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.
