The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation

by Heiko A. Oberman

Book by Oberman, Heiko Augustinus

Genres: History, Religion

163 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 1981

About the author

Heiko Augustinus Oberman was a Dutch historian and theologian who specialized in the study of the Reformation. After earning his doctorate in theology from the University of Utrecht in 1957, he taught at the Harvard Divinity School from 1958 until 1966 and then at the University of Tübingen, Germany from 1966 until 1988, when he became Regents Professor of History at the University of Arizona, Tucson.

Reviews

[Monique · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oberman demonstrates that although the Humanism and Reformation movements of 16th century Europe preached religious toleration, that toleration was only reserved for Christians. The anti-semitism of the humanists and the reformers remained as vicious as it had been in the Middle Ages.
The Europe of the Renaissance and Reformation was still ruled by Christianity, a religion that believed itself to be the only truth and whose attitude towards Jews was: either mass conversion or mass expulsion.
According to the Christians, the great sin of the Jews was their stubborn refusal to accept Jesus as their savior. Their Talmud, which described Jesus as a false messiah, was deemed blasphemous. Jews were accused of being Christ killers, sacrament desecrators, and of murdering Christian children in order to cook with their blood.
Worst of all was their refusal to believe in the immaculate conception of virgin Mary.
Jews were also accused of coveting Christian wealth and blood.
Christians believed that the Jews' exile and misery was the punishment of God for refusing to convert to Christianity.
Oberman proves, backed by numerous original documents, that the great humanists Reichlin and Erasmus were as rabid antisemites as any other Christians of their time. The same was true for Luther and Calvin.
In this era there was a widespread belief that it was the "end of times" and that the antichrist was on its way, and that the second coming of Christ was imminent. Jews were accused, esp. by Luther, of being the antichrist, together with the Pope and the Turks and the Devil.
The invention of the printing press and the use of popular pamphlets served to spread anti-Jewish sentiments among the literate part of society. Church sermons reached the illiterate parts of society.

Oberman reprints an original German document from 1510. It is a report about Jews who got hold of two wafers from a church and how they proceeded to torture the body of Christ until blood flowed from the wafers. The Jews were caught, they "confessed" after being tortured, they even "confessed" prior crimes of having purchased seven Christian children and having tortured them and killed them and then having prepared their blood with pomegranates and having served them for dinner. The Jews were put to death, and additional thirty eight Jews were burnt at the stake.
This official report was published by the respected publishing house of Hieronymous Höltzel of Nuremberg, a scholarly and progressive press in the service of Humanism and Reformation. No Christian seemed to have doubted the veracity of the reported events.

It is only in the 17th century, first in Holland, then in England, and finally in several settlements of the New World, that Jews were granted certain civil rights.
Oberman suggests that the oppression of protestants by the catholic authorities may have contributed to more enlightened attitudes.
" Once the homeless, fugitive Christians were compelled to share the destiny of the Jews, expulsion no longer bore the unambiguous marks of a God-sent punishment...In the latest sermons of Calvin, delivered in French and only recently published in a modern edition, we encounter a growing sense of the hidden community of fate shared by the Christians and Jews in their homeless state of persecution and diaspora".

In his conclusion, Oberman suggests that the roots of anti-semitism run so deep in our society and has over so many centuries been hammered into the minds of both the elite and the uneducated masses, that only something very dramatic will be able to reverse it.
The age of the Renaissance and Reformation saw no improvement in attitudes towards Jews.
Even the Enlightenment movement, which was based on tolerance, has proven insufficient a counter force to erase antisemitism from the world. One only has to refer to the Holocaust and to attitudes towards Israel to prove this point.
Oberman suggests: "Coexistence between Christians and Jews only has a future in the presence of a common history finally understood, a history in which both are bound by the covenant with God- despite hatred and collective guilt, despite expulsion, persecution, and annihilation".
I wish Oberman had elaborated a bit more on his proposed solution. It seems like a nice catch phrase, but it requires explanation.

[Joseph Sverker · Rating 4 out of 5]

Oberman takes the question of Luther's view on the Jews into the correct context, namely to place Luther into the context of middle ages and contemporary theologians. In that way it is possible to make some sense of the sentiments expressed about the Jews, Luther's included, in that time - and why it is so difficult for us to understand that view. Oberman clearly shows that the harsh comments should not be connected with racism, for the theologians treat the Jews as a religious category. This is not to excuse that type of language or intolerance, but an important point to show how things differ over the years. The structure of the book is very reader friendly. There are short readable chapters on different topics that in the end make up a well argued whole picture of the era.