Pre-Emancipation
1200-1777
Early Apologists
and Christian Hebraists
1. Hieronymus [St. Jerome]. From Liber Hebraicarum in
quaestionum in Genesem.
Manuscript, England, circa 1200.
St. Jerome (342-420), one of the most important of the Church Fathers, stood at the critical
point in history when knowledge about Judaism was being absorbed into Christian tradition.
Best known for his translations, the Latin Vulgate Bible was his most important work. He
gained his knowledge of Hebrew directly from Jewish teachers, and he spent much of his adult
life in the Holy Land. Liber Hebraicarum, his first Hebrew study, collates Christian
exegesis with the Hebrew text. Like most Church members of his generation, St. Jerome was
critical of the Jews and Jewish law.
2. Bernardus de Breydenbach. Peregrinatio in Terram Sanctam.
Speier: Petrus
Drach, 1490.
Breydenbach, a relatively obscure figure, is remembered for this description of his trip to the
Holy Land in 1483. The work first appeared in Latin and German in 1486 and was soon
translated into several other languages. The woodcuts, by fellow pilgrim Erhard Rewich, depict
scenes of cities and animal life with artistic and technical skill as well as accuracy.
3. Johannes Reuchlin. De ante cabalistica. Basel: Ioannes
Heruagius,
1561.
Throughout Jewish history, kabbalah has formed an alternative strand to talmudic legalism.
Kabbalah's mystical and esoteric doctrines, largely medieval in origin, were for the most part
speculations on the hidden life of God and the relationships between divine and human life.
During the Renaissance, Christian humanist scholars such as Reuchlin saw in the kabbalah a
complement to the neoplatonism they espoused. De arte cabalistica, first published in
1517, is a sympathetic account that includes associations between the name of Jesus and
kabbalistic doctrines concerning the holy names of God.
4. Johannes Boeschenstain. Elementale introductorium in
Hebreas litteras
Teutonice & Hebraice legendas. Augsburg: Erhard Oeglin, 1514.
With Reuchlin, Boeschenstain was a pioneer of Hebraic studies among Christians in
Germany. He was a teacher of Hebrew and counted among his students the theologian Zwingli.
Boeschenstain's elementary Hebrew grammar of 1514 was the author's first and contains lessons
in the Hebrew alphabet and Hebrew versions of Christian prayers. Other editions followed, as
well as a German translation of Jewish prayers.
5. Johannes Reuchlin. Defensio … contra calumniatores
suos colonienses.
Tubingen: Thomas Anshelmus Badenses, 1514.
When Johann Pfefferkorn, an apostate Jew, called for the suppression of all Hebrew
literature, he requested the aid of Reuchlin in the task. The latter demurred but nevertheless soon
found himself questioned by an imperial council devoted to the matter. In Defensio …
contra calumniatores Reuchlin declared that only anti-Christian polemics should be
condemned, and a great debate on Hebrew literature erupted between the scholastic and
humanist parties in Germany. The struggle ended only with the mordant satire of the scholastic
party by Grotus Rubeanus and Ulrich van Hutten, Letters of Obscure Men, written a few
years later.
6. Isaac Ben Judah Abravanel. Liber de capite fidei.
Amsterdam: Guilielleme
& Johannes Blaue, 1638.
The Sephardic family Abravanel produced scholars and statesmen over several generations
after 1300, and suffered much under the persecutions of the period. The biblical exegete Isaac
Ben Judah, born in Lisbon in 1437, was forced to flee to Spain in 1481, from which he was
finally expelled in 1492. The Liber de capite fidei, first published m Hebrew in 1505,
contains arguments disputing Maimonides' views of the powers of the Divine.
7. Elias Levita. Composita verborum & nominum
Hebraicorum. Basel,
1525.
Elias Levita (or Eliaha Bokhar), a Jewish teacher of Hebrew in Renaissance Italy, was a
philologist, grammarian, and lexicographer, and wrote secular literary works In Yiddish as well,
including the famous Book of Bova. He produced several Hebrew grammars, on various
academic levels, which were often translated into Latin, as was this one, by his pupil Sebastian
Münster. In 1542 Levita published the first known Yiddish-Hebrew dictionary. Many rules
set down by Levita are still accepted by modern Hebrew grammarians.
8. [Judah Ben Isaac Abravanel]. Dialoghi di amore. Venice:
Aldus, 1545.
Judah Abravanel, also known as Leone Ebreo, was the son of Isaac Ben Judah, with whom he
fled to Italy in 1492 as a young man. His fame rests on the Dialoghi, first published in
Rome in 1535; With "dipoi fatto Christiano" on the title page, this edition spuriously implied the
author's conversion to Christianity, and the phrase may have been added to help sell the book.
The work, in the form of three dialogues, treats the Renaissance theme of love as the dominating
force and the loftiest goal of the universe.
9. Simone Luzzatto. Discorso circa it stato de gl'Hebrei.
Venice: Gioanne
Calleoni, 1638.
Venice was the first municipality in Europe to establish a special Jewish quarter. Walled off in
1516, it eventually took its name from the foundry, or ghetto, which was situated nearby.
Nevertheless, the Jewish community played an important role in the city and produced such
figures as Simone Luzzatto–scholar, rabbi, mathematician, and supporter of religious
toleration. The Discorso, his most important work, was addressed to the leaders of the
Venetian Republic and was the first apologetic which argued for toleration of the Jews on the
basis of their economic usefulness. The Jews, he wrote, performed tasks usually done by foreign
merchants but, advantageously, remained under the control of the republic.
10. Leo Modena. The History of the Rites, Customes, and
Manner of Life, of the
Present Jews, Throughout the World. London: J. L., 1650. First English edition.
A precocious child–it was said he could translate from Hebrew to Italian at the age of
three–Modena became a prolific author and a colorful figure in the Venetian Jewish
community. His writing includes such diverse works as religious tracts, poetry, and a treatise on
gambling. This book on Jewish customs was written in Italian in 1637 for James I of England;
the 1650 translation was the first in English.
11. Claude Fleury. Les mouers des israélites. Paris:
Gervais Clousier,
1683.
A famed ecclesiastical historian, legal scholar, and personal tutor to the family of Louis XIV, the
learned Fleury was thirty years in preparing his great work, Histoire ecclésiastique,
which he first published in 1691 as a history of the Church for the popular reader. This
work, Les moeurs des israélites, a companion to Les moeurs des chrestiens,
describes the rituals, habits, artifacts, and social structure of the ancient Hebrews, treating
its subject with dignity and respect,
12. Moses Pereyra de Paiva. Notisias dos Judeos de Cochim.
Amsterdam: Vry
Levy, 1687.
Isolated but adhering strictly to Jewish law, a community of Jews has existed on the Malabar
Coast of southern India for at least nine hundred years. Pereyra de Paiva headed a delegation of
Amsterdam Jews who traveled to India in 1686 to collect information on that community. His
visit inaugurated a close association between the Cochin Jews, as they were called, and the
Dutch Sephardim, which lasted more than a century. This comprehensive report discusses the
origin, economic situation, traditions, and communal organization of the Indian Jews.
13. Lancelot Addison. The Present State of the Jews: (More
Particularly Relating to
Those in Barbary). London: J. C. for William Crooke, 1675. First edition, with
frontispiece.
The Jewish population of the Barbary Coast in the seventeenth century contained a majority of
seminomadic people, much akin in behavior and dress to their Moslem neighbors, and an
admixture of Iberian immigrants living in the coastal cities. At a time when the Jewish
population in England was still small, Lancelot Addison, Joseph Addison's father, made a
detailed study of these Oriental Jews, their customs, and their religious behavior.
14. Der juden zu Franckfurt Stättigkeit und Ordnung.
Frankfurt am
Main: Johann Saurn, 1613.
Like other Jews of the states and free cities of Germany, the Jewish community of Frankfurt,
numbering about three thousand by 1610, lived under its own laws and administration. However,
through the Stättigkeit and Ordnung the government regulated the behavior of the
Jews in those areas where Jews and non-Jews interacted. Issued by the city and periodically
revised, these codes dictated such matters as where the Jews could live, what trades they could
or could not engage in, how they could dress, and what taxes they were required to pay. This text
collects and updates the laws pertaining to the Jews of Frankfurt,
15. Johann Jacob Schudt. Jüdische
Merckwürdigkeiten. Frankfurt
and Leipzig: 1714. 3 volumes in 1.
The destruction of the Frankfurt Ghetto by fire in 1711 inspired the Christian Orientalist Johann
Schudt to write a chronicle of the Frankfurt Jews and an account of the Jews of his time. He had
long been interested in the Jews as a result of both his studies and his hopes, to convert them.
While not a complete history, Jewish Curiosities contains, in addition to its many
revealing descriptions, such items as a comic Purim play and Yiddish poems related to the great
fire.
16. Johann Christoph Georg Bodenschatz. Kirchliche
Verfassung der heutigen
Juden sonderlich derer in Deutschland. Frankfurt and Leipzig: Johannes Friedrich Becker,
1748-49. 4 parts in 1 volume. Image
In his Church Constitution of Today's Jews, Especially Those in Germany, the
Protestant minister Bodenschatz provides, without prejudice or apology, important historical
documentation on seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Jewish life. Well versed in Oriental
languages and in the lore of the ancient Hebrews, the author describes contemporary Jewish
customs and ceremonies and includes some details not often found in works by Jews themselves.
The book is rich in engravings, some taken from Picart's Cérémonies et
coûtumes religieuses de tous les peoples (1723-37).
17. Johann Caspar Ulrich. Sammlung Jüdischer
Geschichten … in der
Schweitz. Basel, 1768. First edition.
As a Protestant theologian who had studied Hebrew and the Talmud, Ulrich developed an
interest in Hebraic studies that led him to write the first comprehensive history of the Jews of
Switzerland. He recognized the Jews as an unfortunate people with an unbroken history of
suffering, and exonerating them from complicity in causing the Black Death, Ulrich urged the
Swiss to treat the Jews with compassion. The work, fair and forthright in its presentation, is
especially valuable for its section on the Jews of Zurich.
18. Privilèges, dont les juifs portugais jouissent en
France depuis 1550.
Paris: Stoupe, 1777.
With the expulsion of the Jews from Provence in 1501, virtually no Jews remained within the
present borders of France. Then a small number of secret Jews, or conversos, began to
arrive from the Iberian peninsula. In 1550 these "Portugese merchants," or, "new Christians,"
were granted letters patent by Henry, II which allowed them to live "wherever they desired in
France." These letters patent were periodically renewed, but it was not until 1723 that the
"Portugese merchants" were recognized as Jews. Prefaced with a laudatory description of the
Sephardic Jews, Privileges collects these royal letters patent issued over two
centuries.
19. Minhagim für ganz Ashkenas, Polen, Mähren
wBöhmen.
Karlsruhe, mid-eighteenth century.
In Jewish law; a minhag is a custom which through continuous practice obtains the force
of law. Many applied only to specific localities and were printed in minhagim books as a
means of preserving them and maintaining their purity. Minhagim books varied in
content, structure, and literary standard. This Yiddish example–covering Germany,
Poland, Moravia, and Bohemia–includes Sabbath observance, daily prayers, and
preparations for the Jewish holidays, with a long section on conducting the Passover
seder.
20. Alexander de Neuo. Consilia contra Judaeos fenerantes.
Venice: Leonard
Wild de Ratisbona, 1489 [1479?].
Though the Jews had always participated in financial affairs, during the Middle Ages in Europe
they were mainly merchants and craftsmen. The disruption in Jewish life during the First
Crusade (1096-1099) began the movement of Jews away from their traditional roles and toward
a greater dependence on moneylending. But the inevitable dislike for creditors, coupled with
religious hostility to the Jews, made this situation a constant source of friction for them. This
collection of consilia, or legal opinions, by de Neuo, a Paduan canonist, treats the
question from the standpoint of canon law.
21. [Andreas Osiander]. Ob es war vn glaublich sey, dass die
Juden der Christen Kinder heymlich erwürgen. [1540].
The belief that Jews murdered Christian children to obtain their blood for ritual
purposes–the blood libel–was to follow the Jews into modern times, despite the
repeated refutations by the highest authorities of the Catholic Church. When Count Franz Wolf
of Pezinok, Slovakia, manufactured a blood-libel charge in 1529, thirty Jews burned at the stake.
Osiander, a Christian theologian, religious reformer, and Hebraist, responded with a defense of
the Jews against the accusation of ritual murder–Whether It Is True and Believable
That the Jews Secretly Strangle Christian Children. This is the only copy of the book in
existence.
22. Martin Luther. Von den Jüden vnd jren Lügen.
Wittemberg:
Hans Lufft, 1543.
During the early phase of his reforming activities, Luther expressed considerable sympathy
toward the Jews. He believed they had been right not to join the Church, which he so strongly
opposed, and felt he would be able to convert them. Disappointment on these grounds, however,
led to attacks on the Jews. Written in his characteristically vituperative language, Of the Jews
and Their Lies–one of the most important of these attacks–appeared in the
same year that Luther helped convince the Saxon government to expel the Jews from its
territories.
23. Johann Andreas Eisenmenger. Entdecktes Judenthum.
[Frankfurt am Main], 1700.
Johann Eisenmenger feigned interest in embracing Judaism as part of his long preparations for
Judaism Unmasked. He brought together and distorted numerous passages from
rabbinical texts, interpreting these to prove the Jews guilty of the crimes of which they had been
long accused. The Frankfurt Jewish community succeeded in having the first edition suppressed,
but another appeared in 1711. The book has served as an inexhaustible source for anti-Semitic
authors, appearing in print as late as the 1890s.
24. Abraham à Santa Clara [Hans Ulrich Megerle].
Judas der Ertz-Schelm für ehrliche Leuth. Salzburg: Melchior Haan, 1696.
Volume 1.
Judas, the Arch-Scoundre1 is a didactic novel written by an Augustinian friar,
court-preacher in Vienna, and persistent anti-Jewish propagandist, well known for his sense of
humor and for the coarse style of his sermons. This novel, which saw many editions, does not
attack the author's Jewish contemporaries directly, but its inferences are apparent. The grotesque
figures on the frontispiece are far more in keeping with European anti-Jewish imagery than with
the biblical account of the betrayal of Christ, which argues that the dark side of the human soul
is Judas incarnate.
25. Elias Liborius Roblik. Jüdische Augen-Gläser.
Brünn: Maria Barb. Swobodin Wittib, 1741; König Gratz: Wentzl Johann
Tibelli; 1743. 2 volumes in 1.
Roblik, a Moravian cleric who eventually forsook the priesthood, attempted to dissuade the Jews
from their false beliefs through force of argument and Christian love. He attacked Jewish
doctrine and not the Jews themselves, who he earnestly believed would see the truth of
Christian belief if only their rabbis and their Talmud would not hide the truth from their eyes.
This work is hence symbolically titled Jewish Eyeglasses, and a large pair of eyeglasses
is illustrated as the frontispiece.
26. Aloys de Sonnenfels [Perlin Lipmann]. Judaica sanguinis
nausea. Jüdischer Blut-Ekel. Vienna: Johannes Ignatz Heyinger, 1753.
Son of a Brandenburg rabbi and father of one of the most influential ministers of the Hapsburg
Empire, Sonnenfels, along with his children, converted to Catholicism sometime between 1735
and 1741. In Vienna he became a professor of Oriental languages and court interpreter to Marie
Theresa. Written to aid the Jews of Poland in their struggle against blood-libel charges,
Judischer Blut-Ekel argued that such false and superstitious accusations actually repelled
Jews from Christianity. The work, published in parallel Latin and German texts, was also
translated into Italian anid submitted to the papacy in an attempt to obtain the renewal of bulls
against the blood-libel charges.
27. Der höchst und hochansehendlichen zu den
Frankfortischen Sachen wolverordneter Keyserlicher Commissarien zu männiglichs
nachrichtung publicirter Declaration und Contradiction.... Darmstadt: Balthasar Hofmann,
1614.
In 1614 the Jews of Frankfurt became embroiled in an intense struggle, with religious, political,
and economic overtones, within the city. Vincent Fettmilch, a Calvinist guild leader who styled
himself the "new Haman," charged that the Lutheran-dominated city senate was corrupt and
favored the Jews. After he failed to have them expelled, he incited riots on the part of the lower
classes–many of whom were in debt to the Jews. The Jews were forced to flee, and the
lower classes gained some concessions from the cities. But the emperor finally interceded, and
in this Declaration und Contradiction, printed with a copy of the indulgences, he rescinds
what the cities granted. Fettmilch was hanged and quartered in 1616.
28. [Paul Nicol Einert ]. Entdeckter jüdischer
Baldober. Coburg: Johann Georg Steinmarck, 1737. First edition.
One of the most overlooked aspects of Diaspora history is Jewish criminality. While the
prevalence of crimes by Jews was below that of the general population, Jews were a significant
part of the underworld in central Europe. Entdeckter jüdischer Baldober, a
handbook intended for the use of criminal prosecutors and others interested in law enforcement,
details prosecutions regarding members of gangs of Jewish thieves and contains the laws
applying to them in the principality of Saxe-Coburg.
29. Sigismund Hosmann. Fürtreffliches Denck-Mahl
der göttlichen Regierung.... bewiessen an der ... güldenen Tafel, und anderer
Kostbarkeiten.... Cell and Leipzig: Hieronymous Friderich Hoffman, 1718.
Hosmann gives his story of Jews who belonged to bands of thieves in his Das schwer zu
bekehrende luden-Hertz, where he also proposes ways of converting the
"conversion-resistant Jewish heart." This present work, Golden Tablet, focuses on a
particular incident of church theft, in the city of Lüneburg, in which some Jews were
supposed to have participated. Giving the details of the case and the prosecution, Hosmann
finally attributes the recovery of the "güldene Tafel" to divine intervention.
30. Die Geschichte von dem grosser Betrieger oder falschen Juden
Könige Sabatai-Sevi von Smirna. [Cöthen], 1702.
The History of the Great Deceiver or False King of the Jews, Sabatai-Sevi is an account
of the life of the most important false Messiah of the Diaspora. Sabatai Zevi proclaimed himself
the Messiah in 1648; and his large following has been attributed in part to the resurgence of the
Jews' longing for physical and spiritual redemption at the time of the Chmielnicki massacres.
Eighteen years later, Sabatai Zevi was arrested in Constantinople; threatened with execution, he
converted to Islam. Although the movement was destroyed, a few followers continued to cherish
his memory long after he died in obscurity in 1676.