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Medieval Heritage and Modern Realities in Protestant-Jewish Relations
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 01 July 2024
Extract
Like most revolutions, the Protestant Revolution of the sixteenth century changed the existing socio-cultural realities far less than appears on the surface. To the Reformers themselves and most of their contemporaries the new ideas sounded startlingly novel, and their realization promised to alter the existing social and political structures to their very foundations. In fact, however, except for the overt changes in certain dogmatic and ritualistic postulates, specifically advocated by the new champions of Reform, life proceeded largely along accustomed lines.
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- Copyright © 1968 Fédération Internationale des Sociétés de Philosophie / International Federation of Philosophical Societies (FISP)
References
* Lecture delivered at the Harvard Divinity School, here revised and annotated.
1 Ernst Walter Zeeden, "Grundlagen und Wege der Konfessionsbildung in Deutschland im Zeitalter der Reformationskämpfe," Historische Zeitschrift, CLXXXV (1958), 249-99.
2 V.H.H. Green, Luther and the Reformation, New York, 1964, p. 9.
3 Martin Luther, Tischgespräche, in his Werke, Weimar ed., IV, 338; LI, 195; and other passages in William Hazlitt's English trans. entitled The Table Talk, with a Memoir by Alexander Chalmers, London, 1883, pp. 346 ff. Luther actually believed that some Jews had tried to poison him. See Reinhold Lewin, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden, Ein Beitrag zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland während des Reformationszeitalters, Berlin, 1911 (Neue Studien zur Geschichte der Theologie und der Kirche, I), pp. 39 ff. and, on the medieval background of these apprehensions, my A Social and Religious History of the Jews, 2d ed. Vols. I-XII, New York, 1952-67, esp. Vol. XI, pp. 158 f., 364 f. n. 47.
4 Vadian (Joachim von Watt), Deutsche historische Schriften, ed. by E. Göt zinger, I, 348, 390, 447; II, 243, 346, cited by Ludwig Geiger in his "Die Juden und die deutsche Literatur," Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutsch land, II (1888), 517 ff.; Andreas Osianders Schrift über die Blutbeschuldigung, ed. by Moritz Stern, Kiel, 1893.
5 Albert A. Sicroff, "Les Controverses des statuts de ‘pureté de sang' en Espagne du XVe au XVIIe siècle," Paris, 1960, Etudes de littérature étrangère et comparée; H. Vuilleumier, "Les Hébraïsants vaudois au seizième siècle," Recueil inaugural of the University of Lausanne, Lausanne, 1892, p. 64; Wilhelm Becker, Immanuel Tremellius. Ein Proselytenleben im Zeitalter der Reformation, 2d ed., Leipzig, 1891. Schriften des Institutum Judaicum, VIII.
6 Wolfgang Capito's Latin letter of April 26, 1537 in Luther's Briefwechsel, in his Werke, Weimar, ed., VIII, 76 ff. No. 3152; in Harry Bresslau's German trans. in his "Aus Strassburger Judenakten, II: Zur Geschichte Josels von Ros heim," Zeitschrift für die Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, V (1892), 326 f. It may be noted that two years earlier Capito had severely scolded Jacques Schor for advocating general liberty of conscience. See his essay, cited by P. Dollinger in "La Tolérance à Strasbourg au XVIe siècle," Hommage à Lucien Febvre, 2 vols., Paris, 1953, II, 241-49.
7 Martin Bucer, "Ratschlag, ob die Christliche Oberkait gebüren müge, dass sye die Juden undter den Christen zu wonen gedulden, und wa sye zu gedulden welche gestalt und mass," reproduced in his Deutsche Schriften (Opera omnia, Ser. I), Vols. I-VII, Gütersloh, 1960-64, VII, 319-94 (includes nine items in the documentary appendix and the editor's introductions); Max Lenz, ed., Brief wechsel Philipp's des Grossmüthigen von Hessen mit Bucer, 3 vols., Leipzig, 1880-91, I, 55 ff.; Siegmund Salfeld, Die Judenpolitik Philipps des Gross mütigen, Frankfurt a.M., 1904; Hasting Eells, "Bucer's Plan for the Jews," Church History, VI (1937), 127-135; and, more generally, William Jesse Nottingham's Columbia University dissertation, The Social Ethics of Martin Bucer, New York, 1962 (typescript), esp. pp. 235 ff.
8 Pastor Ehrhardt's statement, cited in Hartmann Grisar's well-known biog raphy of Luther, 6 vols., London, 1913-17, VI, 78; Ulrich Grotefend, Geschichte und rechtliche Stellung der Juden in Pommern, Diss. Marburg, 1931 (reprinted from Baltische Studien, n.s. XXXII), pp. 138 f.
9 Johann Christian Freiherr von Aretin, Geschichte der Juden in Baiern, Landshut, 1803, pp. 44 ff.; L. Löwenstein, Beiträge zur Geschichte der Juden in Deutschland, I: Geschichte der Juden in der Kurpfalz, Frankfurt, 1895, pp. 29 ff.
10 See Umberto Cassuto, I manoscritti palatini ebraici della Biblioteca Apo stolica Vaticana e la loro storia, Vatican City, 1935 (Studi e testi, LXVI).
11 John Calvin, Ad quaestiones et obiecta Judaei cuiusdam Responsio, in his Opera quae supersunt omnia, ed. by Wilhelm Baum et al., 59 vols. Brunswick, 1863 - Berlin, 1900, IX, 653-74; and my analysis of this debate and of other aspects of Calvin's Judeophobia in "John Calvin and the Jews," Harry Austryn Wolfson Jubilee Volume, 3 vols., Jerusalem, 1965, I, 141-63. Further information might be forthcoming from the publication of more of Calvin's sermons, preserved in manuscript. Unfortunately, this project, begun in 1936, had made insufficient headway in the subsequent two decades. See Hanns Rückert's ed. of Tohannes Calvin's Predigten, resumed by the World Presbyterian Alliance with the publi cation of Supplementa Calviniana Sermons Inédits, edited by Ervin Mühlhaupt et al., Neukirchen, 1961 ff. On the abysmal state of preservation of that valuable source of information on the Genevan reformer, see Bernard Gagnebin, "L'in croyable histoire des Sermons de Calvin," Bulletin of the Société d'histoire et d'archéologie de Genève, X (1956).
12 Miguel (Michael) Servetus, Biblia Sacra ex Sanctis Pagnini translatione… recognita et scholiis illustrata, Lyons, 1542; Articles of accusation against Servetus and Servetus' letters to Calvin, reproduced in the latter's Opera, VIII, esp. cols. 555 f., 675, 703 ff., 764, 767; Aegidius Hunnius, Calvinus Judaizans, hoc est Judaicae Glossae et corruptelae, quibus Johannes Calvinus illustrissima Scripturae Sacrae loca et testimonia de gloriosa Trinitate… corrumpere non ex horruit, Wittenberg, 1595. On Servetus see also Jakob Guttmann, "Michael Servet in seinen Beziehungen zum Judentum," Monatsschrift für Geschichte und Wissenschaft des Judentums, LI (1907), 77-94; and Louis Israel Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements, New York, 1925, pp. 511 ff.
13 See the illustrations given in my A Social and Religious History, 2d. ed., esp. Vol. III, pp. 5 ff. nn. 1 and 4. Not surprisingly, Catholic leaders, too, were prone to accuse the protagonists of Reform of being Judaizers or even descendants of Jews. For one example, in his letter of 1556 to the Orders of Calatrava and Alcantara, King Philip II of Spain sweepingly asserted that "all the heresies which have arisen in Germany and in France have been disseminated by descendants of Jews as has been and is being witnessed every day in Spain." Cited from a Madrid MS by Albert A. Sicroff in Les Controverses, p. 138 n. 184.
14 Hans Baron, Calvin's Staatsanschauung und das konfessionelle Zeitalter, Munich, 1924 (Historische Zeitschrift, Beihefte I), pp. 48 ff. Even in Holland the victory of Calvinism was due to a variety of political and religious factors, among which Dutch nationalism, still in its early formative stages, played a decidedly minor role. See the recent debates summarized by Peter de Jong in his "Can Political Factors Account for the Fact that Calvinism rather than An abaptism came to dominate the Dutch Reformation?" Church History, XXXIII (1964), 392-417.
15 See Harold S. Bender, "The Anabaptists and Religious Liberty in the 16th Century," Archiv für Religionsgeschichte, XLIV (1953), 32-51. Needless to say, not all Anabaptists were of one mind. One of their leaders, Balthasar Hubmeier (Hubmaier), had already played a fateful role in the expulsion of Jews from Regensburg in 1519. In general he was an Anabaptist only with respect to the question of baptism, but otherwise remained a rather hide-bound protagonist of the status quo. See Wilhelm A. Schulze, "Neue Forschungen über Balthasar Hubmeier von Waldshut," Allemannisches Jahrbuch, 1957, pp. 224-74. Even he, however, spoke up against the burning of heretics, declaring that "the slayers of heretics were themselves guilty of the worst heresy." See his short pamphlet, Von Ketzern und ihrer Verbrennern, Nikolsburg, 1524; and some of his other writings collected in his Schriften, ed. by Gunnar Westin and Torsten Bergsten, Gütersloh, 1962. Quellen und Forschungen zur Reformationsgeschichte, XXIX.
16 Elisabeth Feist Hirsch, "Portuguese Humanists and the Inquisition in the Sixteenth Century," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte, XLVI (1955), 47-68; Luther, The Table Talk of Martin Luther, trans. and ed. by W. Hazlitt, with a Memoir by A. Chambers, London, 1900. Bohn's Standard Library.
17 Marcin Bielski, Kronika polska (Polish Chronicle), Cracow, 1597 ed., p. 580; Majer Balaban, Dzieje Zydow w Krakowie i na Kazimierzu (A History of the Jews in Cracow and Kazimierz), 2d ed., 2 vols., Cracow, 1931-36, I, 77 f. n. 4. These exaggerations by Bielski and other contemporaries concerning the extent of Jewish proselytism have been reduced to their proper proportions by E. Zivier in his "Jüdische Bekehrungsversuche im 16. Jahrhundert," in Beiträge zur Geschichte der deutschen Juden. Festschrift… Martin Philippson, Leipzig, 1916, pp. 96-113.
18 William E.H. Lecky, Democracy and Liberty, 2 vols., New York, 1896; Samuel Langdon, "Election Sermon of 1775" in John Wingate Thornton's Pulpit of the American Revolution, Boston, 1860, p. 239; John Cotton, Moses, His Judicials, published in England under the title, An Abstract of the Lawes of New England, London, 1641, more readily available in Peter Force's Tracts and Other Papers Relating Principally to … the Colonies in North America, new impression, New York, 1947, Vol. III, Part 9. See also other data in my address, "From Colonial Mansion to Skyscraper: an Emerging Pattern of Hebraic Studies," reprinted from Rutgers Hebraic Studies, I (1964).
19 Elijah Levita, Masoreth ha-Masoreth (The Tradition of the Masorah: a Philological Treatise), ed. by Christian David Ginsburg, London, 1867, Intro., p. 96 with reference to Ps. 147:20. See also Gerard E. Weil, "L'Archétype de Massoret ha-Massoret d'Élie Lévita," Revue d'histoire et de philosophie religieuse, XLI (1961), 147-58; and on the Protestant side, idem, "Une leçon de l'humaniste hébreu Elias Lévita à son élève Sébastien Münster," Revue d'Alsace, XCV (1956), 31-40.
20 Heinrich Bornkamm, Luther und das Alte Testament, Tübingen, 1948; Emanuel Hirsch, Die Theologie des Andreas Osiander und ihre geschichtlichen Voraussetzungen, Göttingen, 1919; Ezra Stiles, The Literary Diary, ed. with notes by Franklin Bowdich Dexter, 3 vols., New York, 1901, especially in the passages analyzed by George Alexander Kohut in his Ezra Stiles and the Jews, New York, 1902; Jeremiah Mason, "Autobiography," in his Memoirs and Correspondence, Cambridge, Mass., 1873, p. 11.
21 B.B. Edwards, "Reasons for the Study of the Hebrew Language," American Biblical Repository, XII (1838), 113 ff., with the comments thereon by Joseph L. Blau and Salo W. Baron, eds., The Jews of the United States, 1790-1840: a Documentary History, 3 vols., New York, 1963, II, 419 ff.; Cotton Mather, Diary, ed. by Worthington Chancey Ford in the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 7th ser. VII, 200. See also Lee M. Friedman, "Cotton Mather's Ambition" in his Jewish Pioneers and Patriots, Philadelphia, 1943, p. 99.
22 Roland H. Bainton, "The Struggle for Religious Liberty," reprinted in his Studies in the Reformation, Boston, 1963, p. 212.
* See "The Protestant Ethic Thesis in Analytical and Comparative Context," in Diogenes, No. 59, Fall 1967.
23 See the early (1909-10) debate between Max Weber, Felix Rachfahl and Eugen Troeltsch, cited in my aforementioned essay on "John Calvin and the Jews" in the Wolfson Jubilee Volume, I, 162 n. 33. Despite the interventing accumulation of an enormous literature on this, and the related subject of the relations between the Jews and modern capitalism, the issue is still open to debate today.
24 Reinhold Lewin, Luthers Stellung zu den Juden, pp. 104 f.; Werner Sombart, The Jews and Modern Capitalism, English trans. by M. Epstein, With an intro. to the American edition by Bert F. Hoselitz, Glencoe, Ill., 1951, p. 49.
25 Hugo Grotius (De Groot), Remonstrantie nopende de ordre dije in de Landen van Hollandt ende Westvrieslandt dijent gestelt op de Joden, ed. from a Montezinos MS by Jacob Meijer, Amsterdam, 1949; and Meijer's analysis thereof in his "Hugo Grotius' Remonstrantie," Jewish Social Studies, XVII (1955), 91-104. On the eminent jurist's theological orientation, see Arthur Löwenstamm's "Hugo Grotius Stellung zum Judentum," Festschrift… des Jüdisch-Theologischen Seminars Fraenckelscher Stiftung, Breslau, 1929, II, 295-302; and, more generally, Joachim Schlütter's review of Die Theologie des Hugo Grotius, Göttingen, 1919, esp. pp. 3 ff.
26 Lucien Wolf, "The First Stage of Anglo-Jewish Emancipation" (1903), reprinted in his Essays in Jewish History, ed. by Cecil Roth, London, 1934, pp. 115-43.
27 See my "Newer Approaches to Jewish Emancipation," Diogenes, 29 (1960), 56-81.