History of the Jews

by Paul Johnson

Yet there was a growing ambivalence in the official attitude to Jews. The secular lords tended to treat the Jews as personal property, to be farmed; not only their incomes but, in case of necessity, their capital too were there to be plundered. The ecclesiastical lords, as the rulers of cities, appreciated the economic value of the Jewish presence; as churchmen they abhorred it. Pope Gregory the Great (reigned 590-604) protected the Jews of Rome; but at the same time he created the ideology of a Christian anti-Judaism which was to lead directly to physical attacks on Jews. What he argued, in effect, was that the Jews were not blind to the claims of Christianity. They knew Jesus was the Messiah, was the son of God. But they had rejected Him, and continued to reject Him because their hearts were corrupt. And it had always been thus–the evidence against the Jews was all there in the Bible, which they had written themselves.