ANTISBUITISM

ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES

ANTISEMITISM,

ITS HISTORY AND CAUSES.

TRANSLATED FROM THE FRENCH

PUBLISHED BY
THE INTERNATIONAL LIBRARY PUBLISHING CO.,
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By The International Library Publishing Co.

Antisemitism, Its History and Causes

Preface.

Portions of this book, which at various times appeared in the newspapers and periodicals, received the honor of being noticed and discussed. This has induced me to write the few lines that follow. I have been charged by some with being an antisemite, by others, with exhibiting too great bias in defending the Jews, and my writings have been judged either from the antisemitic or the philosemitic standpoint. This is wrong, for I am neither an antisemite nor a philosemite; it has been my intention to write neither an apology nor a diatribe, but an impartial study in history and sociology.

I do not approve of antisemitism; it is a narrow, one-sided view, still I have sought to account for it. It was not born without cause, I have searched for its causes. Whether I have succeeded in discovering them, it is for the reader to decide.

An opinion as general as antisemitism, which has flourished in all countries and in all ages, before and after the Christian era, at Alexandria, Rome, and Antiachia, in Arabia, and in Persia, in mediaeval and in modern Europe, in a word, in all parts of the world wherever there are or have been Jews,—such an opinion, it has seemed to me, could not spring from a mere whim or fancy, but must be the effect of deep and serious causes.

It has, therefore, been my aim to draw a full-size picture of antisemitism, of its history and causes, to follow its successive changes and transformations. Such a study might easily fill volumes. I have, therefore, been obliged to limit its scope, confining myself to broad outlines and omitting details. I hope to take up, at no distant day, some of its aspects which could only be hinted at here, and I shall then endeavor to show what has been the intellectual, moral, economic and revolutionary role of the Jew in the world.

THE AUTHOR.

ANTISEMITISM.

CHAPTER I

GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

Exclusiveness.—The Political and Religious Cult.—Jehovah and the Law.—Civil and Religious Regulations.—Jewish Colonies.—The Talmud.—The Chosen People Doctrine.—Jewish Pride.—Separation from the Nations.—Pollution.—The Pharisees and the Rabbinites.—The Faith, Tradition and Secular Science.—The Triumph of the Talmudists.—Jewish Patriotism.—The Mystic Fatherland.—The Restoration of the Kingdom of Israel.—The Isolation of the Jew.

To make the history of antisemitism complete, omitting none of the manifestations of this sentiment and following its divers phases and modifications, it is necessary to go into the history of Israel since its dispersion, or, more properly speaking, since the beginning of its expansion beyond the boundaries of Palestine.

Wherever the Jews settled after ceasing to be a nation

ready to defend its liberty and independence, one observes the development of antisemitism, or rather anti-Judaism; for antisemitism is an ill-chosen word, which has its raison d'etre only in our day, when it is sought to broaden this strife between the Jew and the Christians by supplying it with a philosophy and a metaphysical, rather than a material reason. If this hostility, this repugnance had been shown towards the Jews at one time or in one country only, it would be easy to account for the local causes of this sentiment. But this race has been the object of hatred with all the nations amidst whom it ever settled. Inasmuch as the enemies of the Jews belonged to divers races; as they dwelled far apart from one another, were ruled by different laws and governed by opposite principles; as they had not the same customs and differed in spirit from one another, so that they could not possibly judge alike of any subject, it must needs be that the general causes of antisemitism have always resided in Israel itself, and not in those who antagonized it.

This does not mean that justice was always on the side of Israel's persecutors, or that they did not indulge in all the extremes born of hatred; it is merely asserted that the Jews were themselves, in part, at least, the cause of their own ills.

Considering the unanimity of antisemitic manifestations, it can hardly be admitted, as had too willingly been done, that they were merely due to a religious war, and one must not view the strife against the Jews as a struggle of polytheism against monotheism, or that of the Trinity against Jehovah. The polytheistic, as

well as the Christian nations combatted not the doctrine of one sole God, but the Jew.

Which virtues or which vices have earned for the Jew this universal enmity? Why was he ill-treated and hated alike and in turn by the Alexandrians and the Romans, by the Persians and the Arabs, by the Turks and the Christian nations? Because, everywhere up to our own days the Jew was an unsociable being.

Why was he unsociable? Because he was exclusive, and his exclusiveness was both political and religious, or rather he held fast to his political and religious cult, to his law.

All through history we see the conquered peoples submit to the laws of the conqueror, though they may guard their own faith and beliefs. It was easy for them to do so, for with them a line was drawn between their religious teachings which had come from the gods, and their civil laws which emanated from legislation and could be modified according to circumstances, without inviting upon the reformers the theological anathema or execration; what had been done by man could be undone by man. Thus, if the conquered rose up against the conquerors, it was through patriotism alone, and they were actuated by no other motive but the desire to regain their land and their liberty. Aside from these national uprisings, they seldom took exception to being subjected to the general laws; if they protested, it was against particular enactments which placed them into a position of inferiority towards the dominant people; in the history of the Roman conquests we see the con-

quered bow to Rome when she extended to them the laws which governed the empire.

Not so with the Jewish people. In fact, as was observed by Spinoza,¹ "the laws revealed by God to Moses were nothing but laws for the special government of the Hebrews." Moses,² the prophet and legislator, assigned the same authority for his judicial and governmental enactments, as for his religious precepts, i. e., revelation. Not only did Yahweh say to the Jews, "Ye shall believe in the one God and ye shall worship no idols," he also prescribed for them rules of hygiene and morality; not only did he designate the territory where sacrifices were to be offered, he also determined the manner in which that territory was to be governed. Each of the given laws, whether agrarian, civil, prophylactic, theological, or moral, proceeded from the same authority, so that all these codes formed a whole, a rigorous system of which naught could be taken away for fear of sacrilege.

In reality, the Jew lived under the rule of a lord, Yahweh, who could neither be conquered, nor even assailed, and he knew but one thing, the law, i. e., the collection of rules and decrees which it had once pleased Yahweh to give to Moses,—a law divine and excellent, made to lead its followers to eternal bliss; a perfect law which the Jewish people alone had received.

With such an idea of his Torah, the Jew could not

^2 Tractatus theologico-politicus.

When I say "Moses assigned," it is not to maintain that Moses himself elaborated all the laws which pass under his name, but merely because he is credited with having revised them.

accept the laws of strange nations; nor could he think of submitting to them; he could not abandon the divine laws, eternal, good and just, to follow human laws, necessarily imperfect and subject to decay. If only he had been allowed to make one part of this Torah; to put on one side all civil ordinances, on the other all religious decrees! But had they not all a sacred character, and did not the welfare of the Jewish people depend upon their full observance?

These civil laws which attached to the people, not to municipalities, the Jews would not abandon upon settling among other nations, for though these laws no longer had any justification beyond Jerusalem and the Kingdom of Israel, they were none the less religious obligations binding upon all the Jews, who, by an ancient covenant with the Deity, had undertaken to fulfill them.

Thus, wherever colonies were founded by the Jews, to whatever land they were deported, they insisted, not only upon permission to follow their religion, but also upon exemption from the customs of the people amidst whom they were to live, and the privileges to govern themselves by their own laws.

At Rome, at Alexandria, at Antioch, in Cyrenaica they were allowed full freedom in the matter. They were not required to appear in court on Saturday; they were even permitted to have their own special tribunals, and were not amenable to the laws of the empire; when the distribution of grains occurred on a Saturday

^1Cod. Theod., book II, title VIII, §2. Cod. Just., book I, title IX, §2.

their share was reserved for them until the next day;² they could be decurions, being at the same time exempt from all practices contrary to their religion³; they enjoyed complete self-government, as in Alexandria; they had their own chiefs, their own senate, their ethnarch, and were not subject to the general municipal authorities.

Everywhere they wanted to remain Jews, and everywhere they were granted the privilege of establishing a State within the State. By virtue of these privileges and exemptions, and immunity from taxes, they would soon rise above the general condition of the citizens of the municipalities where they resided; they had better opportunities for trade and accumulation of wealth, whereby they excited jealousy and hatred.

Thus, Israel's attachment to its law was one of the first causes of its unpopularity, whether because it derived from that law benefits and advantages which were apt to excite envy, or because it prided itself upon the excellence of its Thorah and considered itself above and beyond other peoples.

Still had the Israelites adhered to pure Mosaism, they could, doubtless, at some time in their history, have so modified that Mosaism as to retain none but the religious and metaphysical precepts; possibly, if they had no other sacred book but the Bible they might have merged in the nascent church, which enlisted its first followers among the Sadducees, the Essenes, and the Jewish prose-

^2 Philo, Legat. ad Cai.

^3 Dig., book I, title III, §3. (Decisions by Septimius Severus and Caracalla.)

lytes. One thing prevented that fusion and upheld the existence of the Hebrews among the nations; it was the growth of the Talmud, the authority and rule of the doctors who taught a pretended tradition. The policy of the doctors to which we shall return further made of the Jews sullen beings, unsociable and haughty, of whom Spinoza, who knew them well, could say: "It is not at all surprising that after being scattered for so many years they have preserved their identity without a government of their own, for, by their external rites, contrary to those of other nations, as well as by the sign of circumcision, they have isolated themselves from all other nations, even to the extent of drawing upon themselves the hate of all mankind."

Man's aim on earth, said the doctors, is the knowledge and observance of the law, and one cannot thoroughly observe it without denying allegiance to all but the true law. The Jew who followed these precepts isolated himself from the rest of mankind; he retrenched himself behind the fences which had been erected around the Torah by Ezra and the first scribes¹, later by the Pharisees and the Talmudists, the successors of Ezra, refomers of primitive Mosaism and enemies or the prophets. He isolated himself, not merely by declining to submit to the customs which bound together the inhabitants of the countries where he settled, but also by shunning all intercourse with the inhabitants themselves. To his unsociability the Jew added exclusiveness.

With the law, yet without Israel to put it into practice,

Spinoza, Tractatus theologico-politicus

^1 The Dibre Sophcrim

When Jewish nationality was in peril, the Pharisees, under John Hyrcanus, declared impure the soil of strange peoples, as well as all intercourse among Jews and Greeks. Later, the Shamaites advocated at a synod

^1 Mark, vii, 27.

complete separation of the Jews from the heathens, and drafted a set of injunctions, called The Eighteen Things, which ultimately prevailed over the opposition of the Hillelites. As a result Jewish unsociability begins to engage the attention of the councils of Antiochus Sidetes; exception is taken to "their persistence in shutting themselves up amidst their own kind and avoiding all intercourse with pagans, and to their eagerness to make that intercourse more and more difficult, if not impossible." And the high priest Menelaus accuses the law, before Antiochus Epiphanes, "of teaching hatred of the human race, of prohibiting to sit down at the table of strangers and to show good-will towards them."

If these prescriptions had lost their authority when the cause which had produced and, in a way, justified them, had disappeared, the evil would not have been great. Yet we see them reappear in the Talmud and receive a new sanction from the authority of the doctors. After the controversy between the Sadducees and the Pharisees had terminated in the victory of the latter, these injunctions became part of the law, they were taught with the law and helped to develop and exaggerate the exclusiveness of the Jews.

Another fear, that of contamination, separated the Jews from the world and made their isolation still more rigorous. The Pharisees held views of extreme rigor on the subject of contamination; with them the injunctions and prescriptions of the Bible were insufficient to preserve Man from sin. As the sacrificial vases were contaminated by the least im-

^1 Derembourg, Geographie de la Palestine.

pure contact, they came to regard themselves contaminated by contact with strangers. Of this fear were born innumerable rules affecting every-day life: rules relating to clothing, dwelling, nourishment, all of which were promulgated with a view to save the Israelites from contamination and sacrilege; all these rules might properly be observed in an independent state or city, but could not possibly be enforced in foreign lands, for their strict observance would require the Jews to flee the society of Gentiles, and thus to live isolated, hostile to their environment.

The Pharisees and the Rabbinites went still farther. Not satisfied with preserving the body, they also sought to save the soul. Experience had shown them that Hellenic and Roman importations imperiled what they deemed their faith. The names of the Hellenistic high priests, Jason, Menelaus, &c., reminded the Rabbinites of the times when the genius of Greece, winning over one portion of Israel, came very near conquering it. They knew that the Sadducean party, friendly to the Greeks, had paved the way for Christianity, as much as the Alexandrians and all those who maintained that "none but the legal provisions, clearly enunciated in the Mosaic law, were binding, whereas all other rules growing from local traditions or subsequently issued, could lay no claim to rigorous observance.1

It was under Greek influence that the books and oracles originated which prepared the minds for Messiah. The Hellenistic Jews, Philo and Aristobulus, the pseudo-Phocylides and the pseudo-Longinus, authors of the

^1 Graetz, Histoire des Juifs, b. II, p. 469.

Sibylline oracles and of the pseudo-Orphics, all these successors of the prophets who continued their work, led mankind to Christ. And it may be said that true Mosaism, purified and enlarged by Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, broadened and generalized by the Judaeo-Hellenists, would have brought Israel to Christianity, but for Ezraism, Pharisaism and Talmudism, which held the mass of the Jews bound to strict observances and narrow ritual practices.

To guard God's people, to keep it safe from evil influences, the doctors exalted their law above all things. They declared that no study but that of the law alone became an Israelite, and as a whole life-time was hardly sufficient to learn and penetrate all the subtleties and all the casuistry of that law, they prohibited the study of profane sciences and foreign languages. "Those among us who learn several languages are not held in esteem," said Josephus; contempt alone was soon thought insufficient, they were excommunicated. Nor did these expulsions satisfy the Rabbinites. Though deprived of Plato, had not the Jew still the Bible, could he not listen to the voice of the prophets? As the book could not be proscribed, it was belittled and made subordinate to the Talmud; the doctors declared: "The law is water, the Mishna is wine." And the reading of the Bible was considered less beneficial, less conducive to salvation than the reading of the Mishna.

However, the Rabbinites could not kill Jewish curiosity with one blow; it required centuries. It was as late as the fourteenth century, after Ibn Ezra, Rabbi

^√ ¹ Ant. Jud., xx, 9.

Bechai, Maimonides, Bedares, Joseph Caspi, Levi Ben Gerson, Moses of Narbonne, and many others, were gone, all true sons of Philo and the Alexandrians, who strove to verify Judaism by foreign philosophy; after Asher Ben Yechiel had induced the assembly of the rabbis at Barcelona to excommunicate those who would study profane sciences; after Rabbi Shalem, of Montpellier had complained to the Dominicans of the Moreh Nebukhim, and this book, the highest expression of the ideas of Maimonides, had been burned;—it was only after all this that the rabbis ultimately triumphed.

Their end was attained. They had cut off Israel from the community of nations; they had made of it a sullen recluse, a rebel against all laws, foreign to all feeling fraternity, closed to all beautiful, noble and generous ideas; they had made of it a small and miserable nation, soured by isolation, brutalized by a narrow education, demoralized and corrupted by an unjustifiable pride.¹

The Jewish thought still had a few lights in the fifteenth and the sixteenth century. But those among the Jews who produced anything mostly took part in the struggle between philosophy and religion, and were without influence upon their co-religionists; their existence is therefore no denial of the spirit inculcated on the masses by the rabbis. Besides, one meets, throughout that period, none but unimportant commentators, physicians and translators; there appears no great mind among them. One must go as far as Spinoza to find a Jew truly capable of high ideas; it is well known how the Synagogue treated Spinoza.

^"Insolentia Judaeorum," spoken of by Agobard, Amolon and the polemists of the Middle Ages means nothing but the pride of the Jews, who consider themselves the chosen people. This expression has not the sense forced into it by modern antisemites, who, it may be noted, are poor historians,

With this transformation of the Jewish spirit and the victory of sectarian doctors, coincides the beginning of official persecution. Until that epoch there had only been outbursts of local hatred, but no systematic vexations. With the triumph of the Rabbinites, the ghettos come into being. The expulsions and massacres commence. The Jews want to live apart,—a line is drawn against them. They detest the spirit of the nations amidst whom they live,—the nations chase them. They burn the Moreh,—their Talmud is burned and they themselves are burned with it.¹

It would seem that no further agency was needed to render the separation of the Jews from the rest of mankind complete and to make them an object of horror and reprobation. Still another cause must be added to those just mentioned: the indomitable and tenacious patriotism of Israel.

Certainly, every people was attached to the land of its birth. Conquered, beaten by the conquerors, driven into exile or forced into slavery, they remained true to the sweet memories of their plundered city or the country they had lost. Still none other knew the patriotic enthusiasm of the Jews. The Greek, whose city was destroyed, could elsewhere build anew the hearth upon which his ancestors bestowed their blessings; the Roman

^1 The Roman laws, the Visigothic ordinances and those of the Councils will probably be cited; yet nearly all these measures proceeded principally from Jewish proselytism. It was not until the thirteenth century that the Jews were radically and officially separated from the Christians, by ghettos, by symbols of infamy (the hat, the cape, etc.). See Ulysse Robert, Les Signes d'infamic au moyevage. (Paris, 1891.)

who went into exile took along with him his penates; Athens or Rome had nothing of the mystic fatherland like Jerusalem.

Jerusalem was the guardian of the Tabernacle which received the divine word; it was the city of the only Temple, the only place in the world where God could efficiently be worshipped and sacrifices offered to Him. It was only much later, at a very late day, that prayer houses were erected in other towns of Juda, or Greece, or Italy; still in those houses they confined themselves to the reading of the law and theological discussion; the pomp of Jehovah was known nowhere but at Jerusalem, the chosen sanctuary. When a temple was built at Alexandria, it was considered heretical; indeed, the ceremonies which were celebrated there had no sense, for they ought not to be performed anywhere but in a true temple; so St. Chrysostome, after the dispersion of the Jews and the destruction of their city, was justified in saying: "The Jews offer sacrifices in all parts of the earth except there where the sacrifice is permitted and valid, i. e., at Jerusalem."

With the Hebrews the air of Palestine is the best; it is sufficient to make a man learned; its holiness is such that whoever resides beyond its limits is as if he had no God. Therefore one must not live elsewhere, and the Talmud threatens with excommunication those who would eat the passover lamb in a foreign land.

All Jews of the period of dispersion sent to Jerusalem the didrachm tax for the maintenance of the temple;

^1 Talmud, Bava Bathra, 158, 2.

^2 Talmud, Kethuvoth.

once in their lives they came to the holy city, as later the Mohammedans came to Mecca; after their death they were carried to Palestine, and numerous craft anchored at the coast, loaded with small coffins which were thence forwarded on camel's back.

It was because in Jerusalem only, in the land given by God to their ancestors, their bodies would be resurrected. There those who had believed in Yahweh, who had observed his law and obeyed his word, would awake at the sound of the last trumpet and appear before their Lord. Nowhere but there could they rise at the appointed hour; every other land but that washed by the yellow Jordan was a vile land, fouled by idolatry, deprived of God.

When the fatherland was dead, when adversity was sweeping Israel all over the world, after the Temple had perished in flames, and when the heathens occupied the holiest ground, mourning over bygone days became everlasting in the soul of the Jew. It was over; they could no longer hope to see on the day of mercy the black buck carry away their sins into the desert, neither could they see the lamb killed for the passover night, or bring their offerings to the altar; and, deprived of Jerusalem during life, they would not be brought there after death.

God ought not to abandon his children, reasoned the pious; and naive legends came to comfort the exiles. Near the tombs of the Jews who die in exile, they said, Jehovah opens long caverns through which the corpses roll as far as Palestine, whereas the pagan who dies there, near the consecrated hills, is removed from the

chosen land, for he is unworthy or remaining there where the resurrection will take place.

Still that did not satisfy them. They did not resign themselves to visiting Jerusalem merely as pitiable pilgrims, weeping before the ruined walls, many of them so maddened by grief as to let themselves be trampled upon by horses' hoofs, embracing the ground while moaning; they could not believe that God, that the blessed city had abandoned them; with Judah Levita they exclaimed: "Zion, hast thou forgotten thy unfortunate children who groan in slavery?"

They expected that their Lord would by his mighty right hand raise the fallen walls; they hoped that a prophet, a chosen one, would bring them back to the promised land; and how many times, in the course of ages, have they left their homes, their fortunes,—they who are reproached of being too much attached to worldly goods,—in order to follow a false Messiah who undertook to lead them and promised them the return so much longed for! Thousands were attracted by Serenus, Moses of Crete, Alroi, and massacred in the expectation of the happy day.

With the Talmudists these sentiments of popular enthusiasm, this mystic heroism underwent a transformation. The doctors taught the restoration of the Jewish empire; in order that Jerusalem might be born anew from its ruins, they wanted to preserve the people of Israel pure, to prevent them from mixing with other people, to inculcate on them the idea that they were everywhere in exile, amidst enemies that held them captive. They said to their disciples: "Do not cultivate

strange lands, soon you will cultivate your own; do not attach yourself to any land, for thus will you be unfaithful to the memory of your native land; do not submit to any king, for you have no master but the Lord of the Holy Land, Jehovah; do not scatter amongst the nations, you will forfeit your salvation and you will not see the light of the day of resurrection; remain such as you left your house; the hour will come and you will see again the hills of your ancestors, and those hills will then be the centre of the world. which will be subject to your power."

Thus all those complex sentiments which had in olden days served to build up the hegemony of Israel, to maintain its character as a nation, to develop a high and powerful originality, all those virtues and vices which gave it the spirit and countenance necessary to preserve a nation; which enabled it to attain greatness and later to defend its independence with desperate valor worthy of admiration; all that, after the Jews had ceased to be a State, combined to shut them up in the most complete, the most absolute isolation.

This isolation has been their strength, in the opinion of some apologists. If they mean to say that owing to it the Jews have survived, so much is true; if the conditions are considered, however, under which the Jews have preserved their identity as a people, it is obvious that this isolation has been their weakness, and that they have survived up to modern times, as a race of pariahs, persecuted, often martyred. Moreover, it is not only to their seclusion that they owe this surprising persistence. Their extraordinary solidarity, due to their

misfortunes, and mutual support count for very much; and even in our day, when they take part in public life in some countries, having abandoned their sectarian dogmas, this very solidarity prevents them from dissolving and disappearing as a people, by conferring upon them certain benefits to which they are by no means indifferent.

This solicitude for worldly goods, which is a marked feature of the Hebrew character, has not been without effect upon the conduct of the Jews, especially since they left Palestine; by directing them along certain avenues, to the exclusion of all others, this feature of their character has drawn upon them the most violent animosities. The soul of the Jew is twofold: it is both mystic and positive. His mysticism has come down from the theophanies of the desert to the metaphysical dreaming of the kabbala; his positivism, or rather his rationalism, manifests itself in the sentences of the Ecclesiastes as well as the legislative enactments of the rabbis and the dogmatic controversies of the theologians. Still if mysticism leads to a Philo or Spinoza, rationalism leads to the usurer, the weigher of gold; it creates the greedy trader. It is true that at times these two states of the mind are found in just opposition, and the Israelite, as it occurred in the middle ages, can split his life into two parts: one devoted to meditation on the Absolute, the other to business.

Of the Jewish love for gold, there can be no question here. Though it may have grown so abnormal with this race as to have become well-nigh the only motive of their actions, though it may have engendered a violent and exasperated antisemitism, yet it cannot be classed among the general causes of antisemitism. It was, on the contrary, the effect of those very causes, and we shall see that it is partly the exclusiveness, the persistent patriotism and pride of Israel, that has driven it to become the hated usurer of the whole world.

In fact, all the causes we have just enumerated, if they be general, are not the only ones. I have called them general, because they depend upon one constant element: the Jew. Still the Jew is only one of the factors of antisemitism; he provokes it by his presence, but he is not the only one that determines it. The nations among whom the Israelites have lived, their manners, their customs, their religion, the philosophy even of the nations in whose midst Israel has developed, determine the particular character of antisemitism, which changes with time and place.

We shall trace these modifications and variations of antisemitism through the course of ages down to our epoch; and we shall examine whether, in some countries at least, the general causes I have attempted to deduce are still operating, or whether the reasons for modern antisemitism must not be sought elsewhere.

CHAPTER II

ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY.

The Hykos.—Haman.—Antisemitism in Ancient Society.—In Egypt, Manetho, Chaeremon, Lysimachus.
—Antisemitism at Alexandria.—The Stoics: Posidonius, Apollonius Molo.—Apion, Josephus and Philo.—"Treatise Against the Jews," the "Contra Apionem," and the "Legation to Caius."—The Jews at Rome.—Roman Antisemitism.—Cicero, Disciple of Apion, and Pro Flacco.—Persius, Ovid and Petronius.—Pliny, Suetonius and Juvenal.—Seneca and the Stoics.—Government Measures.—Antisemitism at Antioch and in Ionia.—Antisemitism and Antichristianity.

Modern antisemites who are in quest of sires for themselves, unhesitatingly trace the first demonstrations against the Jews back to the days of ancient Egypt. For that purpose they are particularly pleased to refer to Genesis, xliii, 32, where it is said: "The Egyptians might not eat bread with the Hebrews; for that it is an abomination unto the Egyptians." They also rely upon a few verses of the Exodus, among them the following: "Behold, the people of the children of Israel are more and mightier than we; come on, let us deal wisely with them, lest they multiply." (Exodus, i, 9, 10.)

It is certain that the sons of Jacob who came to the land of Goshen under the Shepherd Pharaoh Aphobis, were treated by the Egyptians with the same contempt as their brothers, the Hyksos, referred to in hieroglyphic texts as lepers, called also "plague" and "pest" in some inscriptions. They arrived at that very epoch when a very strong national sentiment manifested itself against the Asiatic invaders, hated for their cruelty; this sentiment soon led to the war of independence, which resulted in the final victory of Ahmos I., and the enslavement of the Hebrews. However, unless one is a violent anti-Jew, it is impossible to perceive in those remote disturbances anything beyond a mere incident in a struggle between conquerors and conquered.

There is no antisemitism until the Jews, having abandoned their native land, settle as immigrants in foreign countries and come into contact with natives or older settlers, whose customs, race and religion are different from those of the Hebrews.

Accordingly, the history of Haman and Mordecai may be taken as the beginning of antisemitism, and the antisemites have not failed so to do. This view is, perhaps, more correct. Though the historical reality of the book of Esther can scarcely be relied upon, still it is worthy of note that its author puts into the mouth of Haman some of the complaints, which, at a later period, are uttered by Tacitus and other Latin writers. "And Haman said unto the king, Ahasuerus: there is a certain people scattered abroad and dispersed among the people in all the provinces of thy kingdom; and their

^1 Inscription of Aahmes, chief of the mariners, cited in Ledrain's Histoire du peuple d'Israel, I, p. 53.

laws are diverse from all people; neither keep they the king's laws." (Esther, iii, 8.)

The pamphleteers of the middle ages, of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and of our own time, say nothing else; and if the history of Haman is apocryphal, which is highly probable, still it cannot be denied that the author of the Book of Esther has very ably brought out some of the causes, which for many centuries exposed the Jews to the hatred of nations.

Yet we must go to the period of Jewish expansion abroad, to be enabled to observe with certainty that hostility against them, which by a peculiar misuse of terms has in our days been called antisemitism.

Some traditions refer the entrance of the Jews into the ancient world to the epoch of the first captivity. While Nabu-Kudur-Ussur led away to Babylonia a portion of the Jewish people, many of the Israelites, to escape from the conqueror, fled to Egypt, to Tripoli, and reached the Greek colonies. Tradition brings back to the same period the arrival of the Jews in China and India.

Historically, however, the wanderings of the Jews across the globe commence in the fourth century before our era. About 331 B. C. Alexander transported some Jews to Alexandria, Ptolemy sent some of them to Cyrenaica, and about the same time Seleucus led some of them to Antioch. When Jesus was born Jewish colonies flourished everywhere, and it was among them that Christianity recruited its first adherents. There were Jews in Egypt, in Phœnicia, in Syria, in Coele-Syria, in Pamphylia, in Cilicia, and as far as Bithynia. In

Europe they had settled in Thessalia, Boeotia, Macedonia, Attica and Peloponnesus. They were to be found in the Great Isles, on Euboea, on Crete, on Cyprus, and at Rome. "It is not easy to find a place on earth," says Strabo, "which has not received that race."

Why were the Jews hated in all those countries, in all those cities? Because they never entered any city as citizens, but always as a privileged class. Though having left Palestine, they wanted above all to remain Jews, and their native country was still Jerusalem, i. e., the only city where God might be worshipped and sacrifices offered in His Temple. They formed everywhere republics, as it were, united with Judea and Jerusalem, and from every place they remitted monies to the high priest in payment of a special tax for the maintenance of the Temple—the didrachm.

Moreover, they separated themselves from other inhabitants by their rites and their customs; they considered the soil of foreign nations impure and sought to constitute themselves in every city into a sort of a sacred territory. They lived apart, in special quarters, secluded among themselves, isolated, governing themselves by virtue of privileges which were jealously guarded by them, and excited the envy of their neighbors. They intermarried amongst themselves and entertained no strangers, for fear of pollution. The mystery with which they surrounded themselves excited curiosity as well as aversion. Their rites appeared strange and gave occasion for ridicule; being unknown, they were misrepresented and slandered.

At Alexandria they were quite numerous. According

to Philo,¹ Alexandria was divided into five wards. Two were inhabited by the Jews. The privileges accorded to them by Caesar were engraved on a column and guarded by them as a precious treasure. They had their own Senate with exclusive jurisdiction in Jewish affairs, and they were judged by an ethnarch. They were ship-owners, traders, farmers, most of them wealthy; the sumptuousness of their monuments and synagogues bore witness to it. The Ptolemies made them farmers of the revenues; this was one of the causes of popular hatred against them. Besides, they had a monopoly of navigation on the Nile, of the grain trade and of provisioning Alexandria, and they extended their trade to all the provinces along the Mediterranean coast. They accumulated great fortunes; this gave rise to the invidia auri Judaici. The growing resentment against these foreign cornerers, constituting a nation within a nation, led to popular disturbances; the Jews were frequently assaulted, and Germanicu, among others, had great trouble protecting them.

The Egyptians took revenge upon them by deriding their religious customs, their abhorrence of pork. They once paraded in the city a fool, Carabas by name, adorned with a papyrus diadem, decked in a royal gown, and they saluted him as king of the Jews. Under Philadelphus, one of the first Ptolemies, Manetho, the high-priest of the Temple at Heliopolis, lent his authority to the popular hatred; he considered the Jews descendants of the Hyksos usurpers, and said that that leprous tribe had been expelled for sacrilege and im-

^1 In Flaccum.

Not less than the Stoics did the Sophists detest the Jews. But the causes of their hatred were not religious, but, I should say, rather literary. From Ptolemy Philadelphus, until the middle of the third century, the Alexandrian Jews, with the intent of sustaining and strengthening their propaganda, gave themselves to forging all texts which were capable of lending support to their cause. The verses of Aeschylus, of Sophocles, of Euripides, the pretended oracles of Orpheus, preserved in Aristobulus and the Stromata of Clement of Alexandria

^1 Preparatio Evangelica.

by means of magic herbs, the shade of Homer, says Pliny:

Apion repeated in his Treatise against the Jews the stories of Manetho, which had been previously restated by Chaeremon and Lysimachus, and supplemented them by quoting from Posidonius and Apollonius Molo. According to him, Moses was "nothing but a seducer and wizard," and his laws contained "nothing but what is bad and dangerous."

As to the Sabbath, the name was derived, he said, from a disease, a sort of an ulcer, with which the Jews were afflicted, and which the Egyptians called sabbatosim, i. e., disease of the groins.

Philo and Josephus undertook the defense of the Jews and fought the Sophists and Apion. In Contra Apionem, Josephus is very severe on his adversary. "Apion," says he, "is as stupid as an ass and as imprudent as a dog, which is one of the gods of his nation." Philo, on the other hand, prefers to attack the Sophists in general, and if he mentions Apion at all, in his Legatio ad Caium, it is merely because Apion was sent to Rome to prefer charges against the Jews before Caligula.

In his Treatise on Agriculture he draws a very black picture of the Sophists, and insinuates that Moses has compared them to hogs. Nevertheless, in his other writings, he advises his co-religionists not to irritate them, so as to avoid all provocation to disturbances, but to await patiently their chastisement, which will come on the day the Jewish Empire, the empire of salvation, will be established on earth.

^2 Josephus, Contra Apionem, book II, ch. 6.

Philo's injunctions were not heeded; the exasperation on both sides often led to violent riots and massacres of Jews; the latter, however, valiantly defended themselves.¹

At Rome the Jews had a powerful and wealthy colony as early as the first year of the Christian era. If Valerius Maximus may be trusted, they first came to the city about 139 B. C., during the consulate of Popilius Loenus and Cajus Calpwinius.²

Certain it is that, in 160 B. C., an embassy from Judas Maccabee arrived in Rome to negotiate an alliance with the Republic against the Syrians; other embassies followed, in 143 and in 139.

The settlement of the Jews at Rome probably dates from that time. Under Pompey they came in numtant factor in politics. Caesar availed himself of their support during the civil wars and lavished favors upon bers, and as early as 58 B. C., they had quite a settlement. Turbulent and formidable, they were an importhem; he even granted them exemption from military service. Under Augustus the distribution of free bread was postponed for them whenever it fell due on Saturday. The Emperor gave them permission to collect the didrachm which was sent to Palestine, and he ordered the sacrifice of one or two lambs to be offered in his behalf at the Temple of Jerusalem for all time to come. When

^1 Philo, In Flaccum.

^2 Valerius Maximus, I, 3, 2.

^1 Maccab. viii., 11, 17-32; xii, 1-3; xiv, 16-19, 24.—Josephus, Antiqu. Jud.. xii, 110; xiii, 5, 7, 9 Mai script. vet., 111, part 3, p. 998.

Tiberius became emperor, there were at Rome 20,000 Jews, who were organized in colleges and sodalitates.

Except the Jews of prominent families, like the Herods and the Agrippas, who mixed in public life, the Jewish masses lived in retirement. The majority resided in the dirtiest and busiest quarter of the city, the Transtiberinus. They were to be seen near the Via Portuensis, the Emporium and the great Circus, in the Campus Martius, and in Suburra, beyond the Capenian Gate, on the banks of the Egerian Creek, and near the sacred grove. They were engaged in retail trade and the sale of second-hand goods; those at the Capenian Gate were fortune tellers. The Jew of the Ghetto is already there.

At Rome the same causes were at work as at Alexandria. There, also, the excessive privileges of the Jews, the wealth of some of them, as well as their unheard-of luxury and ostentation, excited popular hatred. This resentment was aggravated by deeper and more important reasons of a religious character; it may even be maintained, strange as it may seem, that the motive of Roman anti-Judaism was religious.

The Roman religion resembled in nothing the admirable and profoundly symbolic polytheism of the Greeks. It was ritual rather than mythical; it consisted of customs closely connected with the doings of everyday life, as well as with all sorts of public acts. Rome was one body with its gods; its greatness was bound, as it were, with the rigorous observance of the practices of their national religion; its glory depended upon the piety of its citizens, and it seems that the Roman must have had, like the Jew, that notion of a covenant between the dei-

ties and himself, which was to be scrupulously lived up to by both parties. Somehow or other, the Roman was always in the presence of his gods; he left his hearth, where they abode, only to find them again in the Forum, on the public highways, in the Senate, even in the fields, where they kept watch over the power of Rome. At all times and on all occasions sacrifices were offered; the warriors and the diplomats were guided by auguries, and all authority, civil as well as military, partook of the priesthood, for the officer could not perform his duties unless he knew the rites and observances of the cult.

It was this cult that for centuries sustained the Republic, and its commandments were faithfully obeyed; when they were changed, when the traditions became adulterated, when the rules were violated, Rome saw its glory fade, and its agony commenced.

Thus the Roman religion preserved itself for a long time without change. True, Rome was familar with foreign cults; she saw the worshippers of Isis and Osiris, those of the great Mother and those of Sabazius; still, though admitting them into her Pantheon, she gave them no place in her national religion. All these Orientals were tolerated; the citizens were allowed to practice their superstitions, provided they were harmless; but when Rome perceived that a new faith was subversive of the Roman spirit, she was pitiless, as in the case of the conspiracy of the Bacchantes, or the expulsion of Egyptian priests. Rome guarded herself against the foreign spirit; she feared affiliation with religious societies; she was afraid even of Greek philosophers, and the Senate,

in 161, upon the report of the practor Marcus Pomponius, barred them from entering the city.

From this, one may understand the feeling of the Romans toward the Jews. Greeks, Asiatics, Egyptians, Germans, or Gauls, while bringing with them their rites and beliefs, made no objection to bowing before Mars of the Palatine, or even before Jupiter Latiaris. They conformed, within certain limits, to the rules of the city, to its religious customs; at all events, they showed no opposition. Not so the Jews. They brought with them a religion as rigid, as ritualistic, as intolerant, as the Roman religion. Their worship of Yahweh excluded all other worship; thus they shocked their fellow citizens by refusing to swear to the eagles, whereas the eagle was the deity of the legion. As their religious faith was blended with the observance of certain social laws, the adoption of this faith was pregnant with a change of the social order. Therefore the Romans were worried by its establishment in their midst, for the Jews were eager to make proselytes.

The proselytic spirit of the Jews is attested by all the historians, and Philo justly says: "Our customs win over and convert the barbarians and the Hellenes, the continent and the isles, the Orient and the Occident, Europe and Asia, the whole world, from end to end."

The ancient nations, at their decline, were deeply attracted by Judaism, by its dogma of divine unity, by its morals; many of the poor people were attracted by the privileges accorded to the Jews. These proselytes were divided into two great classes: those who accepted the circumcision and thereby entered into the Jewish com-

munity, thus becoming strangers to their families, and those who, without complying with the requisites for admission to the community, nevertheless gathered around it.

These conversions, generally by suasion and at times by force, as when the rich Jews converted their slaves, were bound to create a reaction. It was this chief cause, together with the secondary causes previously referred to, viz., the wealth of the Jews, their political influence, their privileged condition, that led to anti-Judaic demonstrations at Rome. The majority of Roman and Greek writers from Cicero on bear witness to this state of mind.

Cicero, who was a disciple of Apollonius Molo, inherited his teacher's prejudices; he found the Jews in his way: they were with the popular party against the party of the Senate, to which he belonged. He feared them, and we can see from some passages of Pro Flacco, that he hardly dared to speak of them, so numerous were they around him and in the public place. Nevertheless, one day he burst forth. "Their barbarous superstitions must be fought," says he; he accuses them of being a nation "given to suspicion and slander," and proceeds by saying that they "show contempt for the splendor of the Roman power," They were to be feared, according to him—those men who, detaching themselves from Rome, turned their eyes towards the far away city, that Jerusalem, and supported it by denaries which they drew from the Republic. Moreover, he reproached them for winning citizens over to the Sabhatarian rites

^1 Pro Flacco.

It is this last charge that recurs most frequently in the writings of the polemists, the poets and the historians. The Jewish religion, which charmed those who had penetrated its essence, was repulsive to others who had a scant knowledge of it and regarded it as a heap of absurd and dismal rites. The Jews are nothing but a superstitious nation, says Persius¹; their Sabbath is a lugubrious day, adds Ovid²; they worship the hog and the ass, affirms Petronius¹.

Tacitus, well informed as he is, repeats, with regard to Judaism, the fables of Manetho and Posidonius. The Jews, says he, are descended from lepers, they honor the head of an ass, they have infamous rites. He further specifies his charges, which, one would say, are those of modern French Nationalists: "All those who embrace their faith," says he, "undergo circumcision, and the first instruction they receive is to despise the gods, to forswear their country, to forget father, mother and children." And he warms up by saying: "The Jews consider as profane all that is held sacred with us." Suetonius and Juvenal repeat the same thing; the principal charge reads: "They have a particular cult and particular laws; they despise the Roman laws." This is likewise the complaint of Pliny: "They despise the gods."

Seneca has the same grudge, still with the philosopher other motives supervene. There was a rivalry be-

^1 Sat.. V.

^2 Ars amatoria, I, 75, 76.

^1 Fragm. poet.

^2Tac.. Hist.. v. 4, 5.

^1 Juvenal, Sat., xiv, 96, 104.

^2 Hist. nat., xiii 4.

Anti-Judaism manifested itself not only at Rome and Alexandria, but wherever there were Jews: at Antioch, where great massacres occurred; in Lybia, where, under

^1. Epistle xv.

De superstitione, fragm. xxxvi.

Vespasian, the governor Catullus stirred up the populace against them; in Ionia, where, under Augustus, the Greek cities, by an understanding among themselves, forced the Jews either to renounce their faith or to bear the entire burden of public expenditures.

Yet it is impossible to speak of the persecution of the Jews without speaking of the persecution of the Christians. For a long time Jews and Christians, these hostile brothers, were included in the same contempt, and the same causes which made the Jews hateful made the Christians hateful as well. The disciples of the Nazarene brought into the ancient world the same deadly principles. If the Jews taught the people to leave their gods, to abandon husband, father, child and wife, and to come to Jehovah, Jesus also said: "I have not come to unite, but to separate." The Christians, like the Jews, refused to bow to the eagle; like the Jews they would not lie prostrate before idols. Like the Jews, the Christians knew another country than Rome; like the Jews, they would be oblivious of their civic, rather than their religious duties.

Thus, during the first years of the Christian era, the Synagogue and the ancient Church were despised alike. Simultaneously with the Jews "a certain chrestus" and his followers were driven from Rome. Each side endeavored to convince the people that it ought not to be mistaken for the other, and no sooner did Christianity make itself heard than it rejected, in its turn, the descendants of Abraham.

^1 Suetonius, Claud., 25.

CHAPTER III.

ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH OF CONSTANTINE.

Origen and Rabbi Simlai.—Abbahu of Cæsarea and the Physician Jacob the Minæan.—The Contra Celsum and Jewish Ridicule.—Theological Anti-Judaism.—Tertullian and De Adversus Iudaeos.—Cyprian and The Three Books Against the Jews.—Minucius Felix.—Commodian and Lactantius.—Constantine and the Triumph of the Church.

The Church is the daughter of the Synagogue; she owes her early development to the Synagogue; she grew in the shade of the Temple, and from her first infant cry she opposed her mother, which was quite natural, for they were divided by a wide divergence of opinion.

In the first centuries of the Christian era, during the apostolic age, Christian communities sprang forth from Jewish communities, like a swarm of bees escaping from a beehive; they settled on the same soil.

Jesus was not yet born when the Jews had built their prayer-houses in the cities of the Orient and the Occident; their expansion to Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica, Rome, Greece and Spain has already been noted. By their unceasing proselytism, by their preaching, by the moral influence they exercised over the nations amidst whom they lived, they paved the way for Christianity. True, even before them philosophers had arrived at the conception of one God, but the teaching of the philosophers was restricted to the few; it was not accessible to the common people, to those of humble station whom the metaphysicians rather despised. The Jews addressed the little ones, the weak, and planted in their souls germs of new ideas which had theretofore been foreign to them. They brought with them the spirit of the

prophets, the spirit of brotherhood, pity and also of revolt, that spirit which begat the pitying and sullen anger of Jeremiah and Isaiah and led to the tender sweetness of Hillel, that spirit which inspired Jesus.

This immense class of proselytes won over by the Jews, this God-fearing multitude, was ready to receive the broader and more humanitarian teachings of Jesus, those teachings which the universal Church, from its very inception, undertook to adulterate and to turn away from their true meaning. These converts whose numbers steadily increased during the first century before Christ, were free from the national prejudices of Israel; they Judaized, but their eyes were not turned toward Jerusalem, and, one may say, the fervid patriotism of the Jews rather checked the conversions. The Apostles, or at least some of them, completely separated the precepts of the Jewish faith from the narrow idea of nationality; they built upon the foundation of Jewish work accomplished before and thus won for themselves the souls of those who had received the Jewish seed.

The Apostles preached in the synagogues. In the cities, where they arrived, they went straight to the prayer-houses and there made their propaganda and found their first helpers; later a Christian community was founded, side by side with the Jewish community, and the original Jewish nucleus was increased by all those whom they had convinced among the Gentiles.

Without the existence of Jewish colonies Christianity would have encountered much greater obstacles; it would have had greater difficulties in establishing itself. As has been stated, the Jews in ancient society enjoyed con-

siderable privileges; they had protective charters assuring them an independent political and judicial organization and freedom of worship. These privileges facilitated the development of the Christian churches. For a long time the associations of the Christians were not distinguished by the authorities from Jewish associations, the Roman government taking no cognizance of the division between the two religions. Christianity was treated as a Jewish sect, thus benefiting by the same advantages; it was not only tolerated, but, in an indirect way, protected by the imperial governors.

Thus, on the one hand, unwillingly, the Jews were unconscious auxiliaries of Christianity while, on the other hand, they were its enemies, for which there were numerous reasons. It is known that Jesus and his teachings enlisted their first following among the Galilean provincials who were despised by the Jerusalemites for having yielded more than others to foreign influences. "Can there any good thing come out of Nazareth?" they said. These humble folks of Galilee, though much attached to the Judaic rites and customs, in which respect they were, perhaps, stricter than the Jerusalemites, were ignorant of the Law and were therefore despised by the haughty doctors of Judea. This scorn likewise followed the first disciples of Jesus, some of whom, besides, belonged to the disreputable classes, such e. g., as the publicans.

Nevertheless, while the origin of the primitive Christians brought upon them the scorn of the Jews, it was not enough to excite their hatred; graver reasons were

required for that, foremost among them was Jewish patriotism.

The birth and early development of Christianity coincided with the time when the Jewish nation attempted to shake off the yoke of Rome. Offended in their religious feelings, ill-treated by the Roman administration, the Jews felt a yearning for liberty, which grew with their hatred of Rome. Bands of zealots and assassins traversed the mountains of Judea, entering the villages and wreaking vengeance upon Rome by striking those of their brethren who bowed to the imperial authority. Plainly, these zealots and assassins who attacked the Sadducees for mere complacency towards the Roman procurators, could not spare the disciples of Him to whom the words were attributed, "Render unto Cæsar the things which are Cæsar's.")

Absorbed in the expectation of the coming Messianic reign, the Jewish Christians of those days were "men without a country"; the thought of free Judea no longer made their hearts throb, though some, like the seer of the Apocalypse, had a horror of Rome, still they had no passion for captive Jerusalem, which the zealots strove to liberate; they were unpatriotic.

When all Galilee rose in response to the appeal of John of Gischala, they held aloof, and when the Jerusalemites triumphed over Cestius Gallus, the Jewish Christians, indifferent to the outcome of this supreme struggle, fled from Jerusalem, crossed the Jordan and sought refuge at Pella. In the last battles which Bar Giora, John of Gischala and their faithful gave to the Roman power, to the trained legions of Vespasian and Titus, the dis-

ciples of Jesus took no part; and when Zion was reduced to ashes, burying under its ruins the nation of Israel, no Christian met his death amidst the destruction.

One may well understand what could have been the treatment accorded, in those days of exaltation, before, during and after the insurrection, to the Jewish and Gentile Christians, who, with St. Paul, counseled submission to the power of Rome. The patriotic indignation roused by the nascent Church was seconded by the wrath of the rabbis against Christian proselytism.

Originally the relations between the Jewish Christians and the Jews were fairly cordial. The followers of the Apostles, as well as the Apostles themselves, recognized the sanctity of the ancient law; they observed the rites of Judaism and as yet had not placed the worship of Jesus side by side with that of the one God. The development of the dogma of the divinity of Christ made a breach between the Church and the Synagogue. Judaism could not admit of the deification of a man; to recognize any one as the son of God was blasphemy; and as the Jewish Christians had not severed their connections with the Jewish community, they were disciplined. This accounts for the flagellation of the Apostles and the new converts, the stoning of Stephen and the beheading of the Apostle James.

After the capture of Jerusalem, after that storm which left Judea depopulated, the best of her sons having perished in battle, or in the circus where they were delivered to the beasts, or in the lead mines of Egypt, during this third captivity called by the Jews the Roman exile, the relations between the Jews and Jewish Christians became

still more strained. Their country being dead, Israel gathered around their doctors. Jabne, where the Sanhedrin reconvened, replaced Zion without extinguishing its memory, and the conquered attached themselves still more closely to the Law which the sages commented upon.

Some modern interpreters of the Talmud have gone to the rabbinical discussions and decisions of that epoch for weapons against the Jews, accusing them of blind hatred against anything that did not bear the mark of Israel; they do not seem, however, to have carried into their researches the requisite scientific spirit and good faith.

The Sanhedrin of Jabne regulates the relations between the Jews and the Minæns; the latter are none others but Jewish Christians, Jews deemed apostates, traitors against God and the Law. It is they that are declared inferior to the Samaritans and the Gentiles; it is with them that all intercourse is enjoined. It was at a much later epoch that these injunctions were applied to Christians generally, viz.: when the Christians became persecutors. Thus it was that some, exasperated by suffering and humiliation, applied to them what is said in the Talmud against Goim, i. e., those Hellenes of Cæsarea and Palestine who were always at war with the Jews.

Originally, all Talmudical inhibitions contemplated the Jewish Christians alone. The Tanaim wanted to preserve the faithful from Christian contamination; for this purpose the Gospels were likened to books on witchcraft, and Samuel Junior, by order of the patriarch Gamaliel, inserted in the daily prayers a curse against the Jewish Christians, Birkat Haminim, which has furnished the foundation for the charge that the Jews curse Jesus thrice a day.

While the Jews thus sought to separate themselves from the Christians, the Church, swayed by a great religious movement, was forced to cast away Judaism. To conquer the world, to become a universal creed, Christianity had to rid itself of Jewish particularism, to

break the narrow chains of the ancient law, so as to be able to spread the new one. This was the work of St. Paul, the true founder of the Church, who opposed to the exclusiveness of the Jewish-Christian doctrine the principle of catholicity.

As is well known, the struggle between these two tendencies in the nascent Christianity, which were symbolized by Peter and Paul, was long and bitter. The whole apostolic service of Paul was a long battle against the Judaizing. On the day when the Apostle declared that in order to come to Jesus one need not pass through the Synagogue nor accept the sign of the old covenant, the circumcision, on that very day all ties which bound the Christian Church to its mother were torn and the nations of the world were won over by Jesus.

The resistance of the Judaizing who wanted to belong to Jesus and at the same time to observe the Sabbath and the Passover, was in vain; their prejudice against the conversion of the Gentiles was of no avail. After Paul's journey to Asia Minor the cause of catholicism was won. The Apostle was braced up by an army, and that army arrayed against the Jewish spirit the Hellenic, Antioch against Jerusalem.

The great bulk of the Jewish Christians tore themselves away from the narrow doctrine of the little community of Jerusalem; the ruin of the holy city led them to doubt the efficacy of the ancient law. It was good for the further development of the Church. Ebionism met its death. If Christianity had followed the Jerusalemites it would have remained a small Jewish sect. To become the creed of the world, Christianity had to cast

off Jewish particularism. Indeed, the new believers, the Gentiles, could not observe the Jewish religion while remaining Greeks or Romans. Having rid itself of the Ebionites and the Jewish Christians and cut loose from its mother, Christianity allowed the nations to come to it without forfeiting their individuality, whereas Peter and the Judaizing would have forced upon them the customs of Israel, thereby compelling them to give up a part of their national individuality and to accept that of their converters.

Thus, what was originally a branch of the orthodox Church, gave birth, towards the end of the first century, to two heresies, Ebionism and Elkasaism. Their formation was quite natural, since the bulk of the Jewish Christians accepted the ideas of Paul and united with the Christian converts from paganism; there remained only the small group of stubborn Judaizing, who originally represented staunch orthodoxy. Since, however, the Church had adopted a new course, they became heretics. Nevertheless their spirit remained, and we shall find it again among the Nazarenes and the Quartodecimans; but since that time they were enemies of catholicity, and catholicity turned against them, or, rather, it fought Judaism from which they drew their force.

To safeguard its supremacy, the Church had to fight the Jewish spirit in two forms. The first was that noted above, the Judaic positivism, hostile to anthropomorphism and deification of heroes. Nevertheless this positivism has maintained its existence throughout the ages so that a history of the Jewish current in the Christian Church could be written, beginning with early Ebionism down to Protestantism, including among others the Unitarians and Arians.

The second form is the mystic form represented by the Alexandrian and Asiatic gnosis. The Alexandrian Jews, as known, were influenced by Platonism and Pythagorism; Philo himself was the forerunner of Plotinus and Porphyry in this renovation of the metaphysical spirit. Aided by Hellenic doctrines the Jews interpreted the Bible and scrutinized the mysteries contained therein, construing them into allegories and further developing them.

Proceeding from monotheism and the conception of a personal God as their religious point of departure, the Jews of Alexandria were bound to come metaphysically to pantheism, to the idea of a divine substance, to the doctrine of intermediaries between man and the Absolute, i. e., to emanations, to the Eons of Valentinus and the Sephiroths of Kabbala. To this Jewish fund were superadded the contributions of Chaldean, Persian and Egyptian religions, which coexisted at Alexandria; at that time were elaborated those extraordinary Gnostic theogonies, so multifarious, so varied, so madly mystical.

When Christianity was born, the gnosis was already in existence; the Gospels brought new elements into it; it speculated on the life and words of Jesus, as it had speculated on the Old Testament, and when the Apostles, in their early preaching, addressed themselves to the Gentiles, they were confronted with the Gnostics, and primarily the Jewish Gnostics. Peter met them at Samaria in the person of Simon the Magician; Paul

faced them at Colosse, at Ephesus, at Antioch, wherever he came with his Gospel, and possibly he fought Cerinthus; John himself fought them, and, in the Epistles of the Apocalypse he opposed the Nicolaites who were "of the Synagogue of Satan."

After having escaped the danger of crystallizing into a barren Jewish community, the Church was thus exposed to the new danger of Gnosticism, which, if triumphant, would have resulted in splitting it up into small sects and breaking its unity.

Though at a later date Christianity witnessed the birth of the Hellenic gnosis, originally it had found only the Jewish gnosis, i. e., that of the Nicolaites and of Cerinthus, or similar systems built upon a Judaic basis.

All preachers of the Christian religion had to contend against this gnosis; traces of that fight are found in the Epistles of Paul to the Colossians and Ephesians, in the pastoral letters, in the second Epistle of Peter, in the Epistle of Jude and in the Apocalypse. They did not confine themselves to persecuting the Jewish spirit in the gnosis; as soon as the Pauline spirit had triumphed over Peter, they declared war to the Judaizing tendencies within the Church, as well as to the Jews themselves.

Since 182, after the insurrection of Bar-Cochba, the separation of the Christians from the Jews became final. In 70 the Jewish Christians exhibited indifference to the destinies of the Jewish nation; under Hadrian it was still worse. Five hundred thousand Jews responded to the call of the Son of the Star, and the

^1 St. Irenaeus, II, 26.

^2 Apocalypse, II and III.

Roman legions retreated before them; it required the best general of the Empire to overcome this handful of Judeans who fought for their liberty against Rome, and the last feeble hope of Israel perished with its last citadel, Bethany, and its last liberator, Bar-Cochba; measures of extreme repression were taken against the Jews; they were forbidden to observe their religion; the spot where Jerusalem had stood was levelled with the plow, and the very name of Jerusalem disappeared; at that hour the Jewish Christians would report to the provincial governors the Jews who clandestinely observed their rites and devoted themselves to the study of the Law.

On the other hand, to prevent treason, Bar-Cochba and his soldiers executed a great many Jewish Christians and measures were taken to distinguish the Christians from the Jews. On both sides the enmity was very bitter, and since the Church of Jerusalem had, after 131, become Helleno-Christian, the rupture was complete: Jews and Christians became enemies for ages to come.

On the one hand the Gentiles, who joined the Christian community, brought with them all the hatred and prejudices of the Greeks and Romans against the Jews. On the other hand, the Jewish Christians, after withdrawing from the Jewish community, became still more embittered against their brethren in Israel than the Gentiles.

We find all these sentiments reflected in the writings of the Apostle Fathers, with a growing desire to separate Christianity from Judaism; and with the development of the dogma of the divinity of Jesus, the Jews became the abominable people of Deicides, which they had not been originally. The Synagogue is now "the erstwhile fruitful wife," in the words of the II Clementine Homily, and it is thought that "the law of Moses was not made for the Jews, who never comprehended it." This expression is found in the Epistle of Barnabas, dating from the time of Nerva (A. D. 96) and for the most part reproducing the ideas contained in the oldest of the apostolic writings, viz., the Doctrine of the Twelve Apostles, which can be traced to the year 90. The Pauline traditions resound in the beginning of the second century in the seven letters of Ignatius of Antioch addressed to the churches of Rome, Magnesia, Philadelphia, Ephesus, Smyrna and Tralles and to the Bishop Polycarp. These seven letters attack very strongly the Judaizing Docetae and try to guard the faithful against those doctrines.

Still in face of these hostile demonstrations the Jews were not inactive and proved very dangerous adversaries. It was under the fire of their criticism that the dogma was constructed; it was they who, by their subtle exegetics, by their firm logic, forced the teachers of Christianity to give precision to their arguments. Their hostility worried the theologians; though having severed themselves from Judaism, they wanted to win over the Jews to their side; they believed that the triumph of Jesus would only be assured on the day when Israel would recognize the power of the Son of God; indeed, this belief has survived under different forms throughout the ages. It

Doctrina duodecim apostolorum. Ed. Funk. 1887.

would seem as though the Church were not satisfied of the legitimacy of its faith until the day when the people of whom its God had come were converted to the Galilean. This sentiment was far stronger in the hearts of the first Fathers than it could have been with Bossuet and the Figurists of the seventeenth century. It was, therefore, necessary to defeat the Jewish exegesis, and to borrow from them for this purpose their own arms, i. e., the Bible. Efforts were made to demonstrate to the Jews that the prophecies had been fulfilled; that Jesus was he whose coming Isaiah and David had announced; it was even sought to prove to them that the Christian doctrines were found in the Old Testament; proofs in support of the Trinity were drawn from the opening words of Genesis or from the meeting of Abraham with the three angels. For centuries the defenders of Christ and the enemies of the Jews employed no other method.

This work was taken up by the apologists of Christianity, and their apologetic prepossession was mixed with violent enmity. Thus the Letter to Diognetus, which has been preserved for us in the work of St. Justin, and was written to refute the errors of the adversaries of the Christians, may be considered as one of the first anti-Jewish writings. The unknown author of this brief epistle, in his vigorous attack upon the Millenarian ideas, speaks of the Jewish rites as superstitions. The motives are not the same as those which actuated the unknown author of the Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs, for he wanted, and so he declared, to convert the Jews and convince them of the excellence of the word of Christ.

The most thorough of the apologists of that epoch is

is the subject of their studies. As to things essential, worthy of meditation, they dare not speak of them to you, they do not attempt to explain them, and they prohibit you from listening to our interpretation."

The last complaint is important, it indicates the character of the struggle for the conquest of souls in which Judaism was defeated. The second century is one of the most momentous epochs in the history of the Church. The dogma, still uncertain in the first century, is then formulated and defined; Jesus advances toward divinity and attains it, and his metaphysics, his worship, his conception, are blended with Judeo-Alexandrian doctrines, with Philo's theories of the Word of God, the Chaldean memra and the Greek logos. The Word is born, it becomes identified with the Galilean; in Justin's apologetics and the fourth Gospel, we see the work completed. Christianity has become Alexandrian, and its most ardent upholders, its defenders, even its orators, are at that hour the Christian philosophers of the Alexandrian school: Justin, the author of the fourth Gospel, and Clement.

While this dogmatic transformation was going on, the idea of a universal church gained strength. Bonds of union were formed between the small Christian communities, detached from Jewish congregations; the more their numbers increased the stronger became the ties, and this conception of unity and catholicity kept pace with the growing expansion of Christianity.

This expansion could not proceed undisturbed. Christian preaching addressed itself to all the Jewries of Asia Minor, Egypt, Cyrenaica and Italy, wherever there

Still, not everywhere was the strife marked with such

bloody manifestations. The controversy was always very lively, yet it must be said it was not conducted with equal weapons. The Bible was their common arsenal, but the Christian teachers had but a scant knowledge of it. They did not know Hebrew and used the Septuagint version, which they interpreted very freely, often relying, in support of their dogma, upon passages interpolated into the Septuagint by falsifiers for the good of the cause. The Greek-speaking Jews did not hesitate to do the same, so that the Septuagint, a bad translation as it was, full of absurdities, became available for any purpose. The Jews undertook first to place in the hands of their faithful a purified text, which gave birth to a scrupulous and literal Greek translation by the proselyte Aquila, friend and disciple of Rabbi Akiba. It was only later that the same need was felt by the Christians, and Origen brought forth his Hexapla, which embodied, however, Aquila's version.

It was a matter of necessity with the Christian apologists who were plainly at a disadvantage, as compared with the Rabbinists, and it was felt by Origen himself in his debate on the Trinity with Rabbi Simlai. These debates between Jewish and Christian teachers were not infrequent; in Cæsarea, e. g., Rabbi Abbahu debated with the physician Jacob the Minæan, on the Ascension.

These controversies, which continued through long centuries, were not always courteous. Simultaneously with touching legends concerning Jesus, scandalous stories were invented. To humiliate their enemies, the Jews attacked him of whom the former made their God, and to the deification of Jesus they opposed the stories

of the soldier Pantherus, of abandoned Mary; these were taken up by philosophers hostile to Christianity, and Origen refuted them in his Contra Celsum, meeting abuse with abuse.

Amidst these battles was born a theological anti-Judaism, purely ideological, which consisted in rejecting as bad or worthless anything coming from Israel. This sentiment is evidenced by Tertullian's De Adversus Iudaeos. In that work the fiery African attacked circumcision, which, he said, brought no salvation, but was a simple sign for distinguishing Israel; when Messiah would come he would substitute spiritual for bodily circumcision; he attacked the Sabbath, the temporal Sabbath, to which he opposed the eternal Sabbath.

But this special anti-Judaism, which we find again in Octavius, by Minucius Felix; in De Catholicae Ecclesiae Unitate, by Cyprian of Carthage; in Instructiones Adversus Gentium Deos, by the poet Commodian, and in Divinae Institutiones, by Lactantius, was mixed with the desire to convince the Jews of the truth of the Christian religion, of the soundness of its beliefs, its dogmas and principles; hence the ambition to make proselytes among them. This anti-Judaism crossed with the efforts which the Church was making to arrive at universality, and during the first three centuries remained purely theoretical. We shall further see how, since Constantine and the triumph of the Church, this anti-Judaism was transformed and more precisely defined.

CHAPTER IV.

ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY.

Canon Law, the Councils, and Judaism.—The Condition and Attitude of the Jews.—Catholicism.

For three centuries the Church had to contend against those with whom the greatness of Rome was inseparable from the secular worship of the Gods. Still, the resistance of the civil authorities, of the priests and philosophers, could not arrest the march of the Church; persecutions, hatred, hostility enhanced its power of propaganda; it addressed itself to those whose spirit was troubled, whose conscience was vacillating, and to them it brought an ideal and that moral satisfaction which they lacked. Moreover, at that hour when the Roman Empire was rending all over, when Rome, having abdicated all power and authority, received its Caesars from the hands of the legions, and competitors for the purple bobbed up in every nook of the provinces, the Catholic Church offered to that expiring world the unity it was seeking.

Yet, while offering intellectual unity to the world, the Church at the same time was ruining its institutions, customs and manners. In fact, at Rome, as well as in the Empire, all public functions were at once civil and religious, the magistrate, the procurator, the dux being invested with priestly functions; no public act was performed without rites; the government was, in a manner, theocratic; this ultimately came to be symbolized in the worship of the Emperor. All those who wanted to withdraw from that worship were held to be enemies of Caesar and the Empire; they were considered bad citizens. This sentiment explains the Roman dislike of Oriental religions and of the Jews; it explains the measures adopted against the worshippers of Yahweh, and

still more the severity shown towards the worshippers of Mithra, of Sabazius and particularly towards the Christians, for the latter were not foreigners like the Jews, but rebel citizens.

The triumph of Christianity was brought about by political considerations, and so, to make its victory and domination lasting, it was obliged to adopt many of the ceremonial observances of ancientRome. When the Christians had increased in numbers, and formed a considerable party, they were saved and could see the dawn of victory glimmer, for now a pretender to the throne could find support among them and use their services to solidify his authority. So it happened with Constantine, and Constantius, perhaps, foresaw it when he commanded the Gallic legions. The victorious church succeeded to Rome. She inherited its haughtiness, its exclusiveness, its pride, and almost without any transition period the persecuted turned persecutrix, wielding the power by which she had been fought, holding the consular fasces and hatchet and commanding the legionaries.

While Jesus was taking possession of the superb city and his universal reign was commencing, Judaism was in agony in Palestine; the teachers of Tiberias were powerless to hold the young Judeans and the "illustrious, most glorious, right reverend" patriarch had but the shadow of authority. The flourishing Jewish schools were in Babylonia; the centre of Israel's intellectual life was transferred thither; still wherever Christianity endeavored to extend its influence it had to reckon and to contend with the influence of Judaism, though since the close of the third century the latter was of little impor-

tance, at least directly. Indeed, at that time the Judaizing heresies were nearly extinct. The Nazarenes, those circumcised Christians attached to the old law, who are mentioned by St. Jerome and St. Epiphanius, were reduced to a handful of meek believers, who had found refuge at Berea (Alep), at Kokabe in Batanea, and at Pella, in the Decapolis. They spoke the Syro-Chaldaic language; a remnant of the primitive Church of Jerusalem, they no longer exerted any influence, swamped as they were amidst Greek-speaking churches.

Still, though Ebionism was dying out, Judaizing continued; the Christians attended the synagogues, celebrated the Jewish holidays, and the contentions over the Passover were still on. A large faction in the churches of the Orient insisted upon celebrating the Passover at the same time as the Jews. It required the action of the Nicaen Council to free Christianity of this last and weak bond by which it had still been tied to its cradle. After the Synod all was over between the Church and the Temple, officially, and from the orthodox standpoint, at least; it required, however, the action of further councils to prevent the faithful from conforming to the old usage, and it was not until 341 A. D., when the Council of Antioch had excommunicated the Quartodecimans that unity of the celebration of the Easter was effected.

Since the Church had become armed, anti-Judaism underwent a transformation. Purely theological in the beginning, confined to arguments and controversies, it defined itself and became harsher, more severe and aggressive. Beside writings, laws appeared; the enactment of laws resulted in popular manifestations. The writ-

They no longer tried to win over the Jews to Christ; indeed, a few years sufficed to show to the theologians the futility of their efforts, and the effect of their reasoning, based most frequently upon a fantastic exegesis or a few absurdities of the Alexandrian translation of the Bible, was lost on these stubborn men, who listened only to their own teachers and clung the stronger to their faith the

more it was despised. To arguments was added insult; the Jew was regarded less as a possible Christian than as an unrepenting deicide. They denounced those men, whose persistence was so shocking and whose very presence marred the complete triumph of the Church. Pains were taken to forget the Jewish origin of Jesus and the Apostles; to forget that Christianity had grown in the shade of the Synagogue. This oblivion perpetuated itself, and to-day who in all Christendom would acknowledge that he bows to a poor Jew and a humble Jewess of Galilee?

The Fathers, the bishops, the priests, who had to contend against the Jews, treated them very badly. Hosius in Spain; Pope Sylvester; Paul, bishop of Constantine; Eusebius of Cæsarea, call them a perverse, dangerous and criminal sect."

Some, like Gregory of Nyssa,¹ remain on dogmatic P. G., XLVI.

ground, and merely reproach the Jews for being infidels, who refuse to accept the testimony of Moses and the prophets on the Trinity and Incarnation. St. Augustine² is more vehement. Irritated by the objections of the Talmudists he brands them as falsifiers, and declares that one need seek no religion in the blindness of the Jews, and that Judaism may serve only as a term of comparison to demonstrate the beauty of Christianity. St. Ambrose¹ attacked them from another side; he took up anew the charges of the ancient world, those which had been

^1 Demonstratio Evangelica.

^1Testimonium adversus Judaeos ex Tetere Testamento, Migne,

^2 Oratio adversus Judaeos, Migne, P. L. XLII,

^1 De Tobia. Migne, P. L. XIV

used against the first Christians, and accused the Jews of despising the laws of Rome. St. Jerome² claimed that an impure spirit had seized the Jews. Having learned Hebrew in the schools of the rabbis, he said, referring doubtless to the curses pronounced against the Mineans and distorting their meaning: "The Jews must be hated, for they daily insult Jesus Christ in their synagogues"; and St. Cyril of Jerusalem¹ abused the Jewish patriarchs, claiming that they were a low race.

We find all these theological and polemical attacks combined in the six sermons delivered at Antioch, by St. John Chrysostom¹ against the Jews; an examination of those homilies will give us an understanding of the methods of discussion, as well as the reciprocal attitude of Christians and Jews and their mutual relations.

The Jews, says Chrysostom in the first of his sermons, are ignoramuses, who lack all understanding of their own law, and are consequently impious. They are wretches, dogs, bull-headed; their people are like a herd of brutes, like wild beasts. They have driven Christ away, therefore they are capable of evil only. Their synagogues may be likened to playhouses, they are dens of brigands, the abode of Satan. Being obliged to admit that the Jews are not ignorant of the Father, he adds that this is not enough, since they have crucified the Son and reject the Holy Ghost, and that their souls are the abode of the devil. Therefore they must be mistrusted; the Jewish disease must be guarded against. And Chrysos-

^2 Ep. CLI, Quaest. 10, Migne, P. L. XXII.

^1 Ep. CLI, Quaest, 10, Migne, P. G., XXXIII.

^1 Adversus Judaeos, 10, Migne, P. G., XLVIII.

tom thus apostrophizes his faithful: Do not frequent the synagogues, do not observe the Sabbath, the fast-days and other Jewish rites. If you meet the Judaizing, warn them of the peril, for you are the army of Christ; let not yourselves be seduced; it would be sheer folly. What will you gain in this den of men who deny Moses and the prophets? If the Jewish teachings excite your admiration, you must find the Christian teachings false.

In the second sermon these diatribes are resumed; Chrysostom appears in it much worried over the influence exerted by the Jews. "Our sheep," he exclaims, "are surrounded by Jewish wolves," and he reiterates the warning: Avoid them; avoid their impiety; it is not insignificant controversies that separate us from them, but the death of Christ. If you think that Judaism is true, leave the Church; if not, quit Judaism. Do you not know that the Jews offer sacrifices everywhere on earth, except in the only place where sacrifice is valid, i. e., at Jerusalem? Are you not aware that it is only there that they can celebrate Passover, as the law says (Deuter. xii)? Therefore do not conform to their delusive Passover.

The other four sermons are chiefly theological. Availing himself of the invectives of the prophets, Chrysostom calls the Jews thieves, impure, debauchees, rapacious, misers, crafty, oppressors of the poor; they have filled the measure of their crimes by immolating Jesus. He does not content himself with all that. He advances arguments upon controversies which must have been very lively at Antioch. He defends the Church; he shows that Israel is dispersed in consequence of the death

of Christ; he draws from the prophets and the stories of the Bible proofs of the divinity of Jesus, and he recommends to his flock to stay away from the sermons of those Jews who call the cross an abomination and whose religion is null and useless to those who know the true faith. In short, says he in conclusion, it is absurd to consort with men who have treated God with such indignity and at the same time to worship the Crucified.

irresolute. Their proselytic ardor was not dead; they were not conscious of the fact that they had forever lost their moral power over the world, and they struggled on. They persuaded pagans and Christians to Judaize, and they found followers; if need be they would make converts by force; they did not hesitate to circumcise their slaves. They were the only foes the Church had to face, for paganism was quietly passing away, leaving in the souls but legendary survivals, which have not entirely died out even to this day. If paganism, through its last philosophers and poets, still opposed the diffusion of Christianity, it no longer sought, since the fourth century, to regain those whom Jesus held by his bonds. The Jews, however, had not given up; they deemed themselves in possession of the true religion, upon as good a title as the Christians, and in the eyes of the people their assertion had the attraction flowing from unflinching convictions.

In the morning of its triumph the Church as yet did not hold that universal ascendancy which it gained later; it was still weak, though powerful; but those who directed it aspired to universality, and they could not help considering the Jews as their worst adversaries; they had to strain themselves to the utmost to weaken Jewish propaganda and proselytism. In this the Fathers followed a secular tradition; upon this battle ground they are unanimous, and there are legions of theologians, historians and writers who think and write of the Jews the same as Chrysostom: Epiphanius, Diodorus of Tarsus, Theodore of Mopsuestia, Theodoret of Cyprus, Cosmas Indicopleustes, Athanasius the Sinaite, Synesius, among

the Greeks; Hilarius of Poitiers, Prudentius, Paulus Orosius, Sulpicius Severus, Gennadius, Venantius Fortunatus, Isidore of Seville, among the Latins.

except on the anniversary of the destruction of the Temple, and that upon payment of a special tax in silver. Thus, by aggravating the burdens which were oppressing the Jews, Constantine favored Christian proselytism, and the preachers were not slow to represent to the Jews the advantages baptism would bring. To encourage the hesitating, who were held back from apostasy by the fear of revenge and ill-treatment from their coreligionists, the emperor promulgated a law which condemned to the stake those Jews who persecuted their apostates by stoning.¹

Still, in spite of his hostility to the Jews, perhaps factitious, since the authenticity of the letter written in a violent language and attributed to him by Eusebius² cannot be vouched for, he took pains to protect them against the attacks of their own renegades. Under his successors, no such reservation was made. The Church was now all-powerful with the emperors. Catholicism became the established religion, the Christian worship was the official worship, the importance of the bishops increased from day to day, as well as their influence. They inculcated upon the minds of the emperors those sentiments with which they were inspired themselves, and while their anti-Judaism found expression in statutes. These laws, inspired by the clergy, were directed not only against the Jews, but against Christian heretics as well. Indeed, during the fourth century, so fertile in

^1 Codex Justinianeus, l. I, tit. viii, 3.

^2 Eusebius, Vita Constantini, III, 18, 20.

heresies, the orthodox themselves were at times disturbed when heretical theologians led the emperors.

^1 Codex Justinianeus, 1. 1, tit. IX, 16.

^1 Codex Theodosianus, 1. XVI, tit. VIII, 5

^2 Codex Justiniancus., l. I., tit. IX,

^1 Cod. Theod., b. XVI, tit. viii, 8.

^2 Code Theodosien, 1. XVI, iti. VIII, 28.

^3 Codex Justinianeus, l. 1, tic. IX, 17 and Cod. Theodos., l. XVI, tit. VIII, 14.

^4 Codex Justinianeus, 1. I. tit. IX, 18.

^5 Justinianus, Novellae, 45.

Ocodex Justinianeus, l. I., tit. IX, 15

manner of observing the Sabbath; they were ordered not to celebrate their Passover before Easter, and Justinian went as far as to prohibit them from reciting the daily prayer, the Schema, which proclaimed one God, as against the Trinity.

The Jewish teachers of Judea were exiled, they were

^7 Codex Justinianeus 1. I., tit. IX, 13, and Cod. Theod., 1. VIII, tit. IV, 8.

threatened with death if they persisted in giving instruction, they were compelled to flee from Palestine, while in other provinces of the empire they were denied the rights of Roman citizenship. While the Roman legions, on expedition against King Shabur II., of Persia, were camping in Judea, the Jews were treated like inhabitants of a conquered country. They were heavily taxed; they were forced to bake bread for the soldiers on Sabbath and on holidays.

In the cities, monks and bishops denounced pagans and Jews, inciting against them the Christian populace and leading fanatical mobs in assaults upon temples and synagogues. Under Theodosius I., and under Arcadius, synagogues were burned at Rome and at Callinicus, in Mesopotamia. Under Theodosius II, at Alexandria, St. Cyril stirred up the mob, hermits invaded the city, massacred all the Jews and pagans they met, assassinated Hypathia, plundered synagogues, set the libraries on fire, defying the efforts of the prefect Orestes whom the emperor later disavowed. At Imnestar, near Antioch, Simon, the ascetic, acts likewise, and under Zeno similar scenes are enacted at Antioch. A fury of destruction takes possession of the Christians; one might say, they wish to destroy all traces of the old world to prepare the sweet reign of Christ.

Still the Jews did not behave passively in the face of their enemies, they had not, as yet, acquired that stubborn and touching resignation which became their characteristic later.

To the vehement discourses of the priests they replied by discourses, to acts they responded by acts; to Chris-

Under the reign of Phocas the Jews of Antioch, tired of persecutions, outrages and massacres, one day rushed upon the Christians, assassinated the patriarch Anastasius the Sinaite, and took possession of the city. Phocas sent against them an army with Kotys in command, the Jews at first repelled the imperial legions, but unable to hold out against large enforcements brought to Antioch, they were subdued and massacred, maimed, or banished. Their submission, however, was merely apparent; they

In Persia and Babylonia, the Jews lived since their captivity; after the ruin of Jerusalem many more sought refuge in that admirable and fertile country, where they were given land to farm on and lived happily under the

sans of the Magus and founded a state, whose capital was Mahuza, a city inhabited by Persian converts to Judaism. This state existed for seven years until Mar Zutra was defeated and killed.

Since then the Jews, in Persia, witnessed alternately peace and trouble; happy under Chosroes Nushirvan and Chosru II., oppressed under Hormisdas IV., they ultimately tired of their precarious situation, and, in concert with the Christians of the Sassanide kingdom aided Omar to capture the throne of Persia, thus contributing to the triumph of Mohammed and the Arabs.

Still the Jews had little to rejoice at under the Mussulman yoke. Their first settlement in Arabia, disregarding the legends which trace it as far back as Joshua or Saul, must date from the time of the captivity, or of the destruction of the first Temple. The original nucleus was swelled by fugitives from Judea, who reached Arabia at the time Palestine was conquered by the Romans. In the beginning of the Christian era there were in Arabia four Jewish tribes, whose centre was Medina.

The Jews accomplished a moral and intellectual conquest of the Arabs, whom they converted to Judaism; at least they made them adopt its rites. The kinship between the two peoples made it easy, the more so that, in Yemen, the Jews had in their turn adopted Arabian customs, which differed but little from the early Jewish customs. They were farmers, shepherds and warriors, at times freebooters and poets. Divided into small groups, fighting among themselves and taking part in the quarrels which divided the Arab tribes, they at the same time

the Christians of Dedjran, for Christians and Jews alike polluted the sacred soil of Islam.

Wherever Omar carried his arms, the Jews, oppressed by reason of that very affinity which united them with the Arabs, favored the second calif, who took possession of Persia and Palestine. Omar enacted severe laws against the Jews, who had assisted his antagonist; he subjected them to restrictive legislation, prohibited the erection of new synagogues, forced them to wear dress of a particular color, enjoined them from riding on horseback, and imposed upon them a personal and a land tax. Christians were treated likewise. Nevertheless the Jews enjoyed greater liberty under Arab rule than under Christian domination. On the one hand, the legislation of Omar was not rigorously enforced; on the other hand, aside from a few manifestations of fanaticism, the Mussulmanic mass, in spite of religious differences, showed a friendly disposition towards them. And later, with the expansion of Islam, the Arabs were hailed as liberators by all the Western Jews.

The condition of the Western Jews since the destruction of the fragile Roman empire and the rush of barbarians upon the old world, was subject to all the vicissitudes of the times. The Cæsars, those poor Cæsars who bore the names of Olybrius, Glycerius, Julius Nepos, and Romulus Augustulus, fell, but the Roman laws remained; and if for short periods they were not enforced against the Jews, they still remained in effect, and the German sovereigns could make use of them at pleasure.

From the fifth to the eighth century the fortunes of the Jews wholly depended upon religious causes which were

external to them, and their history among those who were called barbarians is bound with the history of Arianism, its triumph and defeats. So long as the Arian doctrine predominated, the Jews lived in a state of relative welfare, for the clergy and even the heretical government were busy fighting against orthodoxy and little worried about the Israelites, who, to them, were not the enemies to be crushed. Theodoric, however, was an exception. No sooner was the Ostrogoth empire established than the king prohibited the erection of synagogues and endeavored to convert the Jews. He protected them, however, against popular outbreaks, and compelled the Roman Senate to rebuild the synagogues which had been set on fire by the Catholic mobs which rose against the Arian Theodoric.

Still in Italy, under the Byzantine dominion so harassing to them, or under the more indifferent Lombard rule, for the Arian and the pagan Lombards scarcely took notice of the existence of Israel,—the Jews were guarded against the zeal of the lower clergy and their flocks by the benevolence of the pontificial authority, which, from the earliest days of its power, seems to have desired, with rare exceptions, to preserve the synagogue as a living testimony of its victory.

In Spain the condition of the Jews was quite different. From time immemorial they freely settled in the peninsula; their numbers increased under Vespasian, Titus and Hadrian, during the Judean wars and after

^1 His course was probably influenced by his Minister Cassiodorus, who seems to have had scant sympathy for the Jews—he characterized them as scorpions, wild asses, dogs and unicorns.

the dispersion; they owned large fortunes, they were wealthy, powerful and respectable and exerted a great influence upon the population among whom they lived. The imprint received by the peoples of Spain from Judaism, endured for centuries, and that land was the last to witness once more the contest, with almost equal weapons, between the Jewish and the Christian spirit. More than once Spain came very near becoming Jewish, and to write the history of that country until the fifteenth century means to write the history of the Jews, for they were intimately connected in a most remarkable way, with its literature and intellectual, national, moral and economic development. The church, from its very establishment in Spain, contended against Jewish tendencies and proselytism, and it was only after a struggle of twelve centuries that it succeeded in completely extirpating them.

Until the sixth century the Spanish Jews lived in perfect happiness. They were as happy as in Babylonia, and they found a new mother country in Spain. The Roman laws did not reach them there and the eccleciastical ordinances of the Council of Elvira, in the fourth century, which enjoined Christians from intercourse with them, remained a dead letter.

The Visigothic conquest did not change their condition and the Arian Visigoths confined themselves to persecuting the Catholics. The Jews enjoyed the same civil and political rights as the conquerors; moreover, the Jews joined their armies and the Pyrenean frontier was guarded by Jewish troops. With the conversion of King Reccared everything changed; the triumphant

^1 Leges Visigoth, L. XII, tit. 11, 5

Wamba. They were liberated only by Tarin, the Mohammadean conqueror, who destroyed the Visigothic empire with the aid of the exiled Jews joining his army and with the support of the Jews remaining in Spain. After the battle of Xeres and the defeat of Roderick (711), the Jews breathed again.

^1 Lex Burgundionum, tit. XV, 1, 2, 3,

This is not so, however. It must not be forgotten that the church had no right to legislate in civil matters; yet the synodical regulations, the ecclesiastical interdictions and prohibitions and the arguments by which they were supported, exerted an enormous influence upon the

^1 The Councils confine themselves to ordering the baptism of the issue of mixed marriages as well as the dissolution of the marriage in case the Jewish consort is not converted. Besides, they decree that any Jew attempting to convert his slaves shall forfeit them to the fisc.

political authorities; furthermore, the episcopate exerted a personal and manifest influence over the Merovingian or Visigothic kings, and it can be shown that Childebert or Clotaire II., e. g., or Recessionth, in giving their sanction to ecclesiastical decrees and in promulgating their own edicts, acted at the instigation of the bishops.

Still the clergy did not confine themselves to influencing legislation; it was ever at work inciting against the Jews the populace whose orthodoxy was not sufficiently intolerant. It was under the leadership of these priests that the mob attacked the synagogues and put the Jews to the alternative of being massacred, banished or baptized.

Nevertheless, one must not imagine the condition of the Jews at that epoch as very miserable. On the Jewish, as well as on the Christian side, one notices a mixture of tolerance and intolerance which is accounted for either by a mutual desire to make converts, or even to some extent by reciprocal religious good-will. The Jews took an interest in public life, the Christians ate at their tables; they shared in their joys and sorrows, as well as in factional fights. Thus they are seen, at Arles, to unite with the Visigothic party against the bishop Cæsarius, and later to follow the funeral of the same bishop, crying: Vae! vae! They were the clients of great seignors (as witnessed by two letters of Sidonius Apollinaris), and the latter helped them to evade the vexatious ordinances. In many regions the clergy visited them, a great many Christians went to the synagogues,

^1 Vie de Saint Cesaire, Migne. Patrologie latine, t. LXVII.

^2 Sidonius Apollinaris, l. III, ep. IV, and l. V. ep. V.

and the Jews likewise attended Catholic services during the mass of the catechumens. They resisted, as far as possible, the numerous efforts to convert them, at times attended with 'violence, notwithstanding the recommendations of certain Popes;¹ and they boldly engaged in controversies with theologians who endeavored to persuade them by the same means as the Fathers of former ages. We shall return to these controversies and writings when we shall come to study the anti-Jewish literature.

Thus, as shown above, during the first seven centuries of the Christian era, anti-Judaism proceeded exclusively from religious causes and was led only by the clergy. One must not be misled by popular excesses and legislalative repression, for they were never spontaneous, but always inspired by bishops, priests, or monks. It was only since the eighth century that social causes super-

^1Fredegaire (Chronique, XV), and Aumoin (Chronique Moissiacensis, XLV) relate that, at the instigation of Emperor Heraclius, Dagobert gave to the Jews the choice between death, exile and baptism. (Gesta Dagoberti, XXIV). The same is reported of the Visigothic King Sisebut (see appendix to the Chronicle of Bishop Marius, A. D. 588; Dom Bouquet, t. II, p. 19). Chilperich forced many Jews to be baptized. (Gregoire de Tours, H. F., l. VI, ch. XVII). Bishop Avitus compelied the Jews of Clermont to renounce their faith, or leave the city. Gregoire de Tours, H. F., l. V, ch. XI). Other bishops resorted to force, and it required the interference of Pope St. Gregory to stop or at least moderate their zeal. "The Jews must not be baptized by force, but brought over by sweetness," says he in his letters addressed to Virgil bishop of Arles, to Theodore, bishop of Marseilles, and to Paschasius, bishop of Naples. (Regesta Pontificum Romanorum, ed. Jafle, nos. 1115 and 1879). But the authority of the Pope was not always effective.

vened to religious causes, and it was only after the eighth century that real persecution commenced. It coincided with the universal spread of Catholicism, with the development of feudalism and also with the intellectual and moral change of the Jews, which was mostly due to the influence of the Talmudists and the exaggerated growth of exclusiveness among the Jews. We shall now proceed to examine this new transformation of anti-Judaism.

CHAPTER V.

ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY TO THE REFORMATION.

Expansion and Christianity.—Diffusion of the Jews Among the Nations.—Constitution of the Nationalities.—The Role of the Jews in Society.—The Jews and Commerce.—Gold and the Jews.—The Love of Gold and Business Acquired by the Jews.—The Jew as Colonist and Emigrant.—The Church and Usury.—The Birth of Patronage and Wage-System.—Transformation of Property.—The Economic Revolution and the Quest of Gold.—The Instinct of Domination.—Gold and Jewish Exclusivism.—Maimonides and Observation.—Solomon of Montpellier.—Ben-Adret, Asher ben Yechiel, and Jacob Tibbon.—The Moreh Nebukhim.—Intellectual and Moral Abasement of the Jews.—The Talmud.—Influence of this Abasement on the Social

Position of the Jews.—Transformation of Anti-Judaism.—Social Causes; Religious Causes; Their Combination.—The People and the Jews.—The Pastoureaux, the Jacques and the Armleders.—The Kings and the Jews.—The Monks and Anti-Judaism.—Pierre de Cluny, John of Capistrano, and Bernardinus of Feltre.—The Church and Theological Anti-Judaism.—Christianity and Mohammedanism.—The Albigenses, the Heretics of Orleans, the Pasagians.—Heresies and Judaization.—The Hussites.—The Inquisition.—The Bourgeoisie and the Jews.—Ecclesiastic and Civil Legislation Against the Jews.—Controversies and Condemnation of the Talmud.—Vexations.—Expulsions.—Massacres.—The Condition of the Jews and of the People.—The Relativity of the Jewish Sufferings.—The Reformation and the Renaissance.

The church reaches its final constitution in the eighth century. The period of great doctrinal crises is at an end, dogma is settled and heresies will not cause it any trouble until the Reformation. Pontifical primacy strikes deep root, the organization of the clergy is henceforth solid, religion and liturgy are unified, discipline and canonic law are settled, ecclesiastic property increases, the tithe is established, the federal constitution of the Church—sub-divided into sufficiently autonomous circuits—disappears, the movement of centralization for the benefit of Rome is clearly outlined. This movement came to an end, when the Carolingians had established the temporal power of the popes, and the Latin church,

strongly hierarchical before, became as centralized, in a comparatively short time, as the Roman empire of yore, which the church's universal authority had thus supplanted. Simultaneously Christianity spread further still and conquered the barbarians. The Anglo-Saxon missionaries had set the examples in Saint Boniface and Saint Willibrod; they had followers. The gospel was preached to the Alamans, the Frisians, the Saxons, the Scandinavians, the Bohemians and the Hungarians, the Russians and the Wends, the Pomeranians and the Prussians, the Lithuanians and the Finns. The work was accomplished at the end of the thirteenth century: Europe was christianized.

The Jews settled in the wake of Christianity as it kept spreading by degrees. In the ninth century, they came from France to Germany, got thence into Bohemia, into Hungary and into Poland, where they met another wave of Jews—those coming by way of the Caucasus and converting on their march several Tartar tribes. In the twelfth century they settled in England and Belgium, and everywhere they built their synagogues, they organized their communities at that decisive hour, when the nations were coming out from chaos, when states were being formed and consolidated. They remained outside of these great agitations, amid which conquering and conquered races were amalgamating and uniting one with the other; and in the midst of these tumultuous combinations they remained spectators, strangers and hostile to these fusions: an eternal people witnessing the rise of new nations. However, their role was surely of account at all times; they were one of the

active elements of ferment of these societies in the process of formation.

that it was instinctive rather than rational, especially so on the part of the people, for the church or the popes and the synods at least proceeded upon reasoning. With these general principles given we shall see how they acted upon and in what manner they influenced the special and particular manifestations of anti-Judaism. To this end we must say a word about the commercial and financial role of the Jews, of their activity and their spirit.

Only towards the end of the eighth century the activity of the Western Jews developed. Protected in Spain by the Khalifs, given support by Charlemagne who let the Merovingian laws fall into disuse, they extended their commerce which until then centered chiefly in the sale of slaves. For this they were, indeed, particularly favored by circumstances. Their communities were in constant communication, they were united by the religious bond which tied them all to the theological centre of Babylonia whose dependencies they considered themselves up to the decline of the exilarchate. Thus they acquired very great facilities for exporting commerce, in which they amassed considerable fortunes, if we are to believe the diatribes of Dagobard, and later those of Rigord, which, with all their exaggeration of the property of the Jews must not, yet, be entirely rejected as unworthy of credence. Indeed, with regard to this wealth of the Jews, especially in France and Spain,

^1De Insolentia Iudaeorum (Patrologie Latine, v. CIV)

^1 Gesta Philippi Augusti.

^*For the position of Southern Jews at the time of Philip the Fair, cf. Simeon Luce (Catalogue des documents du Tresor des Chartes (Revue des Etudes Juives, v. I, 3.)

we possess the testimonies of chroniclers and the Jews themselves, several of whom reproached their coreligionists for devoting to the worldly welfare much more time than to the worship of Jehovah. "Instead of calculating the numerical value of the name of God," says the Kabbalist Abulafia, "the Jews prefer to count their riches."

Parallel with the general advance we really see this preoccupation with wealth grow among the Jews and their practical activity concentrating on a special business: I mean the gold business. Here we must emphasize a point. It has often been said, and it is repeated still, that the Christian societies had forced the Jews into this position of creditor and usurer, which they have for a long time kept: this is the thesis of the philosemites. On the other hand the antisemites assert that the Jews, from time immemorial, had natural inclinations for commerce and finance, and that they but followed their normal disposition, and that nothing had ever been forced upon them. In these two assertions there is a portion of verity and a portion of error, or rather that there is room to comment on them, and especially to give them a hearing.

At the time of their national prosperity the Jews, like all other nations, for that matter, had a class of the rich, which proved itself as eager for gain and as hard to the lowly as the capitalists of all ages and all nations have proven. The antisemites, as well, who make use of the texts of Isaiah and Jeremiah, e. g., to prove the constant eternal rapacity of the Jews, act very naively, and, thanks to the words of the prophets, can but establish,—and puerile it is,—the existence, in Israel, of

possessors and poor. If they examined impartially the Judaic codes and precepts only, they would acknowledge that legislation and morals prescribed never to charge interest on debts.¹ Taking all in all, the Jews were, in Palestine, the least mercantile of the Semites, in this regard much inferior to the Phœnicians and Carthaginians. It was only under Solomon that they entered into intercourse with the other nations. Even at that time, it was a powerful corporation of Phœnicians that was engaged in the banking business at Jerusalem. However, the geographical position of Palestine prevented its inhabitants from devoting themselves to a very extensive and considerable traffic. Nevertheless, during the first captivity and through the contact with the Babylonians, a class of merchants had formed, and from it came the first Jewish emigrants, who established their colonies in Egypt, Cyrenaica and Asia Minor. In all cities that admitted them they formed active communities, powerful and opulent, and, with the final dispersion, important

^"Thou shalt not lend upon usury to thy brother; usury of money, usury of victuals, usury of anything that is lent upon usury: unto a stranger (nokhri) thou mayest lend upon usury." Deuter. XXIII, 19-20.

Nokhri means a transient stranger; a resident stranger is ger. "And if thy brother be waxen poor, and fallen in decay with thee; then thou shalt relieve him: yea, though he be a stranger, or a sojourner; that he may live with thee. 'Take then no usury of him or increase." Levit. XXV, 35-36.

^"Lord, who shall abide in Thy tabernacle? . . . He that putteth not out his money to usury." (Psalm, XV, 1-5). "Even to a non-Jew," adds the Talmudic commentary, (Makkoth XXIV). Consult also: Exod. XXII 25; Philo, De Charitate; Josephus, Antiquitates Judaeorum, B. IV, ch. VIII; Selden, B. VI., ch. IX).

groups of emigrants joined the original groups which facilitated their installation. To explain the attitude of the Jews it is, accordingly, not necessary to fall back upon a theory of the Arian genius and the Semitic genius. Indeed, we well know the traditional Roman cupidity and the commercial sense of the Greeks. The usury of the Roman feneratores had no limit any more than had their bad faith; they were encouraged by the very harsh laws against the debtors,—a worthy daughter of that law of the Twelve Tables which granted to the creditor the right of cutting pieces of flesh from the live body of an insolvent borrower. In Rome gold was absolute master, and Juvenal could speak of the "sanctissima divitiarum maiestas." As to the Greeks, they were the cleverest and boldest of speculators; rivalling the Phænicians in the slave-trade, in piracy, they knew the use of letters of exchange and maritime insurance, and, Solon having authorized usury, they never did away with it.

As a nation the Jews differed in nothing from other nations, and if at first they were a nation of shepherds and agriculturists, they came, by a natural course of evolution, to constitute other classes among them. And devoting themselves to commerce, after their dispersion, they followed a general law which is applicable to all colonists. Indeed, with the exception of cases when he goes to break virgin soil, the emigrant can be only an artisan or merchant, as nothing but necessity or allure-

^1 The Hebrew Sibyl speaks of "the execrable thirst for gold, of the passion for sordid gain which goads the Latins on to the conquest of the world,"

ment of gain can force him to leave his native soil. Therefore, the Jews coming into Western cities acted in no way differently from the Dutch or English when they established business offices. Nevertheless, they came soon enough to specialize in the money business, for which they have been so bitterly reproached ever since, and in the fourteenth century they constituted quite a coterie of changers and lenders: they had become the bankers of the world. They are accused of having created popular loan banks, and they become the figure-heads for the lords and rich bourgeois. This was a fatal proceeding, if we remember the particular notion entertained by the church concerning money, and also the economic conditions prevailing in Europe from the twelfth century on.

The Middle Ages considered gold and silver as tokens possessing imaginary value, varying at the will of the king, who could order its rate according to the dictations of his fancy. This notion was derived from Roman law, which refused to treat money as a merchandise. The church inherited these financial dogmas, combined them with the biblical prescriptions which forbade loan on interest, and was severe, from its very start, against the Christians and ecclesiastics even that followed the example of the feneratores, who advanced money at 24, 48 and even 60 per cent., when the legal rate of interest was 12 per cent. The canons of councils are quite explicit on this point; they follow the teaching of the Fathers, Saint Augustin, Saint Chrysostom, Saint Jerome; they forbid loans and are harsh against those clerics and laymen who engage in the usurer's business. Their severity did

not prevent usury entirely, but it lessened it by branding it with infamy. At the same time social conditions were such as to make usury inevitable, and in these conditions the synods could change nothing whatever. During several centuries feudalism had plundered communities of their possessions and increased its territories at the expense of communal lands. On the disappearance of serfdom, economic slavery took the place of personal slavery, a portion of the population was forced into vagabondage, which accounts for those bands of vagabonds, beggars and thieves, that overran the roads of France in the fourteenth century. The other portion was compelled to work for wages or they lived as farmers and tenants on the soil which had been their own.

At the same time, in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the wage system were established, the bourgeoisie developed, grew rich and acquired privileges and franchises: capitalistic power was now born. Commerce having taken on a new form, the value of gold increased and the passion for money grew with the importance which the currency had acquired.

Indeed, on one hand were the rich, on the other—the peasants, landless, subject to the tithe and prestations; workingmen dominated over by the capitalist laws. To cap it all, perpetual wars, revolts, diseases and famines. Whenever the year was bad, the money gave out, the crop failed, an epidemic came, the peasant, the proletarian, and the small bourgeois were forced to resort to borrowing. Hence, by necessity there were to be borrowers. But the church had forbidden loan at interest, and capital does not choose to remain unproduc-

tive, but during the Middle Ages capital could only be either merchant or lender, as money could be made productive in no other way. As far as the ecclesiastical decisions had any influence, a great part of the Christian capitalists did not want to begin an open revolt against their authority; there was also formed a class of reprobates for whom the bourgeoisie and nobility often acted as silent partners. It consisted of Lombards, Caeorsins, to whom the princes, the lords granted the privileges of loaning on interest, gathering a part of the profits which were considerable, as the Lombards lent money at 10 per cent. a month; or of unscrupulous foreigners, like Tuscan emigrants settled in Istria who went in usury to such extremes that the community of Triest suspended, in 1350, all executions for debts for three years. This did not take away the ground from under the usurers, but as I have said they found obstacles which the church placed in the way of their operations (the council of Lyons of 1215 wanted to declare the wills of usurers void).

As for Jews, these obstacles did not exist. The church had no moral power over them, it could not forbid them, in the name of the doctrine and dogma, to engage in money exchanging and banking. The Jews, who at this epoch were mostly merchants and capitalists, profited by this liberty and the economic condition of the peoples among whom they lived. In this path the ecclesiastic authorities encouraged, rather than restrained them, and the Christian bourgeois kept them busy in it by furnishing them with capitals and employing them as dummies. Thus a religious conception of the functions of

As merchants they were destined to become usurers, given the conditions which the codes had imposed upon them and the conditions they had imposed upon themselves. To escape persecution and annoyance they had to make themselves useful, even necessary, to their rulers, the noblemen upon whom they depended, to the church

The creation of guilds,—merchant and craft—guilds and their organization, in the thirteenth century, finally forced the Jews into the condition to which they had been led by the social conditions—general and special—under which they lived. All these organizations were, so to speak,

religious organizations, brotherhoods which none joined but those who prostrated themselves before the standard of the patron saint. The ceremonies attendant upon the initiation into these bodies being Christian ceremonies, the Jews could not but be shut out from them: and so they were. A series of prohibitions successively shut them out of all industry and all commerce, except that in odds and ends and in old clothes. Those who escaped this disqualification did so by virtue of special privileges for which they oftenest paid too dearly.

However, this is not all; other more intimate causes were added to those I have just enumerated, and all joined in throwing the Jew more and more out of society, in shutting him up in the ghetto, in immobilizing him behind the counter where he was weighing gold.

An energetic, vivacious nation, of infinite pride, thinking themselves superior to the other nations, the Jews wished to become a power. They instinctively had a taste for domination, as they believed themselves superior to all others by their origin, their religion, their title of a "chosen race," which they had always ascribed to themselves. To exercise this kind of power the Jews had no choice of means. Gold gave them a power which all political and religious laws denied them, and it was the only one they could hope for. As possessors of gold they became the masters of their masters, they dominated over them, and this was the only way to deploy their energy and their activity.

Would they not have been able to display it in some other fashion? Yes, and they tried it, but there they had to fight their own spirit. For many long years they had worked in the intellectual line, devoted themselves to sciences, letters, philosophy. They were mathematicians and astronomers; they practised medicine, and, if the school of Montpellier was not founded by them, they surely helped in developing it; they had translated the works of Averroes and of the Arabic commentators of Aristotle; they had revealed the Greek philosophy to the Christian world, and their metaphysicians Ibn Gabirol and Maimonides had been among the teachers of the schoolmen. For years they had been the depositories of knowledge; like the initiated of old they held the torch which they handed over to the Westerners; with the Arabs, they had taken a most active part in the efflorescence and expansion of the admirable Semitic civilization which had arisen in Spain and Southern France and had ushered in and prepared the way for the Renaissance. Who stopped them in this advance? They themselves.

Their doctors endeavored to confine Israel to the exclusive study of the law in order to preserve Israel from outside influences, pernicious, it was said, to the integrity of the law. Efforts to this effect had been made since the time of the Maccabees, when the Hellenizers constituted a great party in Palestine. Beaten at first, or, at least, hardly listened to, those who later acquired the name of obscurantists, kept at their task. When Jewish intolerance and bigotry grew in the twelfth century, when exclusiveness increased, the struggle between the partisans of profane science and their opponents became fiercer, it blazed up after the

^1 Cf. S. Munk, Melanges de philosophic juive et arabe.

death of Maimonides and ended in the victory of the obscurantists.

^1 Guide des Egares (Translated by S. Munk).

and customs, resigned to intellectual and moral death rather than to the physical and natural death of fallen nations.

In 1232, Rabbi Solomon of Montpellier issued an anathema against all those who would read the Moreh Nebukhim or would take up scientific and philosophic studies. This was the signal for the struggle. It was violent on both sides, and all weapons were resorted to. The fanatical rabbis appealed to the fanaticism of the Dominicans, they denounced the Guide of the Perplexed and had it burned by the inquisition: it was the work of Solomon of Montpellier, but it marked the overthrow of the obscurantists. Still this defeat did not end the struggle. It was renewed at the end of the century against Jacob Tibbon of Montpellier by Don Astruc of Lunel, supported by Solomon Ben Adret of Barcelona. At the instigation of a German doctor, Asher Ben Yechiel, a synod of thirty rabbis met at Barcelona, with Ben Adret in the chair, and excommunicated all those who read books other than the Bible and the Talmud, when under twenty-five years.

A counter-excommunication was proclaimed by Jacob Tibbon, who, at the head of all Provencal rabbis, boldly defended condemned science. All was in vain: those wretched Jews, whom everybody tormented for their faith, persecuted their coreligionists more cruelly and severely than they had ever been persecuted. Those whom they accused of indifference had to undergo the worst punishments; the blasphemers had their tongues cut; Jewish women who had any relations with Christians were condemned to disfigurement: their noses

were subjected to ablation. Despite this, Tibbon's followers persisted. It was due to them, that Jewish thought did not completely die out in Spain, France and Italy during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Even such men as Moses of Narbonne and Levy de Bagnols, as Elias of Crete and Alemani, the teacher of Pico di Mirandola, as well as later Spinoza, were all isolated men. As for the mass of Jews, it had completely fallen under the power of the obscurantists. Hereafter it was separated from the world, its whole horizon was shut out; to nourish its spirit it had nothing but futile talmudic commentaries, idle and mediocre discussions on the Law. Like the mummies swaddled in their bandlets, it was shut up and choked in ceremonial practices: its rulers and guides had it shut up in the tightest and most abominable of dungeons. Hence a terrible deadening and awful decadence, a sinking of intellectualism, a compression of the brain which made them incapable of grasping any idea.

Henceforth the Jew thought no longer. And what need had he of thinking since he possessed a minute, precise code, the work of casuist legists, which could give answer to any question that it was legitimate to ask? For believers were forbidden to inquire into problems which were not mentioned in this code—the Talmud. The Jew found everything foreseen in the Talmud: the sentiments, the emotions, whatever they might be, were designated; prayers, formulas, all ready-made, supplied the means for expressing them. The book left room neither to reason nor to freedom, inasmuch as in instruction the legendary and gnomical portions were almost pro-

The Jew having become such, anti-Judaism became more complicated, social causes intermingled with religious causes; the combination of these causes explains the intensity and gravity of the persecutions which Israel had to undergo.

the Pastoureaux destroyed 120 Jewish communities, but the Jews were not their only victims; they invaded castles, they exterminated the nobles and the propertied. In Brabant, the peasants who besieged Genappe, the residence of the Jews, did not spare their own coreligionists. Similarly, when King Armleder raised the tramps in the Rhine lands, he had in his train not only Judenschläger (Jew beaters), but also slayers of the rich. Only that among the Christians the propertied alone suffered violence at the hands of the rebels, the poor were spared; among the Jews the rich and the poor were exterminated indiscriminately, for, before any crime, they were guilty of being Jews. To the wrath for being plundered the mob added the aversion to being plundered by cursed ones, and no consideration restrained the plundered, as the accursed were of a strange race, forming a people apart.

At all events, the masses, restrained by authority and law, rarely attacked the capitalists in general; to goad them on to revolt a terrible accumulation of miseries was necessary. But with reference to the Jews their ill-feeling was not restrained at all; on the contrary, it was encouraged. This was a means to divert attention, and every now and then kings, nobles or burghers offered their slaves a holocaust of Jews. This unfortunate Jew was utilized for two purposes during the Middle Ages. They employed him as a leech, let him swell up, fill himself with gold, then they made him clear; or, whenever popular hatred was too bitter, he was subjected to corporal punishment which was profitable to the

Christian capitalists, who thus paid a tribute of propitiary blood to those whom they oppressed.

To give satisfaction to their wretched subjects, the kings would from time to time proscribe Jewish usury, would cancel debts; but oftenest they tolerated the Jews, encouraged them, being sure to derive benefit from them through confiscation or by taking their place as creditors. Nevertheless these measures were always but temporary, and governmental anti-Judaism was purely political. They banished the Jews either to mend their finances, or to elicit the gratitude of the small fry by partly relieving them of the heavy burden of debt; but they would soon recall the Jews, as they could find no better tax collectors. However, anti-Jewish legislation was, as we have said, most frequently forced upon the royal power by the church, either by the monks or the popes and synods. Even the regular clergy and the secular clergy acted upon different principles.

The monks addressed themselves to the people, with whom they were in constant touch. In the first place they preached against the deicides, but they represented these deicides as domineering, while they should have been bent forever under the yoke of Christendom. All these preachers gave expression to popular grievances. "If the Jews fill their granaries with fruit, their cellar with victuals, their bags with money and their chests with gold," said Pierre de Cluny: "it is neither by tilling the earth, nor by serving in war, nor by practising

^1 Peter the Venerable, abbot of Cluny: Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiam (Bibl. des Peres Latins, Lyons).

The kings, nobles and bishops did not encourage this campaign of the regulars. They protected the Jews from the monk Radulphe, in Germany; in Italy, they set themselves against the preachings of Bernardinus of Feltre, who accused the princes of having sold themselves to Yechiel of Pisa, the wealthiest Jew of the peninsula; in Poland, Pope Gregory XI. stopped the crusade of Jan of Ryczywol. The rulers had every interest

to suppress these partial uprisings; from experience they knew that when the bands of starvelings were through slaughtering the Jews, they would kill those who possessed too great wealth, those who enjoyed excessive privileges, or those lords, counts or barons, whose power weighed too heavily on the shoulders of tax-payers. The Pastoureaux, the Jacquerie, the faithful followers of the Armcleders, afterwards the peasants of Munzer, had demonstrated that the holders of power were not unreasonable in their fear: by protecting the Jews to a certain degree they protected themselves.

As for the Church, it kept to theological anti-Judaism, and, being essentially conservative, favoring the mighty and rich, it took care not to encourage the passions of the people. I speak of the official Church, abounding in prebendaries; striving for unity and centralization, cherishing dreams of universal domination; the Church of the Synods, the law-making Church, and not the church of petty priests and monks which was stirred by the same passions as agitated the lowly. But if the church sometimes interfered in behalf of the Jews when they were the object of the mob's fury, it nursed this fury and supplied it with fuel by combatting Judaism, even though combatting it from different motives.

Faithful to its principles, it vainly persecuted the spirit of Judaism in all its forms. It could not get rid of it, as this Jewish spirit had inspired it in its earliest stages. It was impregnated with it as the beach-sands are impregnated with the sea-salt which rises to their surface, and despite its efforts from the second century on to rebuff its origin, to thrust far away all memory of

its original foundation, it still preserved the marks of it. In seeking to realize its conception of Christian states directed and ruled over by the Papacy, the church strove to reduce all anti-Christian elements. Thus it inspired Europe's violent reaction against the Arabs, and the struggle of the European nationalities against Mohammedanism was a struggle at once political and religious.

Still the Moslem danger was external, but the internal dangers threatening the dogma proved quite as grave for the church. As it had become all-powerful, as it had attained the maximum of Catholicity, it gave support to heresy less readily; beginning with the eighth century the legislation against heretics grew more severe. Formerly benign and confining itself to canonic penalties, hereafter it appealed to the secular powers, and the Vaudois, Albigenses, Beghards, Apostolic Brothers, Luciferians were treated with cruelty. The limit of this movement was reached in the inquisition which the Pope Innocent III. instituted in the thirteenth century. Henceforth, a special tribunal, backed by civil authority, obedient to its orders was to be the sole judge, and pitiless at that, of heresy.

The Jews could not be overlooked in this legislation. They were persecuted not as Jews—the church wished to preserve the Jews as a living testimony of its triumph—but because they instigated people to judaization, either directly or unconsciously, by the very fact of their existence. Had not their philosophers sent forth metaphysicians like Amaury de Béne and David de Dinan? What is more, were not certain heretics judaizing?

The Pasagians of Upper Italy observed the Mosaic law; the Orleans heresy was a Jewish heresy; an Albigens sect maintained that the doctrine of the Jews was preferable to that of the Christians; the Hussites were supported by the Jews; accordingly, the Dominicans preached against the Hussites and the Jews, and the imperial army that advanced against Jan Ziska massacred the Jews on its way.

In Spain, where the mingling of Jews and Christians was considerable, the Inquisition was instituted by Gregory XI, who gave it its constitution, to surveil the judaizing heretics and the Jews and Moors, who, though not subjects of the Church, were subject to the will of the Holy Office whenever "by their words or their writings they urged the Catholics to embrace their faith." More than that, the popes recalled the canonic decisions to the minds of the Kings of Spain, because the fueros, i. e., Castillian customs which superseded the Visigothic laws, had granted equal rights to Jews, Christians and Moslemites.

All these ecclesiastic measures reinforced the anti-Jewish sentiments of kings and nations; they were the prime causes; they upheld a special state of mind, which political motives emphasized with the kings; social motives—with the nations. Owing to it, anti-Judaism became general, and no class of society was free from it, for all classes were more or less guided by the Church or inspired by its teachings, all of them were or thought themselves harmed by the Jews. The nobility took offense at their riches; the proletarians, the artisans and peasants, in a word the small people, were provoked by their usury; as for the bourgeoisie, the merchant class, the dealers in money, it was in permanent rivalry with the Jews, and their constant competition engendered hatred. The modern contest between Christian and Jewish capital assumes shape in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, the Catholic bourgeois looks with calm eyes on the murder of Jews, which rids him of an often successful rival.

had already been prohibited by Justinian; after him no laws were passed against the Talmud, until the time of Saint Louis. After the controversy between Nicholas Donin and Yechiel of Paris (1240) Gregory IX ordered to burn the Talmud; this order was repeated by Innocent IV (1244), Honorius IV (1286), John XXII (1320) and the anti-pope Benedict XIII (1415). Moreover, the Jewish prayers were expurgated and the erection of new synagogues was forbidden.

The civil laws expounded the ecclesiastical decrees and were inspired by them, as, e. g., the laws of Alfonso X of Castile, in the code of Siete Partidas, the dispositions of Saint Louis, those of Phillip IV, those of the German emperors and the Polish kings. The Jews were forbidden to appear in public on certain days; a personal toll was imposed upon them as if on cattle; they were sometimes forbidden to marry without authorization.

To the laws one must add the customs—vexatious customs—like that of Toulouse, which made the syndic of the Jews subject to boxing on the ear. The mob insulted them during their holidays and sabbaths; it profaned their cemeteries; on leaving the Mysteries and Passion plays it would lay their houses waste.

Not content with vexing them, with expelling them, as did Edward I in England (1287), Phillip IV and Charles VI in France (1306 and 1394), Ferdinand the Catholic in Spain (1492), they killed the Jews everywhere.

^1 Novellae, 146.

^1 Title XXIV.

^2 General Statute of Ladislas Jagellon. Art. XIX

When on their way to liberate the Holy Tomb, the Crusaders prepared themselves for the Holy War by the immolation of Jews; whenever the black plague or a famine raged, the Jews were sacrificed in holocaust to the angered divinity; whenever extortions, misery, hunger, destitution maddened the people, they would avenge themselves on the Jews, who were made victims of expiation. "What's the use of going to fight the Mohammedans," cried Pierre de Cluny, "when we have among us the Jews, who are worse than the Saracens?"

What was to be done against an epidemic unless to kill the Jews who conspired with the lepers to poison the wells? And so they were exterminated in York and London; in Spain at the instigation of St. Vincent Ferrer; in Italy, where John of Capistrano preached; in Poland, Bohemia, France, Moravia, Austria. They were burned in Strassburg, Mayence, Troyes. In Spain the Marranos mounted the scaffold by the thousands; elsewhere they were ripped open with pitchforks and scythes; they were beaten to death like dogs.

Surely the prophets who had called upon Judah—in punishment for his crimes—the terrible wrath of God, had never dreamed of more frightful misfortunes than those that befell him. When reading the Jewish martyrology, such as the Avignonian, Ha-Cohen,² lamented in the sixteenth century, the martyrology, which extends from Akiba, torn to pieces by iron curry-combs, on to the executed of Ancona praying in the flames, to the heroes

^1 Loc. cit.

^2 Emek-ha-Bacha, La Vallee des Pleurs. Translated by Julien See.

of Vitry who immolated themselves, one is overcome with pity. The Valley of Tears is the name of the book which sounded the call for mourning. "I have called it The Valley of Tears," says the ancient chronicler, "because it is the proper title for it. Whoever reads it will gasp for breath, his eyes will suffuse with tears, and with hands on his loins he will exclaim: 'How long, O my Lord?'"

Still, to understand exactly the position of the Jews

during these Dark Ages, one must compare it with that of the people surrounding them. The persecutions of the Jews would go on now that their exclusive character would render them more sorrowful. In the Middle Ages the proletarians and the peasants were not much better off; after being shaken up by terrible upheavals, the Jews would enjoy periods of comparative tranquillity, of which the serfs knew nothing. Steps were taken against them, but what steps were not taken against the Moriscoes, the Hussites, the Albigenses, the Pastoureaux, the Jacques, against the heretics and the outcasts? From the eleventh to the end of the sixteenth century, abominable years fell out, and the Jews suffered from it not a whit more than did those among whom they lived. They suffered for other reasons, and traces of it were left impressed in a different way. But as the manners had grown softer, hours of greater happiness for them were born. We shall see what changes the Reformation and the Renaissance were to bring about in their position.

CHAPTER VI.

ANTI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF THE REFORMATION
TILL THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.

the Schulchan Aruch; the Pilpul.—Jewish Reaction Against the Talmud.—Mardochee-Kolkos, Uriel Acosta, Spinoza.—Mendelssohn, the Meassef and the Jewish Emancipation.—Humanitarian Philosophy and the Jews.—The Social State and the Jews.—The Economic and the Political Objections.—Maury and Clermont-Tonnerre; Rewbel and Grégoire.—The Revolution.—The Appearance of the Jews in Society.

fined, at times illumed with passive sadness and sorrowful resignation. The number of those who had escaped
this abasement was very limited, and the Jews who succeeded in keeping a free brain and proud spirit were in
the lowest minority. These were mostly physicians, as
medicine is the only science permitted by the Talmud;
at the same time there were philosophers occasionally,
and we shall see the role they played in Italy during the
Renaissance. As for the mass of the Jews they had no
capabilities for anything outside of commerce and usury.
However, they had no rights whatever, no capacities, no
road was open to them, and the few paths which they
could still take were closed for them by their own doctors,
who thus acted as allies of the Christian legists.

These latter had been inspired in their work by the Church doctrines which Thomas Aquinas had expressed in such bold relief. Judaei sunt servi, the master said energetically; the law considered them in no other wise. Toward the end of the fifteenth century, the Jew had become the serf of the Imperial Chamber in Germany; in France he was the king's serf, the serf of the lord, less even than a serf, for a serf could still own something, while a Jew in reality had no property; he was a thing rather than a person. The king and the lord, the bishop or the abbot, could dispose of all his belongings, i. e., of all that seemed to belong to him, since for him the possibility of owning was purely fictitious. He was taxable at will; he was subjected to fixed imposts, without prejudice to confiscations, and while, on the one hand, the Church was making exery effort to attract to it the Jew, on the other hand, the baron and church dignitaries kept

him in his condition. If he turned to Christianity he lost his possessions in favor of the lord, who was anxious to make good the loss of the taxes which he could no longer levy on the convert, and thus it was to his interest to remain in the slaves' prison. He was looked upon as a beast, impure and useful at that, as lower than a dog or hog, to which the personal toll likened him, however; he was the one forever accursed, he upon whom it was lawful, even meritorious, to shower the blows which the Crucified had received in Pilate's pretorium.

The only country where the Jews could claim the dignity of human beings was closed to them at the opening of the sixteenth century. The capture of Granada and the conquest of the Moorish Kingdom had deprived the Jews of their last refuge. The whole of Spain became Christian on the day (January 2, 1492) when Ferdinand and Isabella entered the Mohammedan city. The holy war of the Spaniards against the infidels ended victoriously, and the Moors in existence were cruelly persecuted in spite of the security which had been granted them. The victory having aroused on the one hand fanaticism, and the national sentiment on the other, Spain, now free from the Moors, wished to get rid of the Jews, whom the Catholic king and queen expelled the very year of Boabdil's fall, while the Inquisition doubled the severities against the Marranos and the descendants of the Moriscoes.

Still, the time of great sorrows had passed for the Jews, notwithstanding that the circumstances to which they had been reduced were lamentable. They began to descend the hill which they had so laboriously climbed,

and if they found as yet no complete security in their paths, they met with more humaneness, more pity. The manners soften at this epoch, the souls become less rude, people actually acquire the idea of a human being; this age when individualism increases, better understands the individuals; while personality develops, more tenderness is displayed towards the personality of the other.

The Jews felt the effects of this state of mind. They were despised all the same, but they were hated in a less violent way. It was still sought to attract them to Christianity, but that was by persuasion. They were banished from a good many cities and countries; they were driven from Cologne and Bohemia in the sixteenth century; the trade-bodies of Frankfort and Worms, led by Vincent Fettmilch, forced them to leave those cities; but as serfs of the Imperial Chamber, they were efficiently protected by their suzerain. If Leopold I sent them out of Vienna, if later on Maria Theresa expelled them from Moravia, these decrees of exile had but a temporary effect, their consequences were felt but for a short time; and when the Jews re-entered the cities by virtue of undoubted tolerance, they were not molested. The massacres of Franconia and Moravia, the funeral piles of Prague, were exceptions in the sixteenth century, and as for the extermination ordered in Poland by Chmielnicki, in the seventeenth century, they reached the Jews by ricochet only.

Hereafter there have been no systematic persecutions, except those kept up in Spain against the Jewish converts, and in Portugal when introduced by the Pope

Clement VII, at the request of John III, and after the massacres of 1506. Even there the inquisition was intrusted to the Franciscans, who had showed themselves less cruel than the Spanish Dominicans.

Animated by such sentiments, the men of this period could not glow with religious indignation against the Jews. Other preoccupations engaged them, though, and they had to abate two powerful authorities—scholasticism and the supremacy of Rome. The struggles of the preceding century, the schism of the West, the license in the

manners of the clergy, simony, the sale of benefices and indulgences, all these had weakened the Church and impaired the Papacy. There were protests rising against them on all sides. The authority of councils was being proclaimed above that of the pope. A distinction was made between the Universal Church, which was infallible, and the Roman Church, which was liable to error. The seculars and the regulars were in dispute, voices were heard demanding change. "The clergy must be made moral," said the Father of the Vienna Synod (1311). After them, it was declared that it was necessary to reform "the head and the limbs." The movement of the Hussites, that of the Frerots, the Fraticellians, the Beghards, had already been a protest against the wealth and corruption of the Church; but Papacy was incapable of reform, and the Reformation had to take place outside of and against it.

The Humanists were its promoters. Everything turned them away from Catholicism. The Greeks of Constantinople, fleeing from the Turks, had brought to them the treasures of the ancient literatures. By discovering a new world Columbus was to open for them unknown horizons. They were finding new reasons for combatting scholasticism, that oldservant-maid of the Church. The humanists were becoming skeptics and pagans in Italy, but in Germany the emancipating movement which they helped to bring about was becoming more religious. To beat the scholastics the humanists of the empire became theologians, and went to the very sources in order to arm themselves better; they learned Hebrew, not as Pico di Mirandola and the Italians had

done, in the way of a dilettant or out of love for knowledge, but in order to find therein arguments against their opponents.

During these years which ushered in the Reformation, the Jew turned educator, and taught the scholars Hebrew; he initiated them into the mysteries of the kabbala after having opened to them the doors of Arabic philosophy. Against Catholicism he equipped them with the formidable exegesis which the rabbis had cultivated and built up during centuries: the exegesis which protestantism, and later on rationalism, would make good use of. By a singular chance the Jews, who had consciously or unconsciously supplied humanism with weapons, had also given it the pretext for its first serious battle. The contest for or against the Talmud was the forerunner of the disputes over the Eucharist.

The struggle started at Cologne, the city of the inquisition and capital of the Dominicans. A converted Jew, Joseph Pfefferkorn, once more denounced the Talmud before the Christian world, and, with the aid of the great inquisitor, Hochstraten, obtained from the Emperor Maximilian an edict authorizing him to examine the contents of the Jewish books and destroy those which blasphemed the Bible and the Catholic faith. From this decision the Jews appealed to Maximilian, and succeeded in having the power originally conferred upon Pfefferkorn transferred to the archbishop elector of Mayence. As his advisors the archbishop took the doctors, the humanists, and among them Reuchlin, who felt no unbounded sympathy for the Jews, having even attacked them once upon a time. But though he scorned the Jews

in general, he was a hebraizer for all that, and as such was doubtless more interested in the Talmud than in the inquisitorial tribunal with its arrests. He, therefore, violently fought the projects of Pfefferkorn and the Dominicans, and not only declared that the books of the Israelites ought to be preserved, but even maintained that chairs of Hebrew ought to be created in the universities. Reuchlin was accused of having sold himself for the gold of the Jews. He replied with a terrible pamphlet, The Mirror of the Eyes, which was condemned to be burned. Thenceforth the Jews, who were the original cause of the debate, were forgotten, the humanists and Dominicans alone occupied the stage, and the latter being given their final blow by the Letters of Obscurantists, were condemned by the archbishop of Speyer and deserted by the pope, who, a few years previous, had granted the Antwerp printers the privilege of printing the Talmud.

But new times were approaching; the storm foreseen by everybody broke over the Church. Luther issued at Wittenberg his ninety-five theses, and Catholicism not only had to defend the position of its priests, but was also forced to fight for its essential tenets. For a moment the theologians forgot the Jews, they even forgot that the spreading movement took its roots in Hebrew sources. Nevertheless, the Reformation in Germany and England as well was one of those movements when Christianity acquired new force in Jewish sources. The Jewish spirit triumphed with Protestantism. In certain respects the Reformation was a return to the ancient Ebionism of the evangelic ages. A great portion of the protestant sects was semi-Jewish, the anti-trinitarian

doctrines were later preached by the protestants, by Michel Servet and the two Socins of Sienna among others. Even in Transylvania anti-trinitarianism had flourished since the sixteenth century, and Seidelius had asserted the excellence of Judaism and of the Decalogue. The Gospels had been abandoned for the Old Testament and the Apocalypse. The influence exercised by these two books over the Lutherans, the Calvinists and especially the Reformers and the English revolutionists, is well known. This influence continued to the nineteenth century; it produced the Methodists, Pietists, and particularly the Millenaries, the men of the Fifth Monarchy, who in London dreamed with Venner of a republic and allied themselves with the Levellers of John Lilburne.

Moreover, Protestantism, at its inception in Germany, endeavored to win over the Jews, and in this respect, the analogy between Luther and Mohammed is striking. Both had drawn their teachings from Hebrew sources, both wished to have the remains of Israel stamp with approval the new dogmas which they were formulating. This, in fact, presents the by no means least curious side of this nation's history. While detested, despised, humiliated, spat upon and bespattered, outraged, martyred, locked up and beaten, the Jew is still the one from whom Catholicism expects the ultimate reign of Jesus; the Church hopes for and demands the return of the Jews, which, for the Church, would mean the supreme testimony of the truth of its beliefs, and it is to the Jews, too, that the Lutherans and Calvinists appeal for it. It seems even as if the latter would have been completely con-

vinced of the justice of their cause had the sons of Jacob come to them. But the Jews had always been the stubborn people of the Scriptures, the people with the hard nape, rebellious against injunctions, tenacious, fearlessly faithful to its God and its Law.

Luther's preaching proved vain, and the irascible monk issued a terrible pamphlet against the Jews.¹ "The Jews are brutes," he said; "their synagogues are pigsties, they ought to be burned, for Moses would do it, if he came back to this world. They drag in mire the divine words, they live by evil and plunders, they are wicked beasts that ought to be driven out like mad dogs."

In spite of these violent outbursts and excitement, in spite of the numerous controversies, which had taken place between the protestants and Jews, the latter were not ill-treated in Germany; people had no spare time to busy themselves with them. On the one hand, the Lutherans and Calvinists had their hands full with controversies among themselves; the discussions over the Eucharist, the impanation and invination over the trinity and the nature of Christ, sufficiently engaged their minds, and the sects were so numerous—Crypto-calvinists and Antinomists, Adiaphorists and Majorists, Osiandrists and Synergists, Memnonites and Synerchists, etc.—that the struggle of one with the other had to absorb all their activity. On the other hand, the social and religious conditions had quite changed, and this change was advantageous to the Jews, who saw other preoccupations keep their enemies busy.

Overwhelmed with miseries, decimated by war, ruined,

^1 The Jews and their Lies. Wittenberg, 1558.

reduced to slavery, a prey to destitution and famine, the peasants of the sixteenth century no longer went for the Jewish money-lender or the Christian usurer, but they aimed higher; they attacked in the first place a whole class—of the rich—and then the social order as a whole. The revolt was general; at first it was the peasants of the Netherlands, then, and chiefly, those of Germany. All over the Empire they founded secret societies, the Bundschuh, the Poor Conrad, the Evangelic Confederation. The peasants of Speyer and of the banks of the Rhine rose in 1503; the bands of Joss Fritz, in 1512; the peasants of Austria and Hungary, in 1515; those of Suabia, in 1524; those of Suabia, Alsace and the Palatinate, in 1525. All marched with the battle cry: "In Christ there is no longer master or slave." The tradesmen joined them; knights, like Goetz von Berlichingen, placed themselves at their head, and they massacred the nobles and set the castles and convents on fire.

Munzer went even further; he fought not only against the barons, bishops and the rich, those "Kings of Moab," but also against the very principle of authority. "No more authority," he cried, "but that which is accepted and freely chosen." In the code of twelve articles which he edited, he wanted the enfranchisement of the serfs, and when he mounted the scaffold on having lost the battle of Frankenstein, he testified that it had been his desire to "establish equality in Christendom; that all things should be common and each and all have according to need." The twelve articles were translated into French, and were spread abroad in Lorraine, where the

^1 The confederate shoe.

peasants rose up, too, at the moment when Hutter and Gabriel Scherding were going to establish the communities of Moravia, when anabaptism was spreading in Switzerland, in Bohemia and in the Netherlands. In this formidable movement which convulsed a part of Europe until 1535, everywhere leaving deep traces, the Jews had been neglected, they had ceased to be the scapegoat, and the poor wretches, famished and miserable, no longer fell upon them.

Were they as happy in the Catholic countries? Yes, for there, too, they ceased to be the chief and sole enemies of the Church, and it was no longer they that were feared.

The Protestants made people forget the Jews; the Protestants' existence threatened the ancient conception of the Catholic State, and this secular conception brought upon the Protestants of France, Italy and Spain persecutions identical with those which the Jews had once undergone.

Still, after the council of Trent, the reformed papacy once more turned to the Jews. The relaxation of religious ideas brought in Italy a rapprochement between a certain class of Jews and the various classes of society. First, the humanists, the poets, visited the Jewish scholars, philosophers and physicians. This familiarity had begun in the fourteenth century, when Dante was seen to have for his friend the Jew Manoello, the cousin of the philosopher Giuda Romano; it continued in the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries. Alemani was the teacher of Picondi Mirandola, Elias del Medigo publicly taught metaphysics in Padua and Florence, Leo the Hebrew

^1 Abraham de Balmes translated into Latin the greatest part of Averroes's writings, and his translations were in use in the Italian universities until the end of the seventeenth century.

Azael, and, in 1676, Innocent XI threatened with excommunication and a fine of fifteen ducats those who frequented the synagogues. Did then the popes still fear the Jewish influence over their believers? After the terrible shock which had just disturbed the Church, they more than ever wished to guarantee security to the Catholic dogma. "The Talmud might be upheld," the Council of Trent decreed, "if the wrong it contains were removed; for portions of the Talmud can serve to defend the faith and to prove to the Jews their obstinacy." The popes were of a different opinion. Julius III had the Talmud burned in Rome and Venice upon denunciation by Solomon Romano, a converted Jew; Paul IV condemned it again at the request of another convert, Vittorio Eliano; Pius V and Clement VIII did likewise.

During the dogmatic and theological reaction which followed the Reformation, the Roman Church, friendly to the Jews heretofore, came to be the only government, almost the only power, systematically to persecute Judaism. Paul IV revived the ancient canonic laws and had the Marranos burned; Pius V banished the Jews from his domains, except from Rome and Ancona, after having issued his Constitution against the Jews, while the Spaniards, as they penetrated further into Italy, were driving them from Naples, Genoa and Milan.

Another concern engaged the Church at all events. To persecute the Jews and burn their books was good; to convert them was better. This had been the constant preoccupation of the theologians, christian doctors and the fathers. In the fifteenth century, the councils were

busying themselves with the conversion of the Jews. The Basel Council had ordered preaching to the Jews in Germany, and granted important privileges to the converts. The popes of the sixteenth century compelled the Jews to attend certain sermons and there had the good word preached to them by their own apostates. A third of the Jews of Rome had to be present in turn at the sermons. And while Sadolet was limiting at Avignon the pontifical privileges accorded the Jews, while a tax of ten ducats per year was levied on synagogues for the instruction of those who intended to abjure Judaism, Paul IV was building houses of refuge where catechumens were fed, dressed and cared for.

The other sovereigns had not the same motives as the popes to attend to the Jews. And so, from the sixteenth century on, legislation against the Jews ceased. We find only the edict of Ferdinand I against Jewish usury—in Germany; a few decrees in Poland, and much later, the prohibitions of Louis XV and Louis XVI. Again to find anti-Jewish legislation, it will be necessary to study modern Russia, Rumania and Servia, which we shall shortly do.

Anti-Judaism consisted chiefly in molestations and outrages. The populace delighted in jeering the Jews, and the grandees often gave them a chance to do it. Leo X, that ostentatious pontiff, who was fond of buffoonery—he had at his side two monks to divert him with their pleasantries—would order races between Jews, and, being very shortsighted, would watch them, glass in hand, from the heights of his balconies. During the carnival in Rome the people would parody the burial of rabbis, and

a Jew would be marched through the city streets, mounted backward on a donkey and holding the animal's tail in his hand. On the ghetto-gates a sow was carved, and they were often covered with obscene groups, in which rabbis were represented. The sow symbolized the synagogue—exactly as with the Israelites the Roman Church was designated by the Hebrew name for hogand the Jews were constantly reminded of it; a painter once even related at Wagenseil how he had painted a sow on the door-leaf of the arch of a synagogue which he was engaged to adorn.

With the scholars, the learned and the theologians, anti-Judaism was becoming dogmatic and theoretical. True they wanted to bring the Jews back, but by soft measures. It was no longer a question of burning their books, but of translating them. It was said that now that the Christian faith had struck deep enough roots, there was no danger to believers from publishing Hebrew books, as had been done in the case of those of the

^1 E. Rodocanachi: Le Saint-Siege et les Juifs. Paris, 1891.

² Luther: Tractatus de Schemhamphorasch. Altenburg (Opera, V. VIII). These obscene groups were called Schemhamephorasch. Its origin is as follows: these words Schemhamephorasch mean "the name of God distinctly pronounced, the quadriliteral name written and read with the four letters: yod, he, wau, he." (Munk, Translation of the Guide of the Perplexed, v. I, p. 267, note 3). This is the name of which Maimonides says: "Before the creation of the world there were but the Most Holy One and His Name only." (Guide of the Perplexed, v. I, ch. 61). This was the mysterious name; a magic power was ascribed to it, and the rabbis dressed up as magicians, who were represented on the groups I have just mentioned, were understood to reveal the Name to the sow. Hence the appellation Schemhamephorasch.

Arians and other heretics. Thus it would be possible to know the polemic practices of the Israelites, and it would thus be possible successfully to combat them.

^1 On this point consult Duguet, Regles pour l'intelligence des Saintes Ecri ures, 1723. Bossuet, Discours sur l'Histoire universette, part II. Rondet, Dissertation sur le rappel des Juifs, Paris, 1778. Anonymous, Lettre sur le provche retour des Juifs, Paris, 1789, etc.

^2 Gregoire, Histoire des sectes religieuses, v. II (Paris, 1825).

until our days, and in 1809 President Agier fixed upon 1849 as the year of the conversion of the Jews.

All over Europe the Jews enjoyed the greatest tranquillity during the eighteenth century. In Poland alone they fared badly for having once lived too well. They had been prosperous there up to the middle of the seventeenth century. Rich, powerful, they had lived on an equal footing with the Christians, treated as though of the people amid whom they lived; but they could not help giving themselves up to their usual commerce, their vices, their passion for gold. Dominated by the Talmudists they succeeded in producing nothing beyond commentators of the Talmud. They were tax collectors, spirit—distillers, usurers, seigneurial stewards. They were the noblemen's allies in their abominable work of oppression, and when the Cossacks of Ukraina and Little Russia had risen, under Chmielnicki, against Polish tyranny, the Jews, as accomplices of the lords, were the first to be massacred. It is said that over 100,000 of them were killed in ten years, but just as many Catholics and especially Jesuits, were killed as well.

Elsewhere they were very prosperous. Thus, in the Ottoman Empire, they were simply liable to the tax on foreigners and subject to no other restrictive regulations, but nowhere was their prosperity so great as in the Netherlands and England. Marranos fleeing the Spanish Inquisition had settled in the Netherlands in 1593, and thence settled a colony in Hamburg, then, later on, under Cromwell, one in England, whence they had been banished for centuries and whither Menasse-ben-Israel brought them back. The Dutch, as practical and cir-

cumspect a people as the English, utilized the commercial genius of the Jews and turned it to their own enrichment. Besides, indisputable affinities existed between the spirit of these nations and the Jewish spirit, between the Israelite and the positive Dutchman or the Englishman, whose character, as Emerson says, can be brought to an irreducible dualism, which makes his nation one of greatest dreamers and most practical people, a thing which may be said of Jews as well.

In France Henry II. had authorized the Portuguese Jews to settle in Bordeaux, where, on the strength of the granted privileges, confirmed also by Henry III., Louis XIV., Louis XV. and Louis XVI., they acquired great wealth in maritime commerce.

In the other cities of France there were few of them, and, besides, those residing in Paris or elsewhere had settled there only because of the administrative tolerance. In Alsace alone there was a great agglomeration.

Their splendid condition provoked no violent demonstrations; now and then protests would be heard, they would say with Expilly: "With infinite grief one sees how such base people, who had been received in the capacity of slaves, possess costly furniture, lead a refined life, wear gold and silver on their garments, dress showily, perfume themselves, study instrumental and vocal music and ride horseback for mere diversion." At the same time, greater and greater toleration was shown them from day to day; the world was drawing nearer to them. Were they, in turn, drawing nearer to the world? No. They seemed more and more to attach themselves to their mystic patriotism; the further they went, the

These hopes which the illuminism of the Kabbalists entertained, helped to keep the Jews apart, but those who were not seduced by the speculations of dreamers, were weighed down by the yoke of the Talmud, a yoke at all events even ruder and more humiliating. So far from decreasing, the Talmudic tyranny had even increased since the sixteenth century. At this time Joseph Caro had edited the Shulchan Aruch, a Talmudic code,

^1 Peter Beer, Le Judaisme et ses Sectes.

which—according to the traditions inculcated by the rabbinists—set up as laws the opinions of the doctors. Up to our time the European Jews had lived under the execrable oppression of these practices.¹ The Polish Jews improved even upon Joseph Caro and refined the already enormous subtleties of the Shulchan Aruch by making additions thereto, and they introduced the method of Pilpul (pepper-grains) into their instruction.

Accordingly, as the world grew kinder to them, the Jews—at least the masses—retired into themselves, straitened their prison, bound themselves with tighter bonds. Their decrepitude was unheard of, their intellectual sinking was equalled only by their moral debasement; this nation seemed dead.

However, the reaction against the Talmud had proceeded from the Jews themselves. Mordecai Kolkos, 1721.

of Venice, had already published a book against the Mishna; in the seventeenth century, Uriel Acosta³ violently fought the rabbis, and Spinoza⁴ exhibited little affection for them. But anti-talmudism displayed itself particularly in the eighteenth century, at first among the mystics, such as, e. g., the Zoharites, disciples of Franck, who declared themselves enemies of the doctors of the law. At any rate these opponents of the rabbanites were unable to extricate the Jews from their abjection. To begin this task, it was necessary for Moses

^1 In Russia, Poland and Galicia they are extant even to-day.

^* Exemplar vitae humanae. (Published by Limbroch, 1687),

^4 Tractatus Theologico.-Politicus.

Mendelssohn, a Jew and philosopher at the same time, to array the Bible against the Talmud. His German version (1779)—was a great revolution. It was the first blow dealt to the rabbinical authority. The Talmudists, too, who had once wished to kill Kolkos and Spinoza, violently attacked Mendelssohn, and prohibited, under penalty of excommunication, to read the Bible which he had translated.

These outbursts of rage were of no avail. Mendels-sohn had followers: young men, his disciples, founded the periodical Meassef, which advocated the new Judaism, endeavored to snatch the Jews from their ignorance and humiliation, and prepared their moral emancipation. As for political emancipation, the humanitarian philosophy of the eighteenth century was working hard to bring it about. Though Voltaire was an ardent Judoephobe, the ideas which he and the Encyclopaedists represented were not hostile to the Jews, as being ideas of liberty and universal equality. On the other hand, if the Jews really were isolated in the various states, they still had some points of contact with those surrounding them.

Capitalism had by this time developed among the nations; stock-jobbing and speculation were born; the Christian financiers applied themselves to them with a zeal, just as they had applied themselves to usury, just as they had, in the capacity of farmers-general, collected imposts and taxes. The Jews could, therefore, take their place among those whom "discounts were enriching at the public's expense, and who were masters of all pos-

sessions of the French of all classes," as already Saint Simon was saying.

The economic objections which were raised against their possible emancipation had no longer the same import as in the Middle Ages, when the church wanted to make the Jews the only representatives of the class of money-brokers. As for the political objections, that they formed a State within the State, that their presence as citizens could not be tolerated in a Christian society and was even injurious to it, they remained valid until the day when the French Revolution dealt its direct blow to the conception of a Christian State. And so Dohm, Mirabeau, Clermont-Tonnerre, the Abbot Grégoire were right with regard to Rewbel, Maury and the Prince de Broglie, and the Constituent Assembly obeyed the spirit which had guided it since its inception when it declared on September 27, 1791, that the Jews would enjoy in France the rights of actual citizens. The Jews were on the threshold to society.

CHAPTER VII.

ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES.

Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut.—Jewish Polemic Literature in Spain in the Fifteenth Century.— Anti-Christianity.—Chasdai Crescas and Joseph Ibn Shem Tob.—The Attacks Against the New Testament.—The Nizzachon and The Book of Joseph the Zealot.—The Toldoth Jesho.—Attacks Against the Apostates.—Isaac Pulgar, Don Vidal Ibn Labi.—Transformation of Scriptural Anti-Judaism in the Seventeenth Century.—The Converters.—The Hebraizers and the Exegetists: Buxtorf and Richard Simon.—Wagenseil, Voetius, Bartolocci.—Eisenmenger.—John Dury.—The Relationship and Similarity of Anti-Jewish Works. The Imitators.—The Ancient Literary Anti-Judaism and the Modern Antisemitism.—Their Affinities.

We have studied only the legal and the popular anti-Judaism from the eighth century to the French Revolution. We have seen how anti-Jewish legislation, at first canonic and later civil, was little by little instituted. We have shown how the populace had been partly prepared by the decrees of the popes, kings and republics, to hate and abuse the Jews, and how far this exasperation of the people, the massacres it committed, the insults and outrages it showered, had given the counter-blow to this legislation. We have shown that up to the fifteenth century, the accusations weighing over the Jews, had grown each year, so that they had reached their maximum at this period, and from then on went decreasing, that the codes had ceased to be applied rigorously, that customs had gradually fallen into disuse, that few, if at all, new laws were made, and that the Jew thus marched towards liberation.

However, there is a kind of anti-Judaism to which we have paid no special attention, and which we must hereafter examine. While the Church and the monarchies issued laws against the Jews, the theologians, philosophers, poets, and historians were writing about them. It is the role, the working and the importance of this anti-Judaism of the pen that we still have to examine.

It was not born under the same influences; diverse causes engendered it, and according to these causes it was theological or social, dogmatic or even polemic. Not that all these anti-Jewish writings can be classified under one category to the exclusion of any other; on the contrary, there are few of them that can be referred exclusively to one of these types, and yet, according to their principal tendency, they can be registered under one of the rubrics that I have just indicated. Theological anti-Judaism alone has produced clearly cut works, written without social cares, and these works, however little characteristic they may be, may be dogmatic and polemic at the same time.

Theological anti-Judaism, chronologically the first, naturally had apologetic ways at its inception; it could not be otherwise as Judaism was fought only to glorify the Christian faith and prove its excellence. As we have said, they ceased producing apologetic writings towards the end of the fourth century; the young church, in the intoxication of its triumph, did no longer think it necessary to prove its superiority, and as representatives of

the apologetic manner, we find in the fifth century only the Altercation of Simon and Theopilus of Evagrivs, in which the Altercation of Jason and Papiscus of Aristo of Pella was imitated and even plagiarized; after that one has to come to the seventh century to find the three books of Isidore of Seville directed against the Jews.²

When scholasticism was born, apologetics reappeared. Scholasticism from its very start was a servant-maid of the dogma, but a reasoning servant that attempted to explain the Trinity metaphysically, and the discussions on nominalism and realism were of such importance during the Middle Ages, only because these two theories were applied to the interpretation of the Trinity. The whole of metaphysics of this time turned around the nature and divinity of Christ. Hence the importance for the scholastic theologians of defending this divinity against those even who denied it; and were not the Jews just those whose denial was most stubborn? It was necessary, therefore, to convince these obstinates, and thus the apologies sprang up again, and all or nearly all of them were addressed to the Jews.

They had two ends in view: they defended the Catholic dogmas and symbols, and they combatted Judaism. They set themselves against that judaizing which the church, its doctors, philosophers and apologists had always feared, imagining the Jew as a sort of wolf that prowled around the sheep-fold in order to carry the sheep away from a happy life. These were the senti-

^1 Consult the Spicilegium of Achery, vols. X and XV

^2 Isidore of Seville, De Fide Catholica ex vetere et novo Testamento contra Judaeos (Opera, vol. VII). Migne, P. L., lxxxiii

ments that guided, e. g., Cedrenus¹ and Theophanes² when they wrote their ontra Judaeos, and Gilbert Crépin, abbot of Westminster, in his Disputatio Judei cum Christiano de fide Christiana.³

The form of these writings was little varied; they reproduced almost servilely the classic arguments of the Fathers of the Church, and their wording followed similar patterns. To analyze one of them means analyzing all. Thus, e. g., Pierre de Blois's Against the Perfidy of the Jews,⁴ enumerated through thirty chapters the testimonies which the Old Testament, and especially the prophets, contain in favor of the divine Trinity and Unity, of the Father and the Son, of the Holy Spirit, of the Messianism of Jesus Christ, of the Davidic descent of the Son of Man, and of his incarnation. He ended by proving, on the basis of the same authorities, that the Law had been transmitted to the Gentiles, that the Jews had been doomed to reprobation, but that the remnants of Israel would nevertheless one day be converted and saved. Guibert de Nogent, in his De Incarnatione adversus Judaeos,⁶ Rupert in his Annulus sivedialogus inter Christianum et Judeum de fidei sacramentis;¹ Alain de Lille in his De Fide Catholica;² many others to enumerate whom would be tiresome, proceeded in the

^1Disputatio contra Judacos. Opera, Editio Basileensis, p. 180.

^2 Contra Judaeos. Lib. VI.

^3 Migne, P. L., Ch. IX.

^4 Liber contra pérfidia Tudaeorum. Opera, Paris, 1519.

^5 Opera, Paris, 1651.

^1 Migne, P. L., CLXX.

^2 Migne, P. L., CCX.

same way, developing the same arguments, dwelling upon the same texts, resorting to the same interpretations. As a whole, all this literature was one of extreme mediocrity; I know little that is more inane, and Anselm of Canterbury himself failed to make it more interesting when he composed his De Fide seu de Incarnatione verbis contra Judaeos.

The dominican Raymond de Penaforte, confessor of James I. of Aragon, and a great converter of the Jews, bade the Dominicans to learn Hebrew and Arabic to be

able better to persuade and battle with the Jews. He established schools for the instruction of monks in these two languages and was the pioneer of Hebrew and Arabic studies in Spain. He thus started a line of apologists who were no longer contented with collecting the passages of the Old Testament that foreshadowed the Trinity or prophesied the Messiah, but who endeavored to refute the rabbinical books and Talmudic assertions.

All these shields, ramparts, strongholds of faith, a host of treatises and demonstrations, came from this movement. In these pamphlets the Jews were "slain with their own glaive," "pierced with their own sword," i. e., they were being convinced of their ignominy and convicted of falsehoods by means of their own argumentation, such as the monks found it, or at least thought they found it, in the Talmud.

The best known among all these theological lampoons are those published by the dominican Raymund Martin, "a man as remarkable for his knowledge of Hebrew and Arabic writings as for that of Latin works." These squibs bear characteristic enough titles: Capistrum Judaeorum (Muzzle of the Jews) and Pugio Fidei (Dagger of the Faith). The second had the greatest circulation. "It is well," Raymund Martin said therein, "that the Christians take in hand the sword of their enemies, the Jews, to strike them with it?" Starting

^1 Augustin Giustiniani, Linguae Hebreae (1656).

^2 Pugio Fidei (Paris, 1651). (Cf. Quetif, Bibl. Scriptorum dominicanorum, v. I, p. 396, and the edition of Carpzon, Leipzig, 1687).

thence and with this very wide-spread notion that God had given Moses an oral law as commentary to the written law and containing the revelation of the Trinity and the divinity of Jesus, Martin tried to prove, by means of Biblical, Talmudic and Kabbalistic texts, that the Messiah had come and that the tenets of Catholicism were irrefutable. In two chapters,³ he simultaneously fell upon Judaism, which he represented as reprobate and abominable.

During the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the Pugio Fidei was quite in vogue among the monks, especially the Dominicans, ardent defenders of the faith. It was studied, consulted, plagiarized. The number of writings which were inspired by Raymund Martin and for which the Pugio Fidei served as the prototype and even mould, was considerable. Among others those of Porchet Salvaticus, Pierre de Barcelona, and Pietro Galatini may be named.

Still even Martin's knowledge was not perfect, and as we shall presently see, the rabbis very often worsted their opponents in their controversies. The anti-Jews needed better weapons: the Franciscan, Nicholasde Lyra, supplied them. He had made a careful study of rabbinical literature, and his hebraic attainments, their extent, variety and solidity led to the belief that he was

^3 Chh. XXI-XXII, de Reprobatione et Factore doctrinae Inudaeorum.

^1 Victoria adversus impios Hebreos et sacris litteris (Paris, 1629). Wolf, Bibl. Hebr. v. I, p. 1124.

^2 Consult Fabricius, Bibliotheca Latina, on Peter of Barcelona (Petrus Barcinonensis).

^3 De Arcanis catholicae veritatis libris (Sorcino, 1518).

of Jewish origin, which is of little probability. At all events, he was the precursor of modern exegesis, which is the daughter of Jewish thought and whose rationalism is purely Jewish; he was the ancestor of Richard Simon. Nicholas de Lyra declared that the literal explanation of the text of the Scriptures should form the foundation of ecclesiastic science, and that the text and its meaning once established four meanings should be derived therefrom: the literal, allegoric, moral and anagogic. Nicholas de Lyra expounded his researches in the Postilla and the Moralitates, collected and recast later into a larger work. Hereafter this was the arsenal to draw upon in the polemics against the Jews, as well as for the defense of the Gospels against the Jewish attacks, for Nicholas de Lyra had refuted, in his De Messia, the criticisms passed on the Old Testament by the Jews. Numerous editions of Nicholas de Lyra's works appeared, commentaries, notes and additious thereto were made, and in the matter of exegesis even Luther was his pupil.

But praiseworthy as it was to combat the Jews, it was still more meritorious to convince them, and most of the polemist monks did not forget that the conversion of

^4 Throughout the Middle Ages they believed in this fourfold meaning of the Scriptures, and the following distict expressed its import:

Littera gesta doect, quid credas, allegoria; Moralis, quid agass quo tendas anagogia.

^5 Postillae perpetuae in universa Biblia (Rome, 1471, vol. 5.)

^1 Dc Messia, eiusque adventu praeterito tractatus una cum responsione ad Judaei argumenta XIV contra veritatem evan geliorum (Venice, 1481).

A host of sentiments united in maintaining this bilious disposition among the apostates. Above all they wished to give proof of their sincerity: they felt that a sort of suspicion surrounded them at entering into the Christian world, and the affectation of piety which they proclaimed did not seem sufficient to them to dispel the suspicions.

Nothing did they fear so much as the accusation of lukewarmness or sympathy with their former brethren, and the way in which the Inquisition treated those it

^1 For the antisemitic literature of the Jewish apostates consult Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., v. I.

^1 Via della Fede (Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., p. 1010).

^* Treatise on the Confusion of the Jews. (Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., p. 1010).

baptized along with his brother and four of his sons. He studied theology at Paris, was ordained priest, became bishop of Cartagena and afterwards chancellor of Castile. He published an Examination of the Holy Writ,—a dialogue between the infidel Saül and the convert Paul,—and issued an edition of Nicholas de Lyra's Postilla, supplemented by his Additiones and glosses. He did not stop at that in his activity. He is generally found the instigator in all the persecutions which befell the Jews of his time, and he hunted the synagogue with a ferocious hatred; and yet in his works he confined himself to theologic polemics.¹

But not all converts were like Paul de Santa-Maria. To believe Poggio who had learned Hebrew from a baptized Jew, they were, generally speaking, little educated, and of mediocre intelligence: "Stupid,' say he, "crazy and ignorant as are, as a rule, the Jews who baptize." This class of catechumens proved itself the most spiteful. Those, however, who constituted it, were provoked by their coreligionists, who bitterly hated their apostates and missed no opportunity to abuse them, so that numerous laws had to be promulgated forbidding the Jews to throw stones at the renegades and soil their clothes with oil and fetid liquids. When unable to maltreat them the Jews would insult and rail at the converts. The new Christians replied to these insults by publishing satires on the rabbis, as did Don Pedro Ferrus and Diego of Valencia, or by abusing their opponents in bulky dogmatic treatises, in the manner of Victor de

^1 Cf. Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., I, p. 1004; and Joseph Rodriguez de Castro, Bibliotheca espanola (Madrid, 1781), vol. I, p. 235.

Carben.² They did not forget to resort to theologic demonstration, but often preferred invention and even calumny. At times they would unite both methods, as in the case of Alfonso of Valladolid (Abner of Burgos), who published simultaneously concordances of the law and treatises of violent polemics: the Book of God's Battles and the Mirror of Justice 1.)

But the Talmud was the great antagonist of the converts, and one that had to withstand most of their wrath. They constantly denounced it before the inquisitors, the king, the emperor, the pope. The Talmud was the execrable book, the receptacle of the most hideous abuses of Jesus, the Trinity and the Christians; against it Pedro de la Caballeria wrote his Wrath of Christ Against the Jews,² Pfefferkorn, his Enemy of the Jews,³ in which he congratulated himself upon "having withdrawn from the dirty and pestilential mire of the Jews," and Jerome of Santa Fé, his Hebreomastyx.⁴ The Catholic theologians followed the example of the converts, most frequently they had about the Talmud no other notions beyond those given them by the converts.

Usually auto-da-fés followed these denunciations of the Talmud, but they were, as a rule, preceded by a dis-

^2 Three treatises against the Jews 1. Propugnaculum fidei christianae (1510); 2. Judaeorum erroris et moris (Cologne, 1509); 3. De vita et moribus Judaeorum (Paris, 1511). Cf. Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., v. IV, p. 578.

^1 Bibliotheque Nationale, manuscript of Spanish origin, No. 43; cf. Isidore Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, v. XVIII).

^2 Tractatus Zelus christi contra Judaeos, Saracenos et infideles (Venice, 1542).

^3 Hostis Judaeorum (Cologne, 1509).

⁴ Hebreomastyx (Frankfort, 1601)

^1 Juda Hallevy, Liber Cosri. Translated by John Buxtorf, Jr., 1660—a German translation with an introduction was published by H. Jolowicz and D. Cassel, Das Buch Kuzari, 1841, 1853.

"Never let your zeal carry you away to the point of uttering stinging words, for the Christians hold the power and may silence the truth with fist-blows." These counsels were followed, but in spite of the precautions taken, at the end of the argument the Jew, who was always wrong in the end, was beaten to death.

However, the informers were usually commanded to sustain their charges. In 1239, a converted Jew, Nicholas Donin of La Rochelle, brought before the pope, Gregory IX., a charge against the Talmud. Gregory ordered the copies of the book to be seized and an inquest made. Bulls were sent out to the bishops of France, England, Castile and Aragon. Eudes de Chateauroux, chancellor of the University of Paris, directed the investigation in France, the only country where the bulls had produced an effect. The disputation was ordered, and took place in 1240, between the informer, Nicholas Donin, and four rabbis: Yechiel of Paris, Jehuda ben David Melun, Samuel ben Solomon, and Moses of Coucy. The discussion was long, but Donin's skill finally divided the rabbis; the Talmud was condemned and burned a few years later.

In 1263, Raimond de Penaforte arranged at the Aragonian court a dispute between the rabbis, Nachmani of Girone (Bonastruc de Porta), and the Dominion, Pablo Christiani, a converted Jew and a zealous converter. This time Nachmani was victorious after a four-day disputation on the coming of Messiah, on the divinity of Jesus, and the Talmud. The king himself accorded him an audience, received him very cordially and loaded him with presents. But such victories were exceptional,

as the Jewish books were most frequently condemned by the judges beforehand, whatever the skill of their defenders. Thus, a baptized Jew, Joshua Lorqui d'Alcanis, known under the name of Geronimo de Santa Fé, physician to the anti-pope Benedict XIII., called, with a view to making converts, a debate which opened in 1417 at Tortosa. Geronimo exerted himself to prove by Talmudic texts that Messiah had come and that it was certainly Jesus. As adversaries he had the most famous doctors of Spain, Don Vidal Benveniste ibn Albi, Joseph Albo, Zerachya Halevi Saladin, Astruc Levi of Daroque and Bonastruc of Girone. The controversy took place before the anti-pope, surrounded by his cardinals; it lasted sixty days, but no conversions resulting from it Geronimo de Santa Fé issued an address to the court against the Talmud, and the reading of it was forbidden.

These controversies increased in number in Spain during the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. Thus the convert Alfonso of Valladolid had a dispute with his former coreligionists at Valladolid; John of Valladolid, another convert, had a dispute with Moses Cohen de Tordesillas on the proofs of the Christian faith contained in the Old Testament, but was defeated in the contest; Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut had at Pampeluna a controversy on the original sin and redemption, with the cardinal Pedro de Luna, later anti-pope Benedict XIII. Many more might be mentioned, all of them proving what amount of trouble the Jews were giving the church and how eagerly conversion was desired and solicited. Still all these disputes were courteous up to the moment

the Inquisition was introduced. The theologians made every effort to prepare priests and monks so as to prevent the Catholic faith from suffering a blow, and for this purpose, they composed extracts that were intended to enlighten the defenders of Christ on the faults found with the Talmud. A few of these guides have been preserved, as, e. g., the Extractiones Talmut, edited by Eudes de Chateauroux, after the auto-da-fé of 1242, and the Censura et Confutatio libri Talmut, a work composed by Antonio d'Avila, and a prior of the convent of the Holy Cross of Segovia, and addressed to Thomas de Torquemada. All these manuals were placed in the hands of the Spanish inquisitors and served for reference in the trials of the Marranos and Jews.

But alongside of the Jew, considered the enemy of Jesus and the foe of Christianity, there was the Jew, the usurer, the money-dealer, he upon whom fell a part of the hatred of the oppressed and the poor, he whom the rising bourgeoisie was beginning to envy and hate. I have pictured that Jew at work, how he had come to the exclusive pursuit of gold, and how he became the object of popular passions as a sort of victim of expiation, the scape-goat for all the sins of a society that was no better than he. If the populace oftenest killed the deicide, it also fell upon the clipper of ducats; its anti-Judaism was not religious only, but social as well. The case was similar with anti-Judaism of the pen. If certain bishops and ecclesiastical writers confined themselves to defending the symbols of their faith against Jewish

^1 Ms. 351 of the Spanish collection of the Bibliotheque Nationale (Cf. Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives v. XVIII).

^1 De Insolentia Judaeorum (Patrologie latine v. CIV).

$^{^2}$ Existola seu liber contra Judaeos (Patrologie latine, v. $\mathbf{CXVI}$ ).

^3 Gesta Philippi Augusti, 12-16.

^*Tractatus adversus Judaeorum inveteratam duritiam (Bibliotheque des Peres latins. Lyons).

^5 Les Jours caniculaires (Dierum çanicularium) translated by F. de Rosset (Paris, 1612).

^6 Agobard, loc. cit.

^1 Amolon, loc. cit.

der;² they hold the Christians in servitude; they possess enormous treasures in the cities which had received them, e. g., in Paris and Lyons; they commit larceny, they acquire money by evil methods; "everything passes through their hands, they insinuate themselves into houses and gain confidence; by their usury they draw the sap, the blood and the natural vigor of the Christians." They sell counterfeit jewels, they receive stolen goods, they coin base money, cannot be trusted, collect their debts twice over. In brief, "there is no wickedness in the world which the Jews are not guilty of, so that they seem to aim at nothing but the Christians' ruin."

To this picture of the perfidia Judaeorum, the anti-Jews, like Maiol or Luther,⁶ added abundant abuse, and soon anti-Judaism became purely polemic. The theological and social considerations now occupy but a limited place in the books of Alonzo da Spina,¹ especially Pierre de Lancre² and Francisco de Torrejoncillo.³ The Sentinel Against the Jews, a pamphlet by the last named, is particularly curious. Written in Spain at the beginning of the seventeenth century, it was aimed at the Marranos, who, it was said, invaded all the civil and

^2 Pierre de Cluny, loc. cit.

^8 Agobard, loc. cit.—Rigard, loc. cit.

^5 S. Maiol, loc. cit.

^• The Jews and their falsehoods (Wittenberg, 1558).

^1 Fortalitium Fidei (Nurenberg, 1494). Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., v. I, p. 1116.

^2 L'Incredulite et mecreance du sortilege pleinement convaincue (1622).

^3 Centinela contra Judios (Cf. Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, v. V.)

Had all the polemists limited themselves to allegorical comparisons, not much harm would have come to the Jews. But some did not hesitate to relate the most extraordinary things about these accursed ones, and the

^1 Bibliotheque Nationale, Spanish section, Ms. No. 356 (Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives v. XVIII).

¹ Centinela con ra Judios.

^1 Pierre de Lancre, loc. cit.

Ammianus Marcellinus, B. XXII. It is certain that the Judaeorum foetentium of which Marcus Aurelius complained, comes from a blunder or the spite of the copyist, and that foetentium—ill-smelling—was substituted for poetentium-turbulent, which the Ms. of Ammianus contained.

^1 Fortunatus, Carmina, 1. V.

the Serpent had thrown its stench on the race of Eve, but the faithful Jews had been preserved.

them; at all events, though it may discover some real motives, it cannot help inventing imaginary ones. All those who belonged to what is known as the accursed races were made the subject of these fables and legends.

With reference to the Cagots of the Pyrenees, the Gahets of Guienne, the Agotacs of the Lower Pyrenees, the Couax of Bretagne, the Oiseliers of the duchy of Bouillon, the Burrins of l'Ain, the Capots, the Trangots, the Gesitans, the Coliberts,—the same assertions were made as of the Jew.' They exhale, it was said, a stinking and infectious odor, they wither fruits by holding them in their hands, they are subject to the flux of blood, they have a caudal appendage, they emit blood from the navel on Holy Friday, they have dim eyes, they droop their heads, they cannot expectorate. With slight variations, these stories were repeated about the Arians, Manicheans, Cathari, Albigenses, Patarians, in general, of all heretics.

As to the Templars, concerning whom so many similar abominations had been spread, they, above all others, can be likened unto the Jews. Like the latter, they were hated for their pride, their ostentation, their wealth in the midst of general misery, their eagerness for gain, their shameless use of means of acquisition, their making usurious contracts. They were hated because they advanced money on chattels and fiefs on condition that these fiefs and chattels remained theirs in case of the borrower's death; because the Templars' Order possessed a greater part of the French territory in the thirteenth century and formed a commonwealth within the state,

^1 Michel, Les Races maudites, Paris, 1847.

the Templars having and recognizing no master but God.¹ We see then that the same causes produce the same results, create the same animosities, give rise to the same beliefs.

Were not the Templars said to "burn and roast the children they begat by young girls, and to sacrifice to and anoint their idols with the fat taken off"; were not the Cagots said to make use of Christian blood? Does not the charge of ritual murder weigh over the Jews as it had weighed over those wretches, the lepers, whom the Middle Ages treated as the Jew's brethren, thus taking up again the assertions of Manetho, repeated by Chaeremon, Lysimachus, Posidonius, Apollonius Molon and Apion, just as it had weighed over the sorcerers, who were also likened to the Jews? But we shall come back to this question when we speak of the modern antisemites.

What was the attitude of the Jews in the face of all these attacks and abuses which the theologians and polemists directed at them? They vigorously defended themselves. They opposed exegesis to exegesis; they opposed their logic to their opponents' arguments; they answered insults and calumnies with calumnies and insults; which is but normal, natural, inevitable, but all the same these insults fatally rebounded against them. If the anti-Jewish literature is enormous, the defensive literature of the Jews, as well as their anti-Christian literature—

^1 Lavocat, Proces des Freres de l'ordre du Temple, Paris, 1888.

Lavorat, loc. cit.

for the Jews oftentimes took up the offensive—is quite considerable.¹

The first controversial work belonging to the Israelite literature of the Middle Ages, was the Book of the Lord's Wars, written in 1170, by Jacob ben Ruben.² It was made up of twelve chapters, or gateways, proving that Messiah had not yet come, which, however, for the exegetic rhetoricians, was just as easy as, if not easier than to prove the opposite. But it was not enough to prove that Jesus was not the awaited Messiah; it was equally necessary to prove the superiority of the Jewish religion to those who were establishing, irrefutably, the superiority of the Christian religion, and this was easy for both sides, as each drew from the Bible what suited it. The Talmudists made use of the New Testament even to confirm their Judaic dogmas. This was done by Moses Tohen de Tordesillas, in his Support of the Faith, while Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut resumed, in the form of a dialogue between a Unitarian and a Trinitarian, the ideas propounded by Jacob ben Ruben.¹

The polemic literature was greatly developed in Spain

^'It would be necessary to devote a whole chapter to the anti-Christian literature, which I cannot possibly do here, where anti-Judaism is the main question, and I shall simply indicate the Jewish reaction. The Jewish endeavor against "Christian idolatry" was great indeed. To get some idea of it, it will suffice to glance over the Bibliotheca Judaica antichristiana of J. B. Rossi (Parma, 1800). Besides, the catalogue compiled by Rossi is not perfectly exact; still it enables one to gauge the polemic activity of the Jews, which finds its equal only in that of the Christians (Cf. also Wolf and Wagenseil, loc. cit.)

^2 Loeb, Revue des Etudes Juives, v. XVIII

^1 Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut, The Touchstone (Loeb, loc. cit.).

in the fifteenth century. The time was a hard one for the Jews of the Peninsula. The Church doubled its efforts to convert them; disputes, pamphlets, treatises increased in numbers. The Jews fought against proselytism resorting to it under the last extremity, and later on, at the moment of the final banishement, the greatest part of them chose exile without the hope of return, rather than conversion. While the monks sought in the Pentateuch and the Prophets arguments in support of the Christian symbols, the Jews endeavored to lay plain the differences which divide the two creeds, and were fighting Catholicism in order to confirm the faith in the soul of those who vacillated. Like Chasdai Crescas they studied their opponents' theology. Thus armed, Jacob ibn Shem Tob wrote the Objections to the Christian Religion, Simon ben Zemach Duran published a Philosophical Examination of Judaism, a special chapter of which, entitled "Bow and Shield," contained a critique of Christianity.

In imitation of the ecclesiastical writers and inquisitors, the rabbis wrote books for the use of those who were challenged in disputes. A kind of vade mecum, these books pointed out the vulnerable sides of the Christian dogmas; and if, on the one hand, there were publications like "Judaism Defeated with Its Own Weapons," on the other hand were composed works like "Christianity Defeated with Its Own Arms," i. e., with those found in the New Testament. In anti-Christian literature the Gospels played the part of the Talmud in anti-Jewish

^1 Cf. Graetz, v. IV.

^2 Wagenseil in his Tela ignea Satanae (Altdorf, 1681), reproduces all these treatises in print.

^1Zadoc Kahn, The Book of Joseph the Zealot (Revue des Etudes Juives,, vols. I and III).

^2 For the Toldot Jesho, cf. Tela ignea Satanae, Wagenseil, v. II, 5, 189, and B. de Rossi, Biblotheca Judaica antichristiana (Parma, 1800), p. 117.

Martin³ and Nicholas de Lyra⁴, they refuted with still greater energy Jerome de Santa Fé, the Santa Fé whom his former coreligionists called Megaddef, i. e., blasphemer. At Jerome they were incensed. Don Vidal ibn Labi, Isaac ben Nathan Kalonymos,⁵ Solomon Duran,¹ several others, wrote to give the lie to the "calumniator." The same was done by Isaac Pulgar against Alfonso of Valladolid,² by Joshua ben Joseph Lorqui and Profiat Duran.³ The apostates of the Middle Ages were not treated perceptibly better than of yore, in the first century of the Christian era, when a curse that was to smite them was added to the daily prayers; from the tenth till the sixteenth or seventeenth century, they repeated against them what the Talmud said of the Mincans, the ancient Judeo-Christians and the Ebionites. Of course, all these Jewish books were not accepted without protests; they also called forth numerous refutations, which in turn gave rise to replies.

In the seventeenth century anti-Judaism took on another form. The theologians were succeeded by erudites, scholars, exegetes. Anti-Judaism became milder and more scientific; it was represented by hebraizers, often of great attainments, like Wagenseil, Bartolocci, Voe-

^4 Wagenseil, loc. cit.

^5 Magna Biblothica Rabbinica (Rome, 1693-95).

^8 Solomon ben Adret, of Barcelona, refuted the Pugio Fidei.

^4 Chayimibn Musa refuted Nicholas de Lyra in his Shield and Sword (Graetz, loc. cit.)

^1 Letter of Combat (Graetz, loc. cit., and Rossi, Bibloth. antichrist, (p. 100).

^2 Dialogue against the Apostates (Loeb, loc. cit.)

^3 Alteca Boteca (Loeb, loc. cit.)—De Rossi, Dizionario degli autori Ebrei (Parma, 1802), p. 89.

tius, Joseph de Voisin, tec. These men studied Jewish literature and manners in a more serious way. Thus Wagenseil denied ritual murder; though saying that the Talmud contained "blasphemies, impostures and absurdities," Buxtorf declared that it also contained things of value for the historian and philosopher. Yet the same ideas persisted which had inspired the authors of the preceding centuries. The object was always to prove the truth of the Christian faith and dogmas on the basis of the Old Testament; the anxiety to convert the Jews ever haunted the souls, the recall of Israel was spoken of, means of bringing them back were proposed; the apostates invoked the Zohar and Mishna in favor of Jesus, and the polemic literature was still in bloom under Eisenmenger, whose Judaism Unveiled has inspired many contemporary antisemites; under Schudt, later under Voltaire. It is true that literary anti-Judaism, particularly that of combative tendencies and pam-

^6 Disputationes Selectae (Utrecht, 1663).

$^{^{7}}$ Theologia Judaeorum (1647).

^1 Benachrichtung wegen einiger die Judenschaft angehenden Sachen (Altdorf, 1709).

^2 Dictionn. chaldeo-talmudico-rabbinique (Basiliae, 1639) and Synagoga Judaica (Hanau, 1604).

^3 Pean de la Croullardiere, Methode facile pour convaincre les herctiques (Paris, 1667), which contains a "method of assailing ad converting the Jews"; Thomas Bell' Hader, Dottrina facile e breve per reduire l'Hebreo al conoscimento del vero Messia e Salvator del Mondo (Venetia 1608).

^4 Conrad Otton, Gali Razia (Secrets unveiled), (Nurenberg, 1605).

Judaism Unveiled (Frankfort, 1700).

^6 Compendium Historiae Judaicae (Frankfort, 1700) and Judaeus Christicida gravissime peccans et vapulans (1760).

phleteers, is varied but little. Most of the anti-Jewish writers imitate one another, without scruple; they plagiarize without even taking the trouble to verify the assertions of their predecessors. One book of the kind is responsible for similar others: Alonzo da Spina draws his inspiration from Batallas de Dios, by Alfonso of Valladolid; Porchet Salvaticus, Pietro Galatini, Pierre de Barcelona republish, under different names, Raymund Martin's Sword of the Faith; Paul Fagius and Sebastian Münster¹ help themselves to the Book of the Faith.

In spite of this, and independently of the dissimilarities I have noted, anti-Judaism, from the seventeenth century on, is in all respects quite different from the anti-Judaism of the preceding centuries. The social side gets gradually the upperhand of the religious side, though this latter continues to exist. The question is asked, not whether the Jews are wrong in being usurers, or merchants, or deicides, but whether, as Schudt² says, the Jews ought to be tolerated in a State or not, whether it is lawful to admit Jews into a Christian commonwealth, as John Dury³ inquires, about 1655, in a pamphlet directed against Cromwell's protégé, Menasseh ben Israel. This is the social standpoint which we shall see developing henceforth in literary anti-Judaism; a part of modern antisemitism will rest on the theory of a Christian State and its integrity, and in this wise it will be connected with the ancient anti-Judaism. In the course of this book we shall have to examine more closely

^1 Revue des Etudes juives, v. V, p 57.

^2 Loc. cit.

^8 A Case of Conscience (London, 1655).

the affinities and differences which unite and peparate these two kinds of anti-Judaism.

CHAPTER VIII.

MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM.

Emancipated Judaism.—The Position of the Jews in Society.—Usury and the Affairs in Alsace.—Napoleon and the Administrative Organization of the Jewish Religion.—The Great Sanhedrin.—The Restrictive Laws and the Progressive Liberation in France.—The Emancipation in the Netherlands.—Emancipation in Italy and Germany.—The Anti-Napoleonic Reaction and the Jews.—The Revival of Anti-Jewish Legislation.—Popular Movements.—Emancipation in England.—In Austria.—The Revolution of 1848 and the Jews.—The End of Legal Anti-Judaism in the West.—Eastern Anti-Judaism.—The Jews in Roumania.—The Russian Jews.—The Persecutions.—The Social Question and the Religious Question.

After preliminary discussions, as a result of which any decision on the emancipation of the Jews was adjourned, the Constituent Assembly voted, on September 27, 1791, on a motion by Duport, and thanks to Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angély's intervention, the admission of the Jews to the rank of citizens. This decree had been

ready for a long time, prepared as it was through the work of the commission assembled by Louis XVI, with Malesherbes in the chair; prepared by the writings of Lessing and Dohm, of Mirabeau and Grégoire. It was the logical outcome of the efforts made for some time by the Jews and the philosophers; in Germany Mendelssohn had been its promoter and most active advocate, and in Berlin Mirabeau drew his inspiration at the side of Dohm in the salons of Henriette de Lemos.

A certain class of Jews had, however, already been emancipated. In Germany the court Jews (Hofjuden) had obtained commercial privileges; even titles of nobility were being conferred upon them for money. In France the Portuguese Marranos returned to Judaism, enjoyed great liberties and prospered under the supervision of their syndics at Bordeaux, very indifferent nevertheless to the fate of their unfortunate brethren, though very influential: one of them, Gradis, failed to secure a nomination as deputy to the States-General. In Alsace even, several Jews obtained important favors, as, e. g., Cerf Berr, purveyor to the armies of Louis XV, who granted him naturalization and the title of Marquis de Tombelaine.

Thanks to all these privileges, there sprang into existence a class of rich Jews which came into contact with the christian society; open-minded, subtle, intelligent, refined, of extreme intellectualism, it had given up, like so many Christians, the letter of religion or of the faith even, and retained nothing but a mystic idealism which, for good or ill, went hand in hand with a liberal rationalism. The fusion between this group of Jews and the

elite led by Lessing, was brought about above all in Berlin, a young city and centre of a kingdom which was rising to fame, an easy-going city, with little tradition. Young Germany gathered at the houses of Henrietta de Lemos and Rachel von Varnhagen; with the Jews, German Romanticism ended in impregnating itself with Spinozaism; Schleiermacher and Humboldt were seen visiting there, and it may be said that if the Constituent Assembly decreed the emancipation of the Jews, it was in Germany that it had been prepared.

At any rate, the number of these Jews qualified to mingle with the nations, was extremely limited, the more so because the majority of them—like Mendelsson's daughters, like Boerne and Heine later on—ended by converting, and thus no longer existed as Israelites. As for the mass of Jews, it was in quite different circumstances.

The decree of 1791 freed these pariahs from a secular servitude; it broke the fetters with which the laws had bound them; it wrested them from all kinds of ghettos where they had been imprisoned; from, as it were, cattle it made them human beings. But if it was within its power to restore them to liberty, if it was possible for it to undo within one day the legislative work of centuries, it could not annul their moral effect, and it was especially impotent to break the chains which the Jews had forged themselves. The Jews were emancipated legally, but not so morally; they kept their manners, customs and prejudices—prejudices which their fellow citizens of other confessions kept, too. They were happy at having escaped their humiliation, but they looked around

with diffidence and suspected even their liberators.

For centuries they had looked with disgust and terror at this world which was rejecting them; they had suffered from it, but they still more feared to lose their personality and faith from contact with it. More than one old Jew must have looked with anxiety at the new existence which opened before him; I should not even be surprised if there were some in whose eyes the liberation appeared a misfortune or abomination. Many of these miserable beings cherished their humiliation, their seclusion which kept them far from sin and contamination, and the efforts of the majority were bent on remaining what they were, among strangers in whose midst they were cast. The enlightened, intelligent part of the Jews, the reformers, who suffered from their inferior position and from the degradation of their coreligionists—these worked for emancipation, but even they could not at once transform those for whom they had reclaimed the right of being human creatures.

As the decree of emancipation did not change the Judaic self, the way in which this self manifested itself was not changed either. Economically the Jews remained what they were—be it understood that I speak of the majority—unproductive, i. e., brokers, moneylenders, usurers, and they could not be otherwise, given their habits and conditions under which they had lived. With the exception of an insignificant minority among them, they had no other aptitudes, and even nowadays a great many Jews are in the same plight. They did not fail to apply these aptitudes, and during this period of unrest and disorder they found occasion to apply them

^1 Mention must be made that, as in the Middle ages, the Alsatian Jews were the "dummies" and intermediaries of the Christian usurers, (Cf. Halphen, Recueil des lois et decrets concernant les Israelites, (Paris, 1851), and the Petition des Juifs etablis en France addressee a l'Assemblee nationale le 28 janvier 1790).

^2 On the Alsatian Jews before and after the Revolution, consult: Gregoire, Essai sur la Regeneration des Juifs; Dohm, De la Reforme politique des Juifs; Paul Fauchille, La Question Juive en France Sous le premier Empire (Paris, 1884).

measures sufficient, but wanted the source of the evil done away with.

"These circumstances," said he, "caused us at the same time to consider how urgent it was to revive among those subjects of our country who profess the Jewish religion, the sentiments of civic morals, which have unfortunately been deadened with a great number of them through the state of humiliation in which they have languished too long, and which is not our intention to maintain and renew."

in the future, any distinctions between Jews and Christians in the matter of loans, and entirely prohibited usury.

^1 Halphen, Recueil des lois et decrets.

March 17, 1808, forbidding the Jews to engage in commerce without a personal license issued by the prefect, or to take mortgages without authorization; besides, Jews were forbidden to settle in Alsace and the Rhine provinces, and the Alsacian Jews were forbidden to enter other departments unless to engage in agriculture,² These decrees issued for ten years, did not turn one Jew into an agriculturer, and if any of them became chauvinists, the obligation of serving in the army had something to do with it. These were the last restrictive laws in France; the legal assimilation was consummated in 1830, when Lafitte had the Jewish creed incorporated in the budget. This meant the final downfall of the "Christian State," though the lay state was not, as yet, completely established. The last trace of the ancient distinctions between Jews and Christians disappeared with the abolition of the oath More Judaico, in 1839. Nor was the moral assimilation complete.

So far we have been speaking of the emancipation of the French Jews, it remains to examine the influence it had on the Jews of Europe.¹ From the moment of the

^2 Halphen, loc. cit.

¹ In this book I shall not speak of the modern Jews of the Mohammedan countries, Turkey, Asia Minor, Tripoli, Persia. It is quite evident that the enmity there rests on quite different causes from those in Christian lands, and quite different principles, or at least notions and instincts, guide the Mohammedans. In the contemporary meaning of the word, antisemitism does not exist in any of these countries, nevertheless the hostility to Jews, especially popular hositility, is very great there. To determine the causes thereof it would require a special study, which I shall undertake later on; in this study I shall take up the Tunisian and Algerian Jews, with the understanding that I shall not

deal with the grievances of the French antisemites against them, grievances similar to those which we are about to treat here, although some of them, as, for instance, the national grievance, are hardly tenable. I shall simply deal with the more interesting aspects and the causes of hatred between Arabs and Jews.

anti-Judaism manifested itself more acutely, but the revival of anti-Jewish legislation was general. In Italy legislation had been resumed in 1770; in Germany the Vienna Congress abolished all imperial provisions for Jews, leaving them only the rights granted by the lawful German governments. As a result of the decisions of the Congress, the cities and communities showed themselves harsh toward the Jews. Lubeck and Bremen expelled them; like Rome, Frankfort shut them up anew in their ancient quarters. Naturally, popular movements followed suit of the legal measures. At this moment of overheated patriotism, any restriction of the rights of strangers met with approval; for the Jews were as ever the strangers par excellence, who best represented noxious strangers, and so, about 1820, i. e., the moment when this state of minds reached its paroxysm, the mob fell, in many places, upon the Jews and badly maltreated them, even if it did not massacre them.

The thirty years following the disappearance of Napoleon did not witness any great progress for the Jews. In England where they were, as a matter of fact, treated liberally enough, they were, nevertheless, always considered dissidents, and, like the Catholics, were subject to certain obligations. Little by little only did they see their condition modified, and the history of their emancipation is an episode in the struggle between the House of Commons and the House of the Lords.

^1At this moment the Jews entered suit against the city of Frankfort to contest the legality of the city's decisions. This suit was the occasion of violent anti-Jewish polemics.

Not before 1860 were they completely assimilated with the other English citizens.

In Austria they had been partly emancipated by the Toleration edict of Joseph II. (1785), but had to undergo the same reaction; the Revolution was too fatal for the Austrian House, that the latter should even put up with this well-nigh equality of the Jews which a democratic and philosophic sovereign had granted. Only in 1848 the Austrian Jews became citizens. At the same time their emancipation was achieved in Germany, Greece, Sweden, and Denmark. Once more they owed their independence to the revolutionary spirit which once again came from France. However, we shall see that they were not strangers to the great movement

¹ The constitution of March 4, 1849, proclaimed the equality before the law. But as this constitution was abolished in 1851, an ordinance of July 29, 1853, restored the old legislation against the Jews. Successive Amendments were added to it, and the Constitution of 1867 finally restored equality before the law and liberated the Jews.

In Hungary the law emancipating the Jews was also voted in 1867 by the Chamber of Deputies, on motion by the Government. (Cf. Wolf, Geschichte der Juden in Wien, Vienna, 1876; Kaim, Ein Jahrhundert der Judenemancipation. Leipzig, 1869.)

^2 The German Constituent Assembly voted the equality of all citizens before the law, on May 20, 1848. The Parliament of Frankfort did likewise, and the principle of this equality was incorporated in the German constitution of 1849. At any rate many States retained the restrictions against the Jews till the time of the Law of the Northern Federation of July 3, 1869, which abolished all the "restrictions of civil and political rights that still existed and were based on difference in religion." (Cf. Kaim, loc. cit. and Allegemeine Zeitung des Judenthums for the years 1837, 1849, 1856, 1867, 1869). After the Franco-German which had not adopted it before the organization of the Empire. war, this law was forced upon those States like Bavaria, e. g.,

which agitated all Europe; in some countries, notably in Germany, they aided in preparing it, and they were the advocates of liberty. They also were among the first to benefit thereby, as legal anti-Judaism may be said to have come to an end in the Occident after 1848. Little by little the last obstacles fell, and the last restrictions were abolished. The fall of the temporal power of the Popes, in 1870, did away with the last occidental Ghetto, and the Jews now could become citizens even in St. Peter's city.

Since then anti-Judaism has transformed, it has become purely literary, it has come to be but an opinion, and this opinion has no longer had its effect on laws. But before examining this antisemitism of the pen which in certain countries existed until 1870, side by side with restrictive regulations, we must speak of the Christian States of Eastern Europe, where the anti-Judaism is even now legal and persecutionary, i. e., of Roumania and Russia.

The Jews have lived in Roumania, i. e., the Moldau-Valachian lands, since the fourteenth century, but they came there in numbers at the beginning of this century only, and are about 300,000 in all, as a result of Hungarian and Russian emigration. For many long years they lived undisturbed. They naturally depended upon the boyars who hold the power in this country, and they leased the sale of spirits from these noblemen, who held the monopoly therefor. As they were indispensable to

^1 Desjardins, Les Juifs de Moldavies (Paris, 1867).—Isidore Loeb, La Situation des Israelites en Turquie, en Serbie et en Roumanie (Paris, 1877).

called forth by the uprisings in Bucharest, Yassy, Galatz, Tecucin, as well as in other places, and during these uprisings cemeteries were profaned and synagogues burned.

What were, what are still the causes of this special legislation, and of this animosity of the Roumanians towards the Jews? They are not exclusively religious, and despite the persistence of ancestral prejudices, it is not a case of a confessional war. The Roumanian Jews constituted, especially at the moment of the formation of Roumania, agglomerations completely isolated from the bulk of the population in the Moldau-Valachian lands. They wore a special garb, lived in quarters set apart in order to escape contaminations, and spoke a Judaeo-German jargon, which rounded off their marks of distinction. They lived under the domination of their rabbis, narrow-minded, limited, ignorant Talmudists, from whom they received in Jewish schools—heder—and education which was conducive to their intellectual abasement and their degradation.

They were the victims of this isolation which was due to their guides, the rabbinists. The patriotic passions were particularly aroused in this land, which was being born, was acquiring a nationality and striving for unity. There has been a pan-Roumanism, just like pan-Germanism or pan-Slavism. There were discussions on the

^1 This condition has not changed since, and only a small number of Jews, by entering universities and obtaining there intellectual development, succeeded in tearing themselves away from the exclusionist prejudices of the mass which is still sunk in the stupor, from which antitalmudic instruction alone can recover it.

Roumanian race, on its integrity, its purity, the danger threatening it from adulteration. Associations were formed to counteract foreign encroachment, and Jewish encroachment in particular. Schoolmasters, university professors were the soul of these societies; just as in Germany, they were the most active antisemites. They looked upon the Jews as agents and apostles of Germanism, and they became the instigators of restrictive legislation in order to repel and restrain them. They reproached the Jews with forming a state within a state, which was true, but—and that is the everlasting inconsistency of anti-Judaism—they passed laws to retain them in the condition they considered dangerous. They asserted that the Jewish education crippled the brains of those receiving it, that it rendered them unfit for social life, which was but too correct, and yet they were going to shut the Jews out completely from obtaining the education given to Christians, exactly the one that would lift them from their degradation.

But the college-bred were not the sole antisemites in Roumania, and there were economic causes beside patriotic causes. As I have said, antisemitism was born with the advent of the bourgeoisie, because this bourgeois class, composed of merchants and manufacturers, came into competition with the Jews who displayed their activity exclusively in commerce and industry, when not in usury. The bourgeoisie had every interest in the passage of protective laws, which, though nominally directed at strangers and not at the Jews, principally aimed at placing obstacles to the expansion of their formidable rivals. It achieved its point by

skilfully fomenting disturbances which gave their representatives in Parliament a chance to propose new regulations. Thus these diverse causes of antisemitism may be reduced to a single one—national protection-ism—and very clever it is, as simultaneously with denying the Jews all civic rights on the ground that they are strangers, it forces them into military service, which again is a contradiction, as none but a citizen can form a part of a national army.¹

Harder still, more miserable than in Roumania, is the condition of the Jews in Russia. Their history in that country, where they arrived in the third century B. C. and founded colonies in Crimea, has been that of the Jews of all Europe. They were banished in the twelfth century never to be recalled. Nevertheless, at present Russia counts 4,500,000 Jews (see footnote), and to say, as the antisemites maintain, that the Jews have invaded it is nonsense, for Russia has acquired them by seizing White Russia in 1769 and late on the Polish provinces and Crimea, which contained a great number of Jews. At the moment of this conquest it was out of the question to apply the ukase of 1742 which banished the Jews once more. On the one hand, it was not an easy thing to drive out several million individuals into the neighboring states; on the other, commerce, industry, and particularly the treasury, would have fared ill from such wholesale expulsion. Catherine II. then granted the Jews equal rights with her Russian subjects, but the

^1 I believe the truth of this will be admitted by the most irrational chauvinist, be he a Turk, Bulgarian, Russian, German, Englishman or eyen a Frenchman.

Senate ukases of 1786, 1791 and 1794 curtailed these privileges and confined the Israelites within White Russia and Crimea—thenceforth constituting the Jewish territory—and Poland. Only in certain cases and under special conditions were they allowed to leave the limits of this territorial Ghetto.

In Russia all modern antisemitism, which is official antisemitism par excellence, consists in keeping the Jews from escaping the Senate ukases just spoken of. Russia has resigned herself to her Jews, but she wants to leave them where she found them. Still there were favorable or rather less unfavorable times for the Jews. Alexander I. permitted them in 1808 to settle in the crown lands on condition of engaging there in agriculture; Nicholas I. gave them permission to travel when their business required it, they were allowed to attend the universities; and under Alexander II. their position improved still further.

After the death of Alexander II. the autocratic reaction became monstrous in Russia: an abominable reawakening of absolutism was the answer to the bomb of

^1 N. de Gradovski, La Situation legale des Israelites en Russie (Paris, 1891).—Tikhomirov, La Russie politique et sociale (Paris, 1888).—Les Juifs de Russie (Paris, 1891).—Prince Demidoff-San-Donato, La question juive en Russie (Bruxelles, 1884).—Anatole Leroy-Beaulieu, L'Empire des Tzars et les Russes (Paris, 1881-82-89). [English translation, London and New York, 1894].—Weber et Kempster, La Situation des Juifs en Russie (Resume of a report to the United States Government by its delegates).—Leo Errera, Les juifs Russes (Bruxelles, 1893).—Harold Frederic, The New Exodus (1892).

the nihilists. The national orthodox spirit was overexcited, the liberal and revolutionary movement was charged to foreign influences, and the Jews were made the scapegoats, in order to divert the people from the nihilistic propaganda; hence the massacres of 1881 and 1882, during which the mob burned Jewish houses, robbed and killed the Jews, saying: "Our daddy, the Tsar, wants it."

After these disturbances General Ignatyeff promulgated the "May Laws" of 1882. They read as follows:

1. As a temporary measure and until the general revision of the laws regulating their status, Jews are forbidden to settle hereafter outside of cities and towns. Exception is made with regard to Jewish villages already in existence where the Jews are engaged in agriculture.
1. Until further order all contracts for the mortgaging or renting of real estate situated outside of cities and towns to a Jew, shall be of no effect. Equally void is any power of attorney granted to a Jew for the administration or disposition of property of the above-indicated nature.
1. Jews are forbidden to do business on Sundays and Christian holidays; the laws compelling Christians to close their places of business on those days will be applied to Jewish places of business.
1. The above measures are applicable only in the governments situated within the Jewish pale of settlement.

These laws were enacted as a temporary measure. Accordingly, a commission presided over by Count Pahlen met in 1883 to settle finally the Jewish question. The

conclusions of this commission were quite liberal in spirit; it recommended that certain civil rights be given to the Jews. Owing to the influence of Pobyedonostseff, the Procurator of the Holy Synod, the report of the Pahlen Commission was buried, and the May Laws have remained in force. Since that time, and especially from 1890 on, the persecutions redoubled. The "pale" was narrowed by forbidding the Jews to enter certain fortified places, and by creating a frontier belt where the Jews could not reside. The ukase of 1865 of Alexander II., allowing "skilled" artisans to choose a domicile throughout the empire was abrogated. Thus nearly 3,000,000 Jews were crowded into the cities of the pale of settlement, while a million was spread over Poland, and 500,000 privileged—merchants of the first rank, financiers and students—all over Russia.

In the cities of the pale of settlement the Jews constitute a majority, and the conditions of their existence are frightful. Crowded in unhealthy habitations, where they live in the worst of poverty, ravaged by misery beside which the misery found in Paris, Berlin and London is prosperity; with "slack-time" during a part of the year, with work during the other part on condition of accepting wages so ridiculously low that their scale often falls to 8 or 10 cents a day; multiplying incessantly because of their very destitution, these wretches are in the slow agonies of death and are the foreordained victims of cholera, typhoid fever and all pests. From day to day their condition grows more serious, their distress increases, they are crowded together in the cities like cattle, without hope of deliver-

ance in sight; they have only the choice of three things; conversion, emigration or death. It is just what the Procurator of the Holy Synod, Pobyedonostseff foresaw, when he demanded the application of the Ignatyeff Laws.

Other measures, besides this systematic crowding, were taken against the Jews. They were shut out of certain occupations and certain professions; those sheltered in hospitals as invalids were sent away; employees of railroads and steamship companies were dismissed; the number of those who could enter universities, colleges and high schools was limited; they were barred from becoming attorneys, physicians, engineers, or at least their opportunities for entering these professions were restricted; even their own schools were closed to them, they are not admittd even to hospitals, they are burdened with special taxes on their rents, inheritances, the animals they kill for meat, the candles they light on Friday evenings, the skull-caps they wear during religious ceremonies, even when these are of a private nature.

Besides these official taxes imposed by the government, the Jews are under the exploitation of the Russian administration and police, the basest, the most corrupt and venal in all Europe. Half the income of the middle class Jews, says Weber and Kempster, and Harold Frederic, goes to the police. Every Jew in easy circumstances is the victim of constant extortion. As for those (and they are the majority), who are too poor to be able to pay, they are subjected to the most loathsome, most inhuman treatment, forced to bow to all the whims

^1 Loc. cit.

of brutal policemen who domineer and martyrize them, as they martyrize also the nihilists and the suspects of liberalism whom the horrible autocracy of the Tsar places in their power.²

^2 The condition of the Jews in Russia, compared with that of the native people, is absolutely the same as in the Middle Ages. The Russian peasant and the workingman are pretty nearly as wretched as the Jew. They, too, are subjected to annoyances and arbitrary rule, but they are not persecuted, and have, to a certain degree the right of migrating.

^* Russ. kulak, literally fist.

usurer), who, even previously had been playing havoc in all Russian villages where there were no Jews—i. e., in the majority of the country districts. But no measures were taken against the kulak. Thus, the expulsion of the Jews has not for its object the protection of the peasants. They also turn people to drunkenness, we are assured. But Katkoff, who could not be suspected of bias in favor of the Jews, said more than once that alcoholism is much more widespread in central and northern Russia, where there are no Jews, than in the Southwest, where they are engaged in inn-keeping. It is quite natural: alcohol, which becomes a necessity to the wretches whose nourishment is insufficient, is still more necessary in the cold countries. Though the Jews may not be saloon-keepers and others may replace them, yet the expulsion of the Jews is not a fight against alcoholism, as no measure has been taken against the Christian retailers who outnumber the Jewish retailers.

We shall not deal with the frauds with which Jewish business men are charged, as exactly these business men occupy a privileged position; as for the lawlessness of a part of the miserable mass, those of whom it is made up "would not have food if they did not rob," and so they are in the same position with a great number of orthodox Russians whom the social and economic condition of Russia forces to resort to unscrupulous methods, in order to make a living.²

¹ Tikhomirov, loc. cit.

^2 A great part of these grievances is better founded with reference to the Jews of Poland, and yet the Jews there are not driven back into cities as are those of the "pale of settlement."

What are then the real causes of antisemitism? They are political and religious. Antisemitism is by no means a popular movement in Russia; it is purely official. The Russian people, laden with misery, crushed under taxes, groaning under the most atrocious of tyrannies, embittered by administrative violence and governmental abuse of power, burdened with suffering and humiliation is in an unberable condition. Generally resigned, they are liable to yield to passions; their uprisings and revolts are formidable; antisemitic riots are the proper thing to divert popular anger, and that is why the government encouraged them and often provoked them. As to the peasants and workingmen, they fell upon the Jews because, they said, "the Jew and the nobleman are of a pair, only it is easy to thrash the Jew.\footnote{1} Thus is explained the plundering of rich Jewish merchants, of wealthy money-lenders, often of poor Jewish workmen, and it is heart-rending to see these disinherited fall upon one another instead of uniting against the oppressive tsarism.

The possibility of a union between these two camps of misery is, perhaps, foreseen by those whose interest it is to engender and keep their antagonism and who actually saw the rioters burn many Christian houses during the riots of 1881 and 1882. After Alexander II.'s death it became urgent to blot out of the moujiks' and proletarians' memories the nihilists' attempts at liberation. The revolution was more than ever the frightful hydra and dragon, against which Holy Russ

^1 Tikhomirov, loc. cit.

¹ One of the queerest things is the approval given by certain religious antisemites of France and Germany—through chauvinism or passion—to the actions of the Tsar's government. In approving the Tsar's persecution against the Jews, they implicitly approve those against the Catholics and Lutherans, who are so dear to them.

the orthodox capitalists who thus escape the popular passions whose explosion is ever to be feared.

but middlemen and capitalists change their positive function in the community..

Thus we may say that in eastern Europe where the actual condition of the Jews fairly well represents what had been their condition in the Middle Ages, the causes of antisemitism are twofold: social causes, and religious causes combined with patriotic ones. It now remains for us to see what are the causes that maintain antisemitism in the countries where it has become antisemitism of the pen instead of legal antisemitism, and, first of all, to examine this transformation and the phenomena to which it has given rise.

^1I could but sketch the general outlines of Roumanian and Russian antisemitism. To make a complete story of them would require more than these few pages, within which it was impossible to give a social picture of Roumania and Russia, and to expound the moral, psychological, ethnological and economic position of the Jews in these countries.

CHAPTER IX.

MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE.

The emancipated Jews scattered among the nations just like strangers, and, as we have seen, it could not be

those surrounding them; they had no ancient patrimony to defend, the heritage which the former society was leaving to nascent society was not theirs; the thousand ancestral ties which linked the citizens of the modern state with the past, could not influence their conduct, their intellectuality, their morality; their spirit had no shackles.

I have shown that their liberation could not change them, that a number of them regretted their past of isolation, and even if they did endeavor to remain themselves, if they did not assimilate, they marvelously adapted themselves, by the very force of their special tendencies, to the economic conditions which had affected the nations since the beginning of the nineteenth century.

The French Revolution was above all an economic revolution. If it is considered as the termination of a struggle between classes, it must be viewed as the consummation of a struggle between two forms of capital, viz.: real property and personal property, or landed capital, and industrial and speculative capital. With the supremacy of the nobility the supremacy of landed capital disappeared, too, and the supremacy of the bourgeoisie brought on the supremacy of industrial and speculative capital. The emancipation of the Jew is linked with the growth of the prevalence of industrial capital. So long as landed capital retained the political power, the Jew was deprived of any right; the Jew was liberated on the day when political power passed to industrial capital, and that proved fatal. The bourgeoisie needed help in the struggle it undertook; the Jew was

for it a valuable ally, whom it was its interest to emancipate. Since the days of the Revolution, Jew and bourgeois marched hand in hand, together they sustained Napoleon at the moment when dictatorship became necessary to defend the privileges gained by the Third Estate, and when the imperial tyranny became too heavy and oppressive for capitalism the bourgeois and the Jew, united and preluded the fall of the Empire by forestalling provisions at the time of the Russian campaign and helped to bring about the final disaster by calling forth slumps at the exchange and buying the disloyalty of marshals.

At the beginning of the great industrial development, after 1815, when canal, mine, and insurance companies were formed, the Jews were among the most active in promoting combination of capital. Moreover, they were the most skilful, because the spirit of combination had for centuries been their only support. But they were not content to aid in bringing about in this practical way the triumph of industrialism, they gave their aid in a theoretical way, also. They gathered around Saint-Simon, the philosopher of the bourgeoisie; they worked at diffusing and developing his teaching. Saint-Simon had said: "The manufacturers must be entrusted with the administration of the temporal power," and "the last step that remains for industry to make is to obtain the direction of the State and the chief problem of our time is to secure to industry a majority

^1 Saint-Simon, Du Systeme industriel (Paris, 1821).

in our parliaments." He had added: "The industrial class must occupy the first rank, because it is the most important of all; because it can do without all the others, while none other can do without it; because it exists by its own forces, by its personal labors. The other classes must work for it, because they are its creatures and because it sustains their existence; in a word, as everything is made by industry, everything must be made for it." The Jews helped to realize the Saint-Simonian dream; they proved themselves the most trustworthy allies of the bourgeoisie, inasmuch as in working for it they worked for themselves and, in all Europe, they were in the front rank of the liberal movement, which from 1815 till 1848 succeeded in establishing the domination of bourgeois capitalism.

This role of the Jews did not escape the class of landed capitalists, and we shall see that therein lay one of the causes of the anti-Judaism of the conservatives, but to the Jews it was not worth so much as the recognition of the bourgeoisie. When the latter had firmly established its power, when it became restful and secure, it discovered that its ally, the Jew, was its formidable competitor, and it reacted against it. Thus the conservative parties, made up, as a rule, of capitalist agriculturers, became anti-Jewish in their fight against industrial and speculative capitalism, represented chiefly by the Jew, and industrial and speculative capitalism became anti-Jewish in its turn, on account of Jewish competition. Anti-Judaism, which had been religious

^2 Saint-Simon, Catechisme des Industriels, 1er Cahier (Paris, 1823).

at first, became economic, or, rather, the religious causes, which had once been dominant in anti-Judaism, were subordinated to economic and social causes.

echoed the sentiments of their inspirers. What were these sentiments? We shall see if we examine the antisemitic literature, and at the same time we shall disentangle the manifold causes of contemporary antisemitism.

Except in the case of some of them, it is impossible to classify the antisemitic works under too narrow categories, as each of them often presented manifold tendencies. Still they each have a dominant idea, in accordance with which their classification may be settled, always remembering that a work approaching a definite type does not belong solely and exclusively to it. We shall, then, subdivide antisemitism into Christian, Socialist, economic, ethnological and national, metaphysical, revolutionary and anti-Christian antisemitism.

Christian Socialist antisemitism was generated by the permanency of religious prejudices. If the Jews had not changed on entering into society, the sentiments felt toward them for so many long years would not have disappeared either. The Jews owed their emancipation to a philosophical movement coinciding with an economic movement and not to the abolition of secular prejudices against them. Those who thought the Christion State the only State possible looked with disfavor upon the intrusion of the Jews, and anti-Talmudism was the first manifestation of this hostility. The Talmud which was justly considered the religious stronghold of the Jews was assailed and a host of polemists devoted themselves to proving how much the teachings of the Talmud were opposed to the teachings of the Gospel. Against the book they resumed all the com-

blessings of the alien nations in whose midst it had settled, and the history of the Hebrews once more becomes the history of monarchies and republics. Scourged or tolerated, banished or admitted, they, by the very fact of these political vicissitudes, account for the glory of the states or even their decadence. To tell the story of Israel, is to tell the story of France, or Germany, or Spain. This is what the Christian antisemites see, and their antisemitism is thus purely theological, it is the antisemitism of the Fathers, that of Chrysostom, Saint Augustin, Saint Jerome. Before the birth of Jesus, the Jewish people was the chosen people, the beloved son of God; since the time it had disowned the Saviour, since it had become a deicide, it had become the fallen people par excellence, and having before brought the world's salvation, it now causes its ruin.

In certain works, as, e. g., in the little known book by Gougenot des Mousseaux, The Jew, Judaism and the Judaization of the Christian Nations, this conception is very clearly set forth. To Gougenot the Jews are "for ever the elect nation, the noblest and most august of nations, the nation issued from the blood of Abraham, to which we owe the mother of God." At the same time the Jews are the most perverse and unsociable of beings. How does he reconcile these contradictions? By opposing the Mosaic Jew to the Talmudist, the Bible to the Talmud. This is the way in which most of the Christian antisemites proceed. "Judaism and not Mosaism stands in the way of a radical reformation of the Jews,"

^1 Gougenot des Mousseaux, Le Juif, le Judaisme et la Judaisation des peuples chretiens (Paris, 1869).

says the abbot Chiarini in a memoir composed as "a guide to reformers of the Jews."²

Whatever their affinities and kinship with the anti-Jews of the Middle Ages, the anti-Talmudists, at all events, take a little different point of view. Formerly, the blasphemies against the Christian religion were chiefly sought in the Talmud, or arguments in support of the divinity of Jesus Christ were sought there; hereafter this book's enemies hunt it especially as an antisocial, pernicious and destructive work. The Talmud, according to them, makes the Jew an enemy of all nations, but if some of them, like des Mousseaux and Chiarini are guided, like the theologians of yore, above all by the desire to bring Israel back to the bosom of the church, others, like Doctor Rohling, are rather inclined to suppress him and they declare him forever incapable to be of any good. Quite the contrary; since, they say, not only are his teachings incompatible with the principles of Christian governments, but because he even seeks to ruin these governments in order to draw profit therefrom.

It is easy to understand that after the upsettings caused by the French Revolution, the conservatives felt

^2 Chiarini, Theorie du Judaisme (Paris, 1830).

¹ The anxiety for the future role of the Jews is expressed in a striking book by Leon Bloy, Le Salut par les Juifs (Paris, 1892). In the volume of documents and notes written as a sequel to Dom Deschamps' work on Secret Societies, Claudio Jan net expresses the opinion that the Jews are undoubtedly destined to lead the world back to God. This is exactly the ancient theological belief.

^2 Eng. translation. A. Rohling, Le Juif selon le Talmud (Paris, 1888). Translated from the German.

Nevertheless it was necessary to explain how this despised and hated Jew, considered a thing, had obtained the power of accomplishing such deeds, how he had prepared so formidable a might. Here comes in a theory, or rather a philosophy of history familiar to the Cath-

^1 I do not mean to say that the Jews were the only ones to speculate in this way; on the contrary, they were in the insignificant minority among those who did the speculation.

The Genesis of this conception of history is easy to find. It took its origin under the Terror itself. The part taken by the Masonic lodges, by the Illumines, the Red-Crosses, the Martinists, etc., in the Revolution, had vividly struck certain minds which were carried away to exaggerate the influence and role of these societies. A thing which particularly astonished these superficial

The first writers to set forth these ideas confined themselves to stating the existence of "a peculiar nation which was born and had grown in darkness, amidst all civilized nations, for the purpose of subjecting all of them to its rule," as, e. g., the cavalier de Malet, brother

^1 Louis Blanc, Histoire de la Revolution Française, vol. II, p. 74.

^1Recherches historiques et politiques qui prouvent l'existence d'une secte revolutionnaire, son antique origine, son organisation, ses moyens ainsi que son but; et devoilent entierement

brew pomp which characterizes the initiation in these lodges, they arrived at the conclusion that the Jews had always been the inspirers, guides and masters of Free-Masonry, nay, more than that, they had been its founders, and that they, with its aid, persistently aimed at the destruction of the church, from the very time of its foundation.

They went further in this path, they wanted to prove that the Jews had preserved their national constitution, that they were still ruled by princes, the Nassi, who led them to the conquest of the world, and that these enemies of mankind possessed a formidable organization and tactics. Gougenot des Mousseaux,² Rupert,³ de Saint-André,⁴ the abbot Chabeauty,⁵ have supported these assertions. As for Edouard Drumont, the whole pseudo-historic portion of his books, when not borrowed from father Loriquet, is nothing but a clumsy and uncritical plagiarism of Barruel, Gougenot, of Dom Deschamps and Crétineau Joly.¹

Whatever the case may be, with Drumont, as with pastor Stoecker, Christian antisemitism transforms or

Gougenot des Mousseaux, loc. cit.

^3 Rupert, L'Eglise et la Synagogue (Paris, 1859)

De Saint-Andre, Francs Macons et Juifs (Paris, 1880).

^5 A Chabeauty, Les Juifs nos Maitres (Paris, 1883).

^'It must be noted that in his France Juive (I mean in its first chapters) Drumont does not quote Gougenot des Mousseau or Barruel even once; he quotes, in passing, Dom Deschamps three times and Cretineau de Joly's Vendee Militaire once, and yet he laid these writers under heavy contribution. Unless his "historical documents" had been furnished him by the disciples of those I have just mentioned—that is quite possible. Let it be understood here, that this refers to Drumont as historian and not as polemist.

rather it borrows new weapons from several sociologists. Though Drumont fights the Jew's anti-clericalism, though Stoecker, in his anxiety to win the name of a second Luther, rises against the Jewish religion as destructive of the Christian State, other preoccupations engage them; they attack Jewish wealth and attribute to Jews the economic transformation which is the work of the 19th century. They still persecute in the Jew, the enemy of Jesus, the murderer of a God, but they aim particularly at the financier, and therein they join hands with those who preach economic antisemitism.

This antisemitism has manifested itself since the beginning of Jewish financiering and industrialism. If we find only traces of it in Fourier¹ and Proudhon, who confined themselves to stating only the role of the Jew as middle-man, stock-jobber and non-producer,¹ it gave life to men like Toussenel² and Capefigue;³ it inspired such books as The Jews Kings of the Epoch and the History of Great Financial Operations; and later on, in Germany, the pamphlets of Otto Glagau

^1 Fourier, Le Nouveau Monde industriel et societaire (Paris, librairie societaire, 1848).

^1 In Karl Marx (Annales franco-allemandes, 1844, p. 211) and in Lassalle, the same estimates of the parasite Jew may be found as in Fourier and Proudhon.

^2 Toussenel, Les Juifs rois de l'Epoque (Paris, 1847). Toussenel followed up this book with a violent campaign in the newspaper, La Democratie pacifique. However, the antisemitic movement vas quite violent, under the July monarchy, and numerous pamphlets were published against the Jewish financiers.

^3 Capefigue, Histoire des grandes operations financieres (Paris, 1855).

against the Jewish bankers and brokers. However, I have already pointed out the origin of this antisemitism, how, on the one hand, the landed capitalists held the Jew accountable for the predominance of industrial and financial capitalism, so hateful to them, how, on the other hand, the bourgeoisie, stocked with privileges, turned against the Jew, its erstwhile ally, henceforth its competitor and a foreign competitor at that; for to his position as a non-assimilated stranger the Jew owes the excessive animosity shown him, and thus economic antisemitism is bound up with ethnologic and national antisemitism.

This last form of antisemitism is modern, it was born in Germany, and from the Germans the French antisemites have derived their theory.

This doctrine of races, which Renan advocated in France¹ was wrought out in Germany under the influence of the Hegelian doctrines. It gained the ascendancy in 1840 and particularly in 1848, not only because German policy pressed it into service, but because it was in accord with the nationalist and patriotic movement that produced nations, and with that striving for unity which characterized all European nations.

The state, so they said, must be national; the nation

^4 Otto Glagau, Der Boersen und Grundergeschwindel in Berlin, (Leipzig, 1876). Les besoins de l'Empire et le nouveau Kulturkampf (Osnabruck, 1879).

^1 During the last years of his life Renan had given up his theory of races, their inequality and their mutual superiority or inferiority. These theories will be found set forth quite clearly and lucidly in Gobineau's in many ways remarkable book, L'inegalite des races (Paris, Firmin Didot, 1884).

must be one, and must include all the individuals speaking the national language and belonging to the same race. More than that, it is of importance that this national State reduce all the heterogeneous elements, i. e., the foreigners. For the Jew, not being an Aryan, has not the same moral, social and intellectual conceptions as the Aryan; he is irreducible, and therefore he must be eliminated, or else he will ruin the nations that have received him, and some among the nationalist and ethnologic antisemites assert that the work has already been accomplished.

These notions, resumed since then by von Treitschke¹ and Adolph Wagner in Germay, by Schoenerer in Austria, Pattai in Hungary and, at a much later date, by Drumont in France², were reduced, for the first time, to a system by W. Marr, in a pamphlet which had a certain echo in France: The Victory of Judaism over Germanism.³ In it Marr declared Germany the prey of a conquering race, the Jews, a race possessing everything

^1 H. von Treitschke, Ein Wort ueber unser Judenthum (A Word about Our Jews). Berlin, 1888.

Drumont is the type of the assimilator antisemite who has flourished in France these last years, and who has overrun Germany. A talented polemist, vigorous journalist and sprightly satirist, Drumont is a historian of poor documentary evidence, a mediocre sociologist and especially philosopher, and can under no circumstances be compared with men of H. von Treitschke's, Adolph Wagner's and Eugen Duhring's standing. Yet, in the development of antisemitism in France and Germany even he has played a considerable role, and he has exercised a great influence as a propagandist.

^8 W. Marr, Der Sieg des Judenthums ueber das Germvanthum (Berne, 1879). In the Journal des Debats of Nov. 5, 1879, Bourdeau devoted an essay to this pamphlet.

and wanting to judaize Germany, like France, however, and he concluded by saying that Germany was lost. To his ethnologic antisemitism he even admixed the metaphysical antisemitism which, if I may say so, Schopenhauer had professed,⁴ the antisemitism consisting in combatting the optimism of the Jewish religion, an optimism which Schopenhauer found low and degrading, and with which he contrasted Greek and Hindoo religious conceptions.

But Schopenhauer and Marr are not the only representatives of philosophical antisemitism. The whole of German metaphysics combatted the Jewish spirit, which it considered essentially different from the Germanic spirit, and which for it stood for the past as contrasted with the present. While the Spirit is realized in the world's history, while it advances, the Jews remain at a lower stage. Such is the Hegelian thought, that of Hegel and also of his disciples of the extreme left—Feuerbach, Arnold Ruge and Bruno Bauer. Max Stir-

^{4 &}quot;A God like that Jehovah," says Schopenhauer, "who, as animi causa, for its own pleasure and from the joy of heart produces this world of misery and lamentations, and who even glories in it and applauds himself with his

^—this is too much. Let us then, at this point, consider the religion of the Jews as the last among the religious doctrines of the civilized nations, and this will be in perfect accord with the fact that it is the only one that has absolutely not a trace of immortality." (Parerga und Paralipomena, v. II, ch. XII, p. 312, Leipzig 1874).

^1 We shall return to this question in our Economic History of the Jews, when speaking of the role of the Jews in Germany in the nineteenth century.—Cf. Hegel, Philosophie des Rechts; Arnold Ruge, Zwei Jahre in Paris; Bruno Bauer, Die Judenfrage; L. Feuerbach. Das Wesen des Christenthums.

^2 Max Stirner, Der Einzige und sein Eigenthum. Leipzig, 1882, pp. 22, 25, 31, 69.

^1 Particularly in The Parties and the Jewish Question. Die Judenfrage als Frage der Racenschaedlichkeit.

with the Semitic spirit until they have expelled from their spirit this present second aspect of Hebraism."

After Dühring, Nietzsche, in his turn, combatted Jewish and Christian ethics, which, according to him, are the ethics of slaves as contrasted with the ethics of masters. Through the prophets and Jesus, the Jews and the Christians have set up low and noxious conceptions which consist in the deification of the weak, the humble, the wretched, and sacrificing to it the strong, the proud, the mighty.

Several revolutionary atheists, Gustave Tridon² and Regnard³ among them, have espoused, in France, this Christian antisemitism which, in its final analysis, is reduced to the ethnologic antisemitism, just like as is the strictly metaphysical antisemitism.

The different varieties of antisemitism may, then, be reduced to three: Christian antisemitism, economic antisemitism, and ethnologic antisemitism. In our examination just made we have pointed out that the grievances of the antisemites were religious grievances, social grievances, ethnologic grievances, national grievances, intellectual and moral grievances. To the antisemite the Jew is an individual of a foreign race, incapable of adapting himself, hostile to Christian civilization and religion; immoral, antisocial, of an intellectuality different from the Aryan intellectuality, and, to cap it all, a depredator and wrongdoer.

^1 Frierich Nietzche, Human, all too Human (1879), Beyond Good and Evil; The Genealogy of Morality (1887).

^2 Gustave Tridon, Du Molochisme juif. (Bruxelles, 1884).

^8 A. Regnard, Aryens et Semites. (Paris, 1890).

We shall now examine these grievances in regular order. We shall see whether they are well-founded i. e., whether the real causes of contemporary antisemitism correspond to them, or they are but prejudices. Let us first turn to the study of the ethnologic grievance.

CHAPTER X.

THE RACE.

The Ethnologic Grievance.—The Inequality of Races.—Semites and Aryans.—Aryan Superiority.—The Struggle of Semites and Aryans.—The Semitic Share in the so-called Aryan Civilizations.—The Semitic Colonization.—The First Years of the Christian Era and the Judeo-Christians.—The Jewish Elements in the European Nations.—The Idea of Race Among the Jews.—Jewish Superiority.—The Origins of the Jewish Race.—Foreign Elements in the Jewish Race.—Jewish Proselytism.—In Pagan Antiquity.—After the Christian Era.—The Uralo-Altaic Infiltrations in the Jewish Race.—The Khazars and the Peoples of the Caucasus.—Different Varieties of Jews.—Dolichocephals and Brachycephals.—Ashkenazim and Sephardim.—The Jews of China, India and Abyssinia.—Modification Through Surroundings and Language. Jewish Unity.—Nationality.

The Jew is a Semite, he belongs to a strange, noxious, disturbing and inferior race—such is the ethnologic grievance of the antisemites. What does it rest upon? It rests upon an anthropological theory which had given rise or at least justification to an historical theory: the doctrine of the inequality of races, of which we must speak first of all.

Since the eighteenth century attempts have been made to classify men and distribute them under well-defined, distinct and separate categories. As a basis for it quite different indices were taken: the section of the hair—oval section for negroes with woolly hair, or round section; the shape of the skull—broad or elongated; the color of the skin. This last classification has prevailed: nowadays three races of mankind—the negro, the yellow, and the white race—are distinguished. Different aptitudes are ascribed to these races, and they are arranged in the order of their superiority in a ladder of which the negro race occupies the lowest and the white race the highest round. Similarly, in order to account still better for this hierarchy of the human races, the religious doctrine of monogenism, which declares that mankind has descended from a single couple,—is rejected, and against it is set up polygenism which admits of the simultaneous appearance of numerous different couples,—a more logical and rational conception and more in keeping with reality.

Has this classification any serious and actual bases? Does the belief in monogenism or in polygenism allow of

^1 Ulotrichi and Leiotrichi.

^2 Brachyciphals and Dolichocephals.

Race is, however, a fiction. No human group exists that can boast of having had two original ancestors and having descended from them without any adulteration of the primitive stock through mixture; human races are not pure, i. e., strictly speaking, there is no such thing as a race. "There is no unity," says Topinard: the races have divided, scattered, blended, intercrossed in all degrees and directions since thousands of centuries; most of them gave up their language in favor of that of their

L. Gumplowicz, La Lutte des races (Paris, 1893).

conquerors, then gave the same up for a third, if not a fourth language; the principal masses have disappeared and now we find ourselves face to face with peoples and not races." The anthropologic classification of mankind has consequently no value whatever.

Nevertheless, and however untenable this doctrine of the inequality of races, whether from the linguistic or

^1 Dr. P. Topinard, Anthropologie (Paris, Biblioth. des Sciences contemporaines.—Reinwald edit.. (There is an English translation.)

^1 The tenth chapter of Genesis presents one of the most perfect types of this belief, in the genealogy of the descendants of Noah's sons; an ancestor is placed at the head of each human group of each nation.

the same ancestor for each of its members. In spite of all, this idea of the community of origin has survived till our days. That is because it takes its origin in an essential need: the need of homogeneity, unity, the need which impels all societies to reduce their dissimilar elements, and this belief in the purity of blood is but an external manifestation of the need of unity, it is a way of expressing this necessity, a neat, simple and satisfactory way for the unconscious and the savage, but at all events insufficient and particularly undemonstrable for him who is not satisfied with the appearance of things.

All the same the theory of the inequality of races rests on a real fact; its formula ought to be: the inequality of nations, for there is every evidence that the destiny of different nations has not been similar, but this does not mean that the inequality of these nations was original. It simply means that certain nations were placed in more favorable geographical, climatic and historical conditions than those enjoyed by other nations, and that, consequently, they could develop more happily, more harmoniously; but not that they had better dispositions or better-formed brains. The proof thereof is in the fact that certain nations of the would-be superior white race have founded civilizations by far inferior to those of the yellow or even the negro races. There are not, therefore, any originally superior peoples or races, but there are nations which "under certain conditions have founded more powerful monarchies and more lasting civilizations."

^1 Leon Metchnikoff, La Civilisation et les Grands Fleuves.

⁽Paris, 1889.)

mentary way for the diversity of human groups, by the existence of sprouts issued from single parents, each sprout then producing a nation. Thus it is the Bible again that lends assistance to the antisemites, for in ethnography and history we are still clinging to the explanations of the Genesis—Shem, Ham and Japhet, only replaced by the Semite, the Turanian and the Aryan, however impossible it may be to justify these divisions linguistically, anthropologically or historically.¹

Without stopping to discuss whether the negro races are capable of civilization or not² we must see what is understood under the names Aryans and Semites.

Aryans is the name of all peoples whose language is derived from Sanskrit, a language spoken by a human group called arya. Now, this group "presents no scientifically demonstrable unity except from the exclusively linguistic point of view." All anthropologic unity is undemonstrable: the cranial measurements, indices, numbers, furnish no proof. In this Aryan chaos are found Semitic types, Mongolian types, all types and all varieties of types, from the one which is capable of de-

The classification is pretty nearly of a piece with the claim of the feudal classes, who justified, in the Middle Ages, their tyranny by pretending to be Japhetites, while the peasant and the serf were Hamites, a fact which made legitimate the relations of superior and inferior.

^2 We know that that wonderful civilization of Ancient Egypt was in great part the work of negroes, who were helped by the reds, the Semites, Turanians and some of those white tribes, in our days still represented by the African Tuaregs, who have never founded any society or anything lasting. There still exist in Africa imposing ruins which testify to the existence of a negro civilization, strongly developed at one historical epoch.

^* Leon Metchnikoff, loc. cit.

veloping morally, intellectually and socially, up to the one that remains in everlasting mediocrity. There may be observed dolichocephals and brachycephals, men with brown skin, others with yellowish and yet others with white skin. Still, despite the fact that some tribes of Aryan language had no development perceptibly superior to that of some agglomerations of negroes, it is not a whit less energetically asserted that the Aryan is the most beautiful and noblest of the races, that it is the productive and creative race par excellence, that to it we are indebted for the most wonderful metaphysics, the most magnificent lyric, religious and ethical productions and that no other race ever was or is susceptible of a like expansion. To arrive at such a result, an abstraction is naturally made from the indisputable fact that all historical organisms had been formed of the most dissimilar elements, whose respective share in the common work it is impossible to determine.

The Aryan race, then, is superior, and it has proven its superiority by resisting the rule of a fraternal and rival race—the Semitic. This latter is a ferocious, brutal race, incapable of creative power, devoid of any ideal, and Universal History is represented as the history of the conflict between the Aryan and the Semitic race, a conflict which we witness even at present. Each antisemite affords proof of this secular conflict. Even the Trojan War becomes, with some, the struggle between the Aryan and the Semite, and through the exigencies of the case, Paris becomes a Semitic brigand who ravishes Aryan beauties. Later on the Median Wars form a phase of this great contest, and the great king is pictured as the

The Christian antisemites have thus reconciled their faith with their animosity, and not stopping short even before heresy, they have admitted that the prophets and Jesus were Aryans, while the anti-Christian antisemites

^1 This theory, which has the immense advantage of not resting on any foundation, sprang up in Germany and passed from there into France and Belgium. De Biez and Edmond Picard have in turn upheld it, but they did not bring any even illusory proof in support of their assertions. (Cf. Antisemiten—Spiegel, pp. 132, s22., Danzig, 1892).

consider the Galilean and the nabis (prophets) as deserving condemnation and inferior Semites.

served as models for the Greek artists, and thus enabled the subtle mind of the Ionians and Dorians to interpret the myths represented on them, and the Phoenician image-trade helped out much the Greek iconologic mythology. Again, the Phoenicians brought to the Hellenes the alphabet borrowed from the hieroglyphics of ancient Egypt; they taught them the mining industry and the working of metals, just as Assyria's pupil, Asia Minor, made them familiar with sculpture, and we still possess monuments testifying to this influence.—e. g., the lions of the Mycenæan Acropolis and those Hellenic goddesses which have preserved the types we meet with on the Babylonian baked-clay tablets. With their marvelous sense of harmony and beauty, with their science of order, of orchestration, as it were, they wrought up these oriental ideas, transformed and purified them, but, for all that, the Greek people was an amalgam of quite different Aryan, Turanian and Semitic, even perhaps Hamitic, races, and it owed its genius to causes other than the nobility and purity of its origin.

Still the modern antisemites would rigorously admit the importance of the Semites in the history of civilization, but would make a classification even there. There are, they say, superior and inferior Semites. The Jew is the latter type, of the Semites, essentially unproductive, from whom men have received nothing and who can give nothing. It is impossible to accept this assertion. It is true that the Jewish nation has never displayed any

^1 Cf. Clermont-Ganneau, L'Imagerie phenicienne et la Mythologie iconologique chez les Grecs. Paris, 1880; and Les Antiquites orientales, Paris, 1890.

great aptitudes for the plastic arts, but, through the voice of its prophets, it has accomplished a moral work by which every nation has been benefited; it has worked out some of those ethical and social ideas which are the leaven of humanity; if it has not had any divine sculptors and painters, it has had wonderful poets, it has, above all, had moralists who had worked for universal brotherhood, prophetic pamphleteers who made living and immortal the idea of justice, and Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, despite their violence, fierceness even, have made heard the voice of suffering which wants not only to be protected against execrable force, but to be freed from it.

However, if the Phoenician element had incorporated itself with the Pelasgian, Hellenic, Latin, Celtic and Iberian elements, the Jewish element, by intermingling with others, has also contributed to the formation of those agglomerations which later on united to form the modern nations. The Jew, too, came to sink and disappear in that enormous crucible which Asia Minor presented, and where the most diverse nations were cast. Slowly hellenized, the Jews in Alexandria turned the city into one of the most active centres of Christian propaganda. They were among the first to convert; they formed the nucleus of the primitive Church in Alexandria, Antioch, Rome, and after the disappearance of the Ebionites they were absorbed in the total mass of Greek and Roman converts.

Throughout the Middle Ages Jewish blood was intermingling with Christian blood. Cases of wholesale conversion were exceedingly numerous, and it would make interesting reading to recount those of the Jews of

Braine,¹ of Tortosa,² those of Clermont converted by Avitus, the 25,000 converted, as tradition goes, by Vincent Ferrer,—all of whom disappeared in the midst of the nations among whom they lived. If the Inquisition hindered, or at least tried to hinder, judaization, it favored the absorption of the Jews, and were the Christian antisemites logical they would curse Torquemada and his successors, who helped to pollute Aryan purity by the adjunction of the Jew. The number of Marranos in Spain was enormous. In nearly all Spanish families, a Jew or a Moor is found at some point of their genealogy; "the noblest houses are full of Jews," they said,¹ and the cardinal Mendoza y Bovadilla wrote in the sixteenth century a pamphlet on the flaws in Spanish lineages.² It was the same everywhere, and from the number of apostates antagonizing their former coreligionists we have ascertained that the Jews were accessible to Christian seduction.

We have thus made answer to those who maintain the purity of the Aryan race; we have pointed out that this race, like all the others, was a product of countless mixtures. Not to speak of the prehistoric times we have made it clear that the Persian, Macedonian and Roman conquests made worse the ethnologic confusion which in-

^1 Saint-Prioux, Histoire de Braine.

^2 The Jews of Tortosa converted in thousands after the conference opened at the instigation of Jerome de Santa Fe.

^1 Centinela contra Judios.

^2 Francisco Mendoza y Bovadilla, El Tizon de la Nobleza Espanola, o maculas y sambenitos de sus Linajes (Barcelona, 1880; Bibliotheca de obras raras).—Cf. also Llorente, Histoire de l'Inquisition (Paris, 1817).

creased in Europe still further during the invasions. The so-called Indo-Germanic races, stock-full of alluvions even before, intermingled with Chudians, Ugrians, Uralo-Altaians. Those among the Europeans who believe themselves descended in line direct from Aryan ancestors do not keep in mind those so diverse lands which these ancestors had traversed in their long journeys, nor all the tribes which they had swept along with them, nor all those which they found settled wherever they tarried,—tribes of unknown races and of uncertain origin, obscure and unknown tribes whose blood is still running in the veins of those who boast themselves heirs of the legendary and noble Aryans, as the blood of the yellow Dasyus and black Dravidians flows under the skin of the white Arya-Hindoos.

But the idea of Semitic superiority is in no way more justifiable than the idea of Aryan superiority, and yet it was upheld with as much verisimilitude. Theorists were found who asserted and even tried to prove that the Semites were the flower of mankind, and that from them came whatever good there was in the Aryans. Surely one day there will appear, if it has not yet happened, an ethnologist who will be led by his patriotism to prove with equal obviousness that the Turanian ought to occupy the highest place in history and anthropology.

At present, the Jews—who consider themselves the highest incarnation of Semitism—help in perpetuating this belief in the inequality and hierarchy of races. The ethnologic prejudice is universal, and those even who suffer from it are its most tenacious upholders. Antisemites and philosemites join hands to defend the same doc-

trines, they part company only when it comes to award the supremacy. If the antisemite reproaches the Jew for being a part of a strange and base race, the Jew vaunts of belonging to an elect and superior race; to his nobility and antiquity he attaches the highest importance and even now he is the prey of patriotic pride. Though no longer a nation, though protesting against those who see in him the representative of a nation encamped among strange nations, he nevertheless harbors in the depth of his heart this absurdly vain conviction, and thus he is like the chauvinists of all lands. Like them he claims to be of pure origin, while his assertion is no more well-founded, and we have to examine closely the assertion of Israel's enemy and of Israel himself: to wit, that the Jews are the most united. stable, inpenetrable, irreducible nation.

We possess no documents to determine the ethnology of the nomadic Bene-Israel, but probable it is that the twelve tribes constituting this people, according to the tradition, did not belong to a single stock. They were doubtless heterogeneous tribes, for, in spite of its legends, the Jewish nation cannot, any more than the other nations, boast of having originated from a single couple, and the current conception which represents the Hebrew tribe as subdividing into sub-tribes¹ is but a legendary and traditional conception,—that of the Genesis,—and one which a portion of historians of the Hebrews have wrongly accepted. Already composed of various unities among which doubtless were Turanian and Kushite

^1 Ernest Renan, Histoire du peuple d'Israel, v. I.

groups, i.e., yellows and blacks, the Jews added still other strange elements while living in Egypt and in the land of Canaan which they conquered. Later on Gog and Magog, the Scythians, coming in Josiah's reign to Jerusalem's gates, probably left their impress on Israel. But starting with the first captivity the mixtures grow in number. "During the Babylonian captivity," says Maimonides, "the Israelites mingled with all sorts of foreign races and had children, who formed, owing to these unions, a kind of a new confusion of tongues," and yet this Babylonia, where there were cities like Mahuza, almost entirely peopled by Persians converted to Judaism, was deemed to contain Jews of a purer race than the Jews of Palestine. Said an old proverb: "For the purity of the race, the difference between the Jews of the Roman provinces is just as perceptible as the difference between dough of mediocre quality and dough made of the flour of meal; but, compared to Babylonia, Judea itself is like mediocre dough."

This means that Judea had undergone many vicissitudes. It had always been the transit ground for the Mizraim and Assur; afterwards, on returning from captivity, the Jews united with the Samaritans, Edomites and Moabites. After the conquest of Idumea by Hyrcan,

¹ Three elements are found at the basis of every civilization: the white, the yellow and the black. We see it in Egypt, where they adjoined a red element, in Mesopotamia, in India, everywhere where great empires arose, and it may almost be asserted that the co-operation of these three types of mankind is necessary to establish durable civilizations.

^2 Maimonides, Yad Hazaka (the powerful hand), Part I, chap. 1. §4.

there were Jewish and Idumean unions, and it was said that, during the war with Rome, the Latin conquerors had begotten sons. "Are we perfectly sure," said Rabbi Ulla, melancholically, to Judah-ben Ezekiel, "that we are not descended from pagans who dishonored the young daughters of Zion after the capture of Jerusalem?"

But what was most conducive to the introduction of foreign blood into the Jewish nation was proselytism. The Jews were a propagandist nation par excellence, and from the construction of the Second Temple and particularly after the dispersion, their zeal was considerable. They were exactly those of whom the Gospel says, that they ran over "earth and sea to make a proselyte," and with perfect right could Rabbi Eliezer exclaim: "Wherefore has God scattered the Jews among the nations? To recruit for Him proselytes everywhere." There are abundant proofs of the proselyting ardor of the Jews, and during the first centuries before the Christian era Judaism spread with the same vigor as characterized Christianity and Mohammedanism later on. Rome, Alexandria, Antioch—where nearly all the Jews were converted gentiles—Damask, Cyprus were the centres of fusion, as I have already pointed out. Nay, more, the Hasmonide conquerors compelled the vanquished Syrians to circumcise; kings, carrying their subjects along, converted, as, e. g., the family of Adiabenus, and the pop-

^1 Matth. xxiii.

^2 Talmud Babli, Pesachim, f. 87.

^3 Horace, Sat. IV, 143.—Josephus Bell. Jud., vii, III., 3.— Dio Cassius, xxxvii, xvii, etc., etc.

^1 Cf. Ch. II; ch. III and ch. IV.

ulation was very mixed in certain cantons of Palestine itself, as was the case with Galilea, in that "circle of gentiles" where Jesus was to be born.

All over Europe the Jews attracted proselytes, thus rejuvenating their blood by the admixture of new blood. They made converts in Spain where successive councils at Toledo forbade mixed marriages; in Switzerland,

^1 Amolon, Liber contra Judaeos.—Migne, Patr. Lat. CXVI.

where a decree of the fourteenth century sentenced young girls to wearing Jewish hats for having begotten children by Israelite fathers; in Poland, in the sixteenth century, in spite of Sigismund I's edicts, if we are to believe the historian Bielski.² And they not only made these unions with the so-called Aryan nations in Europe, but also with the Uralo-Altaians and Turanians; there the infiltration was more considerable.

On the shores of the Black and the Caspian Sea, the Jews had established themselves in great antiquity. The story goes that during the war he waged against King Tachus (361 B. C.) in Egypt, Artaxerxes Ochus wrested the Jews from their land and transferred them to Hyrcania on the Caspian shore. Even if their establishment in this region is not so old as claimed by this tradition, they still were settled there long before the Christian era, witness the Greek inscriptions of Anape, Olbia and Panticapea. They emigrated in the seventh and eighth centuries from Babylonia and came to the Tatar cities, Kertsh, Tarku, Derbend, etc. About 620 they converted there a whole tribe, the Khazars, whose territory was in the neighborhood of Astrakhan. Legend seized upon this fact, which greatly stirred up the Jews of the West, but, despite of this, there can be no doubt about it. Isidore of Seville, a contemporary of the event, mentions it, and afterwards Chasdai Ibn-Shaprut, minister of the Khalif Abd-er-Rahman, corresponded with Joseph, the last

^2 Bielski, Chronicon rerum Polonicarum.

^1 Vivien de Saint-Martin, Les Khazars (Paris, 1851).—C. C. d'Ohlson, Les Peuples du Caucase, Paris, 1828.—Revue des Etudes juives, v. XX, p. 144.

Khagan of the Khazars, whose kingdom was destroyed by Svyatoslav, prince of Kieff. The Khazars exercised a great influence over the neighboring Slav tribes, the Polyane, Syeveryane and Vyatichi, and made numerous proselytes among them.

The Tatar peoples of the Caucasus also embraced Judaism in the twelfth century, according to the report of the traveler Petachya of Ratisbon.² In the fourteenth century, there were numerous Jews in the hordes, which, with Mamay at their head, invaded the lands surrounding the Caucasus. It was in this nook of Eastern Europe that actively went on the fusion of Jews and Uralo-Altaians; here the Semite mixed with the Turanian, and even now, in studying the nations of the Caucasus, one meets with traces of this mixture among the 30,000 Jews of that country and the tribes surrounding them.¹

Thus this Jewish race represented by Jews and antisemites as the most unassailable, most homogeneous of races, is strongly multifarious. Antropologists would in the first place divide it into two well-defined parts: the dolichocephals and the brachycephals. To the first type belong the Sephardic Jews—the Spanish and Portuguese Jews as well as the greater part of the Jews of Italy and Southern France; to the second may be assigned the

^2 Basnage, Histoire des Juifs, v. IX, p. 246; and Wagenseil, Exercitationes.

Among the Chechens inhabiting the East and Northwest of the Caucasus, as well as among the Andis of Daghestan, the Jewish type is very widespread. The Tats of the Caspian Sea are considered to be Jews, and there are many Jews among the Tatar tribes, as the Kumiks, for instance. (Cf. Eckert, Der Kaukasus und seine Volker, Leipzig, 1887).

Ashkenazim, i. e., the Polish, Russian and German Jews.² But the Sephardim and the Ashkenazim are not the only two known varieties of Jews; these varieties are numerous.

In Africa are found agricultural and nomadic Jews, allied with the Kabyls and Berberians, near Setif, Guelma and Biskra, at the frontier of Morocco; in caravan they go as far as Timbuctoo, and some of their tribes, on the borders of Sahara, like the Daggatouns, are black tribes, as also are the Fellah Jews of Abyssinia. In India, one finds white Jews in Bombay, and black Jews in Cochin China, but the white Jews have in them melanian blood. They settled in India in the fifth century, after the persecutions of the Persian King Pheroces, who banished them from Bagdad. Their settling is at all events assigned to a more remote date: the coming of the Jews into China, i. e., before Christ. As to the Jews of China, they are not only related to the Chinese surrounding them, but they have also adopted the practices of the Confucian religion.³

The Jew, consequently, has incessantly been transformed by the environments in which he stayed. He has changed because the different languages which he has

For the dolichocephalous Jews of Africa and Italy, cf. the works of Pruner-Bey (Memoire de la Societe d'anthropologie, II, p. 432 and III, p. 82) and Lombroso.—For the brachycephalous Jews cf. Copernicki and Mayer, Physical Characteristics of the Population of Galicia, Cracow, 1876 (In Polish).

^1 Mardochee Aby Serour, Les Daggatouns, Paris, 1880

^2 On the Fellahs cf. Abbadie, Nouvelles annales des Voyages, 1845. III. p. 84. and Ph. Luzzato, Archives israelites, 1851-1854.

^3 Elie Schwartz, God's Nation in China. Strassburg, 1880.—Abbe Sionnet, Essai sur les Juifs de la Chine, Paris, 1837.

spoken, have introduced into his mind different and opposite notions; he has not remained such as a united and homogeneous people ought to be, but, on the contrary, he is, at present, the most heterogeneous of all nations, one that presents the greatest varieties. And this pretended race whose stability and power of resistance friend and foe agree in extolling, affords us the most multifarious and most opposite types, since they range from the white to the black Jew, passing by way of the yellow Jew, not to speak of the secondary divisions,—Jews with blonde and red hair, and brown Jews with black hair.

Consequently, the ethnologic grievance of the antisemites does not rest upon any serious and real foundation. The opposition of the Aryans and the Semites is artificial; it is not correct to say that the Aryan race and the Semitic race are pure races, and that the Jew is a single and unvarying people. Semitic blood has mingled with Aryan blood and Aryan blood has mixed with Semitic blood. Aryans and Semites have both, furthermore, received an admixture of Turanian blood and Hamite, Negro or Negroid blood, and in the Babel of nationalities and races which the world is at present, the preoccupation of those who seek to discover who among his neighbors is an Aryan, a Turanian, a Semite, is a vain pursuit.

In spite of this there is a portion of truth in the grievance which we have examined, or, rather, the theories of the antisemites about the inequality of races and Aryan superiority, in one word, the anthropologic prejudices are but the veil which covers some real causes of antisemitism.

We have said that there are no races, but there are peoples and nations. What is improperly called a race is not an ethnologic unit, but is an historic, intellectual and moral unit. The Jews are not an ethnos, but they are a nationality, they are diversified types, it is true, but what nation is not diversified? What makes a people is not unity of origin, but unity of sentiments, ideas, ethics. Let us see whether the Jews do not present this unity, and whether we cannot find therein, in part, the secret of the animosity shown them.

CHAPTER XI.

NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM.

The Jews in the World.—Race and Nation.—Are the Jews a Nation?—The Midst, the Laws, the Customs.—The Religion and the Rites.—The Language and Literature.—The Jewish Spirit.—Does the Jew Believe in His Nationality?—The Restoration of the Jewish Empire.—Jewish Chauvinism.—The Jew and the Strangers to His Law.—Is the Talmud Anti-Social?—Once and Now.—The Permanence of Prejudices.—Jewish Exclusiveness and Persistence of the Type.—The Principle of Nationalities in the Nineteenth Century.—In Germany and Italy.—In Austria, in Russia and Eastern Europe.—Pangermanism and Panslavism.—The Idea of Nationality, the Jew and Antisemitism.—The Heterogeneous

Elements in the Nations.—Elimination or Absorption.—National Egoism.—Preservation or Transformation.—The Two Tendencies.—Patriotism and Humanitarianism.—Nationalism, Internationalism and Anti-Semitism.—Jewish Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of Fatherland.—The Jews and the Revolution.

There are about eight million Jews scattered over the face of the earth, nearly seven-eighths of which inhabit Europe. Among these Jews figure the Bedoween Jews living on the confines of Sahara, the Daggaouns of the

¹It is very difficult to estimate exactly the Jewish population of the world. On the one hand the antisemites overdraw the probable figures, desirous as they are of proving the Jewish invasion; on the other hand, the Jews or the philosemites, led on by contrary interests, in their turn diminish these figures. Thus the antisemites readily give the number as nine millions, if not all ten, the philosemites or the Jews (Cf. Loeb, article "Jew" in Vivien de Saint-Martin's Dictionaire de Geographie.—Th. Reinach, Histoire des Israelites) give the number at 6,300,000; but in their estimate they set down the number of Russian Jews at 2,552,000, which is much below the actual figures of 4,500,000 at the least (Leo Efrera, Les Juifes Russes). I have therefore adopted 8,000,000 as the total population, which seemed to me the figure nearest approaching the truth. [The figure is an underestimate; the number of Russian Jews, according to the Russian census of 1897, was 5,700,00.—Translator.]

¹It is possible that the increasing emigration of Polish and Russian Jews to the United States should cause a difference in in these figures. At present there are about 250 or 300 thousand Jews in the United States, [about 1,135,00 in 1902.—Translator] and if their number does not enormously increase from year to year, it means that the Jews of the United States have a very marked tendency to blend in the surrounding population. This refers to the fact that the majority of the Jewish immigrants belong to the working class.

desert, the Fellahs of Abyssinia, the black Jews of India, the Mongoloid Jews of China, the Kalmuk and Tatar Jews of the Caucasus, the blonde Jews of Bohemia and Germany, the brown Jews of Portugal, Southern France, Italy and the Orient, the dolichocephalous Jews, the brachycephalous and sub-brachycephalous Jews, all Jews, who, according to the section of their hair, the shape of their skull, the color of their skin, could be classified, on the strength of the best principles of ethnology, into four or five different races, as we have just shown.

By comparing, e. g., the inhabitants of the different departments of France, we might, in exactly the same way, prove that the differences observable between a Provencal and a Breton, a Niceois and a Picardian, a Normandian and Aquitanian, a Lorrain and a Basque, an Auvergnat and a Savoyard do not permit the belief in the existence of the French race.

Still, proceeding in this way, we shall really have proven that the race is not an ethnologic unity, i. e., that no people is a descendant of common parents, and that no nation has been formed from the aggregation of cells of this kind. But we shall by no means have proven that there exists no French people, a German people, an English people, etc., and we should not be able to do it, since there exists an English literature, a German literature, a French literature, different literatures all of them, expressing in a different way common sentiments, it is true, but whose objective and subjective play upon the various individuals affected by them is not the same, sentiments common to human nature, but ones which each man and each collection of men feels and ex-

presses in a different way. We have had to reject the anthropologic notion of race, a notion which is erroneous and which we shall see to have given origin to the worst opinions, the most detestable and least justifiable vanities, that anthropologic notion which tends to make of each people an association of proud and egoistic recluses, but we are forced to admit the existence of historical units i. e., separate nations. For the idea of race we substitute the idea of nation, and again we have to make an explanation, for the nineteenth century based its belief in nationalities on its belief in race, and an innate race at that.

What is commonly understood by race? According to Littré, a nation is a "union of human beings inhabiting the same territory subjected or not subjected to the same government, and having had common interests long enough to allow of considering them as belonging to the same race." To this definition of a nation Littré opposes that of a people: "A multitude of human beings who even though not inhabiting the same country, have the same religion and are of the same origin." According to Mancini, a nation is a "natural community of human beings united by their country, origin, manners, language, and being conscious of this community." To follow Bluntschli, a people may be defined as follows: "The community of spirit, sentiment, race, which has become hereditary in a mass of human beings of different pro-

^1Mancini, Della Nazionalita come fondamento del diritto delle genti. Naples, 1873.

^2 Bluntschli, Theorie generale de l'Etat. (Traduction A. de Piedmatten) Paris, 1891.

fessions and classes; a mass which—leaving the political bond out of consideration—feels united by culture and origin, especially by language and manners, and which is strange to others." As for nation, again to follow Bluntschli, it is a "community of men united and organized into a state." Thus it is plain that in order to succeed in discriminating a people from a nation one must introduce either a territorial unity, as does Littré, or a state unity as does Bluntschli; in other words, an outside matter, one above those constituting the people and the nation which can actually be identified.

To sum up. Customarily a nation is called an agglomeration of individuals having in common their territory, language, religion, law, customs, manners, spirit, historic mission. Now, we have seen that a common race, innate race, a race implying the same origin and purity of blood is but a fiction; the idea of race is not necessarily linked with the conception of a nation—proof that the Basques, Bretons, Provencals, belong all to the French nation, though very different anthropologically. As for territorial community, it is not a whit more necessary; the Poles, e. g., possess no common territory, and yet there is a Polish nation. Language, too, does not seem indispensable, and indeed one may refer to Switzerland, Austria, Belgium, in which countries two or several languages are spoken, but these countries, organized,—with the exception of Switzerland,—federatively, permit us on the contrary, to assert that language is clearly the sign of nationality, since in all of them those speaking the same language strive to group together, in other words, that one language tends to become prepon-

Nations, consequently, do exist. These nations may sometimes not be organized under the same government; they may have lost their fatherland, their language, but the nation continues as long as have not disappeared this

self-consciousness and the consciousness of that community of thought and interests which they represent by the fictitious background of race, filiation, origin and purity of blood.

No religion has ever moulded soul and spirit as has the Jewish religion. Nearly all religions have had a

^1 A. Franck, lecture on "Religion and Science in Judaism," in Annuaire de la Societe des Etudes Juives. 2nd vear.

him the characteristics which imitation and heredity have perpetuated.

¹Chapt. VII.

^1 For instance the transformations of the Anglo-Saxons in the United States of America, and the transformations of the Dutch in the Transvaal.

have been different mentally as well as physically.¹ This was not the case, and their social and political midst was the same everywhere. In Spain, France, Italy, Germany, Poland, the legislation against the Jews was identical, a fact quite easy of explanation as in all these lands the legislation was inspired by the church. The Jew was placed under the same restrictions, the same barriers were built around him, he was ruled by the same laws. He had kept apart, and so they kept him apart; he had endeavored to distinguish himself from the others, and they distinguished him; he had retired into his abode to be able to perform freely his rites,—he was shut up in his Ghettoes. The Jew obtained a territory on the day he was imprisoned in these Jewries, and the Israelites lived since then exactly like a people that had a fatherland of its own; in these special quarters they preserved their customs, manners and secular habits, scrupulously transmitted by an education which was everywhere guided by the same invariable principles.

This education did not preserve the traditions only, it was preserving the language. The Jew spoke the language of the country he inhabited, but he spoke it only because it was indispensable in his business transactions; once at home he made use of a corrupt Hebrew or of a jargon of which Hebrew formed the basis. For writing purposes he employed Hebrew, and the Bible and the Talmud do not constitute the whole of Hebrew litera-

^1 If I seem to say that all Jews are alike physically, I want to speak of their general physiognomy only, which is their common property, without prejudicing the truth about the differences which I have stated.

Thus, consequently, the Jews had the same religion, manners, habits and customs, they were subjected to the same civil, religious, moral and restrictive laws; they lived in similar conditions; in each city they had their own territory, they spoke the same language,

^1 Cf. Munk, De la Poesie hebraique apres la Bible, in Temps of Jan. 19, 1835, and the works of Zunz, Rappoport and Abraham Geiger. Cf. also Amador de los Rios, Histoire des Juifs d'Espagne (1875).

One thing, besides, has to be taken into account. Some modern Jews and philosemites have rejected with horror those aphorisms and axioms that had been national

^1 Pirke Aboth (Traite des Principes), with a French translation and notes by A. Crehange (Paris, Durlacher).

Among the Jews who receive a Talmudic education, and this means the majority of the Jews in Russia, Poland, Galicia, Hungary, Bohemia and the Orient, the idea of nationality is still as alive at present as it had been during the Middle Ages. They still form a people

apart, fixed, rigid, congealed by the scrupulously observed rites, by the unvarying customs and the manners; hostile to every innovation, to every change, rebelling against all attempted efforts to detalmudize him. In 1854 the rabbis anathematized the Oriental schools founded by French Jews, where profane sciences were taught; at Jerusalem, an anathema was hurled, in 1856, against the school established by Doctor Franckel. In Russia and Galicia, sects like those of the New Chassidim are still opposing all attempts made to civilize the Jews. In all these countries only a minority escapes the Talmudic spirit, but the mass persists in its isolation, and however great its abjection and its humiliation, it ever holds itself the chosen people, the nation of God.

This intolerant aversion toward the stranger has disappeared among the Western Jews, the Jews of France, England, Italy and a great portion of the German Jews.¹ The Talmud is no longer read by these Jews, and the Talmudic ethics, at least the nationalist ethics of the Talmud, have no longer any hold on them. They no longer observe the 613 laws, have lost their fear of impurity, a horror which the Eastern Jews have preserved; the majority no longer know Hebrew; they have forgotten the meaning of the antique ceremonies; they have transformed the rabbinic Judaism into a religious rationalism; they have given up the familiar observances, and the religious exercise has been reduced by them to passing several hours in the year in a synagogue listening to hymns they no longer understand. They can't attach themselves to a dogma, a symbol; they have none of it;

^1 I leave apart the Polish Jews of Germany.

the principle of nationalities is manifested.

What is this question of nationalities? By it is understood "the movement which carries certain populations, of the same origin and language, but constituting a part of different States,—to unite in such a way as to make a single political body, a single nation."

^1 Laveleye, Le Gouvernment dans la Democratie, v. I, p. 53 (Paris, 1891).

^1 Bluntschli, Theorie generale de l'Etat, p. 84.

forces. They are what made the unity of Germany, of Italy, and they have been the causes of irredentism; they, too, are what creates separatism in Ireland and Austria, what calls forth the struggles between the Magyars and Slavs, the Chekhs and Germans. On these ideas of nationalities Russia and Germany have been and are resting to make up their empire, Pangermanic or Panslavic; and is not this Panslavism, and this Pangermanism what agitates the East of Europe, do not the destinies of that part of Europe depend on this remote or near clash of theirs?

It would be out of place to discuss here the legitimacy or illegitimacy of this movement. It will suffice for our purpose merely to state its existence. How do the peoples construe this tendency into unity? In two ways: either by uniting under the same government all individuals who speak the national language, or by reducing all heterogeneous elements coexisting in the nations, for the benefit of one of these elements which becomes preponderant and whose characteristics henceforth become the national characteristics. Thus the Germans have endeavored to assimilate the Alsatians and Poles; the Russians compel the Poles to maintain the Russian universities which denationalize them; in Austria the Germans try to absorb the Chekhs; in Hungary, "Slovak orphans are taken from the places where their native tongue is spoken and removed to Magyar comitats." If these heterogeneous elements do not let themselves be absorbed, there comes a struggle, a violent struggle often, which is manifested in many

^1 J. Novicow, Les luttes entre societes humaines, Paris, 1893.

various ways—from persecution down to expulsion in some cases.

Now, in the midst of the European nations the Jews live as a confessional community, believing in the latter's nationality, having preserved a peculiar type, special aptitudes and a spirit of their own. In their struggle against the heterogeneous elements which they contained, the nations were led to struggle against the Jews, and antisemitism was one of the manifestations of the effort made by the peoples in order to reduce these strange individualities.

To be reduced, these individualities must be absorbed or eliminated, and the process of social reduction does not differ perceptibly from the process of physiological reduction. In the beginning, when heterogeneous human bands covered the earth, they began to struggle for existence and did not think it possible to develop unless by suppressing the stranger who existed by their side. Cannibalism is the first degree of elmination. When the nations were formed by the fusion and homogeneization of heterogeneous hordes, they tended rather to absorb the stranger, although the tendency toward elimination still existed. Having reached a certain stage of development, the primitive societies came to aim at isolation, exclusivism, mutual hatred; while in the process of formation these national characteristics thus escaped all shocks, all changes, and exclusiveness was, perhaps, indispensable for a certain time, in order that types might be formed. When these types were solidly formed, it became useful to add new cells to the original aggregate owing to the danger that this

customs, in every transformation they see the death of the society of which they are a part, and as conservatives opposed to this transformation they deeply hate whatever is likely to bring a modification, everything that is different from them, i. e., the strange.

To these nationalist egoists, to these exclusivists, the Jews appeared a danger, because they felt that the Jews were still a people, a people whose mentality did not agree with the national mentality, whose concepts were opposed to that ensemble of social, moral, psychological, and intellectual conceptions, which constitutes nationality. For this reason the exclusivists became antisemites, because they could reproach the Jews with an exclusivism exactly as uncompromising as theirs, and every antisemitic effort tends, as we have seen already, to restore those ancient laws restricting the rights of the Jews who are considered strangers. Thus is realized this fundamental and everlasting contradiction of nationalist antisemitism: antisemitism was born in modern societies, because the Jew did not assimilate himself, did not cease to be a people, but when antisemitism had ascertained that the Jew was not assimilated, it violently reproached him for it, and at the same whenever possible it took all necessary measures to prevent his assimilation in the future.

At all events, there exist contrary, opposing tendencies by the side of these nationalist tendencies. Above nationalities there is mankind; now, this mankind, so fragmental at the start, composed of thousands of inimical tribes that were devouring one another, is be-

$^{^{1}}$ Ch. ix.

Though often exceedingly chauvinist, the Jews are

The nationalists have been led to consider them as the most active propagators of the ideas of internationalism; they even found that the example alone of these country-less laymen was bad, and that by their presence they undermined the idea of fatherland, that is any special idea of fatherland. For this reason they became antisemites or rather for this reason their antisemitism took on

added force. They not only accused the Jews of being strangers, but even destructive strangers. The conservatism of the exclusivists connected cosmopolitanism with revolution; it upbraided the Jews first for their cosmopolitanism, and then for their revolutionary spirit and activity. Has the Jew, indeed, any leaning toward revolution? We shall examine that.

CHAPTER XII.

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM.

Communism and Revolution.—The Jewish Agitation.—
The Optimism and Eudaemonism of Israel.—The Theories of Life and Death.—Immortality of the Soul and Resignation.—Materialism and Hatred of Injustice.—The Contract Idea in Jewish Theology.
—The Idea of Justice.—The Prophets and Justice.
—The Return from Babylon, the Ebionim and the Anavim.—The Conception of Divinity.—Divine Authority and Government on Earth.—The Zealots and Anarchism.—Human Equality.—The Rich Man and Evil.—The Poor Man and Good.—Yahwehism and Liberty.—Free Will, Human Reason and Divine Power.—Jewish Individualism.—Jewish Subjectivity and the Feeling of Self.—Hebraic Idealism.—The Idea of Justice, the Idea of Equality, the Idea of Liberty, and Their Possible Realization.—Messianic Times.—The Messiah and Revolution.—The Revolutionary Instinct and Talmudism.—The Modern Jews and Revolution.

To inquire into the revolutionary tendencies of Judaism does not mean to examine Jewish Communism. Moreover, from the fact that the so-called Mosaic institutions had been inspired by socialistic principles it should not necessarily be inferred that the revolutionary spirit has always guided Israel.

Communism and revolution are not inseparable terms, and if nowadays we cannot utter the first word without fatally evoking the other,—this is due to the economic conditions governing us and to the fact that the transformation of the present-day societies, based as they are on individual property, is considered impossible without a violent tearing up. In a capitalistic State the communist is looked upon as a revolutionist, but it is not taken into account that a partisan of private capital would be treated in similar fashion in a communistic State. In the one and the other case this conception would be correct, for communist or individualist would in turn display both discontent and desire for change, and that is the characteristic of the revolutionary spirit.

If it can be said, with Renan, of the Jews that they have been an element of progress or at least of transformation, if they could be regarded as the ferments of revolution, and that, too, at all times, we shall see, it is not because of these laws on gleaning, on the workmen's wages, on the sabbatic and jubilee years, which are found in the Exodus, Numbers, Leviticus, ets., but because they have always been malcontents.

I do not mean to claim thereby that they were mere

^1 Leviticus, xix, xxv; Exodus, xxii; Numbers, xxv.

mudslingers and systematic opponents of all government, for they were not wrought up against an Ahab or Ahaziah only,—but the state of things did not satisfy them; they were forever restless, in the expectation of a better state which they never found realized. Their ideal not being one of those which are satisfied with hope—they had not placed it high enough for that—they never could lull their ambitions with dreams and phantoms. They thought they had a right to demand immediate satisfactions and not remote promises. Hence this constant agitation of the Jews, which had manifested itself not only in prophetism, Messianism and Christianity that was its supreme consummation, but as well since the time of the dispersion, and then in an individual manner.

The causes that gave birth to this agitation, which kept it up and perpetuated it in the souls of some modern Jews, are not external causes such as the tyranny of a ruler, of a people or ferocious code; they are internal causes, i. e., such as pertain to the very essence of the Hebrew spirit. The reasons of the sentiments of revolt with which the Jews were animated must be sought in the idea they had of God, in their conception of life and death.

To Israel, life is a boon, the existence granted to man by God is good; to live is in itself good luck. When, in a strait moment, the Ecclesiastes¹ declared that the day of death was preferable to that of birth, he was troubled by Hellenic thought, and his aphorism had but an individual value. According to the Hebrew, life must

^1 Eccles, vii. 1.

give a being all the joys and only from it they must be expected.

By contrast, death is the only evil that can afflict man, it is the greatest of calamities; it is so horrible, so frightful that to be struck by it is the most terrible of punishments. "May death serve me as expiation," the dying would say, for he could not conceive of a more serious punishment than that consisting in death. The only recompense that the pious earnestly desired was that Yahweh might make them die sated with days, after years passed in abundance and jubilation.

Besides, what recompense other than this could they have expected? They did not believe in the future life, and it was late, perhaps only under the influence of Parsism, that they began to admire the immortality of the soul. For a Jew, his existence ended with life, he was sleeping till the day of resurrection, he had nothing to hope for except from existence, and the punishments that threatened vice, just as the satisfactions that accompanied virtue, were all of this world.

The philosophy of the Jew, or more properly speaking, his eudaemonism, was simple; he says with the Ecclesiastes. "I have found out that there is happiness in rejoicing only and in giving one's self comforts during life." A realist, therefore, he sought to develop himself to the best of his desires; having but a limited number of years allotted to him, he wanted to enjoy it, and he demanded not moral pleasures, but material pleasures, suitable to embellish, to make comfortable the existence. As there was no paradise, he could expect only tangible favors

^1 Eccles. iii, 12.

from God, in return for his fidelity, his piety; not vague promises, good for those seeking beyond, but formal realizations, resulting in an increase of fortune, an augmentation of well-being. If the Jew saw himself defrauded of the advantages he thought were due his attachment, his soul was profoundly disturbed; with Job he preferred to believe he had sinned unknowingly, and that having made him expiate his errors by poverty Yahweh would treat him like that very Job to whom was granted "the double of whatever he had possessed."²

Having no hope of future reward the Jew could not resign to the misfortunes of life; it was only at a very late date that he could console himself in his misfortunes by dreaming of celestial happiness. To the scourges befalling him he replied neither with the Mohammedan's fatalism, nor with the Christian's resignation, but with revolt. As he possessed a concrete ideal, he wanted to realize it, and whatever retarded its advent aroused his wrath.

The peoples that believed in a world beyond, those who deluded themselves with sweet and consoling chimaeras and let themselves be lulled to sleep with the dream of eternity; those that possessed the dogma of rewards and punishments, of paradise and hell, all these peoples accepted poverty and sickness with bowed heads. The dream of future rejoicing kept them up, and without anger they put up with their sores and their privation. They consoled themselves of the injustices of this world by thinking of the mirth that would be their

^2 Job, xlii, 10.

dise pleasures, they consented to bend, without complaint, before the strong who tyrannized them.

"The hatred of injustice is strikingly diminished through the assurance of rewards beyond the grave," says Ernest Renan. Indeed, to him who believes in the life eternal during which immutable and sovereign justice shall reign, of what import are these short earthly iniquities from which death gives release? The faith in the immortality of the soul is a counselor of resiglot in the other world; in the expectation of the paranation; this is so true, that the uncompromising attitude of the Jew subsides as the belief in eternity grows stronger in Israel.

But this idea of the continuity and persistence of the personality contributed nothing to the formation of the moral being with the Jews. In earliest times they did not share the hopes of the later Pharisees; after Yahweh had closed their eyelids, they expected only the horror of Sheol. Accordingly, life was for them the important thing; they sought to beautify it with all blessings, and these mad idealists, who had conceived the pure idea of one God, were, by a startling yet explicable contrast, the most untractable of sensualists. Yahweh had assigned to them a certain number of years on earth; in this existence, always too short to suit the Hebrew, He demanded of them a faithful and scrupulous worship; in return, the Hebrew claimed positive advantages from his Lord.

The idea of contract dominated the whole of Jewish theology. When the Israelite fulfilled his duties toward Yahweh, he demanded reciprocity. If he thought himself

wronged, if he considered his rights had not been respected, he had no good reason to temporize, for the minute of happiness he lost was a minute stolen from him, one which could never be returned to him. Accordingly, he looked to a punctual fulfilment of mutual obligations; he wanted a correct balance to exist between his God and himself; he kept a strict account of his duties and his rights, this account was part of the religion, and Spinoza could justly say: "With the Jews the religious dogmas did not consist in instructions, but in rights and prescriptions; piety meant justice, impiety meant injustice and crime."

The man whom the Jew lauds is not a saint, not a resignee: it is the just man. The charitable man does not exist for those of Judah's people; in Israel there can be no question of charity, but only of justice: alms is but a restitution. Besides, what did Yahweh say? He has said: "Just balances, just weights, a just ephah, and a just hin shall ye have;" he has also said: "Thou shalt not respect the person of the poor, nor honor the person of the mighty; but in righteousness shalt thou judge thy neighbor."

From this conception of the primitive times of Israel came the law of retaliation. Simple spirits, imbued with the idea of justice, were obviously bound to come to: "An eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth." The rigor of the code softened only then when a more exact idea of equity was obtained.

^1 Tract. Theolog. Polit., chap. xvii.

Levit., xix, 15

The Yahwehism of the prophets reflects these sentiments. What the God they praise wants is: "Let judgment run down as waters and righteousness as a mighty stream;" he says: "I am the Lord which exercise lovingkindness, judgment and righteousness in the earth; for in these things I delight." To know justice is to know God, and justice becomes an emanation from divinity; it takes on the character of a revelation. With Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel it formed part of the dogma, it had been proclaimed during the Sinaitic theophanies, and little by little is born this idea: Israel must realize justice.

This desire guides all great prophets before and during the captivity. Should the elect people not practice justice it will be punished for it as for its idolatry. If it is led into captivity it is not simply because it had worshipped Ashera and Kamosh, had sacrificed on high places, had disgraced the sanctuary, but as well because it is rotten with iniquity.

All prophetic schools were imbued with these thoughts. The prophets believed themselves sent to work for the advent of justice. Obviously, what struck them most was the inequality in conditions. As long as there would be poor and rich, there would be no hope for the reign of equity. According to the inspired nabis (prophets) the rich were a hindrance to justice and this latter was to be brought about only by the poor. Accordingly the anavim and ebionim (the afflicted and the poor)

^8 Amos. v. 24.

Jeremiah, ix. 24.

^1 Jeremiah, xxii, 15-16.

gathered around their protectors, the prophets. With them they protested against the extortions; in return, the prophets presented them as models, and from them drew the portrait of the just man: "The just is he that walketh righteously and speaketh uprightly; he that despiseth the gain of oppressions, that shaketh his hand from holding of bribes, that stoppeth his ears from hearing of blood, and shutteth his eyes from seeing evil." They pointed out their duties to the rich and said in the name of Yahweh: "Is not this the fast I have chosen? to loose the bands of wickedness, to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the oppressed go free, and that ye break every yoke? Is it not to deal thy bread to the hungry, and that thou bring the poor that are cast out to thy house?"²

On returning from Babylon, the Jewish population formed a considerable nucleus of poor, just, pious, humble, and saints. A great portion of the Psalms came from this midst. These Psalms are for the most part violent diatribes against the rich; they symbolize the struggle of the ebionim against the mighty. When addressing the possessors, the sated, the Psalmists readily say with Amos: "Hear this, O ye that swallow up the needy, even to make the poor of the land to fail," and in all these poems written between the Babylonian exile and the Maccabees (589-167) the poor is glorified. He is God's friend, His prophet, His anointed; he is good,

^4 Isaiah, xxxiii, 15.

^2 Isaiah, lviii, 6-7.

Amos, viii, 4.

his hands are pure; he is upright and just; he is part of the flock of which God is the shepherd.

The rich is the wicked, he is the man of violence and blood; he is knavish, perfidious, haughty; he does evil without motive; he is contemptible, for he exploits, oppresses, persecutes and devours the poor. But his great crime is that he does not do justice; that he has bribed judges who condemn the poor beforehand.

Incited by the words of their poets, the ebionim did not slumber in their misery, they did not delight in their misfortunes, they did not resign to poverty. On the contrary, they dreamed of the day that would avenge the iniquities and oprobriums heaped upon them, the day when the wicked would be hurled down and the just exalted: the day of the Messiah. For all these humble ones the Messianic era was to be an era of justice. Did not Isaiah speak of this time when he said: "I will also make thy officers peace, and thine exactors righteousness. Violence shall no more be heard in thy land. And they shall build houses, and inhabit them; and they shall plant vineyards, and eat the fruit of them. They shall not build, and another inhabit; they shall not plant and another eat."

When Jesus comes he will repeat what the ebionim Psalmists had said, he will say: "Blessed are they which do hunger and thirst after righteousness, for they shall be filled;" he will anathematize the rich, and will exclaim: "It is easier for a camel to go through the eye

^1 Psalms, xxvi, 10; lxxxii, 2-3; xxii; xlviii; xlix; cii, 1, 2; cvii, etc.

^8 Matth., v, 6.

of a needle than for a rich man to enter the Kingdom of God." On this point the Christian doctrine will turn out to be purely Jewish, not at all Hellenic, and Jesus will find his first adherents among the ebionim.

Thus the conception the Jews formed of life and death furnished the first element of their revolutionary spirit. Starting with the idea that good, that is justice, was to be realized not beyond the grave—for beyond the grave there is sleep, until the day of the resurrection of the dead,—but during life, they sought justice, and never finding it, ever dissatisfied, they were restless to get it.

The second element was given them by their conception of divinity. It led them to conceive the equality of men, it led them even to anarchy; a theoretic and sentimental anarchy, since they always had a government, but a real anarchy, for they never accepted with cheerful heart this government, whatever it were.

Whether worshipping Yahweh as their national God, or when they rose with their prophets to the belief in one and universal God, the Jews never speculated over the essence of Divinity. Judaism never set for itself any essential metaphysical questions, whether about the "beyond" or the nature of God. "Sublime speculations have no connection with the Scripture," says Spinoza, "and, as far as I am concerned, I have not and could not learn, from the Holy Writ, any of the eternal attributes of God"; and Mendelssohn adds: "Judaism has not revealed unto us any of the eternal truths."

^1 Mark, x, 25.

^1 Spinoza, Letters, xxxiv.

Mendelssohn, Jerusalem,

The Jews looked upon Yahweh as a cerestial monarch, who would give a charter to his people and enter into engagements with it, demanding, in return, obedience to his laws and prescriptions. In the eyes of the ancient Hebrews and, later on, the Talmudists, the Bene-Israel alone could enjoy the prerogatives granted by Yahweh; in the eyes of the prophets, all nations could lawfully claim these privileges, because Yahweh was the God Universal, and not the equal of Dagon or Beelzebub.

But Yahweh was "the supreme head of the Hebrew people"; He was the all-powerful and formidable lord, the only king, jealous of His authority, cruelly punishing those who showed themselves rebellious against His omnipotence. In good luck, as in ill-luck, a pious Jew had ever to have recourse to Him. To turn to men and not to God Yahweh was a crime, and having made an alliance with Rome and Mithridates I., Judas Maccabaeus incurred this anathema of Rabbi José, son of Johanan: "Accursed be he who places his reliance in creatures of flesh and who removes his heart from Yahweh!" Yahweh is thy fort, thy shield, thy citadel, thy hope, say the Psalms.

All Jews are Yahweh's subjects; He has said it Himself: "For unto me the children of Israel are servants." What authority can, then, prevail by the side of the divine authority? All government, whatever it be, is evil, since it tends to take the place of the government of God; it must be fought against, because Yahweh is the

Munk, Palestine.

Levit., xxv. 55

only head of the Jewish commonwealth, the only one to whom the Israelite owes obedience.

When insulting the Kings, the prophets represented the sentiment of Israel. They were giving expression to the thoughts of the poor, the humble, all those who, being directly ill-used by the power of the Kings or of the rich, were more inclined, for that very reason, to criticize or deny the good coming from this tyranny.

Holding Yahweh alone as their lord, these anavim and ebionim, were ever driven to revolt against human magistracy; they could not accept it, and during the periods of uprising Zadok and Judah the Galilean were seen carrying with them the zealots by their cry: "Call none your master!" Zadok and Judah were logical: if we place our tyrant in heavens we cannot endure one down here.

No authority being compatible with Yahweh's, it fatally followed that no man could rise above the others; the merciless lord of heavens brought equality on earth, and already primitive Mosaism had in it this social equality. Before God all men are equal; they are equal before the law, since the law is a divine emanation, and the unfortunate have the right, in speaking of the rich, to say to Nehemiah: "Our flesh is as the flesh of our brethren; our children as their children." ¹

God himself commands this equality, and again the mighty are the obstacle to its realization. The humble, who live in common, practice it; they follow the communistic precepts of Leviticus, Exodus, Numbers, precepts inspired by preoccupations with equality. As for the rich, they forget that God had made all men from the

same clay, they disown the equality proclaimed by God. Thus they oppress the people, they fill their houses with the spoils of the poor, they browse his vineyard, they make of widows their prey, of orphans their booty,² and owing to them inequality exists.

At them, at these possessors and these grandees the prophets hurl the anathema; the psalmists thunder: "O Lord God, to whom vengeance belongeth; O God, to whom vengeance belongeth, show thyself!" they cry. They rebuke the rich for the abundance of his treasures, his luxury, his love of pleasures; whatever contributes to raise him materially above his brethren; whatever can give him the impious arrogance of deeming himself made of other dust than that of which is made the mountain-shepherd who pastures his sheep and fears God; whatever makes him forget this divine truth; men are equal to one another, since they are the children of Yahweh who pretended giving each of his subjects an equal share of the earth they tread on, an equal share of joys and blessings.

The Israelite's hatred toward the rich abettor of injustice was tangled up with the hatred toward the rich denier of the prescriptions of equality. As he could not attribute divine origin to riches, as he could not believe that Yahweh distributed it, thus breaking the pact which bound him with his nation, the Hebrew decreed that all wealth came from evil, from sin; he said that all property was ill acquired. To make his ideas of justice and

^1 Nehemiah, v, 5.

^2 Isaiah, iii, 14; x, 2.

^8 Psalms, xciv, 1.

equity agree with reality, which showed him David taking Uri's wife and Ahab despoiling Naboth, he was declaring that the prosperity of the wicked was a pure phantom, that it lasted little; that, sooner or later, the formidable Sabaoth stretched his right hand upon those who violated his law, and made them return to naught.

Yet the poor, the anavim, did not see their wishes being accomplished; before them, ever defying their misery, the rich were making a display of themselves. They would then attribute to their own sins the distress with which they were afflicted; they would carry their hopes forward to the time of Messiah, when all men would be judged with equity, when all would be equal, all free, for they possessed the love of liberty.

This passion contributed also to the formation of the revolutionary spirit of the Jews, and speaking of liberty I do not mean political liberty. The idea of political liberty was born in Israel particularly at the time of the Antiochi and during the Roman sway, when Epiphanes or Sidetes, Aulus Gabinius, or the other proconsuls, fomented religious persecutions, thus provoking the great nationalist movements of the Zealots and Assassins.

But if the conception of political liberty was tardy, that of individual liberty ever existed among the Jews, for it was an inevitable corollary of their dogma of divinity, it proceeded from their theory of man's creation.

According to this theory, all power belonged to God, and the Jew could be ruled by Yahweh only. He gave account of his deeds to Adonai alone, who rules the heavens and earth; none of his fellow-creatures had a right to restrain his activity or to impose his will upon him;

with regard to creatures of flesh he was free and was to be free. This conviction incapacited the Hebrew for discipline and subordination, it led him to reject all shackles with which the kings or patricians would have wished to bind him, and the princes of Judaea ever held sway over a people of rebels, incapable of submitting to any yoke or coercion.

One might believe that so thinking the Jews abdicated liberty into the hands of the Lord whom they recognized; nothing of the kind, and they have never been fatalists like the Mohammedans. Over against Yahweh they claimed their free will, and without caring for the contradiction they stood up erect in the face of Him to assert the reality, the inviolability of their self, while they bowed to the whims of their Lord.

Were they not created after the image of God, and was not their nature partaking of this God? Just because they were fashioned after their Creator, their human brethren must not commit the sacrilege of oppressing them; but Yahweh, who had given men the gift of intelligence, was not at liberty to prevent them from directing this intelligence according to their will. The story of the dispute between Rabbi Eliezer and the rabbis, his colleagues, gives us a sufficiently typical sample, and is worth quoting.

In the course of a doctrinal discussion, the divine voice was heard and, breaking in upon the debate, gave right to Rabbi Eliezer. The colleagues of the favored man did not accept the decision of heaven; Rabbi Joshua, one from among them, arose and declared: "Not mysterious voices, but the majority of sages must hereafter decide

questions of doctrine. Reason is no longer hidden in heaven, the Law is no longer in the heavens; it has been granted on earth, and it is the task of human reason to comprehend and explain it."

If the divine words met with such a reception when they allowed themselves to force individuals and to wish to impose upon man's reason a will foreign to his own will, how were man's words received? Renan was right when saying of the Semites: "There is nothing, therefore, in these souls to resist the uncontrollable feeling of self," and this was more particularly true of the Jews.

After Yahweh they believed in self only. To the unity of God there corresponded the unity of being; to God absolute—absolute being. Accordingly, subjectivity has ever been the fundamental trait of the Semitic character; it has often led the Jews to egoism, and having once exaggerated this egoism, certain Talmudists ended with recognizing, in the matter of duties, nothing but duties to one's self. This subjectivity, as much as monotheism, accounts for the incapacity shown by the Jews in all plastic arts. As for their literature it was purely subjective; the Jewish prophets, like the psalmists, like the poets of Job and the Song of Songs, like the moralists of the Ecclesiastes and the Book of Wisdom, knew only themselves and generalized their feelings or their personal sensations. This subjectivity also allows to understand why the Jews have at all times, even in our days, shown so much aptness for music—that most subjective of all arts.

Talmud, Baba Mezia, 59a.

Ernest Renan, Histoire generale des langues semitiques.

Thus they were undeniably individualists, and these men, so eager to pursue earthly interests, appear to us,—thanks to their uncompromising conception of existence,—as untractable idealists. Now, an individualist imbued with idealism is and will always be in revolt. He will never want to allow anybody to violate his sacred self, and no will will be able to prevail over his.

We have separated all the elements of which was formed the revolutionary spirit in Judaism; they are: the idea of justice, of equality and of liberty. Still, if among the nations Israel was the first to preach these ideas, other nations upheld them at various moments of history, and for all that they were not revolted peoples like the Jewish people. Why? Because, though convinced of the excellence of justice, equality and liberty, these people did not hold their complete realization as possible, in this world at least, and therefore they did not work solely for their advent.

The Jews, on the contrary, not only believed that justice, liberty and equality could be the sovereigns of the world, but they thought themselves specially intrusted with the mission of working for this reign. All the desires, all the hopes these three ideas gave birth to ended by crystallizing around one central idea: that of the Messianic times, of the coming of Messiah, who was to be sent by Yahweh to establish the power of these queens of the earth.

The prophets kept up Israel in this dream of an era of happiness and prosperity, and the Psalms of the period after the exile further contributed toward increasing the belief in a blessed epoch when the wicked shall be no more, when "the meek shall inherit the earth; and shall delight themselves in the abundance of peace." From the return from Babylon up to the very agony of the Jewish nation, this Messianic dream lulled the Jews. The tyranny of Antiochus, the Roman oppression, rendered these hopes but more indispensable to the Jews. They consoled themselves of their trials by dreaming of the day of their deliverance; the liberator's image formed little by little before them, and it was all alive in the soul of those who heard the voice of John the Baptist exclaim: "The Kingdom of Heavens is to come!" in the heart of those who went after Jesus.

Quite a literature was born of these hopes which so many men played false with during the first century before and after the Christian era; but here I can mention but The Book of Daniel, The Psalms of Solomon, The Assumption of Moses, The Book of Enoch, The Fourth Book of Ezra, the Sibylline Oracles; it is impossible for me to analyze these revelations and oracles. Nearly all of them foretell the hour which will witness the Messianic times open; they describe the signs that will announce the Messiah. They also agree in saying that this moment will bring the death of evil, and the Sibyl sums them all up when soothsaying: "From the starry heavens Messiah will descend to men, and with him holy concord, faith, love, hospitality. He will drive iniquity, reprehension, envy, anger, folly, from this world. No more poverty, murders, evil wranglings, dark quarrels, nocturnal thieveries. No more of that which is perverse.

. . The pious men will live happily in cities and

^1 Psalms, xxxvii, 11

rich estates." The earth will be delivered of injustice, inequality will be known no longer and all men will be free.

Israel did not want to trust any one of those who represented themselves as the Messiah. He rejected all those who said they had been sent from God; he has refused to hear Jesus, Bar-Cochba, Theudas, David Alroy, Serene, Moses of Crete, Sabbatai-Zevi. It means that Israel never saw his ideal become real. None of the prophets that came to him has brought the divine justice, triumphant equality or indestructible liberty in the folds of his robe; at the voice of these anointed the Jews did not see chains fall, prison-walls crumble, the rod of authority rot, the ill-gotten treasures of the rich and despoilers scatter like empty smoke.

Notwithstanding their long bondage, despite the years of martyrdom which have been their lot, in spite of the centuries of humiliation, which have debased their character, depressed their brains, cramped their intelligence, changed their tastes, their customs, their aptitudes, the debris of Judah have not abjured their so vivid dream, which had been their support and inspiration during the wars for independence.

The funeral-piles, massacres, spoliations, insults, everything contributed to make dearer to them the justice, the equality and the liberty which during many long years were for them the emptiest words. The great voice of the prophets proclaiming that the wicked will be punished one day has always found an echo in these tenacous souls that did not like to bend, and despised

^1 Sibyllino Oracles, iii, 573, 585,

this so miserable reality in order to delude themselves with the idea of the future time; that future time, of which Amos and Isaiah, Jeremiah and Ezekiel, and all those have spoken who sang Mizmorim (psalms), to their own accompaniment on stringed instruments. However gloomy the present, Israel never ceased to believe in the future.

The Jews were told: "Why do you await Messiah; obdurate, know ye not that he has come?" They answered with sarcasm, they shrugged their shoulders and replied: "The Messiah has not come, for we are suffering, for famine desolates the land, for the black pest and the nobleman burden the sorrowful wretches!" But when they would be told that their Meshiach would never come, they would lift up their bowed down heads and, stubborn that they were, would say: "Meshiach will come one day and on that day will be understood the word of the Psalmist: 'I have seen the wicked in great power and spreading himself like a green bay tree. Yet he passed away and lo! he was not; yea, I sought him, but he could not be found'* and the poor, the just are those who will possess the earth."

The narrow practices into which their doctors had pressed the Jews, have put to slumber their instincts of revolt. Under the bonds of the Talmudic laws, they felt tottering in them the ideas that had ever sustained them, and it could be said that Israel could be vanquished only by himself. Still the Talmud did not debase all Jews; among those who rejected it there were some who persisted in the belief that justice, liberty and

^* Psalms, xxxvii, 35-36.

equality were to come to this world; there were many of them who believed that the people of Yahweh was charged with working for this coming. This makes it plain why the Jews were implicated in all revolutionary movements, for they took an active part in all revolutions, as we shall see when we study their role during all periods of trouble and change.¹.

It remains now to know how the Jew has manifested these revolutionary tendencies, whether he was actually (as he is accused) an element of disturbance in modern societies; and thus we are led to examine the religious, political and economic causes of antisemitism.

¹ It would require a long study to show the role of the Jews in the revolutions. We hope to undertake this study, and we shall bring together, at present, only its elements; it will form part of a book in which we intend to take up again this whole chapter as well as a part of the following chapter; there we shall make a more detailed criticism of the ideas which we have expressed, and we shall examine whether the Jews at all times or at least some among the Jews at all times had not attempted to realize these ideas.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCI-ETY.—POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAUSES OF

Thus it would seem as if the grievance of the antisemite were well founded; the Jewish spirit is essentially a revolutionary spirit, and consciously or otherwise, the Jew is a revolutionist. Not content, however, with this, antisemitism would have it that the Jews are the very cause of revolution. Let us see what truth there is in the charge.

mission of the Jew would have been carried out without him. The Jew, therefore, is not the animating force of the world, nor our sole guide to a newer life. At the same time, those who, in an excess of caution, would represent the Jew as exercising no influence at all in historical evolution, or, going further still, assert that the Jew is essentially inimical to progress, fall into as grave an error as do the antisemites.

The Jew, it is said, is non-progressive; it is necessary to see in what sense and after what fashion this is true. The Jew is non-progressive in so far as regards himself, in clinging tenaciously to his traditions, his modes of worship and his customs. So loath is he to abandon the old that stagnation has resulted, and we may study the life of the Middle Ages in the Jewries of Galicia, Poland and Russia. But in reality it is not so much Judaism which is non-progressive as Talmudism. We have just seen that it is the Talmud alone that can subdue the Jew and tame his rebellious instincts, and it is the study of the Talmud, obligatory and exclusive, that has prevented the Jew from drinking at the real fountain-head, the Bible; the doctors have stifled the prophets. Still, we must not forget that the Talmudists were at one time philosophers also, and philosophers of the rationalist school. In the tenth century the Rabbinites, following in the footsteps of the Karaites, attempted to ground religion upon philosophy. Saadiah, gaon of Sora, main-

¹ The Talmud is, as a matter of fact, permeated with the spirit of rationalism; witness the famous controversy between Rabbi Eliezer and his colleagues, in which it was maintained that miracles can not afford sufficient evidence of truth (Talmud, Baba Mezia, 59).

tained that side by side with the authority of Scripture and tradition ran the authority of reason, and he preached "not only the right, but the duty, of applying the test of reason to religious belief." In the eleventh century, Ibn Gebirol, known to the scholastics as Avicebron, gave life to the Arabian philosophy by the publication of his Fons Vitae. Of Maimonides and of his work I have already spoken.

It was these rationalist thinkers and philosophers who from the tenth to the fifteenth century, that is, to the Renaissance, took an active part in what might be termed the universal revolution of humanity. To a certain extent they helped Man to free himself from the bonds of religion; and, even if at the beginning of this period they were not fully conscious, perhaps, of the nature of the work they were performing, they accomplished their work nevertheless. At a time when orthodoxy and the Christian faith constituted the foundation of States, he who ventured to attack the established dogmas of faith or gave aid to those who assailed them, was naturally a revolutionist.

Theologians who resort to reason for the defence of dogma, will inevitably end by asserting the superiority of reason to dogma, with fatal results to the latter. Exegesis and freedom of investigation are powerful destroyers, and it is the Jews who originated biblical exegesis, just as they were the first to criticize the forms and doctrines of Christianity. Already had the Jews of Palestine assailed the doctrine of the Incarnation as implying

^2 S. Munk, Melanges de philosophie juive et arabe (Paris, 1859), p. 478.

^1 Chapter vii.

totle and of the Arabian philosophers into Hebrew, and these, retranslated into Latin, afforded the scholastics an opportunity for becoming acquainted with Greek thought. The most famous of the scholastics, "men like Albertus Magnus and St. Thomas Aquinas, studied the works of Aristotle in Latin versions made from the Hebrew."²

The Jews did not stop there. They preached the materialism of the Arabian philosophers which was to prove so destructive to the Christian faith, and carried abroad the spirit of skepticism. Their activity was such as to give rise to a general belief in the existence of a secret society sworn to the destruction of Christianity.¹ During the thirteenth century, a century which witnessed the rapid development of that complex of humanism, skepticism and paganism which we call the Renaissance, at a time when the Hohenstaufen defended the cause of science against dogma, and showed themselves the protectors of Epicureanism, the Jews occupied the first place among scholars and rationalist philosophers. At the Court of the Emperor Frederick II, "that hotbed of irreligion," they were received with favor and respect. It was they, as Renan has shown,² that created Averroism; it was they who established the fame of that Ibn-Roshd, that Averroes whose influence was destined to become so great. Without doubt they had their share, too, in the dissemination of the "blasphemies" of the im-

^2 S. Munk, loc. cit.

^1 Cf. the poetic account of the Descent of St. Paul into Hell, cited by Ernest Renan in his Averroes et l'Averroisme, p. 284.

^2 E. Renan, loc. cit

pious Arabians; blasphemies which an Emperor, fond of science and of philosophy, encouraged. These find their type in the so-called "Blasphemy of the Three Impostors," Moses, Jesus and Mahomet, invented by the theologians, and their spirit is tersely summed up in the saying of the Arabian soufis, "What care I for the Kaaba of the Mohammedan, the synagogue of the Jew, or the convent of the Christian!" Truly has Darmesteter written: "The Jew was the apostle of unbelief, and every revolt of the mind originated with him, whether secretly or in the open. In that immense foundry of blasphemy maintained by the Emperor Frederick and the princes of Suabia and Aragon, he acted a busy part."

Another thing also is worthy of notice. If the Jews as followers of Averroes, or as unbelievers, skeptics and blasphemers, sapped the foundations of Christianity in spreading the doctrines of materialism and rationalism, they were also the creators of that other enemy of Catholic dogma, pantheism. In fact the Fons Vitae of Avicebron was the well at which numerous heretics drank. It is even quite possible that David de Dinant and Amaury de Chartres, were influenced by the Fons Vitae which they knew in a Latin translation made in the twelfth century by the archdeacon Dominique Gundissalinus. It is certain that Giordano Bruno borrowed from the Fons Vitae, whence his pantheism came in part.

If, therefore, the Jews were not solely responsible for the destruction of religious doctrine and the decay of

^3 James Darmesteter: Coup d'oeil sur l'histoire du peuple juif, Paris, 1881.

^1 P. 582.

The historian confines himself to the task of investigating the role which the Jew, given his genius, his char-

^1 Gougenot des Mousseaux, Le Juif, le judaisme et le judaisetion des peuples chretiens (p. 25).

^2 J. Burckhart, La civilisation en Italie au temps de la Renaissance (Paris, 1885).

On Spinoza, as an atheist, consult the Life of Spinoza, by Colerus, an opponent of his; of the numerous works published against Spinoza and the atheistic movement of the seventeenth century, see Kortholt, De Tribus Impostoribus, which revives the legend of Averroism; also the treatise of the learned Musaeus, professor of theology at Jena, "a man of great genius,"

according to Schleiermacher, was drunk with God. It would be necessary, finally, to trace the influence of Spinoza's teachings on philosophic thought, especially at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth centuries, when the weazened little Jewish lensmaker became the master and the "daily refuge" of Goethe, the saint adored by Novalis and Schleiermacher, the inspiration of the earliest romanticists and metaphysicians of Germany.

In like manner we would have to inquire what was the importance, I will not say of the Jew, but of the Jewish spirit throughout the period of fierce revolt against Christianity which characterized the eighteenth century. We must not forget that in the seventeenth century, scholars like Wagenseil, Bartolocci, Buxtorf and Wolf, had brought forth from oblivion old volumes of Hebrew polemic, written in refutation of the Trinity and the Incarnation and attacking all dogmas and forms of Christianity with a bitterness entirely Judaic, and with all the subtlety of those peerless casuists who created the Talmud. They gave to the world not only treatises on questions of doctrine and exegesis, like the Nizzachon or the Chizuk Emunah, but published blasphemous tractates and pseudo-lives of Jesus, of the character of the Toldoth Jesho. The eighteenth century repeated, concerning Jesus and the Virgin, the outra-

says our friend Colerus, "who Spinozam pestilentium foctum acutissimis, queis solet, telis confodit." The monstrous cartoons of Spinoza bearing the legend "Signum reprobations in vultu gerens," are well known.

^1 Goethe, Memoires, liv; xvi; Annales, 1811.

^2 See Chap. vii.—Wolf, Bibl. Hebr., vol. iv, p. 639.

geous fables invented by the Pharisees of the second century; we find them in Voltaire and in Parny, and their rationalist satire, pellucid and mordant, lives again in Heine, in Boerne and in Disraeli; just as the powerful logic of the ancient rabbis lives again in Karl Marx, and the passionate thirst for liberty of the ancient Hebrew rebels breathes forth again in the glowing soul of Ferdinand Lassalle.

I have sketched here, and that in the broadest strokes, the function performed by the Jews in the development of certain ideas which helped to bring on the general revolution; but I have not yet shown how the activity of the Jew revealed itself in the very work of revolution. I believe I have established the fact, on more than one occasion, that the Jews acted as a leaven upon the economic development of the age,¹ even though their influence may have proved to be, as the partisans of the old régime assert, a source of disorder; order and stability being represented by the Christian monarchical state. If we are to believe Barruel, Crétineau-Joly, Gougenot des Mousseaux, Dom Deschamps, Claudio Jannet, all those who see in history the mere work of secret societies, the role played by the Jews in the political and social upheavals of history has been one of capital importance. True it is that, during the last years of the eighteenth century, secret associations exercised a great influence on the course of events, and though they may not have been formulators of the humanitarian, rationalistic and

^1 I hope to establish the point still more completely in my Economic History of the Jews, of which The Role of Jew in the French Revolution forms but a part.

revolutionary theories of the time, such societies certainly were the cause of the enormously widespread dissemination of revolutionary ideas. They were, in fact, great centres of agitation. It cannot be denied that Free Masonry and Martinism were powerful agents in bringing about the revolution, but it must be remembered that their importance increased only as the theories for which they stood became predominant in society, and that, far from being the creators of that spirit of the times which was the fundamental cause of the Revolution, they were in themselves but one of its effects, though an effect to be sure which reacted in its turn upon the course of events.

What then was the connection between these secret societies and the Jews? The problem is a difficult one to solve, for respectable documentary evidence on the subject there is none. It is clear, however, that the Jews were not the dominant factors in these associations, as the writer whom I have just now quoted would have it; they were not "necessarily the soul, the heads, the grand-masters of Free Masonry," as Gougenot des Mousseaux mantains. It is true, of course, that there were Jews connected with Free Masonry from its birth, students of the Kabbala, as is shown by certain rites which survive. It is very probable, too, that in the years preceding the outbreak of the French Revolution, they entered in greater numbers than ever, into the councils of the secret societies, becoming, indeed, themselves the founders of secret associations. There were Jews in the circle around Weishaupt, and a Jew of Portuguese ori-

Gougenot des Mousseaux, loc. cit.

gin, Martinez de Pasquales, established numerous groups of illuminati in France and gathered a large number of disciples, whom he instructed in the doctrines of reintegration.² The lodges which Martinez founded were mystic in character, whereas the other orders of Free Masonry were, on the whole, rationalistic in their teachings. This might almost lead one to say that the secret societies gave expression in a way to the twofold nature of the Jew, on the one hand a rigid rationalism, on the other that pantheism which, beginning as the metaphysical reflection of the belief in one God, often ended in a sort of Kabbalistic theurgy. There would be little difficulty in showing how these two tendencies worked in harmony; how Cazotte, Cagliostro,³ Martinez, Saint-Martin, the Comte de Saint Gervais, and Eckartshausen were practically in alliance with the Encyclopaedists and Jacobins, and both, in spite of their seeming hostility, succeeded in arriving at the same end, the undermining, namely, of Christianity.

This, too, then, would tend to show that though the Jews might very well have been active participants in the agitation carried on by the secret societies, it was not because they were the founders of such associations, but merely because the doctrines of the secret societies agreed so well with their own. The case of Martinez de Pasquales is an exceptionable one, and even with regard to him, it should be remembered that before he became the founder of lodges, Martinez had already been initi-

^2 M. Matter, Saint Martin et la philosophie inconnue.

The statement is often made that Cagliostro was a Jew, but the assertion is based on no real evidence.

ated into the mysteries of the illuminati and the Rosi-crucians.

^1 See Emile Campardon, Le Tribunal revolutionnaire de Paris, Paris, 1866.—Proces instruit et juge au tribunal revolutionnaire contre Hebert et ses consorts (1-4 Germinal), Paris, An. II.—Leon Kahn, Les Juifs a Paris (Paris, 1889).

^2 Capefigue, Histoire des grandes operations financieres.— Toussenel, Les juifs rois de l'epoque.

Nevertheless, it was not such feelings that animated Moses Hess, Gabriel Riesser, Heine, and Boerne in Germany, Manin in Italy, Jellinek in Austria, Lubliner in Poland, and many others besides who fought for liberty in those days. To discover in that all-embracing crusade which agitated Europe until the aftermath of 1848

^2 Cretineau-Joly, Histoire de Sonderbund, p. 195 (Paris, 1850).

the work of a few Jews intent on revenging themselves on the Nazarene, argues a remarkable mental attitude. Still, whatever may have been the end pursued, self-interest or idealism, the Jews were the most active, the most zealous of missionaries. We find them taking part in the agitation of Young Germany; large numbers of them were members of the secret societies which constituted the fighting force of the Revolution; they made their way into the Masonic lodges, into the societies of the Carbonari, they were found everywhere in France, in Germany, in England, in Austria, in Italy.

Their contribution to present-day socialism was, as is well known, and still is very great. The Jews, it may be said, are situated at the poles of contemporary society. They are found among the representatives of industrial and financial capitalism, and among those who have vehemently protested against capital. Rothschild is the antithesis of Marx and Lassalle; the struggle for money finds its counterpart in the struggle against money, and the worldwide outlook of the stock-speculator finds its answer in the international proletarian and revolutionary movement. It was Marx who gave the first impulse to the founding of the International through the manifesto of 1847, drawn up by himself and Engels. Not that it can be said that he "founded" the International, as is maintained by those who persist in regarding the International as a secret society controlled by the Jews. Many causes led to the organization of the International, but from Marx proceeded the idea of a Labor Congress, which was held at London in 1864, and resulted in the founding of that society. The Jews constituted a very

large proportion of its members, and in the General Council of the society, we find Karl Marx, Secretary for Germany and Russia, and James Cohen, secretary for Denmark.¹ Many of the Jewish members of the International took part subsequently in the Commune,² where they found others of their faith. In the organization of the socialistic party, the Jews participated to the greatest extent. Marx and Lassalle in Germany,¹ Aaron Libermann and Adler in Austria, Dobrojan Gherea in Roumania, are or were at one time its creators and its leaders. The Jews of Russia deserve special notice in this brief résumé. Young Jewish students, scarcely escaped from the Ghetto, have played an important part in the Nihilistic propaganda; some, among them women, have given up their lives for the cause of liberation, and to

Besides Marx and Cohen, mention might be made of Neumayer, secretary of the bureau of correspondence in Austria; Fribourg, who was one of the directors of the Parisian Federation of the International to which belonged Loeb, Haltmayer, Lazarre and Armand Levi; Leon Frankel, director of the German section at Paris; Cohen who acted as delegate from the Cigar Makers' Union of London to the Congress of the International held at Brussels in 1868; Ph. Coenen who, at the same Congress, represented the Antwerp section of the International, etc. See O. Testat: L'Internationale, Paris, 1871; and L'Internationale au ban de l'Europe (Paris, 1871-72); Fribourg, L'Association internationale des travailleurs (Paris, 1891).

Among the others Fribourg and Leon Frankel.

¹ There are at present four Jewish social-democrats in the German Reichstag, and among the younger element in the ranks of the socialists, collectivists and communistic anarchists, the number of the Jews is very large. Of the reform party in Germany we may mention Doctor Hertzka, the founder of the Freiland colony, an attempt at realizing the ideal social organization. (See Eine Reise nach Freiland, von Theodor Hertska.

these young Jewish physicians and lawyers, we must add the large number of exiled workingmen who have founded in London and in New York important labor societies, which serve as centres of socialistic and even of anarchistic propaganda.²

Thus have I briefly depicted the Jew in his character as a revolutionist, or at least have attempted to show how we might approach the subject. I have described his achievements both as an agent in the dissemination of revolutionary ideas, and as an actual participant in the struggle, and have shown how he belongs to both those who prepare the way for revolution through the activity of the mind, and those who translate thought into action. The objection may be raised that, in joining the ranks of revolution, the Jew as a rule, turns atheist, and ceases practically to be a Jew. This, however, is true only in the sense that the children of the Jewish radical lose themselves more easily in the surrounding population, and that as a result the Jewish revolutionist is more easily assimilated. But as a general thing, the Jew, even the extreme Jewish radical, can not help retaining his Jewish characteristics, and

In April the members of the Jewish revolutionary party in London, celebrated the anniversary of the founding of their club in Berner street. In reviewing the history of the social movement among the Jews, the orator of the occasion declared that "during the last seven years, the Jew has made his entrance as a revolutionary; and now wherever there are Jews,—in London, in America, in Austria, in Poland, and in Russia—there are Jewish revolutionists and anarchists." By seven years, the speaker was referring to the date when the proletarian class among the Jews first declared their adhesion to the revolutionary propaganda.

though he may have abandoned all religion and all faith, he has none the less received the impress of the national genius acting through heredity and early training. This is especially true of those Jews who lived during the earlier half of the nineteenth century, and of whom Heinrich Heine and Karl Marx may serve as fitting examples.

criticism of economic theory. He was inspired by that ancient Hebraic materialism, which, rejecting as too distant and doubtful the hope of an Eden after death, never ceased to dream of Paradise realized on earth. But Marx was not merely a logician, he was also a rebel, an agitator, an acrid controversalist, and he derived his gift for sarcasm and invective, as Heine did, from his Jewish ancestry.

The Jew, therefore, does take an active part in revolutions; and he participates in them in so far as he is a Jew, or more correctly in so far as he remains Jewish. Is it for this reason, then, that the conservative elements among Christians are antisemites, and is this predisposition of the Jews for revolutionary ideas a cause of antisemitism? We may say at once that the great majority of conservatives overlook entirely the historic and

The accusation has not been limited to this alone. The Jew, it is said, is not only a destroyer, but also an upbuilder; arrogant, ambitious and domineering, he seeks to subject everything to himself. He is not content merely to destroy Christianity, but he preaches the gospel of Judaism; he not only assails the Catholic or the Protestant faith, but he incites to unbelief, and then imposes on those whose faith he has undermined his own conception of the world, of morality and of life. He is engaged in his historic mission, the annihilation of the

devoted to the discovery of Jewish maladies, there are writers who descant gravely upon the physical type of the Jewish tribes. We find in the publications of the antisemites all the ancient charges, which were brought forward in the Middle Ages, and which the seventeenth century revived, accusations which find support in popular belief. The most persistent of all accusations, however, and the one which typifies best the historic struggle of Judaism against Christianity, is the charge of ritual-murder. The Jew, it is maintained to the present day, has need of Christian blood in order to celebrate his Passover. What is the origin of this accusation which goes back to the twelfth century?

The first instance of such an accusation being brought against the Jews occurred at Blois, in 1171, when they were accused of having crucified a child during their celebration of Passover. Count Theobald of Chartres, after having caused the accuser of the Jews to undergo the ordeal by water, which proved favorable to him, condemned thirty-four Jewish men and seventeen Jewish women to be burnt.

We can see clearly enough why the Romans should have brought the identical charge against the early Christians. It arose from a materialistic conception of the Lord's Supper, from a literal interpretation of the words employed in consecrating the flesh and blood of Jesus. But how could the Jews, whose sacred books breathe forth a horror of blood, have given occasion, and still give occasion, for such a belief? This question must be discussed to the very bottom. We must examine the theories advanced by those who would have it

and of the sacrilegious priests who practised the "black mass" would prove that the Church recommends in its books assassination and human sacrifice.

Are there still in existence in the East sects maintaining such practices? It is possible.¹ Do Jews constitute a part of such societies? There is nothing to support such a contention. The general accusation of ritual murder, therefore, is shown to be utterly baseless. The murder of children, I speak of cases where murder was actually proved, and these are very rare,² can be attributed only to vengeance or to the practices of magicians, practices which were no more peculiar to Jews than to Christians.

The persistence of these accusations against the Jews is significant, in that it shows what old leaven of hatred still lies in the souls of the people against the murderers of Christ. For it stands to reason that a Christian antisemite does not believe that the Jew of the present time who has abandoned his ancient customs, the Jew whom

^1 In 1814 a Christian sect arose in Bavaria, known as the Brothers and Sisters of Prayer, the members of which brought human sacrifices to God. The founder of this sect was called Poeschl. In Switzerland, in 1815, a certain Joseph Ganz, founded a similar association, to which he gave the same name, and which practised the same rites.

^2 Consult the report of Ganganelli, afterwards Pope Clement XIV, which, after an investigation into the charges of ritual murder brought against the Jews, arrives at the conclusion of their absolute falsity. (Revue des Etudes Juives, April-June, 1889). It may be observed here that the bodies of children murdered for the purpose of magical practices were never found, the magicians having prudently burnt them.

Among the nations of the West, the orthodox Jew likewise affords evidences of his conservatism. He holds to the law and to the regulations of society. He knows how to reconcile his Judaism with a spirit of patriotism, which in its excess amounts at times almost to Jingoism. As we have seen, it was only a minority of emancipated Jews who took part in the French Revolution. These emancipated Jews, even though they might abandon their faith, could not for all that cease to be Jews. And, indeed, how could they have done otherwise? By embracing Christianity, it is said, a course of action followed by some, but from which the majority have recoiled, as merely hypocrisy on their part, inasmuch as the emancipated Jew speedily arrives at a state of irreligion. They have therefore remained Jews by apathy. All those revolutionaries of the first half of the nineteenth century, of whom I have spoken, were brought up in Judaism, and if they abandoned Judaism in the sense that they no longer practised it, they remained its adherents in retaining the spirit of their nation.

The emancipated Jew, being no longer bound by the faith of his ancestors, and owning no ties with the old forms of a society in the midst of which he had lived an outcast, has become in modern nations a veritable breeder of revolutions. Now it has happened that the emancipated Jew has drawn perceptibly nearer to the Christian unbeliever; but instead of observing that the Christian has allied himself with the Jew, because he, too, like the Jew, has lost his religion, the antisemites would have us believe that the Jew, by his very contact, has undermined the faith of the Christians who have

joined him. The Jews, therefore, are made responsible for the disappearance of religious belief, and the general decay of faith; and in doing so, moreover, the antisemite does not distinguish between the Jew who is still faithful to his religion and the emancipated Jew. To the impartial observer, however, it is not the Jew that is destroying Christianity. The Christian religion is disappearing like the Jewish religion, like all religions, which we may now observe in their slow agony. It is passing away under the blows of reason and of science. It is dying a natural death, because it essentially was in harmony with only one period of civilization, and because the further we advance, the less in harmony it is with changing conditions. From day to day our yearning for the irrational and our need of the supernatural is disappearing, and with them our need for religion, especially for the rites of religion: for those even who believe in God, do not believe in the necessity nor in the efficacy of worship.

Has the Jew taken part in this unfolding of the modern spirit? Certainly he has, but he is by no means the creator of it, nor even responsible for it, for he has merely brought an insignificant stone to the edifice which the ages have built up. Wipe the Jew out of existence, the decadence of Catholicism or Protestantism will not be retarded in the least. If the Jew gives us an impression to the contrary, it is because he has played a very great role in Germany, in Austria, in France, and in Italy, in the history of modern liberalism, and liberalism has advanced hand in hand with anti-clericalism. The Jew has indeed been an anti-clerical. He prepared

nothing indeed is so significant as the presence of the Jew in modern society; and by a very common mode of reasoning they have made a cause out of that which is only an effect, because this effect in its turn acts, it is true, as a cause.

These, then, in brief, are the political and religious mainsprings of antisemitism. First and fundamental are hereditary dislike and prejudice; then, as a result of these prejudices, an exaggerated conception of the role which the Jews have played in the development and organization of modern society; a conception in which the Jews appear as the representatives of the revolutionary spirit, against the spirit of established order; of change against tradition; a conception which makes them responsible in this age of transition for the fall of antiquated institutions and the disappearance of ancient beliefs.

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

Ranks of Capital and in the Labor Market.—Grievances Against the Jews and Economic Antisemitism.—Antisemitism and the Intestine Struggles of Capital.

¹ Chap. ii.

^2 Chap. v.

pear a man; and he had the naive vanity of the savage. That was his way of re-acting upon centuries of humiliation. On the eve of the French Revolution, they saw him humble, timid, an object of general contempt, exposed to insult and injury. They found him after the tempest, free, liberated from every constraint, and from a slave, become a master. Such a rapid exaltation was offensive. People were affronted by the wealth which the Jews had now attained the right to pile up, and recourse was had at once to the old accusation of the fathers, the charge that the Jew was an enemy to society. The wealth of the Jew, it was said, is gained at the expense of the Christian. It is acquired through deception, through fraud, through oppression, by all means and principally by detestable means. This is what I shall call the moral charge of the Antisemites, and it may be summed up thus: the Jew is more dishonest than the Christian; he is entirely unscrupulous, a stranger to loyalty and candor.

Is this charge well founded? It was true and still is true in all those countries where the Jew is kept outside of society; where he receives only the traditional Talmudic education; where he is exposed to persecution, to insult, and to oppression; where people refuse to recognize in him the dignity and the independence of the human being. The moral condition of the Jew is due partly to himself, and partly to exterior circumstances. His soul has been moulded by the law which he imposed on himself, and the law which has been forced upon him. Throughout the centuries he lived twice a slave: he was the bondman of the law, and the bondman of everyone.

^1 Chap. v.

over to humiliations, to insults, forced to bow his head under blows and curses and persecution, could avenge himself on his enemies, his tormentors, his executioners only by guile. Robbery and bad faith became his weapons; they were the only weapons of which he could possibly make use, and therefore he exerted himself to elaborate them, to sharpen them, and to conceal them.

entrepreneurs and traders shows itself harsh, cruel, grasping, faithless towards the exploited class, the fault rests with the Jews, who are responsible for present social conditions, nay, more, who are the very cause of such conditions." This is really the great economic charge against the Jews.

But here, too, the antisemites are the victims of an error. The Jew is not the cause of the present state of things which is, in reality, the result of a long evolution. It is true that he has played his part in the economic revolution which has resulted in establishing the supremacy of the bourgeoisie; but far from being the cause, he has been only one of the factors that have brought about such a transformation, by no means the sole factor, nor even the principal one.

I have already shown² how in the course of time the bourgeoisie found in the Jew a powerful and marvelously endowed ally. During long centuries, while society was still plunged in the barbarism of the Middle Ages, the Jew, the trader of old, well armed, well provided with a fine mental equipment, and rich in the possession of ages of experience, was either the representative of capital as employed in commerce and in usury, or else aided in its creation. Nevertheless, these forms of capital did not attain their greatest influence until the labor of centuries had prepared the way for their domination and had transformed them into industrial and bonded capital. To accomplish this Capital needed those two great movements, the Crusades and the

^1 Chap. v.

^2 Chap. ix.

discovery of America, followed by the manifold colonial enterprises of Spain, of Portugal, of the Netherlands, of England, and of France, all the activity, in fact, of the age of commercial development. It needed the establishment of public credit and the rise of great banking institutions. It needed the rise of manufactures and the scientific discoveries which brought about the invention and the perfection of machinery. It needed all the elaborate legislation looking towards the restriction of the laborer's rights and wages, until the moment came when the proletariat was deprived even of the right of association; it needed all that and many other causes besides, causes historic, religious and moral, in order to make present-day society what it is. Those who maintain that the Jews are the sole cause of the present state of things succeed only in establishing their own absurdly marvelous ignorance.

Of course, as I have just said, the part played by the Jews in the development of modern society, was important, but its true character is very little known, or, at least, very imperfectly known, and that especially to the antisemites. It is not to this very elementary knowledge of the economic history of the Jews that antisemitism must be atributed. Our knowledge of the Jews since their emancipation is more complete; in France, under the Restoration and the July Monarchy, they stood at the head of the financial and industrial enterprise, and were among the founders of the great canal, railway and insurance companies. In Germany their activity was exceedingly great. They were at the bottom of all the leg-

islation favorable to the carrying on of banking and exchange, the practice of usury and speculation. It was they who profited by the abolition, in 1867, of the ancient laws limiting the rate of interest. They were active in bringing about the enactment of the law of June 1870, which exempted stock companies from government supervision. After the Franco-German War, they were among the boldest speculators, and at a time when German capitalists were carried away by a passion for the creation of industrial combinations, they acted a no less important part than had the Jews of France, from 1830 to 1848. Their activity persisted until the financial panic of 1873, when the country squires and the small traders who had been ruined by the excesses of this Gründer Periode (the era of promoters) in which the Jew had played the most important part, gave themselves up to the most violent antisemitism, such, indeed, as proceeds only from injured interests.

Once the important part played by the Jews of this period had been proven, and, indeed, their importance was undeniable, people proceeded to the conclusion that the Jew was the possessor of capital par excellence. This became an added cause of hatred against him. The Jews, it was asserted, held everything, and the word Jew, after having been a synonym for knave, malefactor and usurer, came to be used as equivalent to rich. Every Jew is a capitalist; such is the common belief. The error of course is deep. The vast majority of Jews, nearly seven-eighths of the total number, in fact, live in extreme poverty. In Russia, in Galicia, in Roumania,

¹ Otto Glagau, loc. cit.

^1 Miss I. Van Etten, "The Russian Jews as Immigrants," The Forum, April, 1893.

Leo Errera, The Russian Jews.

cia the condition of the working population is no better, and the same is true of Roumania.

¹ It is customary to compare the two million Jews, who may be called the possessors of capital in various degrees, to the total mass of Christian inhabitants, overlooking the fact that the vast majority of Jews is composed of laborers and artisans. If we wish to consider the Jews as a nation, a nation with no determined geographical boundaries, we must endeavor to ascertain whether there are not among them both a class of wage-earners and class of capitalists, as indeed I have already proven, and then to compare the class of Jewish capitalists with the class of

Christian capitalists. In this manner only can we attain a correct formula for the purpose of statistical comparison and a true version of things.

qualities are sufficient to assure him the victory.

Their solidarity is all the stronger in that it goes so far back. Its very existence is denied, and yet it is undeniable. The links in the chain have been forged in the course of ages until the flight of centuries has made man unconscious of their existence. It is worth our while to see how this bond of union was formed and how it was perpetuated.

^1 E. Renan, Vie de Jesus, p. 142.

Throughout Asia Minor, the Archipelago, Cyrenaica and Egypt, a Jew might travel in perfect security; everywhere he was treated as a guest, everywhere he proceeded straight to the house of prayer, where he was sure to find a welcome. The Essenes carried on their propaganda in the same manner. They, too, created their little social centres, little associations in the very heart of the Jewish communities, and in this fashion they traveled from city to city, at their own free will taking no thought of the morrow.

At Rome, where they lived in considerable numbers,¹ the Jews were as firmly united as in the cities of the Orient. "They are bound together by indissoluble bonds by the ties of loving sympathy," says Tacitus.* Thanks to their solidarity, they had acquired at Rome, as in Alexandria, such power that political parties feared them and sought their support. "You know," says Cicero,² "how great is the multitude of the Jews, how firm their union and their sympathy, how striking their political skill and their sway over the crowd in the assemblies."

When the Roman Empire fell, when the barbarian hosts invaded the ancient world, and triumphant Catholicism entered upon its career of expansion, the Jewish communities did not change. They were still powerful organisms and the activity of their common life was such as to lend them great powers of resistance. In the midst

^1 E. Renan estimates the number of Jews in Rome at the time of Nero at from twenty to thirty thousand (L'Antechrist, p. 7, note 2).

^*Hist. v. 5.

^2 Pro Flacco, xxviii.

These synods frequently met after the twelfth century, and

constituted the first general assemblies of the Rabbis since the closing of the Talmud. Jacob Tam (Rabbenu Tam), the founder of the school of Tossafists, was the first to bring about the reunion of such assemblies, for the purpose, undoubtedly, of considering means of common resistance to persecution.

^1 Jost. Geschichte der Juden, Berln, 1820, Vol. 2.

under the pain of anathema, to bring a fellow Jew before a Christian tribunal. The Jewish community, or Kahal, made use of a powerful weapon against those who proved themselves lacking in the spirit of solidarity; it struck them with anathema and pronounced against them the Cherem Hakahal (the ban of the community). This excommunication fell upon all those who failed in their duty to the community; those, for instance, who refused to acknowledge the full value of their possessions in order to evade the taxes imposed for the maintenance of the synagogue; those who, in drawing up a legal instrument with a fellow Jew, omitted to have such document attested by the notary of the community; those who would not submit to any decision arrived at by the Kahal for the common welfare; finally, all those who by word or writing attacked the Law and the Talmud, and worked for the destruction of Israel. Mordechai Kolkos, Uriel Acosta and Spinoza were among the last.

In this manner, the action of time, the influence of hostile legislation and of religious persecution, and the need for mutual defense, have intensified the feeling of fellowship among the Jews. In our own day the powerful institution of the Kahal exerts its influence wherever the Jew is subjected to a rigorous regime, and even the reformed Jew, who has broken away from the narrow restrictions of the synagogue, and yields no obedience to the will of the community, has not forgotten the spirit of solidarity. Once having acquired the sentiment

^1 Maurice Aron, Histoire de l'excommunication juive, Nimes, A. Catelan, 1882.

The Alliance Israelite Universelle, founded in 1860 by

Adolphe Cremieux, and numbering at present more than thirty rhousand members, has served only to foster the fraternal spirit among the Jews. The aims of the Alliance are to ameliorate the intellectual and moral conditions of the Jews in the Orient by the establishment of schools, to take measures for their relief from oppression, and to bring about their complete emancipation.

member of the Jewish free-masonry, of the Jewish clique, if you will.

United, then, by the strongest feelings of solidarity, the Jews can easily hold their own in this disjointed and anarchic society of ours. If the millions of Christians by whom they are surrounded were to substitute this same principle of co-operation for that of individual competition, the importance of the Jew would immediately be destroyed. The Christian, however, will not adopt such a course, and the Jew must inevitably, I will not say dominate, the favorite expression of the antisemites, but certainly possess the advantage over others, and exercise that supremacy against which the Antisemites inveigh, without being able to destroy it, seeing that its reason lies not only in the middle class among the Jews, but in the Christian bourgeoisie as well. The accusations enumerated above are therefore the expression of hatred on the part of the Christian capitalist who sees himself outdistanced and supplanted by his Jewish rival; but such accusations do not constitute the basis of economic antisemitism, the real cause of which I have just demonstrated.

If we keep in mind, then, this conception of Jewish fellowship and the fact that the Jews at present, constitute an organized minority, we are not unjust in concluding that antisemitism is, in part, a mere struggle among the rich, a contest among the possessors of capital. In truth, it is the capitalist, the merchant, the manufacturer, the financier, among the Christians, who

^1 I am not speaking, of course, of Masonic lodges, but use the word Free Masonry in the broad meaning of the term.

feels himself injured by the Jews, and not the Christian proletariat, who suffer no more from the class of Jewish employers than from their Christian masters; less, indeed, if we consider that in a case like this, where numbers count, the entrepreneur class among the Jews by comparison with the Christians amounts to little. This will explain why antisemitism is essentially the sentiment of the middle classes, and why it is so rarely met with, except in the form of a vague prejudice among the mass of the peasants and the working classes.

This war within the ranks of capital does not reveal itself after the same fashion; it presents rather two aspects, according as it arises from the hostility between the landowning class and the capitalist class in the narrower sense, or from competition within the industrial class itself.

The agrarian capitalist, in his contest against the captain of industry, has embraced antisemitism, because to the territorial lord, the Jew is the representative of commercial and industrial capitalism. For this reason, in Germany, the Agrarian Protectionists, are bitter enemies of the Jews, who are among the most conspicuous champions of free trade. By instinct and self-interest the Jews are opposed to the physiocratic theory which would vest political power only in the owners of land; they maintain rather the theory of modern industrialism, which makes political power go hand in hand with industrial development. Jews and Agrarians both are probably unconscious, as individuals, of the part they are playing in the economic struggle, but their mutual hatred comes from this source, nevertheless.

The man of the lower middle class, the small tradesman whom speculation has probably ruined has much clearer ideas of why he is an Antisemite. He knows that reckless speculation, with its attendant panics, has been his bane, and for him, the most formidable jugglers of capital, the most dangerous speculators are the Jews; which, indeed, is very true. Those even whose downfall has not been caused by speculation, ascribe their misfortunes indirectly to this cause which has destroyed a great part of the industrial and commercial capital of the world. But here, as everywhere, they make the Jew responsible for a state of things, of which he is far from being the sole cause.

The other form of economic antisemitism is more simple. It arises from the direct competition between Jewish and Christian brokers, manufacturers, and merchants. The Christian capitalist, acting for the most part, independently of his fellows, when confronted by the harmonious, if not united, opposition of the Jewish capitalists, finds himself necessarily at a disadvantage, and in the daily struggle for life frequently succumbs to his adversaries. He, therefore, suffers directly, from the rise of Jewish manufacturers and merchants. Hence his extreme animosity against the Jews, and the desire to break the power of his fortunate rivals. This is the most violent, the most bitter of all the manifestations of antisemitism, because it is the expression of the sentiments of those who feel themselves injured in their personal interests.

One might be tempted to find an indication of antisemitism proceeding from direct competition, in the dis-

A clearer idea of economic antisemitism may be obtained from a study of the Chinese Question in America. Constituting minority in race and religion and differently endowed from the Americans, the Chinese, through their firm organization, have aroused the fear of the capitalists, who accuse them of draining the country of its wealth, and of reducing wages by their entrance into the labor market. The feeling of hostility against the Chinese has given rise, besides the anti-immigration law, to legislative measures greatly curtailing their rights, checking their influence, and limiting their opportunities. Similar measures have been proposed against German and Russian immigration.

This prejudice against the Jews has prevailed to the

^1 Theodore Mommsen, History of Rome.

preesnt day, secret, instinctive rather than deliberate, and acquired by heredity. People still feel an intense bitterness against the deicides, and glance with no favorable eye at their riches, for they still find it difficult to understand how this tribe of miscreants and murderers, doomed to perdition, can legitimately be the owners of wealth. The belief is still held that the Jew cannot acquire wealth without plundering the sons of the soil—every owner of land looking upon himself as its child. If economic antisemitism therefore must be regarded as the manifestation of a struggle within the ranks of capital, we must not forget, too, that it is an outcome of the opposition between national and foreign wealth.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM.

The Causes of Antisemitism.—Antisemitism of the Present Day and Anti-Judaism in Former Times.—The Permanent Cause.—The Jew as a Stranger and the Manifestations of Antisemitism.—The Jew and Assimilation.—The Jew and His Surroundings.— Modification of the Jewish Type.—The Disappearance of External Characteristics.—The Disappearance of Internal Characteristics.—The Religion of the Synagogue at the Present Day.—The Decline and Fall of Talmudism.—The Jew an Assimilated Element.—The Disappearance of Religious Prejudices Against the Jew.—The Decay of the Spirit of Particularism and National Exclusiveness.—The Progress of Cosmopolitanism.—Antisemitism and Economic Change.—The Struggle Against Capital.—The Capitalist Alliance.—Capital and Revolution.—The Antisemites as Adversaries of Revolution.—The End of Antisemitism.

We have seen then that the causes of antisemitism are, in their nature, ethnic, religious, political and economic. They are all causes of far reaching importance, and they exist not because of the Jew alone, nor because of his neighbors alone, but principally because of prevailing social conditions. Ignorant of the real cause of

but it survived just the same and gave rise to the construction of interminable genealogies for the purpose of establishing a common descent for all the members of the same State.

hostile legislation, religious persecutions and the political and social restrictions under which they lived, have served to prepare them for the present form of society, by equipping them with superior weapons for the daily struggle of life.

^1 This is not the place to discuss the respective importance of these men, who differed among themselves in so many ways; it is sufficient here to recall the part they severally played.

¹ In Eastern Europe, in Persia and in Morocco, we have an approximately correct picture of the antisemitic movement of the Middle Ages. Social prejudice, restrictive legislation, insults, humiliations, riots, massacres, exile, nothing is wanting. This, I believe, I have proved for Russia and Roumania, in Chapter viii.

also varied, in that they are formulated after a different fashion and are given a basis of ethnologic and anthropologic theory; but the causes have not altered appreciably, and modern antisemitism differs from the anti-Judaism of former times only in that it is more self-conscious, more pragmatic, and more deliberate. At the bottom of the antisemitism of our own days, as at the bottom of the anti-Judaism of the thirteenth century are the fear of, and the hatred for, the stranger. This is the primal cause of all antisemitism, the never failing cause. It appears in Alexandria under the Ptolemies, in Rome during the lifetime of Cicero, in the Greek cities of Ionia, in Antioch, in Cyrenaica, in feudal Europe, and in the modern state whose soul is the spirit of nationality.

Let us leave now this old anti-Judaism and concern ourselves only with the antisemitism of modern times. A product of the spirit of national exclusiveness and of a reaction on the part of the conservative spirit against the tendencies set into motion by the Revolution, all the causes which have brought it about, or have served to maintain it, may be reduced to this one only: the Jews are not as yet assimilated; that is to say, they have not yet given up their belief in their own nationality. By the practice of circumcision, by the observation of their special rules of prayer and their dietary regulations, they still continue to differentiate themselves from those around them; they persist in being Jews. Not that they are incapable of the sentiment of patriotism—the Jews in certain countries, as in Germany, have contributed more than anybody else to the realization of national

Why is this so? Because everything has contributed to maintain their peculiar characteristics as a people; because they have been the possessors of a religion which is national in character, and which had its perfect reason

^2 The German Antisemites accuse the Jews of entertaining sentiments hostile to Germany, and of partiality for the interests of France; but the French antisemites, in turn, reproach the Jews with entertaining a tender regard for Germany. This is merely a way of saying that the Jews are strangers, or, to put it in a better form, are not yet assimilated.

In this manner did they remain different from those

who lived beside them. Before their emancipation, however, they escaped the notice of man. They held themselves apart, and no one came into contact with them. Their portion was allotted to them; their territory was marked out for them, and they lived on the outskirts of society, without retarding in the least the general course of events, for they did not constitute a part of society. Once they were liberated, they scattered themselves everywhere, appearing before the eyes of men such as the ages had made them. They produced the same impression that would be experienced now, if of a sudden all the Gypsies of the world should rally to civilization, and demand their place in society. The environment in which the Jews had been living for so long a time had changed, but they themselves had not changed, and it required more than the decree of the National Assembly to accomplish such a feat. The product of a religion and of a law, the Jews could not alter unless that law and that religion were altered.

Here we find ourselves confronted with a most serious objection. The antisemites are not content with saying that the Jew belongs to a different race, and is therefore a stranger, but they declare that he is by nature an element which can never be assimilated; and even if some of them admit that the Jew may become a constituent part in the composition of nations, they would have it that such an amalgamation is only detrimental to that nation. The Semite, it is maintained, saps the strength of and destroys the Aryan, and this in spite of the antisemitic theory that the superior race is bound to overcome the inferior race without being in the least

^1 Chap. x.

^1 I am speaking, of course, of the Jews who have remained true to their faith.

But during the last hundred years, these seemingly constant factors have undoubtedly undergone a change.1

I must repeat once more that I am speaking now only of the Jews of Western Europe, who have been admitted to the rights

At the presnt day, the religious practices of the Jews vary with the different countries. While in Galicia, for example, the utmost minutiæ of religious observances are still maintained; in France, in England, and in

of citizenship in the countries where they live, and not of the Jews of the East, who are still subject to discriminating laws, as in Roumania, in Russia, in Morocco, and in Persia.

Germany they are reduced to the minimum. If the study of the Talmud is still held in respect in Poland, in Russia, and in certain parts of Germany and Austria-Hungary, in other countries it has fallen into complete disrepute. The gulf betwen the emancipated Jew of France and the Talmudic Jew of Galicia widens day by day; and in this manner differences are created in the midst of Israel, differences which may be even observed between the reformed Jew and the orthodox.

^1 Henry George, Progress and Poverty.

merged into the body of the nations, after the same manner as the Phænicians, who, having planted their trading stations all over Europe disappeared without leaving a trace behind them. By that time, too, antisemitism will have run its course. The moment, to be sure, is not near; the number of orthodox Jews is still great, and as long as they exist it would seem that antisemitism must exist. Still antisemitism is not caused solely by Israel; it is the product of religious, ethnic, and economic causes which are independent of the Jew, and which are also capable of modification and of ultimate disappearance. In our own day we may say that their decline is a fact.

If Judaism, then, is in the process of dissolution, neither is Catholicism or Protestantism gaining in strength, and we may venture to say that every external form of religion is losing its influence. The contrary, of course, is maintained in the case of the Christian religion; but in doing so, people are either the victims of an illusion, or else are guided by selfish interests. As Guyau has said,² "Religion has found defenders among the skeptics who support it partly out of regard for the poetry of life and the æsthetic beauty which lies in myths, and partly for its practical utility." This neomysticism is an outgrowth of that hunger for poetry and beauty, which believes that it can find satisfaction only in religious illusion. As for the practical value of religion we see it now sustained by that same capitalistic bourgeoisie which formerly attacked all religious belief in so far as it was the ally of the partisans of the ancient

^2 M. Guyau, L'Irreligion de l'avenir; Paris, 1893, p. xix.

The spirit of national egotism and self-sufficiency, however strong it may be at present, is also showing signs of decay. Other ideas have arisen, which from day to day are gaining in influence; they enter into the spirits of men, they impress themselves upon their understanding, they engender new conceptions and new forms of thought. Though the principle of nationality is still a guiding force in international politics, brutal and un-

^1 M. Guyau, loc. cit., page xv.

^1 Exceptions are the class of sublimated patriots, who, in France, for instance are Anglophobes and Germanophobes, on principle rather than for any ascertainable reason.

tional prejudices the Jews will witness the economic causes of antisemitism losing their force. At present the Jews are assailed as the representatives of foreign wealth. It is therefore just to suppose that when the animosity against things foreign shall have disappeared, Jewish capital will no longer be an object of attack for Christian capital. Competition will, of course, persist in spite of all this, and those Jews who persist in maintaining their national identity, will always remain the objects of an hostility based upon this competitive struggle.

Other events, however, and other changes may bring about the disappearance of these economic causes. In the struggle which is now on between the proletariat and the industrial and financial classes, we shall possibly see Jewish and Christian capitalists forgetting their differences to unite against a common enemy. If present social conditions persist, however, such a union of the Christian and Jewish bourgeoisie can only bring about a temporary truce. From the battle which must inevitably be fought out, the indications are that Capital cannot come out the victor. Founded upon egoism, upon selfishness, upon injustice, upon lies, and upon theft, our present society is doomed to disappear. However brilliant it may appear, however resplendent, refined, luxurious, magnificent, it is stricken with death. It has been weighed morally and found wanting. The bourgeoisie which exercises all political power because it holds control of all economic agencies, will draw upon its resources in vain; in vain will it appeal to all the armies that defend it, to all the tribunals of justice

that watch over it, to all the legal codes that protect it; it will not be able to withstand the inflexible laws which day by day are working towards the substitution of communal property for the capitalistic régime.

but in doing so it gently leads them toward Socialism, prepares them for anarchy, infuses in them a hatred for all capitalists, and, more than that, for capital in the abstract.

And thus, unconsciously, antisemitism is working its own ruin, for it carries in itself the germ of destruction. Nor can it escape its fate. In preparing the way for Socialism and Communism, it is laboring at the elimination not only of the economic cause, but also of the religious and ethnic causes which have engendered it, and which will disappear with this society of ours of which they are the products.

Such, then, is the probable fate of modern antisemitism. I have tried to show how it may be traced back to the ancient hatred against the Jews; how it persisted after the emancipation of the Jews, how it has grown and what are its manifestations. I have attempted to discover the reasons for this existence, and having determined those, have ventured to predict its future on the basis of them. In every way I am led to believe that it must ultimately perish, and that it will perish for the various reasons which I have indicated a because the Jew is undergoing a process of change; because religious, political, social, and economic conditions are likewise changing; but above all, because antisemitism is one of the last, though most long lived, manifestations of that old spirit of reaction and narrow conservatism, which is vainly attempting to arrest the onward movement of the Revolution.

PA Preface	.ge. 5
I.
GENERAL CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM. Exclusiveness.—The Political and Religious Cult.—Jehovah and the Law.—Civil and Religious Regulations.—Jewish Colonies.—The Talmud.—The Chosen People Doctrine.—Jewish Pride.—Separation from the Nations.—Pollution.—The Pharisees and the Rabbinites.—The Faith, Tradition and Secular Science.—The Triumph of the Talmudists.—Jewish Patriotism.—The Mystic Fatherland.—The Restoration of the Kingdom of Israel.—The Isolation of the Jew.	7
II.
ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY. The Hykos.—Haman.—Antisemitism in Ancient Society.— In Egypt, Manetho, Chaeremon, Lysimachus.—Antisemitism at Alexandria.—The Stoics: Posidonius, Apollonius Molo.—Apion, Josephus and Philo.—"Treatise Against the Jews," the "Contra Apionem," and the "Legation to Caius."—The Jews at Rome.—Roman Antisemitism.—Cicero, Disciple of Apion, and Pro Flacco. Persius, Ovid and Petronius.—Pliny, Suetonius and Juvenal.—Seneca and the Stoics.—Government Measures.—Antisemitism at Antioch and in Ionia.—Antisemitism and Antichristianity.	26
III.
ANTI-JUDAISM IN CHRISTIAN ANTIQUITY FROM THE FOUNDATION OF THE CHURCH OF CONSTANTINE.	ЭМ
The Church and the Synagogue.—Jewish Privileges and the First Christians.—Jewish Hostility.—Judaic Patriotism.—Christian Proselytism and the Rabbis.—Attacks upon Christianity.—The Apostates and Maledictions.—Stephen and James.—Jewish Influence Contested.—Christianity Among the Pagans and Among the Jews.—Peter and Paul.—Judaizing Heresies.—The Ebionites, the Elkasaites, the Nazarenes, the Quartodecimans. Gnosticism and Jewish Alexandrinism.—Simon the Magician, the Nicolaites and Cerinthus.—First Apos-

The Epistles to the Colossians and Ephesians, the Pastorals, the Second Epistle of Peter, the Epistle of Jude, the Apocalypse.—The Epistle to Barnabas, the Seven Letters of Ignatius of Antioch.—Christian Apologists and Jewish Exegesis.—The Letter to Diognetus.—The Testament of the Twelve Patriarchs.—Justin and the Dialogue with Tryphon.—Aristo of Pella and the Dialogue of Jason with Papiscus.—Christian Expansion and Jewish Proselytism.—Rivalries and Hatred; Persecutions; The Case of Polycarp.—The Polemics.—The Bible, the Septuagint, Aquilla's Version and the Hexapla.—Origen and Rabbi Simlai.—Abbahu of Cæsarea and the Physician Jacob the Minæan.—The Contra Celsum and Jewish Ridicule.—Theological Anti-Judaism.—Tertullian and De Adversus Iudaeos.—Cyprian and The Three Books Against the Jews.—Minucius Felix.—Commodian and Lactantius.—Constantine and the Triumph of the Church...................................

IV. ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY.

The Church Triumphant.—The Decadence of Judaism.—The Passover and the Judaizing Heresies.—The Council of Nicaea.—Transformation of Theological Anti-Judaism.—Conclusion of Apologetics.—The Anti-Judaism of the Fathers and Clergy.—Abuse.—Hosius, Pope Sylvester, Eusebius of Cæsarea, Gregory of Nyssa and St. Augustine.—St. Ambrose, St. Jerome, and St. Cyril of Jerusalem.—St. John Chrysostom.—Ecclesiastical Writers.—The Edict of Milan and the Jews.—Jewish and Christian Proselytism.—The Jews, the Church, and the Christian Emperors.—Influence of the Church upon Imperial Legislation.—Roman Laws.—Vexatious Treatment of the Jews.—Popular Movements.—The Defense of the Jews, Their Revolts.—Isaac of Sepphoris and Natrona.—Benjamin of Tiberias and the Conquest of Palestine.—Julian the Apostate and the Jewish Nationality.—The Jews Among the Nations.—Anti-Judaism Becomes General.—In Persia.—The Magi, the Jewish Teach 3 and Jewish Academies.—In Arabia.—Influence of the Jews in Yemen.—Victory of Mohammedanism and Persecution of the Jews.—Spain and the Visigothic Laws.—The Burgundians.—The

	-
V.
TI-JUDAISM FROM THE EIGHTH CENTURY TO	0
THE REFORMATION.
ansion and Christianity.—Diffusion of the Jews Among
the Nations.—Constitution of the Nationalities.—The
Role of the Jews in Society.—The Jews and Commerce.
—Gold and the Jews.—The Love of Gold and Business
Acquired by the Jews.—The Jew as Colonist and Emi-
grant.—The Church and Usury.—The Birth of Patron-
age and Wage-System.—Transformation of Property.—
The Economic Revolution and the Quest of Gold.—The
Instinct of Domination.—Gold and Jewish Exclusivism.
Maimonides and Observation.—Solomon of Montpellier.
-Ben-Adret, Asher ben Yechiel, and Jacob Tibbon
The Moreh Nebukhim.—Intellectual and Moral Abase-
ment of the Jews.—The Talmud.—Influence of this
Abasement on the Social Position of the Jews.—Trans-
formation of Anti-Judaism.—Social Causes; Religious
Causes; Their Combination.—The People and the Jews.
—The Pastoureaux, the Jacques and the Armleders.—
The Kings and the Jews.—The Monks and Anti-Juda-
ism.—Pierre de Cluny, John of Capitrano, and Berna-
dinus of Feltre.—The Church and Theological Anti-
Judaism.—Christianity and Mohammedanism.—The Al-
bigenses, the Heretics of Orleans, the Pasagians.—
Heresies and Judaization.—The Hussites.—The Inqui-
sition.—The Bourgeoisie and the Jews.—Ecclesiastic
and Civil Legislation Against the Jews.—Controversies
and Condemnation of the Talmud.—Vexations.—Expul-
sions.—Massacres.—The Condition of the Jews and of
The People.—The Relativity of the Jewish Sufferings.—	ΩT
The Reformation and the Renaissance:	91
VI.
CI-JUDAISM FROM THE TIME OF THE REFORM	IA-
TION TILL THE FRENCH REVOLUTION.
tion of the Jews at the Beginning of the Sixteenth Cen-

PAGE.

Supremacy of Rome.—The Humanists and the Talmud.—Reuchlin and Pfefferkorn.—The Reformation and the Jewish Spirit.—The Bible.—Luther and the Jews.—Transformation of the Social and the Religious Question.—The Peasant Wars.—The Jews No Longer the Chief Enemies of the Church.—The Christian State.—Catholicism, the Reformed and the Jews.—The Popes and Judaism.—Measures Against the Talmud and Conversions.—Anti-Jewish Legislation.—Molestations and Outrages.—Dogmatic Anti-Judaism.—The Recalling of the Jews.—The Jews of Europe in the Eighteenth Century.—The Jews in the Netherlands, England, Poland, Turkey.—The Portuguese Jews in France.—The Intellectual and Moral Condition of the Jews.—Kabbalism and Messianism.—Sabbatai Zevi and Franck.—The Mystic Sects: the Chassidim and New-Chassidim, the Doumeh and the Trinitarians.—Talmudism.—Joseph Caro and the Schulchan Aruch; the Pilpul.—Jewish Reaction Against the Talmud.—Mardochee-Kolkos, Uriel, Acosta, Spinoza.—Mendelssohn, the Meassef and the Jewish Emancipation.—Humanitarian Philosophy and the Jews.—The Social State and the Jews.—The Economic and the Political Objections.—Maury and Clermont-Tonnerre; Rewbel and Gregoire.—The Revolution.—The Appearance of the Jews in Society.....

123

VII

ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES
Anti-Judaism of the Pen and Its Forms.—Theological AntiJudaism.—The Transformation of Christian Apologet-\nics.—Judaization and Its Enemies.—Anselm of Canterbury, Isidore of Seville.—Pierre de Blois.—Alain de
Lille.—The Study of Jewish Books.—Raymond de
Penaforte and the Dominicans.—Raymund Martin and
the Pugio Fidei.—Nicholas de Lyra and His Influence.
Anti-Jewish Theological Literature and the Conversions.—Nicholas de Cusa.—The Converted Jews and
Their Role.—Paul de Santa Maria, Alfonso of Valladolid.—Anti-Talmudism and the Converts: Pfefferkorn.—
The Controversies Over the Talmud and the Jewish
Religion.—Controversies of Paris, Barcelona and Tortosa.—Nicholas Donin, Pablo Christiani and Geronimo
de Santa Fe.—The Extractiones Talmut.—Social AntiJudaism.—Agobard, Amolon, Peter the Venerable, Simon Majol.—Polemic Anti-Judaism.—Alonzo da Spina.

The Livre de l'Alboraique.—Pierre de Lancre.—Francisco de Torrejoncillo and the Centinela Contra Judios.—Polemic Anti-Judaism and the Prejudices.—The Jews and the Accursed Races.—Jews, Templars and Sorcerers.—Ritual Murder.—The Defense of the Jews.—Jacob ben Ruben, Moses Cohen of Tordesillas, Shem-Tob ben Isaac Shaprut.—Jewish Polemic Literature in Spain in the Fifteenth Century.—Anti-Christianity.—Chasdai Crescas and Joseph Ibn Shem Tob.—The Attacks Against the New Testament.—The Nizzachon and The Book of Joseph the Zealot.—The Toldoth Jesho.—Attacks Against the Apostates.—Isaac Pulgar, Don Vidal Ibn Labi.—Transformation of Scriptural Anti-Judaism in the Seventeenth Century.—The Converters.—The Hebraizers and the Exegetists: Buxtorf and Richard Simon.—Wagenseil, Voetius, Bartólocci.—Eisenmenger.—John Dury.—The Relationship and Similarity of Anti-Jewish Works.—The Imitators.—The Ancient Literary Anti-Judaism and the Modern Antigomitism.—Their Affinition

147

VIII.

MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM.

Emancipated Judaism.—The Position of the Jews in Society.

—Usury and the Affairs in Alsace.—Napoleon and the Administrative Organization of the Jewish Religion.—

The Great Sanhedrin.—The Restrictive Laws and the Progressive Liberation in France.—The Emancipation in the Netherlands.—Emancipation in Italy and Germany.—The Anti-Napoleonic Reaction and the Jews.—

The Revival of Anti-Jewish Legislation.—Popular Movements.—Emancipation in England.—In Austria.—

The Revolution of 1848 and the Jews.—The End of Legal Anti-Judaism in the West.—Eastern Anti-Judaism.—The Jews in Roumania.—The Russian Jews.—The Persecutions.—The Social Question and the Religious Question.

178

IX.

MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE
The Emancipated Jew and the Nations.—The Jews and the
Economic Revolution.—The Bourgeoisie and the Jews.
—The Transformation of Anti-Judaism.—Anti-Judaism
and Antisemitism.—Instinctive Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism of the Reason.—Legal Anti-Judaism and Anti-

PAGE.

semitism of the Pen.—Classification of the Antisemitic Literature.—Christian Antisemitism and the Anti-Judaism of the Middle Ages.—Anti-Talmudism.—Gougenot de Mousseaux, Chiarini, Rohling.—Christian-Socialist Antisemitism.—Barruel, Eckert, Don Deschamps.—Chabeauty.—Edouard Drumont and the Pastor Stoecker.—Economic Antisemitism.—Fourier and Proudhon; Toussenel, Capefigue, Otto Glaguu.—Ethnological and National Antisemitism.—Hegelianism and the Race Idea.—W. Marr, Treitschke, Schoenerer.—Metaphysical Antisemitism.—Schopenhauer.—Hegel and the Hegelian Extreme Left.—Max Stirner.—Duhring, Nietzsche and Anti-Christian Antisemitism.—Revolutionary Antisemitism.—Gustave Tridon.—The Complaints of the Antisemites, and the Causes of Antisemitism

204

X.

The Ethnologic Grievance.—The Inequality of Races.—Semites and Aryans.—Aryan Superiority.—The Struggle of Semites and Aryans.—The Semitic Share in the So-called Aryan Civilizations.—The Semitic Colonization.—The First Years of the Christian Era and the Judeo-Christians.—The Jewish Elements in the European Nations.—The Idea of Race Among the Jews.—Jewish Superiority.—The Origins of the Jewish Race.—Jewish Proselytism.—In Pagan Antiquity.—After the Christian Era.—The Uralo-Altaic Infiltrations in the Jewish Race.—The Khazars and the Peoples of the Caucasus.—Different Varieties of Jews.—Dolichocephals and Brachycephals.—Ashkenazim and Sephardim.—The Jews of China, India and Abyssinia.—Modification Through Surroundings and Language.—Jewish Unity.—Nationality

225

XI

NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM.

His Law.—Is the Talmud Anti-Social?—Once and Now.—The Permanence of Prejudices.—Jewish Exclusiveness and Persistence of the Type.—The Principle of Nationalities in the Nineteenth Century.—In Germany and Italy.—In Austria, in Russia and Eastern Europe. Pangermanism and Panslavism.—The Idea of Nationality, the Jew and Antisemitism.—The Heterogeneous Elements in the Nations.—Elimination or Absorption.—National Egoism.—Preservation or Transformation.—The Tow Tendencies.—Patriotism and Humanitarianism.—Nationalism, Internationalism and Antisemitism.—Jewish Cosmopolitanism and the Idea of Fatherland.—The Lower and the Revolution

248

XII. THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM.

Communism and Revolution.—The Jewish Agitation.—The Optimism and Eudaemonism of Israel.—The Theories of Life and Death.—Immortality of the Soul and Resignation.—Materialism and Hatred of Injustice.—The Contract Idea in Jewish Theology.—The Idea of Justice.—The Prophets and Justice.—The Return from Babylon, the Ebionim and the Anavim.—The Conception of Divinity.—Divine Authority and Government on Earth.—The Zealots and Anarchism.—Human Equality.—The Rich Man and Evil.—The Poor Man and Good.—Yahwehism and Liberty.—Free Will, Human Reason and Divine Power.—Jewish Individualism.—Jewish Subjectivity and the Feeling of Self.—Hebraic Idealism.—The Idea of Justice, the Idea of Equality, the Idea of Liberty, and Their Possible Realization.—Messianic Times.—The Messiah and Revolution.—The Revolutionary Instinct and Talmudism.—The Modern Lews and Revolution

275

XIII

THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY. — POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

The Jew as a Revolutionist.—The Jews of the Middle Ages and the Spirit of Skepticism.—Jewish Rationalism and Christianity.—The Jews and Secret Societies.—The Role Played by the ews in the French Revolution and in the Upheavals of the Nineteenth Century.—The Jews and Socialism.—Political, Social and Religious Changes

PAGE

at Work in Present-day Society.—The Grievances of the Conservative Elements and Antisemitism.—The Jew as a Menace to Public Order and a Solvent of Society.—The Judaization of Christian Nations and the Decay of Faith.—Is the Jew Still Anti-Christian?—The Persistence of Anti-Jewish Prejudices.—Ritual Murder.—The Jews and the Talmud.—The Synagogue and the Spirit of Religious Indifferentism Among the Jews.—The Emancipated Jew.—Liberalism, Anti-Clericalism and the Jews.—Judaism and the Christian State.—The Modern Struggle.—The Spirit of Conservatism versus the Spirit of Revolution.—Tradition and Change.—Antisemitism in an Age of Transition.—The Jew in Society

297

XIV

THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

Economic Antisemitism.—The Case Against the Jew.—The Moral Charge.—The Dishonest Jew.—Jewish Astuteness and Bad Faith.—The Corrupting Influence of the Talmud.—Restrictive Legislation and Jewish Fraud.— Mercantilism and Usury as Causes of Degradation.— Money and the Decline of Morality.—The Economic Charge.—The Jew and Present Social Conditions.— The Importance of the Jews in Capitalistic Society.— The Jew in Finance and in Industry.—The Jew as the Possessor of Capital.—Disadvantages Under Which the Jew Labors Under Present Conditions.—The Jewish Proletarians in Europe and America.—The Jews of the Middle Class.—The Relative Supremacy of the Jew.—Causes of Such Supremacy.—Jewish Solidarity versus Middle Class Individualism.—The Jewish Brotherhood.—Its Origin and Antiquity.—The Synagogues.—The Middle Ages.—The Ghettoes.—Modern Times.—The Kahal in the Countries of the East.—Minorities in Western Europe and the Solidarity of Classes.—Opposition Between Different Forms of Capital as a Cause of Antisemitism.—Agricultural Capital versus Industrial Capital.—The Jewish Stockbroker and the Small Trader.—Competition and Antisemitism.—Competition in the Ranks of Capital and in the Labor Market.—Grievances Against the Jews and Economic Antisemitism.—Antisemitism and the Intestine Struggles of Capital

330

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XV.

THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM

The Causes of Antisemitism.—Antisemtism of the Present Day and Anti-Judaism in Former Times.—The Permanent Cause.—The Jew as a Stranger and the Manifestations of Antisemitism.—The Jew and Assimilation.

—The Jew and His Surroundings.—Modification of the Jewish Type.—The Disappearance of External Characteristics.—The Disappearance of Internal Characteristics.—The Religion of the Synagogue at the Present Day.—The Decline and Fall of Talmudism.—The Jew an Assimilated Element.—The Disappearance of Religious Prejudices Against the Jew.—The Decay of the Spirit of Particularism and National Exclusiveness.—

The Progress of Cosmopolitanism.—Antisemitism and Economic Change.—The Struggle Against Capital.—

The Capitalist Alliance.—Capital and Revolution.—The Antisemites as Adversaries of Revolution.—The End of Antisemitism.

356

ANTISBUITISM

ANTISEMITISM,

Preface.

ANTISEMITISM.

CHAPTER I

CHAPTER II

ANTI-JUDAISM IN ANTIQUITY.

CHAPTER III.

CHAPTER IV.

CHAPTER V.

CHAPTER VI.

CHAPTER VII.

ANTI-JUDAIC LITERATURE AND THE PREJUDICES.

CHAPTER VIII.

MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM.

CHAPTER IX.

MODERN ANTISEMITISM AND ITS LITERATURE.

CHAPTER X.

THE RACE.

CHAPTER XI.

NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM.

CHAPTER XII.

CHAPTER XIII.

THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCI-ETY.—POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAUSES OF

CHAPTER XIV.

THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

CHAPTER XV.

THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM.

CONTENTS

IV.

ANTISEMITISM FROM CONSTANTINE TO THE EIGHTH CENTURY.

VII

VIII.

MODERN LEGAL ANTI-JUDAISM.

IX.

X.

XI

NATIONALISM AND ANTISEMITISM.

248

XII.

THE REVOLUTIONARY SPIRIT IN JUDAISM.

XIII

THE JEW AS A FACTOR IN THE TRANSFORMATION OF SOCIETY. — POLITICAL AND RELIGIOUS CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

XIV

THE ECONOMIC CAUSES OF ANTISEMITISM.

XV.

THE FATE OF ANTISEMITISM