Christian Conceptions of Jewish Books: The Pfefferkorn Affair (Copenhagen: Museum Tusculanum Press, 2011), 37. 13. Price, Johannes Reuchlin, 125–6. 14. Ibid., 143. 15. Johann Reuchlin, The Preservation of Jewish Religious Books in Sixteenth-Century Germany: Johannes Reuchlin’s Augenspiegel, ed. and trans. Daniel O’Callaghan (Leiden: Brill, 2013), 121– 3. 16. Ibid., 123–5. The Nizzahon (‘Victory’) was an anthology of anti-Christian arguments probably compiled early in the fifteenth century. The Toledot Yeshu was a late medieval life of Christ, in which Christ is portrayed as illegitimate. 17. Reuchlin, Preservation, 156–7. 18. Ibid., 191–6. 19. Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin, 24. 20. Johann Reuchlin (ed.), Clarorum virorum epistolae latinae, graecae et hebraicae missae ad Johannem Reuchlin (Tübingen: Thomas Anshelm, 1514). 21. Though cf. James H. Overfield, ‘A New Look at the Reuchlin Affair’, Studies in Medieval and Renaissance History 8 (1971), 165–207. 22. For an overview of this approach, and the grounds on which it has been challenged, see Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed, ‘Introduction: Traditional Models and New Directions’, in Becker and Reed (eds), The Ways that Never Parted: Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2007), 1–22. 23. Among the key works which have contributed to a reconfiguration of this debate are Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004) and Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 2006). 24. E.g. Heb. 8.13: ‘In speaking of a new covenant, he treats the first as obsolete’. 25. See especially Rosemary Radford Ruether, Faith and Fratricide: The Theological Roots of AntiSemitism (New York: The Seabury Press, 1974). For a direct response, see Thomas A. Idinopulos and Roy Bowen Ward, ‘Is Christology Inherently Anti-Semitic? A Critical Review of Rosemary Ruether’s Faith and Fratricide’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 45, 2 (1977), 193– 214. 26. James Carroll, Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews (Boston, MA: Houghton Mifflin Company, 2001), 92. 27. Melito of Sardis, On Pascha, and Fragments, ed. and trans. Stuart George Hall (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1979), section 72.

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NOTES to pp. 6–10 28. Jeremy Cohen, ‘The Jews as the Killers of Christ in the Latin Tradition, from Augustine to the Friars’, Traditio 39 (1983), 1–27; idem, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2007). 29. Two valuable surveys of this tradition are A. Lukyn Williams, Adversus Judaeos: A Bird’s Eye View of Christian Apologiae until the Renaissance (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1935) and Heinz Schreckenberg, Die christlichen Adversus-Judaeos-Texte und ihr literarisches und historisches Umfeld, 3 vols (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1982–94). In addition, for a series of essays on individual contributors to the genre, see Ora Limor and Guy G. Strousma (eds), Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Christians and Jews (Tübingen: J.C.B. Mohr, 1996). 30. Justin Martyr, Dialogue with Trypho, ed. Michael Slusser, trans. Thomas B. Falls, revised and with a new introduction by Thomas P. Halton, (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2003). 31. On understanding the Bible see Justin Martyr, Dialogue, esp. 128–38; on Jesus as Messiah see 73–81; on Christians replacing Jews, see 178–88. 32. Tertullian, Against the Jews, in Geoffrey D. Dunn, Tertullian (London: Routledge, 2004), 63–104. 33. Ibid., 68. 34. James Parkes quoted in Robert Louis Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late Fourth Century (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1983), xv. 35. John Chrysostom, Discourses against Judaizing Christians, trans. Paul W. Harkins (Washington, DC: University of America Press, 1979), Sermon 1, II.1, p. 5; Sermon 1, VII.1, p. 25. 36. Ibid., e.g. Sermon 1, III.4, p. 11 (on synagogue attendance); Sermon 8, III.10, p. 217 (on observing a fast); Sermon 2, I.4, 6, pp. 36–7 (for allusions to circumcision). 37. Ibid., Sermon 4, VII.7, pp. 93–4. 38. Augustine, Concerning the City of God against the Pagans, trans. Henry Bettenson (London: Penguin, 1972, 1984), 18.46, p. 828. 39. For fuller discussions of the doctrine of Jewish witness, see Paula Fredriksen, Augustine and the Jews: A Christian Defense of Jews and Judaism (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2010), 290–352; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1999), 35–7. 40. Rebecca Rist, Popes and Jews, 1095–1291 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 77–9. Texts of many of these are available in S. Simonsohn (ed.), The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents, Vol. 1: 492–1404 (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Medieval Studies, 1988). 41. For the Latin text and an English translation, see Edward A. Synan, The Popes and the Jews in the Middle Ages (London: Collier-Macmillan Limited, 1965), 229–32. 42. Norman P. Tanner (ed.), Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils, 2 vols (London: Sheed & Ward, 1990), vol. 1, 265–7. 43. Irven M. Resnick, Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2012), 80–88; Flora Cassen, Marking the Jews in Renaissance Italy: Politics, Religion, and the Power of Symbols (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2017), esp. 20–49. 44. The classic statement of this thesis is R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Authority and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, [1987] 2007). 45. On the medieval Inquisition, see Edward Peters, Inquisition (New York: The Free Press, 1988), 40–74. 46. See especially Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews: The Evolution of Medieval Anti-Judaism (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1982). 47. Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Obduracy of the Jews, trans. Irven M. Resnick (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2013); Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogue Against the Jews, trans. Irven M. Resnick (Washington, DC: The Catholic University of America Press, 2006). 48. Raymond Martini, Pugio fidei adversus Mauros et Judaeos, facsimile reprint (Farnborough: Gregg Press, 1967). On the Pugio, see Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and Jewish Response (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1989), 115–36.

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NOTES to pp. 10–14 49. Cohen, Friars, 132. 50. On Christiani and Lull see ibid., 103–28 and 199–225. On Ferrer, see David J. Viera, ‘The Treatment of Jews in Vincent Ferrer’s Vernacular Sermons’, Fifteenth Century Studies 26 (2001), 215–24. Also see Nirit Ben-Aryeh Debby, ‘Jews and Judaism in the Rhetoric of Popular Preachers: The Florentine Sermons of Giovanni Dominici (1356–1419) and Bernardino da Siena (1380–1444)’, Jewish History 14 (2000), 175–200. 51. Cohen, Friars, 82–3. 52. Hyam Maccoby (ed. and trans.), Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages (Oxford and Portland, OR: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2003). 53. An English translation of these thirty-five articles is contained in John Friedman and Jean Connell Hoff (trans.), The Trial of the Talmud: Paris, 1240 (Toronto, Ontario: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 2012), 102–21. 54. Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century: A Study of Their Relations during the Years 1198–1254, Based on the Papal Letters and the Conciliar Decrees of the Period (Philadelphia, PA: The Dropsie College for Hebrew and Cognate Learning, 1933), 32. 55. Maccoby, Judaism on Trial, 82. 56. Robert Chazan, Reassessing Jewish Life in Medieval Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010), 2. 57. Bishop Rudiger of Speyer’s Charter, in Robert Chazan (ed.), Church, State and Jew in the Middle Ages (West Orange, NJ: Behrman House Inc., 1980), 58. 58. Moore, Formation, 37–9. 59. Jeffrey Richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation: Minority Groups in the Middle Ages (London: Routledge, 2007), 102. 60. See Joseph Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered: Jews, Moneylending and Medieval Society (Berkeley, CA and Oxford: University of California Press, 1990), esp. 107–18. 61. Jonathan Riley-Smith, ‘The First Crusade and the Persecution of the Jews’, in W.J. Shiels (ed.), Persecution and Toleration. Studies in Church History 21 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1984), 51–72. 62. Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1987), esp. 137ff. 63. E.g. ‘Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson’ and ‘Chronicle of Rabbi Eliezer bar Nathan’, both in Shlomo Eidelberg (ed. and trans.), The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 49, 85. 64. David Berger, ‘The Attitude of St Bernard of Clairvaux toward the Jews’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972), 89–108. 65. Bernard of Clairvaux to the English People, Aug–Sep 1146, in idem, The Letters of St Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Bruno Scott James, introduction by Beverly Mayne Kienzle (Stroud: Sutton Publishing, 1998), letter 391. 66. The fullest and most up-to-date account of this episode is provided by E.M. Rose, The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2015). 67. Thomas of Monmouth, The Life and Passion of William of Norwich, trans. and ed. Miri Rubin (London: Penguin, 2014), 25. 68. Ibid., 31. 69. Ibid., 61. 70. Ibid., books 3–7. 71. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1988), 3. 72. This episode is discussed most fully in idem, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1992). 73. Ibid., 34–50. 74. Stephen Bowd (ed.), ‘On Everyone’s Lips’: Humanists, Jews and the Tale of Simon of Trent (Tempe, AZ: Centre for Medieval and Renaissance Studies, 2012). 75. Giovanni Mattia Tiberino, in ibid., 55.

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NOTES to pp. 14–18 76. Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1999), 40–45. 77. Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1, 230. 78. Philip Ziegler, The Black Death (London: Collins, 1969), 101. 79. Richards, Sex, 103. 80. See Malcolm Barber, ‘Lepers, Jews and Moslems: The Plot to Overthrow Christendom in 1321’, History 66 (1981), 1–17; David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1996), 43–68. 81. Samuel K. Cohn Jr, ‘The Black Death and the Burning of Jews’, Past & Present 196 (2007), 3–36. 82. John Kelly, The Great Mortality: An Intimate History of the Black Death (London: Harper Perennial, 2006), 138–40. 83. Ziegler, The Black Death, 104. 84. Ibid., 111. 85. Kelly, Great Mortality, 256. 86. Rosemary Horrox (trans. and ed.), The Black Death (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1994), 207. 87. Ibid., 220. 88. Ibid., 222. 89. On this theme see the classic study, Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism (Philadelphia, PA and Jerusalem: The Jewish Publication Society, [1943] 1983). For a substantial collection of relevant images, see Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History (London: S.C.M. Press, 1996). 90. Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003), 105–111. 91. Schreckenberg, Jews, 157–89. 92. Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisée (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1999), 31ff. 93. Nina Rowe, The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011). 94. Isaiah Shachar, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif and Its History (London: The Warburg Institute, 1974). 95. Ibid., 30–31. 96. Ibid., 43–5; see Martin Luther, Vom Schem Hamphoras, in Gerhard Falk (ed.), The Jew in Christian Theology: Martin Luther’s Vom Schem Hamphoras, Previously Unpublished in English, and Other Milestones in Church Doctrine Concerning Judaism (Jefferson, NC and London: McFarland and Company, Inc., Publishers, 1992), 182. 97. Geoffrey Chaucer, The Canterbury Tales, trans. Nevill Coghill (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1975), 186–93. 98. On this episode, see Gavin I. Langmuir, ‘The Knight’s Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln’, Speculum 47 (1972), 459–82. 99. Jacobus de Voragine, The Golden Legend: Readings on the Saints, trans. William G. Ryan, with an introduction by Eamon Duffy (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2012), 166–8. 100. Ibid., 210. 101. William Langland, Piers Plowman, trans. A.V.C. Schmidt (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 213. 102. Also on this theme, see Joan Young Gregg, Devils, Women and Jews. Reflections on the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (Albany, NY: State University of New York Press, 1997), 169–235. 103. Dan Cohn-Sherbok, The Crucified Jew: Twenty Centuries of Christian Anti-Semitism (London: HarperCollins, 1992), 52. 104. Anthony Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms, 1350–1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9. 105. For comparative discussions of this kind, see Moore, Formation; Richards, Sex.

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NOTES to pp. 18–22 106. For this line of argument more broadly see Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2007) and Chazan, Reassessing Jewish Life. 107. Ubertino Pusculo in Bowd (ed.), On Everyone’s Lips, 119. 108. N.R.M. de Lange, Origen and the Jews: Studies in Jewish-Christian Relations in Third-Century Palestine (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976); John A. McGuckin, ‘Origen on the Jews’, in Diana Wood (ed.), Christianity and Judaism (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 1–13. 109. See J.N.D. Kelly, Jerome: His Life, Writings and Controversies (London: Duckworth, 1975), esp. 153–67. 110. Stefan Rebenich, ‘Jerome: The “Vir Trilinguis” and the “Hebraica Veritas” ’, Vigiliae Christianae 47 (1993), 56. 111. James Barr, ‘St Jerome’s Appreciation of Hebrew’, Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 49 (1966–67), 290. 112. Adam Kamesar, Jerome, Greek Scholarship, and the Hebrew Bible: A Study of the ‘Quaestiones Hebraicae in Genesim’ (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993), 176–91. 113. Jerome, Saint Jerome’s Hebrew Questions on Genesis, trans. with an introduction and commentary by C.T.R. Hayward (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 1995), preface, 29. 114. Augustine to Jerome, 403 ce, Augustine, Letters, trans. Wilfrid Parsons (Washington, D.C., Catholic University of America Press, 1951–89), letter 71. 115. Tanner, Decrees, vol. 2, 664–5. 116. Jerry H. Bentley, Humanists and Holy Writ: New Testament Scholarship in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983), esp. 32–69 and 112–93. 117. Eugene F. Rice Jr, Saint Jerome in the Renaissance (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985), 175–80. 118. Rebenich, ‘Jerome’, 50. 119. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, [1952] 1983), 83–111. 120. Ibid., 112–95. 121. Frank E. Manuel, The Broken Staff: Judaism through Christian Eyes (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1992), 17–18. 122. Ibid. 123. Daniel Stein Kokin, ‘Giannozzo Manetti in Leonardo Bruni’s Shadow: The Formation and Defense of a Humanist Hebraist’, I Tatti Studies in the Italian Renaissance 19, 2 (2016), 309–33. 124. Alastair Hamilton, ‘Humanists and the Bible’, in Jill Kraye (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Renaissance Humanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 103. 125. Giannozzo Manetti, A Translator’s Defense, ed. Myron McShane, trans. Mark Young (I Tatti Renaissance Library 71) (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2016), 2.86, 105. Manetti dealt with the principal differences between the two translations in books 3 and 4. 126. Some historians once sought to distinguish between ‘Kabbalah’, when referring to Jewish usage, and ‘Cabala’, for the Christianised form, but in practice this distinction is difficult to maintain. The former term will be used here. 127. Joseph L. Blau, The Christian Interpretation of the Cabala in the Renaissance (New York: Columbia University Press, 1944). 128. See especially Chaim Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter with Jewish Mysticism (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 1989). 129. S.A. Farmer, Syncretism in the West: Pico’s 900 Theses (1486) – The Evolution of Traditional and Philosophical Systems, with text, translation and commentary (Tempe, AZ: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1998). 130. Johann Reuchlin, De verbo mirifico (Basel: Johannes Amerbach, 1494). 131. Johann Reuchlin, On the Art of the Kabbalah [De arte cabalistica], trans. Martin and Sarah Goodman (Lincoln, NE: University of Nebraska Press, 1993). See also Jerome Friedman, The Most Ancient Testimony: Sixteenth-Century Christian-Hebraica in the Age of Renaissance Nostalgia (Athens, OH: Ohio University Press, 1983), 71–98.

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NOTES to pp. 22–27 132. Yvonne Petry, Gender, Kabbalah, and the Reformation: The Mystical Theology of Guillaume Postel (1510–1581) (Leiden: Brill, 2004), esp. 5–24. 133. Ibid., 46. 134. Poggio Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, 18 May 1416, in Poggio Bracciolini, Two Renaissance Book Hunters: The Letters of Poggius Bracciolini to Nicolaus de Niccolis, trans. Phyllis W.G. Gordan (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974), 24–5. 135. Leonardo Bruni to Giovanni Cirignano, 12 September 1442, in Leonardo Bruni, The Humanism of Leonardo Bruni: Selected Texts, ed. David Thompson and trans. Gordon Griffiths and James Hankins (New York: Renaissance Society of America, 1987), 333–6. 136. Above all, Shimon Markish, Erasmus and the Jews, trans. Anthony Olcott (Chicago, IL and London: University of Chicago Press, 1986). 137. Ibid., 80. 138. Ibid. 139. Hilmar M. Pabel, ‘Erasmus of Rotterdam and Judaism: A Reexamination in the Light of New Evidence’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 87 (1996), 9. 140. This discussion is informed by Salo Baron’s article on ‘Population’, in the Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971) but adapted in light of more recent scholarship, especially Dean Philip Bell, Jews in the Early Modern World (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers Inc., 2008), 35–57. CHAPTER 2 A NEW DAWN? RE-EVALUATING THE JEWS AT THE START OF THE REFORMATION ERA 1. Henry Kamen, ‘The Mediterranean and the Expulsion of Spanish Jews in 1492’, Past and Present 120 (1988), 44. 2. Nicholas Terpstra, Religious Refugees in the Early Modern World: An Alternative History of the Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015), 2. 3. The Jewish account of the expulsion is in Jacob Rader Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book, 315–1791 (Cincinatti, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1999), 60; Bernáldez cited in Kamen, ‘Mediterranean’, 32. 4. Judah Abravanel, ‘Poem to his Son (1503)’, in Olivia Remie Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia: Readings from Christian, Muslim, and Jewish Sources (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2012), 516–23. 5. John Edwards, The Spain of the Catholic Monarchs, 1474–1520 (Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 2000), 199ff. 6. Henry Kamen, Spain, 1469–1714: A Society of Conflict (Harlow: Pearson, 2005), 34–40; Edwards, Spain, 101–40. 7. Kamen, Spain, 57–60. 8. Henry Kamen, The Spanish Inquisition: An Historical Revision (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1997), 16. 9. Henry Kamen, Inquisition and Society in Spain in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1985), 13. 10. Edwards, Spain, 226–9. 11. Stephen Haliczer, ‘The Jew as Witch: Displaced Aggression and the Myth of the Santo Niño de la Guardia’, in Mary Elizabeth Perry and Anne T. Cruz (eds), Cultural Encounters: The Impact of the Inquisition in Spain and the New World (Berkeley, CA and Oxford: University of California Press, 1991), 151–5. 12. ‘Charter of Expulsion (1492)’, in Constable (ed.), Medieval Iberia, 508–13. 13. Peggy K. Liss, Isabel the Queen: Life and Times (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), 276. 14. Kamen, Spain, 45. 15. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 21. 16. Edwards, Spain, 231. 17. Erwin Iserloh, The Theses Were not Posted: Luther between Reform and Reformation (London: Geoffrey Chapman, 1968); Peter Marshall, 1517: Martin Luther and the Invention of the Reformation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), esp. 12–16, 56–62.

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NOTES to pp. 28–32 18. On fear and anxiety in this era see, for example, Lawrence G. Duggan, ‘Fear and Confession on the Eve of the Reformation’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984), 153–75; William J. Bouwsma, ‘John Calvin’s Anxiety’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 128, 3 (1984), 252–6. 19. Terpstra, Religious Refugees, 2. 20. J.N. Hillgarth, The Spanish Kingdoms, 1250–1516, 2 vols (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1976–78), vol. 1, esp. 169–214. 21. Philippe Wolff, ‘The 1391 Pogrom in Spain: Social Crisis or Not?’, Past and Present 50 (1971), esp. 8–14. 22. David Nirenberg, ‘Mass Conversion and Genealogical Mentalities: Jews and Christians in Fifteenth-Century Spain’, Past and Present 174 (2002), esp. 9–10. See also Angus MacKay, ‘Popular Movements and Pogroms in Fifteenth-Century Castile’, Past and Present 55 (1972), 33–67. 23. Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 19–20. 24. Michael Alpert, Secret Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition (Nottingham: Five Leaves Publications, 2008), 13. 25. On this theme more broadly, see Jillian Williams, Food and Religious Identities in Spain, 1400– 1600 (London: Routledge, 2017). 26. Jerome Friedman, ‘Jewish Conversion, the Spanish Pure Blood Laws and Reformation: A Revisionist View of Racial and Religious Antisemitism’, Sixteenth Century Journal 18, 1 (1987), 3–30. 27. Edwards, Spain, 78. 28. Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 116. 29. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 232–43. 30. Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 121. 31. Ibid., 125–6. 32. Friedman, ‘Jewish Conversion’, 27–8. 33. Kamen, Inquisition and Society, 12. 34. Norman Roth, Conversos, Inquisition, and the Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (Madison, WI: The University of Wisconsin Press, 2002), 127. 35. For these and further examples see ibid., 126–33. 36. Liss, Isabel, 165. 37. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 44. 38. For a comprehensive overview of these tribunals, see William Monter, Frontiers of Heresy: The Spanish Inquisition from the Basque Lands to Sicily (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1990). 39. On Torquemada, see John Edwards, Torquemada and the Inquisitors (Stroud: Tempus, 2005), 11–33. 40. ‘Gaspar de Argüello, Instructions of the Holy Office of the Inquisition’, in Lu Ann Homza (ed. and trans.), The Spanish Inquisition, 1478–1614: An Anthology of Sources (Indianapolis, IN: Hackett Publishing Company, Inc., 2006), 61–79. 41. Ibid., 64. 42. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 305–20. 43. Ibid., 188–92, 198–202. 44. For a fuller discussion of the auto, see, for instance ibid. 204–13. 45. ‘Inquisition Trial of Pedro de Villegas’, in Homza, Spanish Inquisition, 17–26. 46. Ibid., 19–20. 47. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 59–60; Monter, Frontiers, 21. 48. Stephen Haliczer, ‘The First Holocaust: The Inquisition and the Converted Jews of Spain and Portugal’, in idem (ed. and trans.), Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 10. 49. Jaime Contreras and Gustav Henningsen, ‘Forty-four Thousand Cases of the Spanish Inquisition (1540–1700): Analysis of a Historical Data Bank’, in Gustav Henningsen and John Tedeschi (eds), The Inquisition in Early Modern Europe: Studies in Sources and Methods (Dekalb, IL: Northern Illinois Press, 1986), 114.

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NOTES to pp. 32–37 50. Geoffrey Parker, Emperor. A New Life of Charles V (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2019), 519. 51. Rebekka Voss, ‘Charles V as Last World Emperor and Jewish Hero’, Jewish History 30 (2016), 81–106. 52. Riccardo Calimani, The Ghetto of Venice, trans. Katherine S. Wolfthal (Milan: Rusconi, 1988). On the question of etymology see Sandra Debenedetti-Stow, ‘The Etymology of “Ghetto”: New Evidence from Rome’, Jewish History 6 1/ 2 (1992), 79–85. 53. Robert Finlay, ‘The Foundation of the Ghetto: Venice, the Jews and the War of the League of Cambrai’, Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society 126, 2 (1982), 140–54. 54. Brian Pullan, Rich and Poor in Renaissance Venice: The Social Institutions of a Catholic State, to 1620 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1971), 484. 55. David Chambers and Brian Pullan (eds), Venice: A Documentary History, 1450–1630 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992), 189–90. 56. Ibid., 190. 57. Benjamin Ravid, ‘The Venetian Government and the Jews’, in Robert C. Davis and Benjamin Ravid (eds), The Jews of Early Modern Venice (Baltimore, MD and London: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 2001), 7–8. 58. Benjamin Ravid, ‘The Religious, Economic and Social Background and Context of the Establishment of the Ghetti of Venice’, in Gaetano Cozzi (ed.), Gli Ebrei e Venezia secoli XIV– XVIII (Milan: Edizione di Comunità, 1987), 215. 59. Ravid, ‘Venetian Government’, 8–9. 60. The full text of this decree is in idem, ‘Religious’, 248–50. 61. Ibid., 220–22. 62. Benjamin Ravid, ‘Curfew Time in the Ghetto’, in Ellen E. Kittell and Thomas F. Madden (eds), Medieval and Renaissance Venice (Urbana, OH and Chicago, IL: University of Illinois Press, 1999), 241. 63. Ravid, ‘Curfew’, 245–6. 64. Ibid., 251–2. 65. Pullan, Rich and Poor, 479. 66. Texts of these decrees are in Ravid, ‘Religious’, 250–4. 67. Idem, ‘Venetian Government’, 22. 68. Idem, ‘Curfew’, 260. 69. Pullan, Rich and Poor, 557–8. 70. This was presumably a reference to Colonna’s De arcanis catholicae veritatis which was first published in 1516. 71. Chambers and Pullan (eds), Venice, 339–40. 72. Ravid, ‘Venetian Government’, 22–3. 73. Benjamin J. Kaplan, Divided by Faith: Religious Conflict and the Practice of Toleration in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA and London: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2007), 297. 74. Dana E. Katz, ‘The Ghetto and the Gaze in Early Modern Venice’, in Herbert L. Kessler and David Nirenberg (eds), Judaism and Christian Art: Aesthetic Anxieties from the Catacombs to Colonialism (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 235. 75. Benjamin Ravid, ‘Between the Myth of Venice and the Lachrymose Conception of Jewish History: The Case of the Jews of Venice’, in idem, Studies on the Jews of Venice, 1382–1797 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), chapter IX, 157. 76. Robert Bonfil, Jewish Life in Renaissance Italy (Berkeley, CA and London: University of California Press, 1994), 68–77; idem, ‘A Cultural Profile (of the Jews in Early Modern Venice’, in Davis and Ravid (eds), Jews of Early Modern Venice, 169–90. 77. G. Lloyd Jones, The Discovery of Hebrew in Tudor England: A Third Language (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1983), esp. part 2. 78. Tanner, Decrees, vol. 1, 379–80. 79. On the Bible in the Reformation see especially Peter Matheson, ‘The Reformation’, in John F.A. Sawyer (ed.), The Blackwell Companion to the Bible and Culture (Oxford: Blackwell Publishing,

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NOTES to pp. 37–41

80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90.

91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107.

2006), 69–84; Debora Kuller Shuger, The Renaissance Bible. Scholarship, Sacrifice, and Subjectivity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1998). Roland H. Bainton, ‘The Bible in the Reformation’, in S.L. Greenslade (ed.), The Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. III: The West from the Reformation to the Present Day (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1963), 6–9. Jaroslav Pelikan, The Reformation of the Bible: The Bible of the Reformation (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996), 23–34. Roper, Martin Luther, 259–72. Ibid., 319–20. Erika Rummel, ‘Humanists, Jews and Judaism’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation, 3–8. Deena Aranoff, ‘Elijah Levita: A Jewish Hebraist’, Jewish History 23, 1 (2009), 21. Rummel, ‘Humanists’, 4. More broadly, see Wirszubski, Pico della Mirandola’s Encounter, 3–21. Eric Zimmer, ‘Jewish and Christian Hebraist Collaboration in Sixteenth-Century Germany’, Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s. 71, 2 (1980), 72. Ilona Rashkow, ‘Hebrew Bible Translation and the Fear of Judaization’, Sixteenth Century Journal 21, 2 (1990), 217–21. Basil Hall, ‘Biblical Scholarship: Editions and Commentaries’, in Greenslade (ed.), Cambridge History, 43. Heiko A. Oberman, ‘Discovery of Hebrew and Discrimination against the Jews: The Veritas Hebraica as Double-Edged Sword in Renaissance and Reformation’, in Andrew C. Fix and Susan Karant-Nunn (eds), Germania Illustrata: Essays on Early Modern Germany Presented to Gerald Strauss (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers Inc., 1992), 19–34. Johann Reuchlin, De rudimentis hebraicis (Pforzheim: Thomas Anshelm, 1506). Andrew Pettegree, The Book in the Renaissance (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2011), 75. Stephen G. Burnett, Christian Hebraism in the Reformation Era (1500–1660): Authors, Books and the Transmission of Jewish Learning (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 95. Burnett’s volume provides the most comprehensive survey of Christian Hebraica in the Reformation era. Aldus Manutius, Introductio utilissima hebraice discere cupientibus (Venice: Aldus Manutius, c. 1500). Frank Rosenthal, ‘The Study of the Hebrew Bible in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, Studies in the Renaissance 1 (1954), 84–5. D.R. Jones, ‘Appendix 1: Aids to the Study of the Bible’, in Greenslade (ed.), Cambridge History, 520. Jones, Discovery, 73. Jones, ‘Appendix 1’, 520–21. Burnett, Christian Hebraism, 96. On Bibliander see also Christine Christ-von Wedel (ed.), Theodor Bibliander, 1505–1564: Ein Thurgauer im Gelehrten Zürich der Reformationszeit (Zürich: Verlag Neue Zürcher Zeitung, 2005). Burnett, Christian Hebraism, 96. Ibid., 109. Paul F. Grendler, ‘The Universities of the Renaissance and Reformation’, Renaissance Quarterly 57, 1 (2004), 2. Douglas Biow, Doctors, Ambassadors, Secretaries: Humanism and Professions in Renaissance Italy (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2002), 1–26. Erika Rummel, ‘The Importance of Being Doctor: The Quarrel over Competency between Humanists and Theologians in the Renaissance’, Catholic Historical Review 82, 2 (1996), 187–203. On Zamora, see A. Neubauer, ‘Alfonso de Zamora’, The Jewish Quarterly Review 7, 3 (1895), 398–417. Burnett, Christian Hebraism, 30–32. Martin Luther to George Spalatin, May 1518, in Martin Luther, Luther’s Works (55 vols, Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1958–67) (hereafter LW), 48, Letters I, ed. and trans. Gottfried G. Krodel, letter 20, 63.

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NOTES to pp. 41–49 108. 109. 110. 111. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141. 142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148.

Luther to Spalatin, 22 May 1519, LW 48, letter 39, 123. Luther to Spalatin, 7 November 1519, LW 48, letter 45, 132–3. Luther to Spalatin, 16 April 1520, LW 48, letter 55, 159–61. Robert Wakefield, On the Three Languages [1524], ed. and trans. G. Lloyd Jones (Binghamton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies with The Renaissance Society of America, 1989), 42. Ibid., 88. Ibid., 174. Luther, Table Talk. LW 54 (ed. and trans. Theodore G. Tappert). Ibid., no. 312, 42–3. Thomas Kaufmann, Luther’s Jews: A Journey into Anti-Semitism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017), 26. Luther, Table Talk, no. 3479. Luther to Spalatin, 1514, in Brooks Schramm and Kirsi I. Stjerna, Martin Luther, the Bible, and the Jewish People: A Reader (Minneapolis, MN: Fortress Press, 2012), 52. Eric W. Gritsch, ‘Luther as Bible Translator’, in Donald K. McKim (ed.), The Cambridge Companion to Martin Luther (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 63–6. Gordon Rupp, Martin Luther and the Jews (London: Council of Christians and Jews, 1972), 7. Martin Luther, ‘First Psalm Lectures’, in Schramm and Stjerna (eds), Martin Luther, 45. Martin Luther, ‘The Magnificat’, LW 21, trans. A.T.W. Steinhauser, 354. Idem, That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, trans. Walther I. Brandt, in Helmut T. Lehman (ed.), LW 45. Ibid., 199. Hans von der Planitz to Elector Frederick, 2 January 1523, in Preserved Smith and Charles M. Jacobs (eds), Luther’s Correspondence, vol. 2 (Philadelphia, PA: Lutheran Publication Society, 1918), 158. Luther to Spalatin, 22 January 1523, in Smith and Jacobs (eds), Luther’s Correspondence, vol. 2, 165. Gen. 3.15, Gen. 22.18, 2 Sam. 7.12–14 and Isa. 7.14. Luther, That Jesus Christ, 202. Ibid., 200. Ibid., 213. Ibid., 213–29. Ibid., 201. Ibid., 200. Ibid. Ibid. Ibid., 229. Ibid. On this theme, see especially Andrew C. Gow, The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200–1600 (Leiden: Brill, 1995). On Farissol see David B. Ruderman, The World of a Renaissance Jew: The Life and Thought of Abraham ben Mordecai Farissol (Cincinatti, OH: Hebrew Union College Press, 1981). Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ‘The Reformation in Contemporary Jewish Eyes’, Proceedings of the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities 4 (1969–70), 256. Ibid., 262. R. Abraham, quoted in ibid., 267. Carl Cohen, ‘Martin Luther and His Jewish Contemporaries’, Jewish Social Studies 25, 3 (1963), 199. Ibid., 201. A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, c.1615, ed. Abraham David, trans. Leon J. Weinberger with Dena Ordan (Tuscaloosa, AL and London: University of Alabama Press, 1993), 28. Ben-Sasson, ‘Reformation’, 266–7. Joseph ben Joshua ha-Kohen, quoted in ibid., 277. R. Abraham ibn Megas ha-Levi, quoted in ibid., 273–4.

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NOTES to pp. 50–56 CHAPTER 3 DASHED HOPES: JEWS AND THE EARLY REFORMATION 1. For a concise account of the Kingdom of Münster, see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (London: Paladin Books, [1957] 1984), 252–80. 2. Cf. Judges 6–8. 3. Hermann von Kerssenbrock, Narrative of the Anabaptist Madness: The Overthrow of Münster, the Famous Metropolis of Westphalia, trans. with introduction and notes by Christopher S. Mackay, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 2007), vol. 2, 538. 4. Henry Gresbeck, False Prophets and Preachers: Henry Gresbeck’s Account of the Anabaptist Kingdom of Münster, ed. and trans. Christopher S. Mackay (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2016), 90; Kerssenbrock, Narrative, 538. 5. On the impact of this episode, see Sigrun Haude, In the Shadow of ‘Savage Wolves’: Anabaptist Münster and the German Reformation During the 1530s (Boston, MA: Humanities Press, 2000). 6. On Hoffman see especially Klaus Deppermann, Melchior Hoffmann: Social Unrest and Apocalyptic Visions in the Age of Reformation, trans. Malcolm Wren (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1987). 7. MacCulloch, Reformation, 205. 8. Cohn, Pursuit, 260. 9. Ibid., 263. 10. Haude, In the Shadow, 13; Kerssenbrock, Narrative, 543. 11. ‘Order Relating to Private Life’, in Lowell H. Zuck (ed.), Christianity and Revolution: Radical Christian Testimonies, 1520–1650 (Philadelphia, PA: Temple University Press, 1975), 95–6. 12. ‘Order Relating to Public Behaviour’, in Zuck (ed.), Christianity and Revolution, 96–7. My italics. 13. Ibid. 14. ‘Bernard Rothmann, A Restitution . . . of Christian Teaching, Faith and Life . . . (1534)’, in Zuck (ed.), Christianity and Revolution, 99–101. 15. See Revelation 7.3–8; 14.1–5. 16. Kerssenbrock, Narrative, 566–70. Feichen is also mentioned, but not named, in the account written by Henry Gresbeck: see idem, False Prophets, 95. 17. This was presumably based on the Book of Judith, a book included in the Septuagint and regarded as canonical by Catholics, but placed among the Apocrypha by mainstream Protestants. 18. Hans J. Hillerbrand (ed.), The Reformation in Its Own Words (London: S.C.M. Press, 1964), 263. 19. Cohn, Pursuit, 280. 20. On Karlstadt see Hans J. Hillerbrand, ‘Andreas Bodenstein of Carlstadt, Prodigal Reformer’, Church History 35, 4 (1966), 379–98, and G. Rupp, ‘Andrew Karlstadt and Reformation Puritanism’, Journal of Theological Studies n.s. 10 (1959), 308–26. 21. Hans Peter Rüger, ‘Karlstadt als Hebraist an der Universität zu Wittenberg’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 75 (1984), 297–308. 22. Andreas Karlstadt, ‘On the Removal of Images and that there Should be no Beggars among Christians’, in idem, The Essential Carlstadt: Fifteen Tracts, by Andreas Bodenstein (Carlstadt) from Karlstadt, ed. and trans. E.J. Furcha (Waterloo, Ontario: Herald Press, 1995), 102, 118. 23. Idem, ‘Regarding the Sabbath and Statutory Holy Days’ (1524), in idem, Essential Carlstadt, 317–38. 24. Ibid., 324. 25. Philip Stubbes, The Anatomie of Abuses (London: Richard Jones, 1583). Sigs L2–L2v. 26. Karlstadt, ‘Regarding the Sabbath’, 333. 27. Martin Luther, Against the Heavenly Prophets in the Matter of Images and Sacraments, ed. Conrad Bergendoff and trans. Bernhard Erling, LW 40. 28. Daniel Liechty, Andreas Fischer and the Sabbatarian Anabaptists: An Early Reformation Episode in East Central Europe (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1988), 41–3. 29. Idem, Sabbatarianism in the Sixteenth Century: A Page in the History of the Radical Reformation (Berrien Springs, MI: Andrews University Press, 1993), 30. 30. Idem, Andreas Fischer, 51–9. 31. Peter Blickle, The Revolution of 1525: The German Peasants’ War from a New Perspective, trans. Thomas A. Brady and H.C. Erik Midelfort (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1981),

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NOTES to pp. 56–61

32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46.

47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52. 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59.

18–67. For the text of the Twelve Articles, see Tom Scott and Bob Scribner (eds), The German Peasants’ War: A History in Documents (New York, NY: Prometheus Books, 1991), no.125, 252–7. Blickle, The Revolution, 62–3. ‘Articles of the Porrentruy Band’, in Scott and Scribner (eds), German Peasants’ War, no. 9, 86. ‘The Frankfurt Articles’, in ibid., no. 63, 170–74, here at 172–3. Claus-Peter Clasen, Anabaptism: A Social History, 1525–1618 – Switzerland, Austria, Moravia, South and Central Germany (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1972), 32. Menno Simons, ‘The Blasphemy of John Leiden’, in idem, The Complete Writings of Menno Simons, c. 1496–1561, ed. J.C. Wenger and trans. Leonard Verduin, with a biography by Harold S. Bender (Scottdale, PA: Herald Press, 1956), 41, 38. Allyson F. Creasman, ‘The Virgin Mary against the Jews: Anti-Jewish Polemic in the Pilgrimage to the Schöne Maria of Regensburg, 1519–25’, Sixteenth Century Journal 33, 4 (2002), 965–7. David C. Steinmetz, Reformers in the Wings: From Geiler von Kayserberg to Theodore Beza (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2001), 139. Pilgram Marpeck, The Writings of Pilgram Marpeck, ed. and trans. William Klassen and Walter Klaassen (Kitchener, Ontario: Herald Press, 1978), 75. Ibid., 539. James Beck, ‘The Anabaptists and the Jews: The Case of Hätzer, Denck and the Worms Prophets’, Mennonite Quarterly Review 75 (2001), 407–27. Martin Luther, ‘On Translating: An Open Letter (1530)’, trans. Charles M. Jacobs, revised by E. Theodore Bachmann, LW 35, 194–5. Beck, ‘Anabaptists’, 418. George Huntston Williams, The Radical Reformation (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1962), 410. Ibid., 411. On this theme, see especially Haim Hillel Ben-Sasson, ‘Jews and Christian Sectarians: Existential Similarity and Dialectical Tensions in Sixteenth-Century Moravia and Poland–Lithuania’, Viator 4 (1973), 369–85; Michael Driedger, ‘Crossing Max Weber’s Great Divide: Comparing Early Modern European Jewish and Anabaptist Histories’, in Geoffrey Dipple and Werner Packull (eds), Radical Reformation Studies: Essays Presented to James M. Stayer (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1999), 157–74; Jerome Friedman, ‘Unitarians and New Christians in Sixteenth-Century Europe’, in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 81 (1990), 216–37; Michael Driedger, ‘The Intensification of Religious Commitment: Jews, Anabaptists, Radical Reform, and Confessionalisation’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 269–99. Josel of Rosheim, ‘Chronicle’, in idem, The Historical Writings of Joseph of Rosheim: Leader of Jewry in Early Modern Germany, ed. and trans. with an introduction and commentary by Chava Fraenkel-Goldschmidt (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 303–39. Selma Stern, Josel of Rosheim: Commander of Jewry in the Holy Roman Empire of the German Nation (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1965), 2. Josel of Rosheim, ‘Chronicle’, 303. Ibid., 312. François Guesnet, ‘The Politics of Precariousness: Josel of Rosheim and Jewish Intercession in the Holy Roman Empire in the Sixteenth Century’, Jewish Culture and History 19, 1 (2018), 8–22. Josel of Rosheim, ‘Chronicle’, 314–15. Ibid., 315. Ibid., 315–16. Debra Kaplan, ‘Entangled Negotiations: Josel and the Peasants’ Rebellion of 1525’, AJS Review 40, 1 (2016), 125–43. Stern, Josel, 76. Josel of Rosheim, ‘Chronicle’, 317–18. Ibid., 318. On Margaritha see Michael T. Walton, Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith: Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University, 2012) and idem, ‘Anthonius Margaritha: Honest Reporter?’, Sixteenth Century Journal 36, 1 (2005), 129–41.

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NOTES to pp. 61–67 60. Maria Diemling, ‘Anthonius Margaritha on the “Whole Jewish Faith”: A Sixteenth-Century Convert from Judaism and his Depiction of the Jewish Religion’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 303–33. 61. Anthonius Margaritha, Der gantz Jüdisch glaub (Augsburg, 1530). 62. Walton, Anthonius Margaritha, 74. 63. Josel of Rosheim, ‘Letter of Consolation’, in idem, Historical Writings, 372. 64. Walton, Anthonius Margaritha, 77. 65. For example, John T. Pawlikowski, ‘Martin Luther and Judaism: Paths Towards Theological Reconciliation’, Journal of the American Academy of Religion 43, 4 (1975), 681 says ‘we must lay aside Luther’s specific writings on the Jews . . . and concentrate instead on his major theological writings.’ See also Ken Schurb, ‘Luther and the Jews: A Reconsideration’, Concordia Journal 13 (1987), 307–30 which argues that anti-Jewishness is not inherent to Luther’s thought. 66. Mark U. Edwards Jr, Luther’s Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531–46 (Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1983), 6–19; Hans J. Hillerbrand, ‘Martin Luther and the Jews’, in James H. Charlesworth (ed.), Jews and Christians: Exploring the Past, Present and Future (New York, NY: Crossroad, 1990), 127–50. 67. Martin Luther, Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 6–14, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, trans. George V. Schlick, LW 2, 361. 68. Idem, Against the Sabbatarians: Letter to a Good Friend, ed. Franklin Sherman, trans. Martin H. Bertram, LW 47, 57–98. It has been suggested that this was Count Wolfgang Schlick of Falkenau. 69. Idem, Against the Sabbatarians, 65. 70. Ibid., 76. 71. Ibid., 79. 72. Ibid., 84. 73. Ibid., 91. Luther followed Augustine in considering this the third commandment, but some other Christian groups consider it to be the fourth. 74. Martin Luther, On the Jews and Their Lies, ed. Franklin Sherman, trans. Martin H. Bertram, LW 47, 121–306. 75. It has generally been assumed that this was a work of Jewish authorship, but Kaufmann, Luther’s Jews, 107–8, suggests that it was a dialogue written by the Basel Hebraist Sebastian Münster in 1539, which, though it took a Christian perspective, still gave space to its Jewish protagonist. 76. Luther, Jews and Their Lies, 137. 77. Ibid., 138. 78. Ibid., 142–76. 79. Ibid., 176–254. 80. Ibid., 254–67. 81. Ibid., 264–5. 82. Ibid., 277. 83. Ibid., 268–70, 285–7. 84. Ibid., 292. 85. Luther, Vom Schem Hamphoras. 86. Ibid., 166. 87. Ibid., 167. 88. Ibid., 168–71. 89. Ibid., 172–90. 90. Ibid., 190–224. 91. Martin Luther, On the Last Words of David, ed. Jaroslav Pelikan, trans. Martin H. Bertram, LW 15, 265–352. 92. Idem, ‘An Admonition Against the Jews (1546)’, in Schramm and Stjerna (eds), Martin Luther, 201. 93. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 136. 94. Johannes Wallmann, ‘The Reception of Luther’s Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century’, Lutheran Quarterly 1 (1987), 75.

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NOTES to pp. 67–73 95. Josel of Rosheim to Strasbourg City Council, 11 July 1543, in Schramm and Stjerna (eds), Martin Luther, 182, 185. 96. Edwards, Luther’s Last Battles, 135. 97. Ibid., 136. 98. Wallmann, ‘Reception’, 77–8. 99. Timothy J. Wengert, ‘Philip Melanchthon and the Jews: A Reappraisal’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation, 120. 100. Ibid., 116. 101. Stern, Josel, 170. 102. Ibid., 38, 171. 103. Ibid., 172 104. Wengert, ‘Philip Melanchthon’, 125. 105. Heiko A. Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James I. Porter (Philadelphia, PA: Fortress Press, 1984), 7–8. 106. Kaufmann, ‘Luther and the Jews’, 86–7. 107. Oberman, Roots, 48. 108. Ibid., 49. 109. For a brief biography, see Steinmetz, Reformers, 64–9. 110. Joy Kammerling, ‘Andreas Osiander, the Jews, and Judaism’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 221–4. 111. Ibid., 228–9. 112. Ibid., 223. 113. Joy Kammerling, ‘Andreas Osiander’s Sermons on the Jews’, Lutheran Quarterly 15 (2001), 59–84. 114. Scott H. Hendrix, ‘Toleration of the Jews in the German Reformation: Urbanus Rhegius and Braunschweig (1535–40)’, Archiv fur Reformationsgeschichte 81 (1990), 192–3. 115. Ibid., 195. 116. Ibid., 197–9. 117. Ibid., 199–200. 118. Ibid., 201–6. 119. On the Reformation in Strasbourg, see Miriam Usher Chrisman, Strasbourg and the Reform: A Study in the Process of Change (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1967); Lorna Jane Abray, The People’s Reformation: Magistrates, Clergy and Commons in Strasbourg, 1500–1598 (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1985). 120. Debra Kaplan, Beyond Expulsion: Jews, Christians and Reformation Strasbourg (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2011), 28. 121. Ibid., 29–32. 122. Ibid., 93. 123. Ibid., 69–72. 124. Ibid., 82–4. 125. Ibid., 94. 126. James M. Kittelson, Wolfgang Capito: From Humanist to Reformer (Leiden: E.J. Brill, 1975). 127. Erasmus to Fisher, 5 June 1516, Desiderius Erasmus, The Collected Works of Erasmus, vol. 3: The Correspondence of Erasmus, 1514–1516, trans. R.A.B. Mynors and D.F.S. Thomson, annotated James K. McConica (Toronto, Ontario and Buffalo, NY: University of Toronto Press, 1976), Letter 413, 294. 128. Quoted in Kittelson, Wolfgang Capito, 26. 129. Quoted in ibid. 26. 130. Kaplan, ‘Entangled Negotiations’, 128. 131. Wolfgang Capito to Martin Luther, 26 April 1537. 132. Martin Luther to Josel of Rosheim, 11 June 1537, in Schramm and Stjerna (eds), Martin Luther, 127–8. 133. On Bucer, see for instance Martin Greschat, Martin Bucer: A Reformer and His Times trans. Stephen E. Buckwalter (Louisville, KY and London: Westminster John Knox Press, 2004); Christian Krieger and Marc Lienhard (eds), Martin Bucer and Sixteenth Century Europe: Actes du colloque de Strasbourg (28–31 août 1991), 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 1993).

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NOTES to pp. 74–79 134. R. Gerald Hobbs, ‘Bucer, the Jews, and Judaism’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism and the Reformation, 137–69. 135. R. Gerald Hobbs, ‘How Firm a Foundation: Martin Bucer’s Historical Exegesis of the Psalms’, Church History 53 (1984), 477–91. 136. Idem, ‘Martin Bucer on Psalm 22: A Study in the Application of Rabbinic Exegesis by a Christian Hebraist’, in Olivier Fatio and Pierre Fraenkel (eds), Histoire de l’exégèse au XVIe siècle: Textes du colloque international tenu à Genève en 1976 (Geneva: Droz, 1978), 150. 137. Ibid., 151. 138. Kenneth Austin, From Judaism to Calvinism: The Life and Writings of Immanuel Tremellius (1510–80) (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2007). 139. Immanuel Tremellius, Praelectiones doctiss. in Epistolam D. P. ad Ephesios, eximi doctoris Martini Buceri . . . Ex ore praelegentis collectae . . . (Basel, 1562); idem, Libellus vere aureus D. Martini Buceri de vi et usu sacri ministerii . . . (Basel, 1562). 140. This discussion draws on the following: John W. Kleiner, ‘The Attitudes of Martin Bucer and Landgrave Philipp Toward the Jews of Hesse (1538–1539)’, in Richard Libowitz (ed.), Faith and Freedom: A Tribute to Franklin H. Littell (Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1987), 221–30; idem, The Attitudes of the Strasbourg Reformers towards Jews and Judaism (Ann Arbor, MI: University Microfilms, 1978); R. Gerald Hobbs, ‘Martin Bucer et les Juifs’, in Christian Krieger and Marc Lienhard (eds), Martin Bucer and Sixteenth Century Europe: actes du colloque de Strasbourg (28–31 août 1991) (Leiden: Brill, 1993), vol. 2, 681–9; Willem Nijenhuis, ‘A Remarkable Historical Argumentation in Bucer’s “Judenratschlag” ’, in idem, Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 23–37; idem, ‘Bucer and the Jews’, in idem, Ecclesia Reformata: Studies on the Reformation (Leiden: Brill, 1972), 38–72. 141. Richard A. Cahill, Philipp of Hesse and the Reformation (Mainz: P. von Zabern, 2001). 142. These terms are set out at the beginning of Bucer’s response. See Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften, vol. 7 (Gutersloh: Gütersloher Verlagshaus, 1964), 342–3. 143. Ibid., 347–57. 144. Ibid., 355–6; translation from Kleiner, ‘Attitudes’, 225. 145. Ibid., 356; translation from Kleiner, ‘Attitudes’, 226. 146. Philip’s Letter to the Rat, 23 December 1538, in Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften, 380–82, here at 380. 147. ‘Entwurf einer Juden-Ordnung in elf Artikeln (Ende 1538)’, in Martin Bucers Deutsche Schriften, vol. 7, 383–5. 148. Kleiner, ‘Attitudes’. CHAPTER 4 PEOPLE OF THE BOOK: THE REFORMED CHURCH AND JUDAISM 1. This episode is described in William G. Naphy, Calvin and the Consolidation of the Genevan Reformation (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1994), 146. 2. Ibid., 144–53; William G. Naphy, ‘Baptisms, Church Riots and Social Unrest in Calvin’s Geneva’, Sixteenth Century Journal 26, 1 (1995), 87–97. 3. Idem, ‘Baptisms’, 89. 4. Idem, Calvin, 145. 5. In short, it is felt that the term ‘Calvinism’ (which was first used as an insult in any case) implies that this was a movement over which Calvin exerted almost exclusive control; the term ‘Reformed’, which was used in the sixteenth century, is rather more neutral, but also allows for a wider range of figures who contributed to this theological tradition, in Geneva and elsewhere. 6. Graeme Murdock, Beyond Calvin: The Intellectual, Political and Cultural World of Europe’s Reformed Churches (Basingstoke: Palgrave MacMillan, 2004), 102–4; Philip Benedict, Christ’s Churches Purely Reformed: A Social History of Calvinism (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2002), 505–6.

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NOTES to pp. 79–84 7. Idem, Rouen during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1981), 104–6. 8. For a compelling biography of Calvin see Bruce Gordon, Calvin (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009). 9. E.g. most recently, G. Sujin Pak, ‘The Protestant Reformers and the Jews: Excavating Contexts, Unearthing Logic’, Religions 8, 72 (2017), available online at https://doi.org/10.3390/ rel8040072 (accessed 21 August 2019). See also Peter Barnes, ‘Calvin and the Jews’, Reformed Theological Review 68, 3 (2009), 178–81. 10. William Klempa, ‘ “The First-Born in God’s Family”. Calvin and the Jews’, in Richard R. Topping and John A. Vissers (eds), Calvin@500: Theology, History and Practice (Eugene, OR: Pickwick Publications, 2011), 1–22; Detmers, Reformation und Judentum, esp. 239–322. 11. Ambrosius Blarer to John Calvin, May 1561, Ioannis Calvini Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. G. Baum, E. Cunitz and E. Reuss, 59 vols (Braunschweig: C.A. Schwetschke, 1863–1900) [hereafter CO; for Calvin’s correspondence, references will include the volume number, page reference, and then the letter number] 18: 419–22 (no. 3,371). 12. John Calvin, Commentary on Daniel 2.9, vv.25–26, CO 40: 605. 13. Achim Detmers, ‘Calvin, the Jews, and Judaism’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 204. 14. Ibid., 201–10 reviews all of the evidence for possible contacts. 15. For a discussion of Calvin’s time in Strasbourg see Cornelis Augustijn, ‘Calvin in Strasbourg’, in Wilhelm H. Neuser (ed.), Calvinus Sacrae Scripturae Professor: Calvin as Confessor of Holy Scripture (Grand Rapids, MI: William B. Eerdmans Publishing Co., 1994), 166–77. 16. Salo Baron suggests that Calvin might be the unnamed Christian figure whom Josel records in his diary as delivering a ‘violent, angry and menacing’ harangue at Frankfurt in 1539: Salo W. Baron, ‘John Calvin and the Jews’, in Jeremy Cohen (ed.), Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict. From Late Antiquity to the Reformation (New York, NY and London: New York University Press, [1965] 1991), 389–90. 17. Max Engamarre, ‘Joannes Calvinus trium linguarum peritus? La question d’Hébreu’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 58 (1996), 35–60. 18. Austin, From Judaism to Calvinism, 48–50. 19. Valérand Poullain to John Calvin, 13 October 1544 and 12 January 1545, CO 11: 755–57 (no. 577) and CO 12: 4–6 (no. 604); Hilarius Guymonneus to John Calvin, 28 April 1545, CO 12: 68–70 (no. 635). 20. John Calvin to Pierre Viret, 25 August 1547, CO 12: 581–2 (no. 941). 21. Pierre Viret to Guillaume Farel, 24 November 1547, CO 12: 621 (no. 969). On Swiss responses to Italian exiles more broadly, see Mark Taplin, The Italian Reformers and the Zurich Church, c. 1540– 1620 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2003), esp. 26–66. 22. Immanuel Tremellius to John Calvin, 8 September 1554, CO 15: 228–9 (no. 2,008). 23. For a fuller discussion of this episode, see Austin, From Judaism, 93–5. 24. John Calvin to Immanuel Tremellius, 29 August 1558, CO 17: 309–10 (no. 2,944). 25. John Calvin to François Boisnormand, 27 March 1559, CO 17: 477–78 (no. 3,030). 26. Immanuel Tremellius, Sefer Hinukh behirei Yah [i.e. Initatio electorum Domini; est versio Hebraica catechism Jo. Calvini] (Geneva, 1554). 27. Immanuel Tremellius to John Calvin, 3 March 1551, CO 14: 53–4 (no. 1,452). 28. Immanuel Tremellius, In Hoseam prophetam interpretatio et enarratio (Geneva, 1563). 29. John Calvin to Immanuel Tremellius, 27 October 1562, CO 19: 564–5 (no. 3,870). 30. John Calvin, Institutes of the Christian Religion, 4.16.14, trans. Henry Beveridge (Peabody, MA: Henrickson Publishers Inc., 2008), 879–80. 31. John Calvin to Guillaume Farel, April 1539, CO 10: 340 (no. 169). 32. Calvin, Commentary on Daniel, CO 40: 605. 33. Ibid. 34. All three of these quotations in this paragraph come from David L. Puckett, John Calvin’s Exegesis of the Old Testament (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 1995), 53. 35. These were Psalms 2, 8, 16, 22, 45, 72, 110 and 118.

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NOTES to pp. 84–89 36. G. Sujin Pak, The Judaizing Calvin: Sixteenth-Century Debates over the Messianic Psalms (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), esp. 77–101. See also Gregory Goswell, ‘Calvin’s Commentary on the Psalter: Christian or Jewish’, Pacifica 22, 3 (2009), 278–300. 37. Pak, Judaizing Calvin, 71–2. 38. Ibid., 84–91. See also Barbara Pitkin, ‘Imitation of David: David as a Paradigm for Faith in Calvin’s Exegesis of the Psalms’, Sixteenth Century Journal 24, 4 (1993), 843–63. 39. Pak, Judaizing Calvin, 95–9. 40. Baron, ‘John Calvin’, 384. 41. John Calvin, ‘Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam responsio . . .’, in idem, CO 9: 657–74. 42. Baron, ‘Calvin’, 390 has suggested that it was written in the late 1530s, while Detmers, ‘Calvin’, 216 has speculated that it was written in the last years of his life. Burnett suggests that it was written after 1555: Stephen Burnett, ‘Calvin’s Jewish Interlocutor: Christian Hebraism and AntiJewish Polemics during the Reformation’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 55, 1 (1993), 113–23. While it is possible that Calvin read the text itself, Burnett believes it much more likely that he gained his familiarity with it via Sebastian Münster’s edition of the Gospel of Matthew. Twenty of the twenty-three questions appear in the Nizzahon, all of which appear in Münster’s annotations; one of the remaining questions draws on a different line in that work which does not appear in the Nizzahon. 43. Calvin, ‘Ad quaestiones’, 661. 44. Ibid., 662. 45. On Servetus see Jerome Friedman, Michael Servetus: A Case Study in Total Heresy (Geneva: Droz, 1978) and Roland H. Bainton, Hunted Heretic: The Life and Death of Michael Servetus (Boston, MA: Beacon Press, 1953). The episode instigated a broader discussion about how one ought to treat heretics. Sebastian Castellio, a former colleague of Calvin’s in Geneva with whom the Genevan had fallen out, wrote De haereticis, an sint persequendi [Whether Heretics Should Be Persecuted] (Basel, 1554). Theodore Beza, Calvin’s second-in-command and successor in Geneva, countered this with De haereticis a civili magistrate puniendis libellus [Book on Why Heretics Must Be Punished] (Geneva, 1554). 46. Melanchthon to Calvin, 14 October 1554, CO 15: 268. 47. Andrew Pettegree, ‘Michael Servetus and the Limits of Toleration’, History Today 40 (1990), 40–45. 48. Michael Servetus. The Two Treatises of Servetus on the Trinity: On the Errors of the Trinity . . .’, trans. Earl Morse Wilbur (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1932). 49. These two texts also appear in ibid. 50. Friedman, Michael Servetus, 13. 51. Idem, Christianismi restitutio: totius ecclesiae apostolicae est ad sua limina vocatio (Vienne, 1553). 52. Johannes Oecolampadius to John Calvin, 18 July 1531, CO 8: 863–5. 53. Servetus, On the Errors, 1.30–61, 33–69. 54. Pettegree, ‘Michael Servetus’. 55. Gordon, Calvin, 227–8. 56. Servetus, On the Errors, 1.59, 66–7. 57. Friedman, Michael Servetus, 130. See also Jerome Friedman, ‘Michael Servetus: The Case for a Jewish Christianity’, Sixteenth Century Journal 4, 1 (1973), 87–110. 58. Friedman, Michael Servetus, 121. 59. Servetus, On the Errors, 7.12, 181. 60. Idem, Biblia Sacra, Introduction, quoted in Friedman, Michael Servetus, 29. 61. Friedman, Michael Servetus, esp. 27–36. 62. Idem, On the Errors, 1.53, 58. 63. Johannes Oecolampadius to Calvin, 1531, CO 8: 860. 64. The Complaint of Nicholas de la Fontaine Against Servetus, 14 August 1553, CO 8: 727–31. 65. On the Academy see Gillian Lewis, ‘The Geneva Academy’, in Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke and Gillian Lewis (eds), Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994), 35–63; Karin Maag, Seminary or University? The Genevan Academy and Reformed Higher Education, 1560–1620 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1995).

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NOTES to pp. 89–94 66. For a fuller discussion, see Kenneth Austin, ‘Academic Exchanges: Letters, the Reformation and Scholarly Self-Fashioning’, in Richard Kirwan (ed.), Scholarly Self-Fashioning and Community in the Early Modern University (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2013), 48–51. 67. Maag, Seminary or University, 13. 68. John Calvin to Immanuel Tremellius, 29 August 1558, CO 17: 309–10 (no. 2,944). 69. John Calvin to François Boisnormand, 27 March 1559, CO 17: 477–8 (no. 3,030). 70. Pablo-Isaac Halevi, ‘The Hebrew Language’, in Martin Goodman (ed.), The Oxford Handbook of Jewish Studies (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2005), 503. 71. Ibid., 503. 72. On the first group of pastors trained at this institution, and their impact on France, see Robert M. Kingdon, Geneva and the Coming of the Wars of Religion (Geneva: Droz, 1956). 73. Austin, From Judaism to Calvinism, 59–82, 97–124, 169–71. 74. Ibid., esp. 118–23. 75. On Beza, see especially Alain Dufour, Théodore de Bèze: Poète et théologien (Geneva: Droz, 2006). 76. Théodore de Bèze, Icones, id est verae imagines virorum doctrina simul et pietate illustrium . . . (Geneva: Ioannes Laonius, 1580). 77. Immanuel Tremellius to Theodore Beza, September/October 1579, Correspondance de Théodore de Bèze, ed. Hippolyte Aubert, H. Meylan and A. Dufour (Geneva: Droz, 1998), no. 1,373, 194–5. 78. Ibid., 195. 79. Anthony Grafton, ‘ “Pandects of the Jews”: A French, Swiss and Italian Prelude to John Selden’, in Scott Mandelbrote and Joanna Weinberg (eds), Jewish Books and their Readers: Aspects of the Intellectual Life of Christians and Jews in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 176. 80. Stephen Burnett, ‘The Regulation of Hebrew Printing in Germany, 1555–1630: Confessional Politics and the Limits of Jewish Toleration’, in Max Reinhart and Thomas Robisheaux (eds), Infinite Boundaries: Order, Disorder and Reorder in Early Modern German Culture (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publishers, 1998), 337–41. 81. Theodore Beza on Romans 11.18, quoted in Klempa, ‘ “The First-Born” ’, 21. 82. See Bruce Gordon, The Swiss Reformation (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2002), esp. 46–85. 83. On Zwingli see G.R. Potter, Zwingli (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976). 84. W.P. Stephens, Zwingli. An Introduction to His Thought (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 2001), 12. 85. Hans-Martin Kirn, ‘Ulrich Zwingli, the Jews, and Judaism’, in Bell and Burnett (eds), Jews, Judaism, and the Reformation, 174. 86. G.R. Potter (ed.), Huldrych Zwingli (London: Edward Arnold, 1978), 66. 87. Gerald Hobbs, ‘Zwingli and the Old Testament’, in Edward J. Furcha (ed.), Huldrych Zwingli, 1484–1531: A Legacy of Radical Reform: Papers from the 1984 International Zwingli Symposium McGill University (1985), esp. 154–62. See also George R. Potter, ‘Zwingli and the Book of Psalms’, Sixteenth Century Journal 10, 2 (1979), 43–50. 88. Zurich Council Decree, 29 September 1523, in Potter, Huldrych Zwingli, 62. 89. Gordon, Swiss Reformation, 232–9. 90. Stephens, Zwingli, 30–2. 91. Christoph Zürcher, Konrad Pellikans Wirken in Zürich (Zurich: Verlag Zurich, 1975), 21ff. 92. Perhaps the most famous example is the ‘prophesyings’ held by the Puritans in Elizabethan England. See Peter Marshall, Heretics and Believers. A History of the English Reformation (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2017), 516–19. 93. On Bullinger see Bruce Gordon and Emidio Campi (eds), Architect of Reformation: An Introduction to Heinrich Bullinger, 1504–1575 (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker Academic, 2004). 94. Bullinger to Bucer, 8 December 1543, discussed in Detmers, Reformation und Judentum, 161–3. 95. Achim Detmers, ‘ “Sie nennen unseren Retter Christus einen Hurensohn und die göttliche Jungfrau eine Dirne”: Heinrich Bullingers Gutachten zur Duldung von Juden 1572’, in Alfred Schindler and Hans Stickelberger (eds), Die Zürcher Reformation: Ausstrahlungen und Rückwirkungen (Bern: Peter Lang, 2001), 243–9. 96. Ibid., 244. 97. Ibid., 247.

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NOTES to pp. 94–101 98. David Berger, ‘Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages’, American Historical Review 91, 3 (1986), 576–91. 99. Jerome Friedman, Most Ancient Testimony, 212–54 remains the fullest discussion of this theme. 100. Stephen G. Burnett, ‘A Dialogue of the Deaf: Hebrew Pedagogy and Anti-Jewish Polemic in Sebastian Münster’s Messiahs of the Christians and the Jews (1529/39)’, in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 91 (2000), 168–90; Jerome Friedman, ‘Sebastian Münster, the Jewish Mission, and Protestant Antisemitism’, in Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 70 (1979), 238–59. 101. Ibid., 242. 102. Friedman, Most Ancient Testimony, 228 ff. 103. Ibid., 215 ff. 104. Ibid., 245ff. 105. Immanuel Tremellius to John Calvin, 3 March 1551, CO 14: 53–4 (no. 1,452). 106. Immanuel Tremellius, Sefer Hinukh behirei Yah, ii. 107. Ibid., iv–v. 108. Elisheva Carlebach, Divided Souls: Converts from Judaism in Germany, 1500–1750 (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001), 164. 109. Tremellius, Sefer Hinukh behirei Yah, v; trans. from Friedman, Most Ancient Testimony, 250–1. 110. This is suggested by Friedman, Most Ancient Testimony, 214. 111. Calvin, Preface to Psalms, CO 31: 19–22. See also Pitkin, ‘Imitation’. 112. Dick Wursten, ‘Clément Marot, the Learned Poet: Jewish Medieval Exegesis and the Genevan Psalter’, Reformation and Renaissance Review 12, 1 (2010), 85–6. 113. Ibid., 96–102. 114. Edward A. Gosselin, ‘David in Tempore Belli: Beza’s David in the Service of the Huguenots’, Sixteenth Century Journal 7, 2 (1976), 31–54. 115. Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 54–72. 116. Simon Schama, The Embarrassment of Riches: An Interpretation of Dutch Culture in the Golden Age (London: Collins, 1987), 109–10. 117. Graeme Murdock, ‘ “The Importance of Being Josiah”: An Image of Calvinist Identity’, Sixteenth Century Journal 29, 4 (1998), 1,043–59: these three examples taken from 1,050, 1,051, 1046. 118. Christopher Bradshaw, ‘David or Josiah? Old Testament Kings as Exemplars in Edwardian Religious Polemic’, in Bruce Gordon (ed.), Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe, vol. 2, (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), 77–90; Achsah Guibbory, Christian Identity, Jews and Israel in Seventeenth-Century England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010), 28. 119. John Strype (ed.), Memorials of Thomas Cranmer, 2 vols (London, 1853), vol. 2, 206–7. 120. John Bale, Apology Agaynste a Rank Papyst (London, 1550), iii recto. 121. Ibid., iv verso. 122. Christopher Hill, The English Bible and the Seventeenth-Century Revolution (London: Penguin, 1994), esp. 3–44. 123. Adam A. Duker, ‘The Protestant Israelites of Sancerre: Jean de Léry and the Confessional Demarcation of Cannibalism’, Journal of Early Modern History 18 (2014), 255–86. 124. Benedict, Christ’s Churches, esp. 78–120. 125. Menna Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 1541–1715 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1985); Andrew Pettegree, Alastair Duke and Gillian Lewis (eds), Calvinism in Europe, 1540–1620 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 126. On this theme see especially Alexandra Walsham, Providence in Early Modern England (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 127. On this idea, see Andrew Pettegree, ‘The Exile Churches and the Churches “Under the Cross”: Antwerp and Emden During the Dutch Revolt’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 38, 2 (1987), 187–209. 128. Charles H. Parker, ‘French Calvinists as the Children of Israel: An Old Testament SelfConsciousness in Jean Crespin’s Histoire des Martyrs before the Wars of Religion’, Sixteenth Century Journal 24, 2 (1993), 227–48.

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NOTES to pp. 101–107 129. Quoted in ibid., 227. 130. Parker has identified 57 martyr accounts in Crespin’s work from the period between 1540 and 1561 which are dealt with in particular detail. He judges that in 33 of these Old Testament imagery dominates, while New Testament imagery dominates in 8 (and no clear pattern in the remaining 16). See ibid., 229–30. 131. Quoted in ibid., 233. 132. Julian H. Franklin (ed. and trans.), Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Beza and Mornay (New York, NY: Pegasus, 1969). CHAPTER 5 A TRIDENTINE RESPONSE: THE CATHOLIC CHURCH AND THE JEWS 1. The Italian text of this letter, and an English translation, are in Peter A. Mazur, Conversion to Catholicism in Early Modern Italy (Abingdon: Routledge, 2016), 121–3. On Borromeo, see especially John M. Headley and John B. Tomaro (eds), San Carlo Borromeo: Catholic Reform and Ecclesiastical Politics in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century (Washington, DC: Folger Shakespeare Library, 1988). 2. Paula Fredriksen, ‘Paul and Augustine: Conversion Narratives, Orthodox Traditions, and the Retrospective Self ’, Journal of Theological Studies 37, 1 (1986), 3–34. 3. On these ambiguities in the autobiographical writings of German converts, see Carlebach, Divided Souls, 88–123. 4. François Soyer, ‘ “It Is Not Possible to Be Both a Jew and a Christian”: Converso Religious Identity and the Inquisitorial Trial of Custodio Nunes (1604–5)’, Mediterranean Historical Review 26, 1 (2011), 81–97. 5. John W. O’Malley, Trent and All That: Renaming Catholicism in the Early Modern Era (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2000), 119–43 provides a very helpful discussion of a range of terms that historians have used. 6. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, The World of Catholic Renewal, 1540–1770 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998) and Robert Bireley, The Refashioning of Catholicism, 1450–1700: A Reassessment of the Counter Reformation (Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1999) offer comprehensive views of the many different aspects of the Catholic Reformation. 7. Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 10–25. 8. For a nuanced discussion of this theme, see David L. Graizbord, Souls in Dispute: Converso Identities in Iberia and the Jewish Diaspora, 1580–1700 (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), esp. 1–17, 50–63, 171–8. 9. Robert A. Maryks, The Jesuit Order as a Synagogue of Jews: Jesuits of Jewish Ancestry and Purityof-Blood Laws in the Early Society of Jesus (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 42ff. 10. James W. Reites, ‘St Ignatius of Loyola and the Jews’, Studies in the Spirituality of Jesuits 13, 4 (1981), 30. 11. Ibid., 17. 12. Magnum bullarium romanum a Beato Leone Magno usque ad S.D.N. Benedictum XIII (Luxembourg: Andrew Chevalier, 1727), vol. 1, 758–9. 13. Ibid., 767–9. 14. Kenneth R. Stow, Catholic Thought and Papal Jewry Policy, 1555–1593 (New York, NY: Jewish Theological Seminary of America, 1977), 52. 15. Ibid., 53–4. 16. Mazur, Conversion to Catholicism, 25. On this theme more broadly, see Cecil Roth, ‘Forced Baptisms in Italy: A Contribution to the History of Jewish Persecution’, Jewish Quarterly Review n.s. 27, 2 (1936), 117–36. 17. Antonio Folcario, Vita della Serenissima Eleonora Arciduchessa d’Austria (Mantua, 1598), 167–73. 18. Ibid., 174. 19. Simon Ditchfield, ‘Decentering the Catholic Reformation: Papacy and Peoples in the Early Modern World’, Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 101 (2010), 186–208.

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NOTES to pp. 107–115 20. The fullest and most up-to-date discussion of these institutions is Mazur, Conversion to Catholicism, 18–42. 21. ‘Rules for the Collegio degli Alunni, Milan, 1630s’, in ibid., 129–34. 22. Figures from ibid., 31. On Naples, see also Peter A. Mazur, The New Christians of Spanish Naples, 1528–1671 (Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2013), esp. 34–59. 23. On the ‘spirituali’, see especially Eva-Maria Jung, ‘On the Nature of Evangelism in SixteenthCentury Italy’, Journal of the History of Ideas 14 (1953), 511–27 and Elisabeth G. Gleason, ‘On the Nature of Sixteenth-Century Italian Evangelism: Scholarship 1953–1978’, Sixteenth Century Journal 9, 3 (1978), 3–26. 24. At the same time, William V. Hudon, Marcello Cervini and Ecclesiastical Government in Tridentine Italy (De Kalb, IL: Northern Illinois University Press, 1992), esp. 7–17, 162–74, offers a helpful critique of this model. 25. The full Latin text and an English translation of this bull are in Stow, Catholic Thought, 291–8. 26. Ibid., 294. 27. Ibid., 295–96. 28. Ibid., 297. 29. Stow, Catholic Thought, 8–10. He notes that in previous bulls, Jews were to be tolerated ‘although’ they preferred to continue to adhere to Judaism. My italics. 30. Ibid., 295. 31. Ibid., 13–28. 32. Emily Michelson, ‘Conversionary Preaching and the Jews in Early Modern Rome’, Past and Present 235 (2017), 79ff. 33. Ibid., 84–5. 34. Emily Michelson, ‘Evangelista Marcellino: One Preacher, Two Audiences’, Archivio Italiano per la Storia della Pieta 25 (2012), 105–202. 35. Michelson, ‘Conversionary Preaching’, 98. 36. Stow, Catholic Thought, 25. 37. Ibid., 37–42. 38. Ibid., 43. 39. See especially Kenneth Stow, Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century (Seattle, WA and London: University of Washington Press, 2001). 40. Bonfil, Jewish Life, 71–2. 41. Stephanie B. Siegmund, The Medici State and Ghetto of Florence: The Construction of an Early Modern Jewish Community (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2006), esp. 201–38. 42. Ibid., 171–6. 43. On Cosimo more broadly, see Konrad Eisenbichler (ed.), The Cultural Politics of Duke Cosimo I de’ Medici (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2001). 44. Edward Goldberg, Jews and Magic in Medici Florence: The Secret World of Benedetto Blanis (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2011), 28. 45. Ibid., 28. 46. Quoted in Siegmund, Medici State, 131. 47. Goldberg, Jews and Magic, 29. 48. Siegmund, Medici State, 55. 49. Quoted in ibid., 55. 50. Ibid., 57. 51. Ibid., 58–61. 52. Ibid., 71 ff. 53. Ibid., 65. 54. Goldberg, Jews and Magic, 23. 55. Quoted in ibid., 31. 56. Edward Goldberg, A Jew at the Medici Court: The Letters of Benedetto Blanis Hebreo (1615–1621) (Toronto, Ontario: University of Toronto Press, 2011). 57. Idem, Jews and Magic, 15–16. 58. Ibid., 16–21.

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NOTES to pp. 115–120 59. Ibid., 60. 60. On the Jews of Livorno, see Francesca Trivellato, The Familiarity of Strangers: The Sephardic Diaspora, Livorno, and Cross-Cultural Trade in the Early Modern Period (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009); idem, ‘The Port Jews of Livorno and their Global Networks of Trade in the Early Modern Period’, Jewish Culture and History 7, 1–2 (2004), 31–48. 61. Quoted in Goldberg, Jews and Magic, 60. 62. Ibid., 62. 63. Ibid., 62. 64. Christopher F. Black, The Italian Inquisition (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2009); John A. Tedeschi (ed.), The Prosecution of Heresy: Collected Studies on the Inquisition in Early Modern Italy (Binghampton, NY: Medieval and Renaissance Texts and Studies, 1991). 65. Brian Pullan, The Jews of Europe and the Inquisition of Venice, 1550–1670 (London and New York: I.B. Tauris, 1997), 72–3. 66. Ibid., 73–4. 67. Trans. in Katherine Aron-Beller, ‘Disciplining Jews: The Papal Inquisition of Modena, 1598– 1630’, Sixteenth Century Journal 41, 3 (2010), 717. 68. Quoted in Nicolas Davidson, ‘The Inquisition and the Italian Jews’, in Stephen Haliczer (ed.), Inquisition and Society in Early Modern Europe (London: Croom Helm, 1987), 25. 69. Ibid., 35. 70. John A. Tedeschi, with William Monter, ‘Toward a Statistical Profile of the Italian Inquisitions, Sixteenth to Eighteenth Centuries’ in Tedeschi (ed.), Prosecution, 89–126. 71. Pullan, Jews of Europe, 26–45; John J. Martin, Venice’s Hidden Enemies: Italian Heretics in a Renaissance City (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1993), 51–70. 72. On religion in Venice see, for example, William J. Bouwsma, Venice and the Defense of Republican Liberty. Renaissance Values in the Age of the Counter Reformation (Berkeley and Los Angeles, CA: University of California Press, 1968), esp. 112–61. 73. On the interdict, see ibid., 339–482. 74. Katherine Aron-Beller, Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598–1638 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016). 75. Ibid., 20. 76. Ibid., 1. 77. Ibid., 2. 78. Ibid., 56. See also idem, ‘The Inquisition, Professing Jews, and Christian Images in SeventeenthCentury Modena’, Church History 81, 3 (2012), 575–600. 79. Aron-Beller, ‘Disciplining Jews’, 725. 80. Ibid., 724. 81. Aron-Beller, Jews on Trial, 55. 82. Quoted in idem, ‘Buon Purim: Proselytizing, Professing Jews and the Papal Inquisition in Modena’, Jewish History 26, 1/2 (2012), 165. 83. Lucien Febvre and Henri-Jean Martin, The Coming of the Book: The Impact of Printing 1450– 1800, trans. David Gerard (London: Verso, [1958] 1997), 304–12. 84. Paul F. Grendler, The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540–1605 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1977); idem, ‘The Roman Inquisition and the Venetian Press, 1540– 1605’, Journal of Modern History 47 (1975), 48–65. 85. Pettegree, Book in the Renaissance, 55–62. 86. Bruce Nielsen, ‘Daniel van Bombergen, a Bookman of Two Worlds’, in Joseph R. Hacker and Adam Shear (eds), The Hebrew Book in Early Modern Italy (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2011), 56–75; Marvin J. Heller, ‘Earliest Printings of the Talmud: From Bomberg to Scottenstein’, in idem, Further Studies in the Making of the Early Hebrew Book (Leiden: Brill, 2013, 421–49, available online at http://www.jewishhistory.com/ printingthetalmud/essays/7.pdf (accessed 21 August 2019). 87. Piet van Boxel, ‘Hebrew Books and Censorship in Sixteenth-Century Italy’, in Mandelbrote and Weinberg (eds), Jewish Books, 76–9.

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NOTES to pp. 120–126 88. Stephen G. Burnett, ‘The Strange Career of the Biblia Rabbinica among Christian Hebraists, 1517–1620’, in Bruce Gordon and Matthew McLean (eds), Shaping the Bible in the Reformation: Books, Scholars and their Readers in the Sixteenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 78. 89. David Stern, ‘The Rabbinic Bible in its Sixteenth-Century Context’, in Hacker and Shear (eds), The Hebrew Book, 79–80. 90. Paul F. Grendler, ‘The Destruction of Hebrew Books in Venice, 1568’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978), 105. 91. Ibid., 106–7. 92. Ibid., 106. 93. Fausto Parente, ‘The Index, the Holy Office, the Condemnation of the Talmud, and Publication of Clement VIII’s Index’, in Gigliola Fragnito (ed.), Church, Censorship, and Culture in Early Modern Italy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2001), 165. 94. Kenneth R. Stow, ‘The Burning of the Talmud in 1553 in the Light of Sixteenth-Century Catholic Attitudes towards the Talmud’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 34 (1972), 435–59. 95. Grendler, ‘Destruction’, 108. 96. J.M. de Bujanda, Index des livres interdits, 10 vols (Sherbrooke, Quebec: Centre d’Études de la Renaissance, 1985–94). 97. Ibid., vol. 3. 98. Ibid., vol. 8. 99. Parente, ‘The Index’, 167. 100. Ibid., 169; Bujanda (ed.), Index, vol. 8. 101. This paragraph draws on Grendler, ‘Destruction’, 111. 102. Ibid., 120. 103. Ibid., 120. 104. Ibid., 117. 105. Van Boxel, ‘Hebrew Books’, 80–81. 106. Ibid., 81–2. 107. A recent provocative study – Amnon Raz-Krakotzkin, The Censor, the Editor, and the Text: The Catholic Church and the Shaping of the Jewish Canon in the Sixteenth Century, trans. Jackie Feldman (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2007) – has sought to emphasise the dialogue between Christians and Jews, and the extent to which this played a constructive role in shaping the canon of Jewish works. 108. E.g. van Boxel, ‘Hebrew Books’ and Federica Francesconi, ‘Illustrious Rabbis Facing the Italian Inquisition: Accommodating Censorship in Seventeenth-Century Italy’, both in Mandelbrote and Weinberg (eds), Jewish Books, 75–99 and 100–121 respectively. 109. Joseph R. Hacker, ‘Sixteenth-Century Jewish Internal Censorship of Hebrew Books’, in idem and Shear (eds), Hebrew Book, 109–20; Francesconi, ‘Illustrious Rabbis’. 110. Quoted in Pullan, Jews of Europe, 85. 111. John Edwards, The Jews in Christian Europe, 1400–1700 (London and New York, NY: Routledge, 1991), 36. 112. François J. F. Soyer, The Persecution of the Jews and Muslims of Portugal: King Manuel I and the End of Religious Tolerance (1496–7) (Leiden: Brill, 2007). 113. Ibid., 69–70. 114. Edwards, Jews, 37. 115. François Soyer, ‘King Manuel I and the Expulsion of the Castilian Conversos and Muslims from Portugal in 1497: New Perspectives’, Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas 8 (2008), 40–41. 116. Idem, ‘The Massacre of the New Christians of Lisbon in 1506: A New Eyewitness Account’, Cadernos de Estudos Sefarditas 7 (2007), 221. 117. Ibid., 222. 118. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 287–8. 119. Ibid., 124. 120. Ibid., 123–5.

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NOTES to pp. 126–134 121. Robert J.W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 3–40. 122. André Neher, Jewish Thought and the Scientific Revolution of the Sixteenth Century: David Gans (1541–1613) and His Times (Oxford: Littman Library, 1986), 22. 123. Abraham David (ed.), A Hebrew Chronicle from Prague, c. 1615, trans. Leon J. Weinberger with Dena Ordan (Tuscaloosa, AL and London: The University of Alabama Press, 1993), 46. 124. Paula Sutter Fichtner, Emperor Maximilian II (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2001). 125. Ibid., 37–8. 126. Ibid., 41–2. 127. Neher, Jewish Thought, 57. 128. David Gans, Zemah David, trans. in Neher, Jewish Thought, 56. 129. Ibid., 57. 130. Robert J.W. Evans, Rudolf II and His World: A Study in Intellectual History, 1576–1612 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1973); Howard Louthan, Converting Bohemia: Force and Persuasion in the Catholic Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2009). 131. Idem, Johannis Crato and the Austrian Habsburgs: Reforming a Counter-Reform Court (Princeton, NJ: Princeton Theological Seminary, 1994); idem, The Quest for Compromise: Peacemakers in Counter-Reformation Vienna (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997). 132. Hillel J. Kieval, Languages of Community: The Jewish Experience in the Czech Lands (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000). 133. Peter Marshall, The Mercurial Emperor: The Magic Circle of Rudolf II in Renaissance Prague (London: Pimlico, 2007). 134. Byron L. Sherwin, Mystical Theology and Social Dissent: The Life and Works of Judah Loew of Prague (Rutherford: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982). 135. David Gans, Zemah David, trans. in Neher, Jewish Thought, 33. 136. Headley and Tomaro (eds), San Carlo Borromeo. CHAPTER 6 FAULT LINES: JEWS IN A CONFESSIONALLY DIVIDED CHRISTENDOM 1. Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997) provides a very accessible overview. 2. Robert M. Kingdon, Myths about the St Bartholomew’s Day Massacres, 1572–1576 (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1988). 3. Philip Benedict, ‘The St Bartholomew’s Massacres in the Provinces’, Historical Journal 21, 2 (1978), 205–25. 4. Julian H. Franklin (ed. and trans.), Constitutionalism and Resistance in the Sixteenth Century: Three Treatises by Hotman, Bèze and Mornay (New York, NY: Pegasus, 1969). See also Robert M. Kingdon, ‘Calvinism and Resistance Theory, 1550–1580’, in J.H. Burns (ed.), The Cambridge History of Political Thought 1450–1700 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991), 193–218. 5. Jean Bodin, On Sovereignty: Four Chapters from the Six Books of the Commonwealth, ed. and trans. Julian H. Franklin (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992). 6. Jean Bodin, Colloquium of the Seven about Secrets of the Sublime, trans. with an introduction, annotations and critical readings by Marion Leathers Daniels Kuntz (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1975). 7. Ibid., 4. 8. Ibid., 14. 9. Gary Remer, ‘Dialogues of Toleration: Erasmus and Bodin’, Review of Politics 56, 2 (1994), esp. 321–34. 10. Bodin, Colloquium, 471.

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NOTES to pp. 134–138 11. Marion Leathers Daniels Kuntz, ‘Introduction’, in Bodin, Colloquium, lxvii–lxx. The fact that it was not printed in his lifetime has led some critics to suggest that Bodin was not its author. While this cannot be ruled out, it seems unlikely. See Noel Malcolm, ‘Jean Bodin and the Authorship of the Colloquium Heptaplomeres’, Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 69 (2006), 95–150. 12. See Carlo Ginzburg, The Cheese and the Worms: The Cosmos of a Sixteenth-Century Miller, trans. John Tedeschi and Anne Tedeschi (Baltimore, MD: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1992), 50–1. This particular element of Menocchio’s trial is also discussed in Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 245. 13. Giovanni Boccaccio, The Decameron, trans. G.H. McWilliam (London: Penguin, 2003), Day 1, Story 3, 41–4. 14. Ginzburg, Cheese and the Worms, 51. 15. A point made particularly clearly in Christopher Haigh, English Reformations: Religion, Politics and Society under the Tudors (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1993). 16. Claus-Peter Clasen, The Palatinate in European History, 1555–1618 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1966). 17. Jonathan I. Israel, European Jewry in the Age of Mercantilism 1550–1750 (Oxford and Portland, OR: The Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, [1985] 1998), 30. 18. Richard H. Popkin, The History of Scepticism from Erasmus to Spinoza (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1979); Michael Hunter and D. Wooton (eds), Atheism from the Reformation to the Enlightenment (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992). 19. Michel de Montaigne, The Essays, ed. and trans. with an introduction and notes by M.A. Screech (London: Penguin, 1991), 560–63; Zachary S. Schiffman, ‘Montaigne and the Rise of Skepticism in Early Modern Europe: A Reappraisal’, Journal of the History of Ideas 45, 4 (1984), 499–516. 20. Israel, European Jewry, 2. 21. On ‘confessionalisation’ see John M. Headley, Hans J. Hillerbrand and Anthony J. Paplas (eds), Confessionalization in Europe: Essays in Honor and Memory of Bodo S. Nischan (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2004); Wolfgang Reinhard, ‘Reformation, Counter-Reformation and the Early Modern State: A Reassessment’, Catholic Historical Review 75 (1989), 383–404. 22. Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 39–105; Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 48–72. 23. Walsham, ‘Reformation’; Robert W. Scribner, ‘The Reformation, Popular Magic and the “Disenchantment of the World” ’, Journal of Interdisciplinary History 23 (1993), 475–94. 24. For discussions of the Reformation on a national basis, see, for example, Andrew Pettegree (ed.), The Early Reformation in Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992) and Bob Scribner, Roy Porter and Mikuláš Teich (eds), The Reformation in National Context (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994). 25. Mack P. Holt, The French Wars of Religion, 1562–1629 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 26. For surveys of these two conflicts, see Geoffrey Parker, The Dutch Revolt (London: Penguin, 1977) and Peter H. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy: A History of the Thirty Years War (London: Allen Lane, 2009). 27. Mack P. Holt, ‘Review Article: Putting Religion back into the Wars of Religion’, French Historical Studies 18 (1993), 524–51. 28. For a nuanced discussion of the readiness to die, see Holt, French Wars, esp. 1–49; on martyrdom, see Brad S. Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999). 29. Natalie Zemon Davis, ‘The Rites of Violence: Religious Riot in Sixteenth-Century France’, Past and Present 59, 1 (1973), 51–91. 30. Will Coster and Andrew Spicer (eds), Sacred Space in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). 31. Holt, French Wars, 2. 32. Classic accounts include Joseph Lecler, Toleration and the Reformation, 2 vols (London: Longmans, 1960) and W.K. Jordan, The Development of Religious Toleration in England, 4 vols (London: Allen and Unwin, 1932–40). Other works in a similar vein include Henry Kamen, The Rise of Toleration (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1967) and Perez Zagorin, How the Idea of Religious Toleration Came to the West (Princeton, NJ and Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2003).

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NOTES to pp. 138–142 33. John Locke, ‘A Letter Concerning Toleration’ in John Locke, Two Treatises of Government and a Letter Concerning Toleration, ed. Ian Shapiro (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2003), 211–54. 34. István Bejczy, ‘Tolerantia: A Medieval Concept’, Journal of the History of Ideas 58, 3 (1997), 365–84. 35. Walsham, Charitable Hatred; Kaplan, Divided by Faith; Keith Luria, Sacred Boundaries: Religious Coexistence and Conflict in Early Modern France (Washington, DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2005). 36. Kaplan, Divided by Faith, 198–217. 37. Ibid., 288. 38. Both examples are discussed in Daniel Jütte, ‘ “They Shall not Keep Their Doors or Windows Open”: Urban Space and the Dynamics on Conflict and Contact in Premodern Jewish-Christian Relations’, European History Quarterly 46, 2 (2016), 219–20. 39. Jütte, ‘ “They Shall not Keep” ’. See also Dana E. Katz, ‘ “Clamber not You Up to the Casements”: On Ghetto Views and Viewing’, Jewish History 24 (2010), 127–53; idem, ‘The Ghetto and the Gaze’, 233–62. 40. Leon of Modena, Historia de riti hebraici (Paris, 1637). On Leon, see idem, The Autobiography of a Seventeenth-Century Venetian Rabbi. Leon of Modena’s Life of Judah, trans. and ed. Mark R. Cohen (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989). 41. Israel, European Jewry, 31. 42. See, for example, Seong-Hak Kim, Michel de L’Hôpital: The Vision of a Reformist Chancellor during the French Wars of Religion (Kirksville, MO: Sixteenth Century Journal Publications, 1997); Mack P. Holt, The Duke of Anjou and the Politique Struggle during the Wars of Religion (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1986). 43. On the costs of war see James B. Wood, The King’s Army: Warfare, Soldiers, and Society during the Wars of Religion in France, 1561–1576 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996). 44. Edmond M. Beame, ‘The Politiques and the Historians’, Journal of the History of Ideas 54, 3 (1993), 360, 357. 45. Ibid., 363. 46. Kaplan, Divided by Faith, esp. 73–98; Walsham, Charitable Hatred; Davis, ‘Rites of Violence’; Barbara B. Diefendorf, Beneath the Cross: Catholics and Huguenots in Sixteenth Century Paris (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991). 47. The various examples in this paragraph are taken from Myriam Yardeni, ‘The Attitude to the Jews in Literary Polemics during the Religious Wars in France’, in idem, Anti-Jewish Mentalities in Early Modern Europe (Lanham, MD: University Press of America, 1999), 3–4. 48. Ibid. 49. Ibid. 50. Ibid. 51. Lyndal Roper, Witch Craze: Terror and Fantasy in Baroque Germany (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2004); Brian P. Levack, The Witch-Hunt in Early Modern Europe (London: Longman, 1993). 52. On the complexities of this relationship, see Anna Foa, ‘The Witch and the Jew: Two Alikes that Were Not the Same’, in Jeremy Cohen (ed.), From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), 361–74. 53. Levack, Witch-Hunt, 27–40. 54. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, ‘Witchcraft, Magic, and the Jews in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany’, in Cohen (ed.), From Witness, 429 also makes this point; Levack, Witch-Hunt, 6–10. See also the Malleus Maleficarum (‘Hammer of Witches’) written by the Dominican Inquisitor, Heinrich Institoris, in 1486. Substantial extracts are available in The Malleus Maleficarum, ed. and trans. P.G. Maxwell-Stuart (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2007). 55. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, ‘Jews as Magicians in Reformation Germany’, in Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (eds), Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis (New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 1991), 115–39.

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NOTES to pp. 143–148 56. Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition: A Study in Folk Religion (Mansfield Centre, CT: Martino Publishing, [1939] 2013). 57. Levack, Witch-Hunt, 93–116. 58. Keith Thomas, Religion and the Decline of Magic: Studies in Popular Beliefs in Sixteenth- and Seventeenth-Century England (London: Penguin, [1971] 1991), 599–637; Moshe Lazar, ‘The Lamb and the Scapegoat: The Dehumanization of the Jews in Medieval Propaganda Imagery’, in Sander L. Gilman and Steven T. Katz (eds), Anti-Semitism in Times of Crisis (New York, NY and London: New York University Press, 1991), 38–80. 59. Robin Briggs, Witches and Neighbours: The Social and Cultural Context of European Witchcraft (Harmondsworth: Penguin, 1996), 20–25, 137–68. 60. James Shapiro, Shakespeare and the Jews (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1996). 61. Christopher Marlowe, The Jew of Malta, ed. James R. Siemon (London: A & C Black, 1994); William Shakespeare, The Merchant of Venice, ed. Jay L. Halio (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993). 62. Lee Palmer Wandel, The Eucharist in the Reformation: Incantation and Liturgy (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 94–138. 63. Miri Rubin, Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1991). Also see Wandel, Eucharist, 208–55 for Reformation-era Catholic views. 64. Wandel, Eucharist, 139–207. 65. Janusz Tazbir, ‘Poland’, in Scriber, Porter and Teich (eds), Reformation in National Context, 168– 80; idem, A State without Stakes: Polish Religious Toleration in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries (New York: Ko´sciuszko Foundation, 1973). 66. Magda Teter, Sinners on Trial: Sacrilege after the Reformation (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2011), 31. 67. Ibid., 58–62. 68. Magda Teter, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post-Reformation Era (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 113–14. 69. Andreas Osiander, Ob es war und glaublich sey dass die juden der Christen Kinder heymlich erwürgen . . ., ed. Moritz Stern (Kiel, 1893). 70. Hsia, Myth, 136–43. 71. Quoted in ibid., 137. 72. Johann Eck, Ains Juden büechlins verlegung: darin ain Christ gantzer Christenhait zü schmach (Ingolstadt, 1541). On this work see Hsia, Myth, 124–31 and David Bagchi, ‘Catholic AntiJudaism in Reformation Germany: The Case of Johann Eck’, in Wood (ed.), Christianity and Judaism, 253–64. 73. Hsia, Myth, 126–7. 74. Quoted in ibid., 129. 75. Ibid., 197. 76. Zenon Guldon and Jacek Wijaczka, ‘The Accusation of Ritual Murder in Poland, 1500–1800’, Polin 10 (1997), 99–140; Gershon Hundert, Jews in Poland–Lithuania in The Eighteenth Century (2004), 57–78. 77. Hsia, Myth, 214. 78. Hillel J. Kieval, ‘Representation and Knowledge in Medieval and Modern Accounts of Jewish Ritual Murder’, Jewish Social Studies n.s. 1, 1 (1994), 52–72. See also idem, ‘Death and the Nation: Ritual Murder as Political Discourse in the Czech Lands’, Jewish History 10, 1 (1996), 75–91. Kieval, ‘Representation’, 53–4 refers to a clutch of accusations around the turn of the twentieth century. 79. Pak, Judaizing Calvin, 104. 80. Aegidius Hunnius, The Judaizing Calvin, trans. Paul A. Rydecki (Malone, TX: Repristination Press, 2012). 81. Ibid., 11. 82. Ibid., 56. 83. Kamen, Spain, 198. 84. Moredechai Feingold, ‘Isaac Casaubon, Hebraist’, International Journal of the Classical Tradition 19, 2 (2012), 63–81.

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NOTES to pp. 148–152 85. Anthony Grafton and Joanna Weinberg, ‘I Have Always Loved The Holy Tongue’: Isaac Casaubon, the Jews, and a Forgotten Chapter in Renaissance Scholarship (Cambridge, MA and London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011), 164–230. 86. Ibid., 169. 87. Hsia, Myth of Ritual Magic, 218. 88. Ibid., 222. 89. Jonathan M. Elukin, ‘Jacques Basnage and the History of the Jews: Anti-Catholic Polemic and Historical Allegory in the Republic of Letters’, Journal of the History of Ideas 53, 4 (1992), 603–30. 90. Ibid., 606. 91. Ibid., 607. 92. Stephen G. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism to Jewish Studies: Johannes Buxtorf (1564–1629) and Hebrew Learning in the Seventeenth Century (Leiden: Brill, 1996); Peter van Rooden, Theology, Biblical Scholarship and Rabbinical Studies in the Seventeenth Century: Constantijn L’Empereur (1591–1648) – Professor of Hebrew and Theology at Leiden (Leiden: Brill, 1989); Jason P. Rosenblatt, Renaissance England’s Chief Rabbi: John Selden (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2006). 93. Hans Bots and Françoise Waquet, La republique des lettres (Paris: Belin–De Boeck, 1997). 94. Peter N. Miller, ‘The Mechanics of Christian-Jewish Intellectual Collaboration in SeventeenthCentury Provence: N.-C. Fabri de Peiresc and Salmon Azubi’, in Allison P. Coudert and Jeffrey S. Shoulson (eds), Hebraica Veritas? Christian Hebraists and the Study of Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Philadelphia, PA: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 71–101. See also Peter N. Miller, Peiresc’s Europe: Learning and Virtue in the Seventeenth Century (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2000). 95. Andrew Berns, ‘Abraham Portaleone and Alessandro Magno: Jewish and Christian Correspondents on a Monstrous Birth’, European Journal of Jewish Studies 5, 1 (2011), 53–66. 96. The examples which follow are taken from Petry, Gender, Kabbalah and the Reformation, 82–5. 97. Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, ‘Christian Ethnographies of Jews in Early Modern Germany’, in Raymond B. Waddington and Arthur H. Williamson (eds), The Expulsion of the Jews: 1492 and after (New York, NY and London: Garland Publishing Inc., 1994), 223–35. 98. Yaacov Deutsch, Judaism in Christian Europe: Ethnographic Descriptions of Jews and Judaism in Early Modern Europe, trans. Avi Aronsky (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012); Yaacov Deutsch, ‘ “A View of the Jewish Religion”: Conceptions of Jewish Practice and Ritual in Early Modern Europe’, Archiv für Religionsgeschichte 3 (2001), 273–95. 99. Burnett, From Christian Hebraism; idem, ‘Distorted Mirrors: Antonius Margaritha, Johann Buxtorf and Christian Ethnographies of the Jews’, Sixteenth Century Journal 25, 2 (1994), 275–87. 100. Idem, From Christian Hebraism. 101. Aya Elyada, A Goy Who Speaks Yiddish: Christians and the Jewish Language in Early Modern Germany (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2012); idem, ‘Protestant Scholars and Yiddish Studies in Early Modern Europe’, Past and Present 203 (2009), 69–98. 102. Elyada, ‘Protestant Scholars’, 72. 103. E.G. Rupp, ‘The Bible in the Age of the Reformation’, in D.E. Nineham (ed.), The Church’s Use of the Bible: Past and Present (London: S.P.C.K., 1963), 73–87; Roland H. Bainton, ‘The Bible in the Reformation’, in Greenslade (ed.), Cambridge History, 1–37. 104. Ilona N. Rashkow, ‘Hebrew Bible Translation and the Fear of Judaization’, Sixteenth Century Journal 21, 2 (1990), 217–33. 105. Bainton, ‘The Bible’, 6–7. 106. Stephen Ozment, The Age of Reform, 1250–1550: An Intellectual and Religious History of Late Medieval and Reformation Europe (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1980), 65. 107. Alastair Hamilton, ‘The Study of Tongues: The Semitic Languages and the Bible in the Renaissance’; Bruce Gordon and Euan Cameron, ‘Latin Bible in the Early Modern Period’; Alastair Hamilton, ‘In Search of the Most Perfect Text: The Early Modern Printed Polyglot Bibles from Alcalá (1510–1520) to Brian Walton (1654–8)’; all in Euan Cameron (ed.), The New Cambridge History of the Bible, Vol. 3: From 1450 to 1750 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2016), 17–36, 187–216 and 138–56 respectively.

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NOTES to pp. 152–157 108. Gordon and Cameron, ‘Latin Bible’, 188–94. 109. Ibid., 211–15. 110. Quoted in Jacques Le Long, Bibliotheca sacra seu syllabus omnium ferme sacrae scripturae editionum (Leipzig, 1709), 286–8. See also Paul F. Grendler, ‘Italian Biblical Humanism and the Papacy, 1513–35’, in Erika Rummel (ed.), Biblical Humanism and Scholasticism in the Age of Erasmus (Leiden, Brill, 2008), 240–47. 111. Erwin I.J. Rosenthal, ‘Sebastian Muenster’s Knowledge of and Use of Jewish Exegesis’, in I. Epstein, E. Levine and C. Roth (eds), Essays in Honour of the Very Rev. Dr. J. H. Hertz (London: Edward Golston, 1942), 351–69. 112. Bruce Gordon, ‘Remembering Jerome and Forgetting Zwingli: The Zurich Latin Bible of 1543 and the Establishment of Heinrich Bullinger’s Church’, Zwingliana 41 (2014), 2. 113. Gordon, ‘Remembering Jerome’, 5–6. 114. Ibid., 15–16. 115. Ibid., 17. 116. Austin, From Judaism, 145–67. 117. Ibid., 179. 118. Hall, ‘Biblical Scholarship’, 73. 119. Hamilton, ‘Humanists and the Bible’, 105. 120. Robert J. Wilkinson, The Origins of Syriac Studies in the Sixteenth Century (unpublished PhD thesis, University of the West of England, 2003). 121. Austin, From Judaism, 129–31. 122. See the Appendix in ibid., 179. 123. Ibid., 131–2. 124. Ibid., 116–17. 125. Heinz Schilling, ‘Confessional Europe’, in Thomas A. Brady Jr, Heiko Oberman and James D. Tracy (eds), Handbook of European History, 1400–1600: Late Middle Ages, Renaissance, Reformation, vol. 2 (Leiden: Brill, 1994–95), 641–81. 126. Raymond A. Mentzer (ed.), Sin and the Calvinists: Morals Control and the Consistory in the Reformed Tradition (Kirksville, MO: Truman State University Press, 2002). 127. On this theme see Andrew Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation of the Parishes: The Ministry and the Reformation in Town and Country (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1993), esp. idem, ‘The Clergy and the Reformation: From ‘Devilish Priesthood’ to New Professional Elite’, 1–21. 128. Maag, Seminary or University?; idem, ‘Education and Training for the Calvinist Ministry: the Academy of Geneva, 1559–1620’ in Pettegree (ed.), Reformation of the Parishes, 133–52. 129. See C. Scott Dixon, The Reformation and Rural Society: The Parishes of Brandenburg-AnsbachKulmbach, 1528–1603 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1996), 60–66 and Rona Johnston, ‘The Implementation of Tridentine Reform: The Passau Official and the Parish Clergy in Lower Austria, 1563–1637’ in Pettegree (ed.), Reformation of the Parishes, 215–37 for two local case-studies. 130. See, for instance, Walsham, Charitable Hatred, 49–56. 131. Israel, European Jewry, 42; J. Friedrich Batternberg, ‘Jews in Ecclesiastical Territories of the Holy Roman Empire’ in R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann (eds), In and Out of the Ghetto. Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 251–2. 132. Rotraud Ries, ‘German Territorial Princes and the Jews’ in Hsia and Lehmann (eds), In and Out of the Ghetto, 217–18. 133. Dean Phillip Bell, ‘Confessionalisation in Early Modern Germany: A Jewish Perspective’, in Christopher Ocker, Michael Printy, Peter Starenko and Peter Wallace (eds), Politics and Reformations: Histories and Reformations. Essays in Honor of Thomas A. Brady, Jr. (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 345–72; Yosef Kaplan, ‘Between Christianity and Judaism in Early Modern Europe: The Confessionalisation Process of the Western Sephardi Diaspora’, in Lothar Gall and Dietmar Willoweit (eds), Judaism, Christianity and Islam in the Course of History: Exchange and Conflicts (Munich: R. Oldenbourg Verlag, 2011), 307–41.

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NOTES to pp. 157–165 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139.

Ruderman, Early Modern Jewry. Bell, ‘Confessionalisation’. Ibid. Kaplan, ‘Between Christianity and Judaism’, 337. Ibid. Bell, ‘Confessionalisation’, 352–3. CHAPTER 7 CAUGHT IN THE CROSSFIRE: JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THE ERA OF THE THIRTY YEARS WAR

1. For a Jewish account of this event, see Rivka Ulmer (ed. and trans.), Turmoil, Trauma and Triumph: The Fettmilch Uprising in Frankfurt am Main According to Megillas Vintz (New York, NY: Peter Lang, 2001). 2. Christopher H. Friedrichs, ‘Politics or Pogrom? The Fettmilch Uprising in German and Jewish History’, Central European History 19, 2 (1986). 3. Ibid., 192. 4. Fritz Backhaus, Gisela Engel, Robert Liberles and Margarete Schlüter (eds), The Frankfurt Judengasse: Jewish Life in an Early Modern City (London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2010). 5. Fritz Backhaus, ‘The Population Explosion in the Frankfurt Judengasse in the Sixteenth Century’, in idem, Engel, Liberles and Schlüter (eds), The Frankfurt Judengasse, 26–32. 6. Ibid., 32. 7. Ulmer, Turmoil, 125. 8. Friedrichs, ‘Politics or Pogrom?, 193. 9. Thomas A. Brady Jr, ‘The Entropy of Coercion in the Holy Roman Empire: Jews, Heretics, Witches’, in Howard Louthan, Gary B. Cohen and Franz A.J. Szabo (eds), Diversity and Dissent: Negotiating Religious Difference in Central Europe, 1500–1800 (New York, NY: Berghahn Books, 2011), 98. 10. Friedrichs, ‘Politics or Pogrom?’, 193. 11. Ulmer, Turmoil, 191. 12. Lionel Kochan, The Making of Western Jewry, 1600–1819 (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2004), 11. 13. Christopher R. Friedrichs, ‘Anti-Jewish Politics in Early Modern Germany: The Uprising in Worms, 1613–1617’, Central European History 23, 2/3 (1990), 91–152. 14. Ibid., 140–41. 15. Ian Maclean, Scholarship, Commerce, Religion: The Learned Book and the Age of Confessions, 1560–1630 (Cambridge, MA and London: Harvard University Press, 2012), 12. 16. Ibid. 17. Friedrichs, ‘Anti-Jewish Politics’, 106. 18. Friedrichs, ‘Politics or Pogrom?’, 190; Friedrichs, ‘Anti-Jewish Politics’, 96–7. 19. Wallmann, ‘Reception’, 78. 20. Friedrichs, ‘Politics or Pogrom?’, 192. 21. Friedrichs, ‘Anti-Jewish Politics’, 135. 22. Ibid. 23. Friedrichs, ‘Politics or Pogrom?’, 195. 24. Ibid. 25. Indeed Friedrichs’s article ‘Politics or Pogrom?’ is, in essence, a review of the arguments on both sides. 26. Wilson, Europe’s Tragedy is the fullest and most up-to-date account. Wilson argues that while religion was an important part of the context for this conflict, it was not primarily a religious war. 27. Kochan, Making of Western Jewry, 14. 28. Ibid., 15. 29. Ibid., 16–17. 30. Jean Bérenger, A History of the Habsburg Empire, 1273–1700 (London and New York, NY: Longman, 1994), 266.

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NOTES to pp. 165–171 31. Robert J. W. Evans, The Making of the Habsburg Monarchy, 1550–1700: An Interpretation (Oxford, Clarendon Press, 2002), 198. 32. Kochan, Making of Western Jewry, 25–6. 33. Ibid., 20. 34. Ibid., 21. 35. Selma Stern, The Court Jew: A Contribution to the History of the Period of Absolutism in Central Europe, trans. Ralph Weiman (Philadelphia, PA: The Jewish Publication Society of America, 1950). 36. ‘Meisel the Philanthropist’, in Marcus (ed.), Jew in the Medieval World, 367. 37. ‘The Confiscation of Mordecai Meisel’s Wealth’, in Marcus (ed.), Jew in the Medieval World, 369–70. 38. Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 277. See also Jonathan I. Israel, Empires and Entrepots: The Dutch, the Spanish Monarchy and the Jews, 1585–1713 (London: Hambledon Press, 1990). 39. Henry Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 288. 40. Hsia, World of Catholic Renewal, 48; A.D. Wright, Catholicism and Spanish Society under the Reign of Philip II, 1555–98, and Philip III, 1598–1621 (Lewiston, NY: E. Mellen Press, 1991); Jose Pedro Paiva, ‘Spain and Portugal’, in Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia (ed.), A Companion to the Reformation World (Oxford and Malden, MA: Blackwell, 2004, 2006), 291–310. 41. See also Andrew C. Hess, ‘The Moriscos: An Ottoman Fifth Column in Sixteenth-Century Spain’, American Historical Review 74, 1 (1968), 1–25. 42. Antonio Feros, Kingship and Favouritism in the Spain of Philip III, 1598–1621 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000); Patrick Williams, The Great Favourite: The Duke of Lerma and the Court and Government of Philip III of Spain, 1598–1621 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006). 43. Karen Silvia de León-Jones, Giordano Bruni & the Kabbalah. Prophets, Magicians and Rabbis (Lincoln, NE and London: University of Nebraska Press, 2004) 44. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 290. 45. Mercedes García-Arenal and Gerard Wiegers (eds), The Expulsion of the Moriscos from Spain: A Mediterranean Diaspora (Leiden: Brill, 2014). 46. Michael Alpert, Crypto-Judaism and the Spanish Inquisition (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2001), 42–5. 47. John Lynch, 'Spain after the Expulsion' in Elie Kedourie (ed.), Spain and the Jews: Sephardi Experience, 1492 and After (London: Thames and Hudson, 1992), 148–9. 48. Alpert, Crypto-Judaism, 89. 49. John H. Elliott, The Count-Duke of Olivares: The Statesman in an Age of Decline (New Haven and London: Yale University Press, 1986). 50. Kamen, Spanish Inquisition, 291–2. 51. Ibid., 292. 52. Quoted in ibid., 292–3. 53. Alpert, Crypto-Judaism, 91–2. 54. On this process of consolidation, see Jonathan I. Israel, The Dutch Republic. Its Rise, Greatness and Fall, 1477–1806 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 55–73. 55. On Philip II’s early dealings with the Netherlands, see Geoffrey Parker, The Grand Strategy of Philip II (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 1998), 115–20. 56. Israel, Dutch Republic, 140–6. 57. Parker, Dutch Revolt, 64–72. 58. Phyllis Mack Crew, Calvinist Preaching and Iconoclasm in the Netherlands, 1544–1569 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1978). 59. Parker, Dutch Revolt, 108. 60. For a highly readable account, see ibid. 61. On the complexities of religious identity in this context see Paul J. Hauben, ‘Marcus Pérez and Marrano Calvinism in the Dutch Revolt and the Reformation’, Bibliothèque d’humanisme et Renaissance 29, 1 (1967), 121–32; Miriam Bodian, ‘In the Cross-Currents of the Reformation: Crypto-Jewish Martyrs of the Inquisition, 1570–1670’, Past and Present 176 (2002), 66–104.

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NOTES to pp. 171–177 62. Dean Philip Bell, Jews in the Early Modern World (Lanham, MD: Rowman and Littlefield Publishers, 2008), 50; Israel, European Jewry, 50–51. See also T. de Paepe, ‘Diego Duarte II (1612–1691): A Converso’s Experience in Seventeenth-Century Antwerp’, Jewish History 24, 2 (2010), 169–93. 63. Israel, European Jewry, 42. 64. Ibid., 51–2. 65. On Halevi, see Miriam Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation: Conversos and Community in Early Modern Amsterdam (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1999), 43–6. On Emden, see Andrew Pettegree, Emden and the Dutch Revolt: Exile and the Development of Reformed Protestantism (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1992), esp. 57–86. 66. Steven Nadler, Menasseh ben Israel: Rabbi of Amsterdam (New Haven, CT and London: Yale University Press, 2018), 15. 67. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 46, 54. 68. Bell, Jews in the Early Modern World, 51. 69. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 31–2; Barry L. Stiefel, Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 1450–1730 (London: Pickering and Chatto, 2014), 67. 70. Daniel M. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans. The Portuguese Jews of Seventeenth-Century Amsterdam (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilisations, 2004), 11. 71. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 47. 72. Stiefel, Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 67. 73. Ralph Melnick, From Polemics to Apologetics: Jewish-Christian Rapprochement in SeventeenthCentury Amsterdam (Assen: Van Gorcum, 1981), 8. 74. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 47. 75. Melnick, From Polemics to Apologetics, 7; Bodian, Hebrews of the Nation, 20–22. 76. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 22. 77. Kochan, Making of Western Jewry, 34. 78. Benjamin J. Kaplan, ‘Fictions of Privacy: House Chapels and the Spatial Accommodation of Religious Dissent in Early Modern Europe’, American Historical Review 104, 4 (2002), 1,031–64. 79. Stiefel, Jews and the Renaissance of Synagogue Architecture, 67. 80. Ibid., 68. 81. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 62. 82. Ibid. 83. Alastair Duke, ‘Salvation by Coercion: the Controversy surrounding the “Inquisition” in the Low Countries on the Eve of the Revolt’ in idem, Reformation and Revolt in the Low Countries (London: Cambridge University Press, 2003), 152–74. 84. ‘Union of Utrecht’ in Texts concerning the Revolt of the Netherlands, ed. with an intro. by E.H. Kossman and A.F. Mellink (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1974), 165–73. 85. Ibid., 169–70. 86. Alastair Duke, ‘Building Heaven in Hell’s Despite: the Early History of the Reformation in the Towns of the Low Countries’ in idem, Reformation and Revolt, 71–100. On the theme of toleration in this context, see Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia and Henk van Nierop (eds), Calvinism and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Golden Age (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2002). 87. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 55. 88. Benedict, Christ’s Churches, 173–201; Alastair Duke, ‘The Ambivalent Face of Calvinism in the Netherlands, 1561–1618’, in Prestwich (ed.), International Calvinism, 109–34. 89. Guido Marnef, ‘The Netherlands’, in Andrew Pettegree (ed.), The Reformation World (London: Routledge, 2000), 361. 90. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 11. 91. Ibid., 12. 92. Ibid., 13. 93. Peter van Rooden, ‘Jews and Religious Toleration in the Dutch Republic’, in Hsia and van Nierop (eds), Calvinism and Religious Toleration, 136–7. 94. Quoted in Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 59. 95. See also Peter van Rooden, ‘Conceptions of Judaism as a Religion in the Seventeenth-Century Dutch Republic’, in Wood (ed.), Christianity and Judaism, 299–308.

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NOTES to pp. 177–183 96. 97. 98. 99. 100. 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. 111. 112.

Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 31. Ibid. Ibid., 32. Van Rooden, ‘Jews and Religious Toleration’, 139. See also idem, Theology. Swetschinski, Reluctant Cosmopolitans, 36. Ibid., 32. Ibid., 32. See also Myriam Yardeni, ‘French Calvinism and Judaism’, Reformation and Renaissance Review 6, 3 (2004), 306–8. Bodian, Hebrews of the Portuguese Nation, 60. Schama, Embarrassment of Riches, esp. 93–125. Quoted Paul Regan, ‘Calvinism and the Dutch Israel Thesis’, in Bruce Gordon (ed.), Protestant History and Identity in Sixteenth-Century Europe (Aldershot: Ashgate, 1996), vol. 2, 95. Quoted in G. Groenhuis, ‘Calvinism and National Consciousness: The Dutch Republic as the New Israel’, in A.C. Duke and C.A. Tamse (eds), Britain and the Netherlands, Vol. 7: Church and State since the Reformation (Berlin: Springer, 1981), 119. Quoted in Regan, ‘Calvinism’, 91. Ibid., 91. Quoted in Groenhuis, ‘Calvinism and National Consciousness’, 120. Laurens Reael, ‘Anti-Christs Nieuew Jaer 1571’, quoted in Groenhuis, ‘Calvinism and National Consciousness’, 126. Quoted in ibid., 129. Ibid., 133. CHAPTER 8 HEIGHTENED EXPECTATIONS: MESSIANISM, MILLENARIANISM AND THE HOPE OF ISRAEL

1. Gershom Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi: The Mystical Messiah, 1626–1676 (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1973) is the definitive study of Zevi. An account of Zevi’s life, through to 1664, is on pp. 102–98. For several contemporary accounts, see David J. Halperin (ed. and trans.), Sabbatai Zevi: Testimonies to a Fallen Messiah (Oxford: Littman Library of Jewish Civilisation, 2012). 2. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 115ff. 3. Ibid., 129 ff. 4. Dan Cohn-Sherbock, The Jewish Messiah (Edinburgh: T. & T. Clark, 1997), 134; Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 138–49. 5. Baruch of Arezzo, Memorial to the Children of Israel in Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi, 31. 6. Cohn-Sherbock, Jewish Messiah, 135; Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 150–51. 7. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 213–15. 8. Quoted in ibid., 272. 9. Quoted in ibid., 273. 10. Baruch of Arezzo, Memorial, 39. 11. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 433ff. 12. Ibid., 445–59. 13. Quoted in Michael McKeon, ‘Sabbatai Sevi in England’, Association of Jewish Studies Review 2 (1977), 144. See also Richard H. Popkin, ‘Three English Tellings of the Sabbatai Zevi Story’, Jewish History 8, 1/2 (1994), 43–54. 14. Scholem, Sabbatai Sevi, 550. 15. Quoted in ibid., 551. 16. Ibid., 672–80. 17. Ibid., 686. 18. Ibid., 918. 19. Bernard D. Weinryb, The Jews of Poland: A Social and Economic History of the Jewish Community in Poland from 1100 to 1800 (Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1973), 192–9.

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NOTES to pp. 183–190 20. Halperin, Sabbatai Zevi, 5 21. On Messianism in the Hebrew Scriptures, see William Horbury, Jewish Messianism and the Cult of Christ (London: SCM Press, 1998), 5–35. On Messianism more broadly, see, for example, Wim Beuken et al. (eds), Messianism Through History (London: SCM Press, 1993). 22. Quoted in Gershom Scholem, The Messianic Idea in Judaism, and Other Essays (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1971), 28. 23. Marcus van Loopik, ‘The Messianism of Shabbetai Zevi and Jewish Mysticism’ in Beuken et al., Messianism, 73 24. Gershom Scholem, Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism (New York, NY: Schocken Books, 1946), 244–51. 25. Harris Lenowitz, The Jewish Messiahs: From the Galilee to Crown Heights (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1998), 126. 26. Scholem, Major Trends, 252–3. 27. On Luria, see especially Lawrence Fine, Physician of the Soul, Healer of the Cosmos: Isaac Luria and His Kabbalistic Fellowship (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2003). 28. Quoted in Cohn-Sherbock, Jewish Messiah, 124. 29. Ibid., 119–21. 30. Quoted in Carl Cohen, ‘Martin Luther and His Jewish Contemporaries’, Jewish Social Studies 25, 3 (1963), 199–200. 31. Cohn-Sherbock, Jewish Messiah, 121–2. 32. Quoted in ibid., 123–4. 33. Quoted in ibid., 124. 34. Quoted in Lenowitz, Jewish Messiahs, 108. For a brief account of Reubeni’s life, see ibid., 103–8. 35. Quoted in ibid., 112. 36. Quoted in ibid., 113. 37. Marcus, Jew in the Medieval World, 284. 38. Lenowitz, Jewish Messiahs, 115. 39. Accounts of this episode by both Molko and Reubeni are presented in ibid. 115–16. 40. Cohn-Sherbock, Jewish Messiah, 122–3. 41. An account of this meeting by Yosef Ha-Cohen, an Italian physician and historian, is presented in Lenowitz, Jewish Messiahs, 120. 42. On Joachim of Fiore’s view of history, see Marjorie Reeves, The Influence of Prophecy in the Later Middle Ages. A Study in Joachimism (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1969), 16–27. 43. Ibid., 28–36. 44. Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence. Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1970), esp. 112–37. 45. Ibid., 159–84. 46. Bernard McGinn, Visions of the End. Apocalyptic Traditions in the Middle Ages (New York, NY: Columbia University Press, 1979), 281. 47. Weinstein, Savonarola, 142, 167–8. 48. Savonarola on the Renovation of the Church in John C. Olin (ed.), The Catholic Reformation. Savonarola to Ignatius Loyola (New York, NY: Fordham University Press, 1992), 5. 49. On the significance of Messianism in the early Reformation, see Helga Robinson-Hammerstein, ‘Messianic Ideals in the German Reformation’ in Beuken et al., Messianism, 82–97. 50. On this theme, see especially Gow, Red Jews. 51. Christopher Hill, The World Turned Upside Down. Radical Ideas during the English Revolution (London: Penguin, 1991), 17–18. 52. Ibid., passim; Bernard S. Capp, The Fifth Monarchy Men: An Analysis of Their Origins, Activities, Ideas and Composition (London: Faber and Faber, 1972); Elizabeth M. Sauer, ‘Milton’s Peculiar Nation’, in Douglas A. Brooks (ed.), Milton and the Jews (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), 35–56. 53. F.D. Dow, Radicalism in the English Revolution 1640–1660 (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1985), 62. 54. The examples in this paragraph are drawn from Hill, English Bible, p.300 ff. and Bernard Capp, Astrology and the Popular Press: English Almanacs, 1500 to 1800 (London: Faber and Faber, 1979), chapters 5 and 6.

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NOTES to pp. 190–193 55. Matt. 24: 37 (‘As were the days of Noah, so will be the coming of Man’). 56. On this theme, see especially, N.I. Matar, ‘The Idea of the Restoration of the Jews in English Protestant Thought, 1661–1701’, Harvard Theological Review 78, 1/2 (1985), 115–48. 57. Richard W. Cogley, ‘The Fall of the Ottoman Empire and the Restoration of Israel in the “Judeocentric” Strand of Puritan Millenarianism’, Church History 72, 2 (2003), 304–32. 58. N.I. Matar, ‘Milton and the Idea of the Restoration of the Jews’, Studies in English Literature, 1500–1900 27, 1 (1987), 109. 59. Karen Clausen-Brown, ‘Spinoza’s Translation of Margaret Fell and His Portrayal of Judaism in the Theological-Political Treatise’, Seventeenth Century 34, 1 (2019), 89–106; Richard H. Popkin, ‘Spinoza’s Relations with the Quakers in Amsterdam’, Quaker History 73, 1 (1984), 14–28. 60. Margaret Fell, For Manasseth ben Israel. The Call of the Jewes out of Babylon (London: 1656), 3. 61. Claire Jowitt, ‘ “Inward” and “Outward” Jews: Margaret Fell, Circumcision, and Women’s Preaching’, Reformation 4 (1999), 139–67. 62. Ibid., 149. 63. Richard H. Popkin, ‘Can One be a True Christian and a Faithful Follower of the Law of Moses? The Answer of John Dury’ in Martin Mulsow and Richard H. Popkin (eds), Secret Conversions to Judaism in Early Modern Europe (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 42–3. 64. George Fox, A Visitation to the Jews (London, 1656), 1. 65. Margaret Fell, A Call to the Universall Seed of God (London, 1665), 3. 66. Jowitt, ‘ “Inward” ’, 157. 67. On Puritanism, see Patrick Collinson, Godly People: Essays on English Protestantism and Puritanism (London: Hambledon Press, 1993); John Coffey and Paul C.H. Limm (eds), The Cambridge Companion to Puritanism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008). 68. H.R. Trevor-Roper, Archbishop Laud, 1573–1645 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1988). 69. John Spurr, English Puritanism, 1603–1689 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1998), 171–88; Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales, ‘Introduction: The Puritan Ethos, 1560–1700’, in Christopher Durston and Jacqueline Eales (eds), The Culture of English Puritanism, 1560–1700 (Basingstoke: Macmillan Press, 1996), 16–17. 70. Crawford Gribben, Puritan Millennium: Literature and Theology, 1550–1682 (Dublin: Four Courts Press, 2000), 26–40. 71. Peter Toon, Puritans, the Millennium and the Future of Israel: Puritan Eschatology 1600 to 1660 (Cambridge and London: James Clarke and Co. Ltd, 1970); Andrew Crome, ‘English National Identity and the Readmission of the Jews, 1650–1656’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 66, 2 (2015), 280–301. 72. Andrew Willett, De universali et novissima Iudaeorum vocatione (Cambridge, 1590). 73. On Brightman, see Andrew Crome, The Restoration of the Jews: Early Modern Hermeneutics, Eschatology, and National Identity in the Works of Thomas Brightman (Cham: Springer, 2014); Philip Almond, ‘Thomas Brightman and the Origins of Philo-Semitism: An Elizabethan Theologian and the Restoration of the Jews to Israel’, Reformation and Renaissance Review 9, 1 (2007), 3–25. 74. Thomas Brightman, A Revelation of the Revelation, That is the Revelation of St Iohn Opened (Amsterdam, 1615). 75. David S. Katz, Philo-Semitism and the Readmission of the Jews to England, 1603–1655 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1982), 92. 76. Thomas Draxe, The Worldes Resurrection, or The Generall Calling of the Iewes (London, 1608), 88. 77. Ibid. 78. [Sir Henry Finch], The Calling of the Iewes (London, 1621); Katz, Philo-Semitism, 95–7; Franz Kobler, ‘Sir Henry Finch (1558–1625) and the First English Advocates of the Restoration of the Jews to Palestine’, Transactions (Jewish Historical Society of England) 16 (1945–51), 101–20. 79. Guibbory, Christian Identity, esp. 21–55 80. Edmund Calamy, God’s Free Mercy, 4, 8, cited in Guibbory, Christian Identity, 99. 81. Guibbory, Christian Identity, esp. 89–120. 82. This theme is discussed more fully in Katz, Philo-Semitism, 43–88.

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NOTES to pp. 193–197 83. William Robertson, The First Gate, or the Outward Door to the Holy Tongue Opened in English (London, 1654); John Davis, A Short Introduction to the Hebrew Tongue (London, 1656). Both are discussed in Katz, Philo-Semitism, 63. 84. This term is used, for instance, in the titles of Katz, Philo-Semitism and Eliane Glaser, Judaism without Jews: Philosemitism and Christian Polemic in Early Modern England (Basingstoke: Palgrave, 2007). For a fuller discussion of the term, see Jonathan Karp and Adam Sutcliffe (eds), Philosemitism in History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2011), particularly the editors’ introduction. 85. Guibbory, Christian Identity, 62. 86. Kenneth L. Parker, The English Sabbath: A Study of Doctrine and Discipline from the Reformation to the Civil War (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998); Bryan W. Ball, The SeventhDay Men: Sabbatarians and Sabbatarianism in England and Wales, 1600 to 1800 (Oxford: Clarendon, 1994). 87. Luc Racaut, ‘The “Book of Sports” and Sabbatarian Legislation in Lancashire, 1579–1616’, Northern History 33, 1 (1997), 73–87. 88. Nicholas McDowell, ‘The Stigmatizing of Puritans as Jews in Jacobean England: Ben Jonson, Francis Bacon and the Book of Sports Controversy’, Renaissance Studies 19, 3 (2005), 348–63; Katz, Philo-Semitism, 18–34. 89. Ibid., 348. 90. John Traske, A Treatise of libertie from Iudaisme (London, 1620), 19 ff., 29 ff. 91. Patrick Collinson, ‘The Beginnings of English Sabbatarianism’, Studies in Church History 1 (1964), 207–21; M.M. Knappen, ‘The Early Puritanism of Lancelot Andrewes’, Church History 2, 2 (1933), 95–104; Richard L. Greaves, ‘The Origins of English Sabbatarian Thought’, Sixteenth Century Journal 12, 3 (1981), 19–34; Christopher Hill, ‘Uses of Sabbatarianism’, in idem, Society and Puritanism in Pre-Revolutionary England (London: Pimlico, 2003). 92. Quoted in Katz, Philo-Semitism, 24. 93. Ibid., 25. 94. ‘B.D.’ [John Falconer], A Briefe Refutation of John Traske’s Iudaical and Novel Fancyes (SaintOmer, 1618). 95. McDowell, ‘The Stigmatizing of Puritans’, 353. 96. Ben Jonson, Bartholomew Fair in Ben Jonson, Volpone and Other Plays, ed. Michael Jamieson (London: Penguin, 2004), 325–460. 97. David S. Katz, The Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1994), 1–106. 98. Katz, Jews, 1–10. 99. Todd M. Endelman, The Jews of Britain 1656 to 2000 (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2002), 18. 100. Ian Gentles, Oliver Cromwell: God’s Warrior and the English Revolution (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2011), 86–90. 101. Colin Davis, ‘Cromwell’s Religion’, in John Morrill (ed.), Cromwell and the English Revolution (London: Longman, 1990), 181–208; John F.H. New, ‘Cromwell and the Paradoxes of Puritanism’, Journal of British Studies 5, 1 (1965), 53–9. 102. Gentles, Oliver Cromwell, 90. 103. On the significance of religion for Cromwell, see Christopher Hill, God’s Englishman: Oliver Cromwell and the English Revolution (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1970), 217–50, and Anthony Fletcher, ‘Oliver Cromwell and the Godly Nation’ in Morrill (ed.), Cromwell, 209–33. 104. See on this theme more broadly, Blair Worden, ‘Providence and Politics in Cromwellian England’, Past and Present 109 (1985), 55–99. 105. Gentles, Oliver Cromwell, 94–5. 106. Quoted in Davis, ‘Cromwell’s Religion’, 199. 107. Katz, Philo-Semitism, 193–4. 108. Johanna Cartwright, The Petition of the Jewes for the Repealing of the Act of Parliament for their Banishment out of England (London, 1649), 3. 109. Quoted in Katz, Philo-Semitism, 178.

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NOTES to pp. 197–202 110. Yosef Kaplan, Richard H. Popkin, and Henry Méchoulan (eds), Menasseh ben Israel and His World (Leiden: Brill, 1989); Nadler, Menasseh. 111. Ibid., 39, 49ff. 112. This account was prefaced to the English and Spanish versions of the Hope of Israel. 113. Nadler, Menasseh, 132. 114. John Dury, ‘An Epistolicall Discourse of Mr John Dury to Mr Thorowgood’ in Thomas Thorowgood, Jewes in America, Or; Probabilities that the Americans Are of that Race (1650), preface, c1 r. 115. Thorowgood, Jewes. Montezinos’s account is at 129–39. On Thorowgood’s works see Richard W. Cogley, ‘The Ancestry of the American Indians: Thomas Thorowgood’s Iewes in America (1650) and Jews in America (1660)’, English Literary Renaissance 35, 2 (2005), 304–30. 116. Ernestine G. E. van der Wall, ‘Three Letters by Menasseh ben Israel to John Durie’: English Philo-Judaism and the “Spes Israelis” ’, Nederlands Archief voor Kerkgeschiedenis/ Dutch Review of Church History 65, 1–2 (1985), 46–63. 117. Menasseh ben Israel, The Hope of Israel (London, 1650). 118. It has been widely assumed that this text was intended to prepare the ground for Jewish readmission to England, but Ismar Schorsch, ‘From Messianism to Realpolitik: Menasseh ben Israel and the Readmission of the Jews to England’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 45 (1978), 188 has noted that ‘England is barely mentioned’ in the text. 119. Menasseh, Hope of Israel, 58. 120. Ibid., 66–8. 121. Ibid., 74–6. 122. Nadler, Menasseh, 193–5. 123. Menasseh ben Israel, Humble Addresses to the Lord Protector (London, 1655), Declaration, unpaginated. 124. Henry Jessey, A Narrative of the Late Proceeds at White-hall, Concerning the Jews (London, 1656). 125. Ibid., 12. 126. Ibid. 127. Ibid., 9. 128. Ibid., 3–4. 129. Ibid., 2. 130. Eliane Glaser, ‘ “Reasons . . . Theological, Political, and Mixt of Both”: A Reconsideration of the “Readmission” of the Jews to England’, Reformation 9, 1 (2004), 173–203; Nathan Osterman, ‘The Controversy over the Proposed Readmission of the Jews to England (1655)’, Jewish Social Studies 3, 3 (1941), 301–28. 131. Jessey, Narrative, 7. 132. Ibid., 8. 133. Katz, Philo-Semitism, 223–4. 134. Jessey, Narrative, 9. 135. William Prynne, A Short Demurrer to the Jewes (London, 1656); idem, The Second Part of a Short demurrer to the Jewes long discontinued remitter into England (London, 1656). 136. Prynne, Short Demurrer, 87. 137. William Hughes, Anglo-Judaeus, or the History of the Jews (London, 1656), 3. 138. Anon, The Case of the Jewes Stated (London, 1656). 139. Ibid., 1. 140. Ibid., 2. 141. Ibid., 6. 142. Joseph Copley, The Case of the Jews is Altered, and their Synagogues Shut to all Evil-Walkers, or a Vindication of the Jewes from the false imputations laid upon them in a scurrilous pamphlet . . . (London, 1656), 1. 143. Menasseh ben Israel, Vindiciae Judaeorum, or A letter in answer to certain questions propounded by a noble and learned gentleman (London, 1656). 144. Ibid., 2.

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NOTES to pp. 202–206 145. Johannes Buxtorf, The Jewish Synagogue, or, An Historical Narration of the State of the Jewes, trans. ‘A.B.’ (London, 1663). 146. Yosef Kaplan, ‘The Jewish Profile of the Spanish-Portuguese Community of London During the Seventeenth Century’, Judaism 41, 3 (1992), 232. 147. Ibid., 232. 148. Ibid., 233. See also Samuel Oppenheim, ‘A List of Jews Made Denizens in the Reigns of Charles II and James II, 1661–1687’, Publications of the American Jewish Historical Society 20 (1911), 109–13. 149. Quoted in Katz, Jews in the History of England, 142. 150. Quoted in ibid., 143. CONCLUSION 1. Bell, Jews in Early Modern Europe, 37. 2. Israel, European Jewry.

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283

INDEX

Abraham, 5, 44, 64, 70, 96, 190 Abraham, Rabbi, 48 Abramo, Clemente, 153 Abravanel, David, see Dormido, Manuel Martinez Abravanel, Isaac, 48, 186 Abravanel, Judah Leon, 25, 48 Adrian, Matthew, 41, 72 Adrianople, 183 Adversus Judaeos, 6, 10, 70, 84 Africa, xvii, 11, 25, 124 Albarracín, 26 Alcalá, University of, 40, 152 Alemanno, Johann ben Isaac, 38 Alexander III, pope, 8 Alexander VI, pope, 25 Alfonso II, duke of Ferrara, 117 Alhambra Decree, 26 Aljamas, 26 Alkmaar, 173 Alsace, ix, 56, 60, 71, 86, 139 Altdorf, 60 Alva, duke of, 97, 171, 178 Amerbach, Boniface, 73 Amerbach, Johann, 39 America, xvii, 190, 198 Amsterdam, 157, 158, 169, 172–80, 183, 197, 198, 203, 205, 212 Anabaptism, x, xviii, 50–3, 55, 57–9, 62, 75, 157, 175, 189, 196 Ancona, x, 111 Andalucia, 26, 30 Andrew of St. Victor, 20 Andrews, Lancelot, 195 Anshelm, Thomas, 39 Antichrist, 47, 184, 190, 196 anti-Jewish riots, ix, 28, 159–63 anti-Judaism, ix, xii, xiv, xv, xvi, xxi, 1, 2, 4, 6, 13, 17, 18, 23, 28–9, 33, 44, 57, 60, 62–8, 83, 87, 113, 114, 124–6,

144, 150, 161–3, 175, 177, 205, 209, 211 see also Judaeo–Christian relations Antilles, 172 Antioch, 7, 154 anti-Semitism, xiv, 29, 193–4 Antitrinitarianism, 59 Antwerp, 48, 120, 153, 171 apocalypticism, xxiv, 62, 94, 177, 191 Aquinas, Thomas, 116 Arabic, 37 Aragon, 26, 30, 32, 86 Arama, Isaac ben Moses, 88 Aramaic, 39, 69, 120, 154 Atheism, xxiv, 135 Augsburg, 23, 61, 62, 70, 94 Confession of, 71 Diet of, 70 Peace of, x, xiv Augustine, Saint, xiii, 7–9, 13, 19, 44, 46, 83, 100, 104, 110, 207, 209 Austria, xii, 37, 107, 114 auto da fé, 31, 167, 169, 170 Auvergne, 101 Avignon, x, 48, 111, 116, 183 Avila, 26 Azubi, Salomon, 149 Babylon, 63, 178, 179 Bacharach, 41 Bacon, Francis, 195 badge of identification, 9, 12, 16, 109, 113–15, 178 Bale, John, 98 Bancroft, Richard, 195 baptism, 25, 27, 30, 36, 43, 51, 57, 59, 67, 78, 86, 106, 108, 111, 118 Barbirius, Nicolaus, 82 Barcelona, 28, 32 Disputation of, viv, 11

284

INDEX Baronio, Cesare, 148–9 Barrionuevo, Jerónimo de, 169 Bartholomew’s Day Massacre, Saint, 99, 102, 132–3, 141 Baruch of Arezzo, 181–2 Basel, 15, 39, 40, 56, 72, 81, 87, 91, 92, 149, 150, 153 Basnage, Jacques, 149 Belmonte, Jacob Israel, 173 Benedict XIII, pope, 11 Bennett, Henry, 203 Benoît, Jean, 152 Bern, 40 Bernáldez, Andrés, 25 Bernard of Clairvaux, 13 Bethlen, Gábor, 98 Beukelszoon, Jan, see Jan of Leiden Beza, Theodore, 91–2, 94, 97, 133, 150, 155, 200 Bible, ix, xix, xxi, xxii, xxiii, 1, 2, 3, 7, 8, 16, 18, 19–23, 37–8, 41–4, 46, 53, 58, 64, 74, 79, 86, 88–93, 98–103, 115, 120, 126, 147, 149, 151–5, 158, 161, 184, 189–92, 210, 213 see also New Testament; Old Testament Bibliander, Theodore, 39 Black Death, ix, 15 Blanis, Benedetto, 114–15 Blarer, Ambrosius, 80 blasphemy, 3, 9, 10, 43, 51, 54, 57, 58, 61, 65, 67, 73, 75, 86, 87, 91, 94, 112, 116, 117, 118, 121, 141, 176, 177, 197, 201, 208 blood libel accusation, ix, 13–14, 17–18, 24, 26, 60, 65, 70, 142–3, 145–7, 148–9, 199, 201, 202, 209 Boccaccio, Giovanni, 134 Bodin, Jean, 133–5, 137, 138 Bohemia, 15, 126–8, 164–6 Boisnormand, François, 82, 89 Boldu, Antonio, 35 Bologna, ix, 37, 107, 121 Bomberg, Daniel, 120, 153 Book of Sports, 194 Bordeaux, 101 Borromeo, Carlo, 104–5, 130 Bossuet, Jacques-Bénigne, 149 Bracciolini, Poggio, 23 Bragadino, Alvise, 120 Brandenburg, 68, 145 Braunschweig, 70 Brazil, 99 Brenz, Johannes, 70 Brescia, 18 Breslau, 15 Brianza, Pietro, 104 Brightman, Thomas, 192

Bristol, 195 Bruni, Leonardo, 21, 23 Bruno, Giordano, 167 Brunswick, 70 Bucer, Martin, x, 53, 60, 61, 71, 73–6, 81, 84, 85, 90, 93, 97, 103, 120, 207 Budé, Louis, 81 Bullinger, Heinrich, 93–4, 150 Burgkundstadt, 41 Burgos, 26, 28, 64 Burgundy, 170 Buxtorf, Johannes, 149–51, 177, 193, 202 Caceres, Simon de, 203 Cádiz, 26 Cairo, 181, 182 Calamy, Edmund, 193 Calixtus II, pope, 8 Calvin, John, x, 80–6, 87, 89, 90, 94–7, 99, 100, 103, 147–8, 152 Institutes, 83, 86, 100 Calvinism, see Reformed Cambrai, War of the League of, 33, 117 Cambridge, 40, 74, 89–91, 199 Canisius, Peter, 127 Cantalpiedra, Martín Martínez de, 126 Canterbury, 69, 155, 192, 194–5 Capito, Wolfgang, 39, 60, 72–4, 81 Carmona, 29 Carolinum, 93 Cartwright, Johanna, 196 Cartwright, Ebeneezer, 196 Cartwright, Thomas, 194 Carvajal, Antonio Ferdinando, 203 Casa Pia, 114 see also domus catechumenorum Casaubon, Isaac, 148 Castile, 25, 28, 30, 32, 167 Castro, León de, 126 Catechism, 82, 90, 95, 127, 156 Catherine of Braganza, 203 Catholicism, xiv, xv, xviii, xix, xxi, xxiii, xxv, 3, 9, 24, 26–8, 30–3, 37–8, 40, 43, 46–51, 61–2, 64, 72, 74, 78, 79, 83, 102, 104–31, 133, 148–51, 157, 161, 163–5, 167, 170–6, 180, 192, 196, 212 Celle, 70 Cellorigo, Martín González de, 168 censorship, 2, 82, 92, 116, 119–23, 130, 177, 178, 190 Ceporinus, Jacobus, 93 Chaldaean, 37, 91 Champier, Symphorien, 88 Chappuis, Ami, 78

285

INDEX Charles I, king of England, 189, 192, 194–5 Charles II, king of England, 189, 200, 203 Charles V, Holy Roman Emperor, xiv–xv, 26, 32, 45, 54, 59–61, 81, 126–7, 146, 166, 170, 171, 187–8 Charles IX, king of France, 132, 142 Chaucer, Geoffrey, 17 Chevallier, Antoine, 89 Chevallier, Pierre, 92 Chiari, Isidoro, 152 China, 198 Chmielnicki, Bogdan, 183 Chmielnicki Uprising, x, 172, 182 Christ-killers, see deicide Christian I, elector of Saxony, 147 Christian Hebraica, see Hebraica Christology, 45, 58, 61, 64, 70, 83–4, 97, 148, 158 Christopher, duke of Württemberg, 95 circumcision, 1, 5, 7, 22, 27, 55, 61, 63–4, 119, 174, 176, 182, 187, 201–2 Cirignano, Giovanni, 23 Cisneros, Francesco Ximénes de, 152 Clement V, pope, 37 Clement VI, pope, 15 Clement VII, pope, 111, 125, 187, 188 Clement VIII, pope, 117, 153, 167 Cocceius, Johannes, 177 Coimbra, 167 Coligny, Gaspar de, 132 Collège de France, 81, 91 Colmar, 71 Cologne, 1–2, 13, 15, 23, 43, 146, 153, 171 Colonna, Pietro, 36, 150 Columbus, Christopher, 25 Complutensian Polyglot, 152 confessionalisation, xv, xviii–xix, xxiv–xxv, 136, 155–8, 163 Constance, 71, 80, 95 Constantine the Great, xiv Constantinople, ix, 7, 121, 181–2, 186 Contarini, Gasparo, 27–8, 109 Contra Judaeos, see Adversus Judaeos conversion from Christianity to Judaism 64–66, 77, 112, 116, 119, 176, 187, 199–200, 208 from Judaism to Christianity xxii, xxiv, 1–2, 8–9, 11, 14, 27–30, 35–7, 44–7, 57, 61–6, 70, 76–7, 87–8, 90, 94–6, 104–8, 110–11, 114, 118, 124, 130, 177, 184, 189–94, 199–200, 207, 209–10 conversionary sermons, 2, 10, 75–6, 107, 110–11, 165, 177, 210 conversos, 28–32, 48, 87, 90, 105–6, 115–16, 125–6, 157, 163, 166–72, 176, 180, 187, 205

convivencia, 28–29 Copley, Joseph, 201 Córdoba, 26, 185 Cordovero, Moses, 185 Coster, Abraham de, 176, 177 Courteau, Thomas, 82 Covenant, xxi, 5, 6, 73, 92, 95, 209 Cracow, 205 Cranmer, Thomas, 69, 98 Cremona, 117, 121 Crespin, Jean, 101 Cristiani, Pablo, 10 Cromwell, Oliver, xi, 189, 195–203 Cromwell, Richard, 189 crucifixion, 6, 14–17, 24, 26, 44, 142, 197, 201 Crusades, ix, 12–13 crypto-Judaism, 29, 32, 105–6, 166–9, 195–6, 202–3 Cudworth, Ralph, 199 Cuenca, 169 Cum nimis absurdum, x, 109, 111, 113, 129 Dangolsheim, 60 Dato, Mordecai ben Judah, 186 David, 51, 57, 66, 84, 97, 178, 184 Davis, John, 193 deicide, 6, 24, 142, 191, 207 Denck, Hans, 58 Deventer, 177 Diggers, 190 disputations, 10, 11, 28, 37, 74 Dominicans, 1, 3, 10, 29, 30, 47, 71, 120, 125, 153, 188 domus catechumenorum 106–10, 131, 210 Donin, Nicholas, 10 Dorléans, Louis, 140 Dormido, Manuel Martinez, 196 Dortmund, 68 Draxe, Thomas, 192 Dury, John, 198 Dutch Revolt, x, 137, 170, 172, 175, 179 Dynkarten, 93 Easter, 13, 14, 33, 35, 50, 125, 139, 160, 162, 189 Ecclesia, 16 Eck, Johann, 146 Edward I, king of England, 200 Edward VI, king of England, 74, 98, 135 Egidio da Viterbo, 38, 187 Egypt, 63, 100–1 Einhorn, Werner, 41 Eisenach, 43, 80 Eisleben, 43, 66 Eleanor of Austria, 107

286

INDEX Eleazar of Worms, 88 Eliezer bar Nathan, 13 Elijah del Medigo, 38 Elizabeth I, queen of England, 135, 155, 192, 194 Emden, 172 Empiricus, Sextus, 135 Empoli, 139 Endlinger, 60 England, ix, xi, xvi, xviii, 11, 13–14, 23–4, 35, 41, 79, 81, 90, 98, 135–6, 144, 149, 155, 172, 180, 184, 189–206, 212 Enlightenment, xviii, 138 Erasmus, Desiderius, 20–1, 23, 72, 138, 175 Erfurt, 1–2, 43, 80 Essen, 157 Este, Cesare d’, 117–19 Estienne, Henri, 135 Estienne, Robert, 82, 152 Ethiopia, 187, 198 ethnographies, 150, 211 Eucharist, 73, 142, 144, 145 see also Mass Evora, 104, 124, 167 exegesis, xxii–xxiv, 19, 20, 41–6, 58, 61, 64, 66, 74, 83, 84, 90, 93, 97, 99, 103, 147, 151–5, 213 expulsion of Jews, ix–xi, xvii, xviii, xx–xxi, xxiv, 23–8, 33, 35, 47, 56–57, 60, 68–71, 73, 75, 94, 111, 114, 116, 118, 124, 126–7, 130, 152, 157, 160–2, 166, 168, 185, 195, 199–201, 205, 211 Eymerich, Nicholas, 116 Ezra, Abraham ibn, 58, 74 Fagius, Paul, 91, 95–6, 120 Fairfax, Thomas Lord, 197 Falconer, John, 195 Faradj, Isaac ibn, 125 Farel, Guillaume, 81, 83 Farissol, Abraham, 47 Faro, 28 Farrar, Abraham, 158 Federfusius, Lupold, 1 Feichen, Hille, 52 Fell, Margaret, 190–1 Ferdinand I, Holy Roman Emperor, 45, 114, 126–7, 146, 154 Ferdinand II, Holy Roman Emperor, 164–5 Ferdinand III, Holy Roman Emperor, 165 Ferdinand of Aragon, 25–7, 30, 32, 116, 124, 167 Ferrara, 36, 47, 80, 107, 111, 117–18, 121, 158, 188

Ferrer, Vincent, 10 Fettmilch, Vincenz, 159–63 Fettmilch Uprising, x, 159–63 Fez, 110 Fifth Monarchy Men, 190 Finch, Henry, 193 First Crusade, see Crusades Fischer, Andreas, 55, 59 Fisher, Samuel, 191 Fleury, Claude, 149 Florence, x, 23, 36, 47, 111–15, 118, 121, 188–9 Folcario, Antonio, 107 Fontainebleau, 141 Forman, Simon, 190 Forster, Johannes, 91 Fox, George, 191 France, ix, x, xvi, 10–11, 15, 21–4, 27, 35, 47–8, 78–80, 86, 89–90, 99, 101–2, 132–3, 136, 140–1, 149, 154, 172, 180, 183, 187–8, 192, 205–6 Francis I, king of France, 187 Franciscans, ix, 10, 15, 21, 33, 48, 64, 150 Franconia, 15 Frankfurt, x, 2, 56–7, 68–9, 81, 139, 141, 146, 154, 157–64, 172, 183, 186, 205, 209 Frederick III, elector of Saxony, 41, 45 Frederick III, Holy Roman Emperor, 38, 59, 159 Frederick III, elector of the Palatinate, 135 Frederick IV, elector of the Palatinate, 135 Frederick V, elector of the Palatinate, 98 Freiburg, 38 Friuli, 134 Froben, Ambrosius, 91, 92 Fromm, Paul, 68 Froschauer, Christoph, 153 Fuggers, 165 Füsüs, Janos Pataki, 98 Galilee, 185 Gallipoli, 182 Gans, David, 127–8, 165, 186 Gaza, 182 Gemara, 4 Geneva, ix, x, 40, 78–82, 85–7, 89–92, 95–9, 103, 148, 150, 152, 176 Genoa, 25, 48, 66 George I of Hesse-Darmstadt, 76 Geraldino, Giacomo, 122 Germany, xii, xv, 3, 11, 15, 16, 32, 37, 43, 58, 60–1, 71, 76, 80, 90, 119, 145, 148, 163, 180, 182, 191, 198 see also Holy Roman Empire Gerosolimitano, Domenico, 122 Ghent, 171

287

INDEX ghetto, x, 26, 28, 33–6, 72, 108–19, 130–1, 139, 159–60, 183, 191, 205, 207–12 Giessen, 67 Gigas, Herman, 15 Giovanna of Austria, 114 Giustiniani, Marcantonio, 120– 1 Glaidt, Oswald, 55, 58 ‘Glorious Revolution’, xi, 206 Goltzius, Hendrick, 97 Gouge, William, 193 Grajal, Gaspar de, 126 Granada, 25, 28 Gratius, Ortwin, 1 Greece, 21, 181 Greek, xxiii, 19–21, 23, 38–42, 82, 91–3, 148, 152–5 Gregory IX, pope, 10 Gregory XIII, pope, 110, 116 Gregory the Great, pope, 8 Grotius, Hugo, 177 Grumbach, 146 Grynszpan, Herschel, xii Guarinoni, Hippolytus, 148–9 Guise, 132 Guymonneus, Hilarius, 81 Guzmán, Gaspar de, 168 Haarlem, 50, 172 Hagenau, 81, 86 Hague, The, 174 Hahn, Juspa, 158 Ha-kohen, Joseph ben Joshua, 48 Halabi, Raphael Joseph, 182 Halberstadt, 157 Halevi, Abraham ben Eliezer, 48, 186 Halevi, Moses Uri, 172–4 Halevi, Salomon, 28 Hamburg, 172 Hätzer, Ludwig, 58 Hebraica, xvii, xx, xxii, xxiv, 1, 3, 19–23, 28, 37–42, 58, 73, 88, 90, 103, 106, 147–50, 207, 211 Hebrew language, ix, xvii, xx, xxii–xxiv, 19–23, 28, 34, 36–42, 54, 58–62, 69–73, 77, 81–2, 88–97, 103, 106, 110, 115, 120–2, 146–55, 177, 191, 193, 195, 197, 199, 207, 210–14 Heidelberg, 2, 40, 70, 90, 98, 155 Helen, Elhanan ben Abraham, 160 Henrietta-Maria, queen of France, 192 Henry IV, king of France, 89, 132 Henry VIII, king of England, 41, 98, 193, 195 Henten, Jan, 152

heresy, xx, 18, 22, 30, 32, 46, 57, 84, 101, 130, 134, 140, 148, 166, 167, 171, 208, 211 Hesse, 74–7 Hesse-Darmstadt, 76, 160 Hesse-Kassel, 76 Hildesheim, 157 Hoffman, Melchior, 50–1 Holland, 176, 178 Holocaust, xiii Holy Child of La Guardia, 26, 143 Holy League, 140 Holy Roman Empire, x, xiv, xxi, 2, 11, 23–4, 32, 45, 54, 60, 114, 116, 126–9, 131, 146, 157, 159, 160, 163–6, 170, 172, 188, 208 see also Germany Hôpital, Michel de l’, 140 Host desecration, 14–15, 18, 24, 26, 68, 69, 139, 142–5 Hotman, François, 133 Hubmaier, Balthasar, 57–8 Hugh of Lincoln, 17–18 Hugh of St. Victor, 20 Hughes, William, 201 Huguenots, 79, 97, 99, 101–2, 132, 140, 148, 172 Humanism, xiii, 3, 14, 18, 21–3, 36, 88, 150, 175 Hungary, 24, 98–9, 126, 145 Hunnius, Aegidius, 147–8 Hus, Jan, 37 Iberia, xvi, xviii, 24, 47–8, 90, 106, 115, 123–6, 163, 166–70, 171, 185, 197 Ibrahim, Sultan, 183 iconoclasm, 48–9, 54, 171 idolatry, 98, 122, 162, 177 Ignatius III, patriarch of Antioch, 154 Ignatius of Loyola, 106 Index of Prohibited Books, x, 121–2, 130 indulgences, xiv, 45 Innocent III, pope, 8–9 Innsbruck, 128 Inquisition, x, 10, 27–30, 33, 104, 113, 116–19, 123, 130, 134, 138, 156, 170–1, 175, 196 see also Spanish Inquisition Ireland, 196 Isaaco, Zaccaria d’, 139 Isabella of Aragon, 124 Isabella of Castille, 25–8, 30, 32, 116, 124, 167 Islam, xi, 11, 32, 36, 106, 122, 130, 166–7, 170, 183, 190 see also Muslims; Ottoman Empire Israel, xxii, 5, 6, 48, 50–3, 57, 79, 81, 82, 96, 98–102, 139, 149, 178–9, 181, 184–6, 189–94, 197–8, 206, 209 Istria, 48

288

INDEX Italy, ix, xvi–xvii, xxi, 11, 14, 24, 27–8, 30, 33, 36, 48, 61, 74, 81, 105–23, 130–1, 134, 136, 139, 180, 183, 186, 188–9, 191, 208, 212 James II, king of England, xi, 206 James VI of Scotland and I of England, 91, 98, 193–4 Jan of Leiden, 51–3, 57 Jenson, Nicholas, 120 Jerome, 19–23, 39, 152–3 Jerusalem, xiii, 5–8, 13, 17, 48, 63–4, 122, 181, 186, 190, 198 Jerusalem, New, 50–3, 189 Jessey, Henry, 199–200 Jesuits, 29, 106, 127, 148, 161, 164–5 Jesus of Nazareth, xiii–xiv, xxi–xxii, 2–8, 10, 14, 22, 43, 45–6, 50, 55, 57–9, 65–8, 70, 77, 83–5, 89, 92–5, 106, 117, 141, 147, 183, 184, 188–91, 213 Jewish books, 2, 3, 10, 34, 88, 113, 119–23, 130, 157–8, 165, 197 Jewish mission, 94–6 Jewish readmission, xi, xviii, xxiv, 184, 194–204, 212 Jews, passim accusations against, xiv, 13–15, 24, 26, 45, 65, 77, 94, 102, 142, 201–2 as chosen people, xiii, xxi, xxiv, 3–4, 7, 64, 101, 193, 213–14 Christian identification with, xx, 50–3, 57, 79, 96–103, 148–9, 178–9, 191, 193, 207, 209 Joachim I, elector of Brandenburg, 68 Joachim II, elector of Brandenburg, 68–9 Joachim of Fiore, 188 Johann, elector of Mainz, 160 John II, elector of the Palatinate, 135 John II, king of Portugal, 124, 187 John III, king of Portugal, 125 John Chrysostom, 7 John Frederick, elector of Saxony, 67, 69, 73–4 Jonas, Justus, 67, 69, 71 Jonson, Ben, 195 Josel of Rosheim, ix, 59–62, 67, 69, 72–3, 81, 84, 139 Josiah, 54, 97–8 Jud, Leo, 153 Judaeo-Christian Relations, xiii–xv, xvii–xix, xxi–xxv, 3, 4–13, 18, 26, 28, 30, 35, 37–42, 44–7, 53, 55, 62–3, 66, 68, 71, 76–7, 83–4, 87–8, 90, 92, 94–6, 100, 104–6, 118–19, 123, 129, 147, 148, 171, 206, 208, 210, 211, 213 see also anti-Judaism; Judaising; Judaism

Judaising, xxiii, 7, 23, 26, 32, 38, 53, 55, 59, 77, 84, 89, 96, 103, 117, 125, 126, 147, 151, 169, 170, 188, 194, 195 Judaism, 2, 4, 6–7, 16, 23, 28–30, 32, 35, 37–8, 43, 46–7, 53, 55, 63, 77, 81–3, 100, 104–6, 110, 116, 122–3, 125, 130, 147, 148, 149, 150, 151, 157–8, 165, 171, 173, 177, 183, 194, 196, 197, 210, 211, 213 see also crypto-Judaism; Judaeo–Christian Relations Judensau, 16 Julius II, pope, 117 Julius III, pope, 110, 121 Junius, Franciscus, 91, 154–5, 161 Jurieu, Pierre, 177 Justin Martyr, 6 Kabbalah, 2, 21–2, 38, 89, 115, 128, 142, 150, 154, 167, 181–2, 185–7, 221 n.126 Karlstadt, Andreas, 54, 151 Kayserberg, 60 Keller, John, 41 Kerssenbrok, Hermann von, 52 Kimhi, David, 40, 58, 74, 84, 88, 93, 120 Klesl, Melchior, 165 Krautwald, Valentin, 55, 59 Kristallnacht, xii La Guardia, 26, 143 Laínez, Diego, 106 Lämmlein, Asher, 48, 186 Lancashire, 194 Langland, William, 17 La Rochelle, 10 Last Days, xxii, 8, 47–8, 50, 177, 184, 194, 207, 210 Last Judgement, 1, 192 Lateran IV, Church Council, ix, 9, 14, 113, 188 Laud, William, 192, 201 Lausanne, 81, 89–90 Lefèvre D’Etaples, Jacques, 27–8, 88 Leiden, 51, 149, 177–8 Leipzig, 40–1, 62 L’Empereur, Constantijn, 149, 177 Leo X, pope, 22, 120, 178 León, Luis de, 126 Leon of Modena, 123, 139 Leopold I, Holy Roman Emperor, 157, 205 Lepanto, Battle of, x, 121 lepers, 15, 18 Lerma, duke of, 167 Léry, Jean de, 99 L’Estoile, Pierre de, 141 Letters of Famous Men, ix, 3

289

INDEX Letters of Obscure Men, ix, 1, 3 Levant, 172, 198 Levi, Aaron, see Montezinos, Antonio de Levita, Elijah, 38–40 Liegnitz, 59 Lilly, William, 190 Limpieza de sangre (‘purity of blood’), 29, 106, 148, 168 Lindau, 71 Lipman-Muelhausen, Yom Tov, 88 Lippomano, Marco, 21 Lisbon, 117, 124–5, 167, 173, 187 Livorno, 115, 191 Loans, Jacob ben Jechiel, 38, 59 Locke, John, 138 Lodensteyn, Jodocus von, 179 Loew, Judah, 128–9 Lollards, 37 London, xi, 98, 149, 182, 195, 198, 203 Loredan, Pietro 36 Louis XII, king of France, 80 Louis XIV, king of France, xi, 206 Louvain, 40–1, 152 Lovato, Ruffino, 33 Lucca, 23 Ludwig V, landgrave of Hesse-Darmstadt, 160 Ludwig VI, elector of the Palatinate, 135 Lull, Ramon, 10 Luria, Isaac, 185–6 Luther, Martin, x, xii–xvi, xviii, xxi, 3, 17, 20, 27, 32, 37–8, 40–8, 53–5, 58, 62–9, 71, 73–4, 76–7, 80, 84–5, 89, 92–4, 100, 104, 146, 150–3, 181, 189, 207, 210, 212–13, 215 n.7 Against the Sabbatarians, 63–4, 68–9 Last Words of David, 66 Lectures on Genesis, 62 Ninety-Five Theses, x, xvi, 27 On the Ineffable Name, 65–6, 68 On the Jews and Their Lies, x, xii, 64–9, 161 Table Talk, 42–3 That Jesus Christ Was Born a Jew, x, 45–8, 62, 64–5, 67, 94, 189 Lutheranism, x, xv, xviii, xxi, 40, 49–51, 55, 62, 67–71, 76, 83–4, 89, 91, 101, 133, 135, 141, 144, 146–7, 150, 157, 161, 172, 175–6, 211 Luzzato, Simone, 36 Lyon, 101, 153 Madrid, 167, 169–70 magic, 12, 22, 24, 26, 66, 142–3 Magiolino, Hieronimo, 104 Magno, Alessandro, 149 Maimonides, 21, 88, 120, 184

Mainz, 2, 11, 13, 160 Málaga, 167 Manetti, Giannozzo, 21, 221 n.125 Mansfeld, 43 Mantua, 107, 111, 121, 149, 188 Manuel I, king of Portugal, 124, 166 Manutius, Aldus, 39, 120 Marburg, 147 Colloquy of, 38 Marcantonio, 104, 130 Marc’Antonio degli Eletti, 35–6 Marcellino, Evangelista, 111 Margaret of Parma, 171 Margaret of Valois, 132 Margaritha, Anthonius, x, 61–2, 65, 90, 150, 177 The Whole Jewish Faith, x, 61, 65, 150, 177 Margoles, Samuel, 61 Maria of Austria, 127 Maria-Theresa, Holy Roman Empress, 205 Marino, Marco, 92 Marino, Prospero, 114 Marlowe, Christopher, 144, 211 Marot, Clément, 97 Marpeck, Pilgram, 58 Marques, Rodrigues, 203 Marseille, 12 Martin V, pope, ix Martini, Raymond, 10, 20, 37 martyrdom, 97, 101, 137 Mary, Virgin, 2, 10, 17, 44–5, 58, 65, 66, 94, 106–8, 150 Masius, Andreas, 95 Mass, 14, 30–1, 54, 71, 92, 127, 195, 202 see also Eucharist Matthias, Holy Roman Emperor, 160–1 Matthieu, Pierre, 140 Matthys, Jan, 50–2 Maurice, Prince of Orange, 76, 97, 178 Mauroceno, Paolo, 123 Maximilian I, Holy Roman Emperor, 2–3, 58, 60, 150 Maximilian II, Holy Roman Emperor, 114, 127–9, 146 Medici, 47, 112–16, 188 Medici, Carlo, 115 Medici, Cosimo, 112–15 Medici, Ferdinando, 115 Medici, Francesco I, 112–15 Medici, Giovanni de, 115 Medina, Bartolomé de, 126 Mediterranean, 11, 32, 137, 185 Megas, Abraham ibn, 49 Megillas Vintz, 160 Mehmed IV, Sultan, 183

290

INDEX Meisel, Mordecai, 165 Melanchthon, Philip, 41, 68–71, 83, 86, 120, 145 Melito of Sardis, 6 Memmingen, 71 Menasseh ben Israel, 197–9, 202 Mennonites, 57 Menocchio, 134–5, 138 ‘mercantilism’, 135, 206 Mercier, Jean, 89 Mesopotamia, 11 Messiah, x, 3–4, 7–8, 22, 46, 48, 58–9, 63–4, 67–8, 70, 76–7, 87, 94–5, 122, 147, 181–8, 191, 198, 208, 209, 213 Messianic Psalms, 83–4, 97, 147 Middelburg, 172 Milan, 104, 108, 126, 130, 166 millenarianism, xxii, xxiv, 184–92, 204, 210 Milton, John, 190 miracles, 14, 58, 85, 145, 179, 182, 186 Mishnah, 4 Mithridates, Flavius, 38 Modena, 36, 108, 111, 117–19 Moisè da Modena, 119 Molko, Solomon, 187–8 moneylending, 2, 9, 12, 16, 18, 24, 33, 35, 56–7, 65, 67, 72, 74–6, 139, 161, 199, 206, 208 Monier, Claude, 101 Montaigne, Michel de, 135 Monte, Andre del, 110 Montelfalcone, Giovanni de, 118 Montezinos, Antonio de, 197–8 Monza, 104 Moravia, 55, 62–3, 128, 165 Moriscos, 166, 167, 170 Moro, Joseph, see Monte, Andre del Morocco, 172 Moses, 21, 59, 63, 70, 85, 97, 151, 154, 178, 185, 194 Law of, 6, 7, 16, 27, 31, 54, 55, 59, 63, 64, 69, 75, 207 Moses of Mardin, 154 Muhammad, 31 Mulhouse, 71 Münster, Kingdom of, x, 50–3, 57, 189 Münster, Sebastian, 39, 72, 81, 91, 94–6, 102, 153 Muslims, xx, 11, 13, 15, 18, 25, 28, 87, 106, 107, 124, 133, 134, 140, 141, 168, 187, 200 see also Moriscos; Islam; Ottoman Empire mystery plays, 18, 24 naming practices, 78–9, 98, 100, 102 Nantes, Edict of, x–xi, 206 Naples, 21, 86, 106, 108, 117 Napoleon Bonaparte, 205

Nassau-Siegen, Johan Maurice van, 174 Nathan of Gaza, 182 Navarre, 25 Netherlands, 32, 48, 50, 79, 97, 99, 137, 163, 168, 170–80, 191, 197, 198, 212 Neumark, 67 Neustadt, 15 ‘new Christians’, see Conversos New England, 198 New Spain, 197 New Testament, xxii, 4–6, 21, 23, 42, 44, 78–9, 84–5, 88, 91–2, 95, 101, 152, 154–5 see also Bible New World, 26, 184, 189, 198, 211 Nicaea, First Council of, 87 Nicholas V, pope, 21 Nicholas of Lyra, 21, 64 Nidda, 150 Nigrinus, George, 67 Nizzahon, 3, 84, 217 n.16, 233 n.42 Nordlingen, 158 Northumberland, 190 Norwich, ix, 13 Nunes, Custodio, 104 Nuremberg, 69–70, 145 Diet of, 45 trials, xii–xiii, 215 n.7 Obernai, 71 Oecolampadius, Johannes, 87, 89 Old Testament, xiii, xxii, xxiv, 3–5, 7–8, 10, 19–21, 24, 44–6, 53–4, 57–60, 66, 70, 75, 77–9, 83, 85, 90–3, 96–7, 99, 101–2, 126, 143, 146, 152–5, 158, 179, 188, 192–4, 207, 209–10 see also Bible Oldenburg, Henry, 182 Olivares, count-duke of, see Guzmán, Gaspar de Origen, 19 Osiander, Andreas, 69–71, 81, 145–6 Ottoman Empire, ix, x, 27, 32, 34, 36, 49, 89, 107, 121–2, 125, 134, 142, 181–3, 186, 187–8, 190, 192 Ouderkerk, 173 Oxford, 37, 40, 191 Padua, 33, 111 Pagninus, Santes, 86, 153 Palatinate, 135, 155 Palestine, 11, 48, 183, 190 papacy, xx, 3, 8–10, 37, 47, 55, 92, 105–6, 110–13, 116–17, 120–1, 123, 129–31, 141, 149, 153, 167, 184, 188, 207 see also entries for specific popes

291

INDEX Papal States, x, 111, 122 Paris, xii, 14, 20, 22, 37, 40, 66, 73, 81, 89, 132, 133, 141 Disputation of, ix, 10, 119 Parker, Matthew, 155 Pasquier, Etienne, 140 Passover, 6, 31 Paul, Saint, xiii, xxii, 4–6, 44, 66, 94, 104, 148, 177, 200, 209–10 Epistle to the Romans, xxii, 66, 92, 189, 192, 210 Paul III, pope, 106, 110, 116, 125 Paul IV, pope, x, 109–10, 113–14, 117, 121, 127, 148, 207 Paul V, pope, 117 Paul of Burgos, 64 Peasants’ War, 37–8, 53, 56, 60 Peiresc, Nicolas-Claude Fabri de, 149 Pellikan, Konrad, 39, 54, 72–3, 93, 102, 153 Pesaro, 108 Peter the Venerable, 10 Petrus Alfonsi, 10 Pfefferkorn, Johann, ix, 1–3, 22, 43, 90, 119 Pforzheim, 39 Pharaoh, 101, 178 Philip II, king of Spain, 26, 97, 126, 131, 166, 167, 171, 176, 178 Philip III, king of Spain, 167 Philip IV, king of Spain, 168 Philip V, king of Spain, 205 Philip, landgrave of Hesse, x, 67, 69, 74–6 philo-Semitism, 193–4 Pico della Mirandola, Giovanni, 22, 38 Piers Plowman, 17 Pilate, Pontius, 6, 17, 201, 202 Pinto, Manuel Fernández, 169 Pires, Diogo, see Molko, Solomon Pisa, 115 Pistorius, Johann, 128, 150 Pius IV, pope, 113, 121 Pius V, pope, x, 111, 113 Plessis-Mornay, Philippe du, 133 pogrom, x, xii, 15, 126 poison, 12, 15, 24, 65, 142, 201 Polanco, Juan de, 106 Poland, x, xii, 24, 30, 55, 59, 99, 145, 146, 172, 182, 183, 209 Pole, Reginald, 109 Politiques, 140 polygamy, 52 Porrentruy, 56 Portaleone, Abraham, 149 Porto, 124

Portugal, ix, xxii, 25, 48, 104, 123–6, 166–70, 172, 176, 187, 197, 203 Pösing, 145 Postel, Guillaume, 22, 154 Poullain, Valérand, 81 Prague, 70, 126–9, 141, 164–5, 183, 205 Prague Chronicle, 48 Pratensis, Felix, 120 Priuli, Lorenzo, 35 Prophezei, 93, 153 Provence, 15 Providence, 99–100, 196 Prynne, William, 201 Psalms, 7, 21, 42, 44, 73–4, 83–4, 92, 96–7, 101, 120 Ptolemy II, 19 Pugio fidei, 10, 20, 37 Pulgar, Fernando de, 30 Purim, 119, 174 Puritanism, 54, 190, 192–6, 198, 204 purity of blood, see Limpieza de sangre Pusculo, Ubertino, 18 Quakers, 180, 190–1 Quito, 197 rabbinic exegesis, xxii, xxiii, xxiv, 19, 20, 21, 46, 58, 66, 74, 84, 89, 93, 97, 103, 110, 120, 153, 210, 213 rabbis, 1, 10, 25, 28, 36, 38, 40, 61, 65, 70, 91, 93, 96, 123, 141, 149, 157, 181 Rader, Matthaeus, 148 Rashbam, 20 Rashi, 20, 58, 74, 88 Rath, Ernst vom, xii Reael, Laurens, 179 ‘reason of state’, 135, 139–40, 163, 206 Reconquista, ix, 25 Reformed, xviii, xxi, 40, 76–7, 78–103, 132–3, 135, 137, 141, 147, 149–50, 155–7, 161–4, 170–80, 192, 209, 211 Regensburg, x, 57–58, 60–1 Colloquy of, x Regius Professorships, 40, 199 Reisch, Conrad, 73 religious pluralism, see confessional divisions Renaissance, xxii–xxiii, 20, 21–3, 38, 40, 101, 151, 188 Renée de France, 80 Republic of Letters, 149 Reubeni, David, 187–8 Reuchlin, Johann, 2–3, 20, 22, 38–9, 43, 54, 59, 66, 72, 84, 91–3 Revelation of St. John, xxii, 52, 192

292

INDEX Revius, Jacobus, 179 Rhegius, Urbanus, 70–1 Rhine, 11 Rhineland, 2, 13 Rhodes, 181 Ribadeneyra, Pedro de, 106 Rici, Paul, 150 ritual murder, see blood libel accusation Rivet, André, 150 Robertson, William, 193 Robles, Antonio Rodrigues, 202–3 Rogers, Thomas, 195 Roman Inquisition, see Inquisition Rome, x, 21, 22, 37–8, 40, 43, 106, 108, 111, 112, 114, 117, 121–3, 128–30, 141, 153, 154, 177, 182, 186–9, 192–3, 205 Rosheim, 60 Rosheim, Josel of, see Josel of Rosheim Rossi, Azariah dei, 186 Rothmann, Bernard, 50–2 Rotterdam, 149, 203 Rouen, 79, 98, 172 Rudiger of Speyer, 11 Rudolf II, Holy Roman Emperor 128, 129, 146 Rycaut, Paul, 200 Saba, Abraham, 88 Sabbatarianism, 54–5, 59, 62–3, 64, 194–5 Sabbateans, 183 Sabbath, 31, 54–5, 62–3, 110, 194–5 Safed, 185 Saint Paul’s Cathedral, 202 Saint Victor, abbey of, 20 Sainte-Aldegonde, Philippe de Marnix de, 150 Salamanca, 37, 126 Salonica, 125, 174, 181, 185, 205 Salvaticus, Porchetus, 66 salvation, xxii, 1, 4, 27, 42, 44, 55, 92, 136, 189, 196 Sancerre, 99 Sansovino, Francesco, 36 Santo Niño de la Guardia, see Holy Child of La Guardia Sanuto, Marino, 33, 35 São Tomé, 124 Sappenfeld, 145 Saravía, Diego de, 169 Saravía, Juan Núñez, 169 Sasportas, Jacob, 203 Sasse, Martin, xii Savonarola, Girolamo, 47, 188, 189 Saxony, 41, 70, 147 scepticism, xx, 133, 135 Schairer, Immanuel, xii

Schmalkaldic War, 81 Schudt, Johann Jacob, 146 Schwenckfeld, Kaspar, 55, 58–9 Scotland, 99, 136, 198 Scultetus, Abraham, 98 Sedan, 90 Segovia, 26 Selden, John, 149 Sélestat, 71 Selnecker, Nikolaus, 68 Seneor, Abraham, 30 Sens, 11 Septuagint, 19, 21 Servetus, Michael, x, 59, 84, 86–9 Seville, 26, 28–30, 167 Sforno, Obadiah ben Jacob, 38 Shakespeare, William, 144, 211 Sicut judaeis, 8–9 Siena, 36, 111 Silesia, 55, 59 Silíceo, Juan Martínez, 148 Silva, Duarte de, 203 Simon of Trent, ix, 14, 18, 146 Simons, Menno, 57 Sixtus IV, pope, 30 Sixtus V, pope, 153 Smyrna, 181, 182 Soeiro, Manoel Dias, see Menasseh ben Israel Sola scriptura, xxiii, 37, 53, 151, 210 Solomon bar Simson, 13 Soncino, ix Spain, ix, xvii, xxi, 10, 11, 20, 25–33, 35, 47–8, 86–8, 97, 105–6, 116, 123–6, 131, 136, 141, 151–2, 154, 166–70, 171–2, 175–6, 178–80, 185, 202, 205, 212 Spalatin, George, 41, 43 Spanish Inquisition, ix, 26–8, 30–3, 87, 105, 116, 124–6, 143, 166–70, 175, 180, 198, 205 see also Inquisition Speyer, 11 Spinoza, Baruch, 182, 190 Staffelsteiner, Paul, 70 Stetten, George von, 94 Strasbourg, 15, 39, 40, 50, 51, 53, 59, 60, 67, 71–4, 77, 81, 83, 91, 139, 173, 208 Streicher, Julius, xiii Stubbes, Philip, 54 Stuttgart, xii Styria, 164 Suleiman the Magnificent, Ottoman Emperor, 49 supersessionism, xiii, xxi, xxiv, 4, 7, 79, 102, 209 Swabia, 56 Switzerland, 27, 37, 71, 86, 90, 92

293

INDEX Synagoga, 16 synagogues, x, 7, 12, 16, 36, 58, 65, 70, 75, 109–10, 118, 161–2, 165, 173–8, 182–3, 191, 199, 201–3, 211 Syriac, 91, 154–5 Talmud, x, 2–3, 4, 10, 17, 65, 73, 75, 91–2, 94, 113, 116, 120–1, 150, 165, 207 Tedeschi, Mosé, 118 Ten Commandments, 21, 55, 97, 127 Tertullian, 7 Teruel, 26 Tetragrammaton, 66, 181 Tetrapolitan Confession, 71 Thirty Years War, x, 137, 163, 164–6, 171, 172, 180, 183, 206 Thomas, Hans Valtin, 162 Thomas of Monmouth, 13, 14 Thorowgood, Thomas, 198 Thuringia, xii Tiberino, Giovanni Mattia, 14 Tirol, 148, 149 Toledo, 26, 29, 32, 148, 168–9 Toledot Yeshu, 3, 66, 67 toleration, xvi, xx, xxi, 13, 23, 26, 43, 46, 67, 70, 75–6, 80, 86, 93–4, 109–10, 113, 122, 128–9, 138, 141–2, 168, 175, 180, 196, 204, 206, 212, 213 Torah, 4, 10, 16, 110, 120, 181, 185 Torelli, Lelio, 113 Torquemada, Juan de, 29 Torquemada, Tomás de, 30 Tortosa, Disputation of, ix, 11 transubstantiation, 14, 193 Traske, John, 194, 195 Tremellius, Immanuel, 74, 81–2, 89–91, 95–6, 102, 154–5, 161 Trent, ritual murder accusation, see Simon of Trent Trent, Council of, x, xv, 14, 20, 37, 105, 112–13, 121, 123, 129–30, 152–3 Trevis, Eliezer, 186 tribes of Israel, xxii, 51, 184, 187, 189, 197–8 Trinity, 22, 59, 66, 84, 86–9, 95, 150, 188, 196 Troyes, 11, 20, 74 Tübingen, 40 Tudor, Mary, 81, 135 Turkey, 181–3 Tuscany, 112, 114, 115 Twelve Articles, 56 Twelve Years’ Truce, 168, 172, 179 Ulcinj, 183 Union of Utrecht, 175

universities, ix, 2, 37, 40–1, 90, 103, 156, 210 Urban II, pope, 12 Urbino, 111 usury, see moneylending Utrecht, 176, 177, 179 Uzziel, Jonathan ben, 91 Valencia, 28, 32 Valla, Lorenzo, 20, 21 van Campen, Nicolaes, 176 Vatable, François, 81, 91 Vedelius, Nicolaus, 177 Venice, x, 22, 33–6, 39, 48, 72, 92, 107, 110, 114, 117, 119–23, 133, 137, 139, 141, 144, 186–8, 205, 211 ghetto in, x, 33–6, 72, 110, 114, 117, 139 Vermigli, Peter Martyr, 90 Verona, 36, 111 Vienna, xi, 15, 23, 40, 57, 62, 127, 128, 154, 157, 165, 183, 205 Vienne, 86 Council of, ix, 37 Villanueva de Sijena, 86 Villegas, Pedro, 31–2 Viret, Pierre, 81, 90 Vltava, 127–8 Voetius, Gisbertus, 177 Voragine, Jacobus de, 17 Vulgate, 20, 69, 74, 126, 152–3, 155 Wakefield, Robert, 41–2 Wartburg, 44, 45 Wechel, 161 West Indies, 198 Westphalia, 50 Treaty of, x, 137, 171, 180 Whitehall Conference, xi, 190, 195–202, 212 Whitgift, John, 194 Widmanstetter, Johann, 154–5 Willett, Andrew, 192 William IV of Hesse-Kassel, 76 William of Norwich, ix, 13–14 William of Orange, x, 97, 176, 178 witches, xx, 32, 117, 130, 142–4, 158 Wittenberg, 40, 41, 43–5, 54, 67–9, 71–3, 80, 89, 91, 147 Castle Church, x, xvi, 17, 27, 44 University of, 41, 44, 72, 89, 91, 147 Wolf, Ferenc, 145 ‘Wonderyear’, x, 137, 171, 175, 178 Worms, 2, 11, 13, 58, 68, 81, 88, 146, 161–4, 209 Diet of, x, 32, 45, 54 Worms Prophets, 58 Württemberg, 68, 95

294

INDEX Wycliffe, John, 37 Wytenbach, Thomas, 92 Yiddish, xxii, 151, 160, 210, 211 Yom Kippur, 173, 181 Zadok, Rabbi, 60 Zamora, Alfonso de, 40 Zaragoza, 26 Zárate, Pedro de, 106

Zeeland, 176 Zell, Matthias, 60, 71 Zevi, Mordecai, 181 Zevi, Sabbatai, xi, 181–3 Zimra, David ben Solomon ibn Abi, 187 Zion, 51, 53, 179 Zohar, 181, 185 Zurich, 15, 23, 39–40, 71, 73, 92–3, 103, 150, 153 Zweibrücken, duke of, 82, 89 Zwingli, Huldrych, 27, 28, 38–9, 92–3

295

296