Constantine's Sword: The Church and the Jews (116 page)

32. My Inquisition

1.
Ad Tuendam Fident,
in
National Catholic Reporter,
July 17, 1998.

2. "Doctrinal Commentary on the Concluding Formula of the
Professio Fidei," National Catholic Reporter,
July 17, 1998.

3.
The Tablet,
September 19, 1998.

4.
New York Times,
February 7, 1998.

33. Convivencia
to
Reconquista

1. Thomas F. Click, "An Introductory Note," in Mann et al.,
Convivencia,
1.

2. Barrucand and Bednorz,
Moorish Architecture,
39.

3. Ibid., 63.

4. Roth, "Jews in Spain," 14.

5. Ibid., 2.

6. Glick, "An Introductory Note," in Mann et al.,
Convivencia,
6. There is one problem with the way
convivencia
is recalled as a golden age for Jews. It was surely that for certain classes of Jews, the intellectuals and courtiers as well as a prospering middle class made up of practitioners of trades and crafts. But for a large number of less well off Jews, the pressures of the age were anything but golden. In that, they were perhaps not unlike the forever downtrodden peasantry.

7. Gilbert,
Atlas of Jewish History,
10.

8. Roth, "Jews in Spain," 16. Roth notes that the extremity with which the Almohad invasion is often rendered constitutes an example of the "lachrymose tradition" of Jewish history. He emphasizes, instead, that "careful analysis of actual sources concerning the Almohad period reveals that most of the communities which were supposedly 'destroyed' in Spain were hardly affected at all" (17).

9. Kamen,
Inquistion and Society in Spain,
2.

10. Roth, "Jews in Spain," 10.

11. Ibid.

12. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
1–2.

13. Burns,
Emperor of Culture,
3.

14. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
2.

15. "Toledo,"
Encyclopedia Judaica,
vol. 15 (Jerusalem: Keter, 1972), 1199.

16. Omer,
Synagogue of Samuel Halevy,
188, 183.

17. Riera Vidal,
Jews in Toledo and Their Synagogues,
7.

18. Omer,
Synagogue of Samuel Halevy,
183.

19. Fletcher,
Moorish Spain,
162.

20. Burns,
Emperor of Culture,
60.

21. Baer,
Jews in Christian Spain,
vol. 1, 120.

22.
Encyclopedia Judaica,
vol. 15, 1202.

23. Baer,
Jews in Christian Spain,
vol. 1, 130.

24. Bloom,
Kabbalah and Criticism,
24. Bloom dates the
Zohar's
composition to the years between 1280 and 1286 and accepts Moses de Leon as its author, although the work may be more accurately defined as a compilation of numerous diverse sources going back many years before Moses de Leon. See Silberman,
Heavenly Powers,
90.

25. Gershom Scholem,
Kabbalah,
213. Harold Bloom says the
Zohar
is sometimes called the "Bible of Kabbalah." Bloom,
Kabbalah and Criticism,
24–25.

26. Dan,
Early Kabbalah,
36.

27. Silberman,
Heavenly Powers,
90.

28. Bloom,
Kabbalah and Criticism,
24.

29. Silberman,
Heavenly Powers,
91.

30. Ibid., 92.

31. Ibid., 98.

32. Ibid.

34. Convert-Making: The Failure of Success

1. Quoted by J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
66.

2. Ibid., 97.

3. Ibid. When Cohen's book was published in 1982, some scholars faulted the extremity of some of its claims, perhaps including this one. Yet as a statement of the ultimate purpose of the conversionist movement, it rings true to me. For another view, see Chazen,
Daggers of Faith.

4. Romans 11:8.

5. Thomas Aquinas,
Summa Theologiae
(3a.47.53, 69.

6. I am indebted here to an unpublished paper by Adam Gregerman, "The Barcelona Disputation and Late Medieval Europe: An Analysis of Political and Social Change."

7. Cited by J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
111.

8. Chazan,
Daggers of Faith,
89–90.

9. Ibid., too.

10. Quoted by Gregerman, "Barcelona Disputation," 7.

11. Ibid., 25.

12. J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
109. The decrees also "demanded that blasphemous passages be expurgated from Jewish books" and "established a censorship commission to achieve that purpose."

13. Quoted by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
117.

14. Quoted by Silberman,
Heavenly Powers,
95.

15. Quoted by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
119.

16. Chazan,
Daggers of Faith,
181.

17. J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
245.

18. Quoted by J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
239.

19. Ibid.

20. Quoted by Poliakov,
History of Anti-Semitism,
107–8.

21. Marcus,
The Jew in the Medieval World,
43.

22. Harpur,
Revelations,
60.

23. Bunson,
The Pope Encyclopedia,
86.

24. Cited by Tuchman,
Distant Mirror,
105. This order of dissection by a fourteenth-century pope, involving the mutilation of corpses, regarded by the Church as sacred ("temples of the Holy Ghost"), was at least as radical as it would be today for a pope, concerned about world population or the spread of AIDS, to lift the Catholic ban on "artificial contraception."

25. Marcus,
The Jew in the Medieval World,
43.

26. Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
134.

27. Tuchman,
Distant Mirror,
116. Tuchman cites reports of the number of Jewish deaths in Mainz on one day, August 24, 1349, as six thousand.

28. Poliakov,
History of Anti-Semitism,
110.

29. Cited by Marcus,
The Jew in the Medieval World,
46.

30. Quoted by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
133. See also Tuchman,
Distant Mirror,
112–16.

31. Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
134.

32. Poliakov,
History of Anti-Semitism,
ill.

33. Quoted by Marcus,
The lew in the Medieval World,
47.

34. Ruether,
Faith and Fratricide,
206.

35. Ullmann, "The Mystery of 1492," 331.

36. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
8. See also Benjamin R. Gampel, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia:
Convivencia
Through the Eyes of Sephardic Jews," in Mann et al.,
Convivencia,
28.

37. Gampel, "Jews. Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia," 28.

38. Baer,
Jews in Christian Spain,
vol. 2, 145.

39. Gampel, "Jews. Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia," 29.

35.
Expulsion in 1492

1. 2 Maccabees 7, translation from
The Jerusalem Bible
(Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1966).

2. Cited by M. Cohen,
Under Crescent and Cross,
174.

3. Ibid. Cohen's exploration of the responses of Jews and Christians to persecution is especially informative (see ch. 10, "Persecution and Collective Memory").

4. Maimonides,
Letters of Maimonides,
64.

5. Ibid.

6. Ibid., 65.

7. Ibid., 64.

8. MacKay, "Popular Movements and Pogroms," 52.

9. Stow,
Jews in Rome,
xi.

10. Quoted by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
136.

11. Quoted by Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
25.

12. Bunson,
The Pope Encyclopedia,
247.

13. Quoted by Saperstein,
Moments of Crisis,
28.

14.
Cantate Domino,
in Tanner,
Decrees of the Ecumenical Councils,
578.

15. Nicolaus of Cusa,
Toward a New Council of Florence,
273.

16. I depend here on notes I took while listening to David Tracy lecture on Nicolaus of Cusa at the Harvard Divinity School, fall 1997.

17. Pelikan,
Christian Tradition,
vol. 4, 68.

18.
The American Heritage Dictionary of the English Language
(Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1992), 86.

19. Nicolaus of Cusa,
Toward a New Council of Florence,
231.

20. Ibid., 232–33.

21. Ibid., 266–67.

22. Baron,
History of the Jews,
vol. 13, 174. See also Flannery,
The Anguish of the Jews,
124; Roth,
History of the Jews of Italy,
206.

23. Gershom Scholem, "The Beginnings of the Christian Kabbalah," in Dan,
The Christian Kabbalah,
17.

24. Quoted by Baron,
History of the Jews,
vol. 13, 175.

25. Paul I. W. Miller, in Pico Delia Mirandola,
On the Dignity of Man, xxx.

26. See Klaus Reichert, "Christian Kabbalah in the Seventeenth Century," in Dan,
The Christian Kabbalah.

27. Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
146.

28. Benjamin R. Gampel, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia," in Mann et al.,
Convivencia,
31.

29. Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
138.

30. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
29.

31. Gampel, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia," 31–32.

32. MacKay, "Popular Movements and Pogroms," 64.

33. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
161.

34. Ibid., 175.

35. Ibid., 176.

36. J. Cohen,
The Friars and the Jews,
50.

37. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
188.

38. Ibid., 41.

39. Quoted by Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
191.

40. Bloom,
Kabbalah and Criticism,
47.

41. Brenan,
St. John of the Cross,
23.

42. Saint Teresa described a vision in which she was pierced by an angel's flaming golden arrow: "The pain was so great that I screamed aloud; but at the same time I felt such infinite sweetness that I wished the pain to last forever. It was not physical but psychic pain, although it affected the body as well to some degree. It was the sweetest caressing of the soul by God." Quoted by Janson,
History of Art,
513.

43. Brenan,
St. John of the Cross,
91–94.

44. Ibid., 95.

45. Judith Hershcopf Banki, "Some Reflections on Edith Stein," in Cargas,
The Unnecessary Problem of Edith Stein,
46.

46. Gampel, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia," 32.

47. Ibid., 32. See also Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
15. Franco's name is ironic, given that the cloud of fearful ignorance that fell on Spain in this period did not lift until the death of another Franco, nearly five hundred years later.

48. Harpur,
Revelations,
22–23.

49. At a meeting with Jewish and Catholic scholars in Chicago in 1999, I heard Cardinal Edward Cassidy, head of the Vatican's Congregation for Religious Relations with the Jews, describe how his intervention had prevented the Congregation for the Causes of the Saints from proceeding with the canonization of Isabella. Cassidy said that his appeal was based on the damage such an act would do to Jewish-Catholic relations. The context of this discussion was the "cause" of the canonization of Pius XII, about which Cardinal Cassidy was noncommittal.

50. Gilbert,
Atlas of Jewish History,
46–47.

51. Quoted by Cohn-Sherbok,
Crucified Jew,
88.

52. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
135.

53. Gampel, "Jews, Christians, and Muslims in Medieval Iberia," 32.

54. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
17.

55. Baer,
Jews in Christian Spain,
vol. 2, 438.

56. Bernaldez, "Chron. de los Reyes Cathol. Colmentares, Hist, de Segovia," in Ackerman,
Out of Our People's Past,
6.

57. Kamen,
Inquisition and Society in Spain,
16.

58. Gilbert,
Atlas of Jewish History,
46.

59. Ibid.

36. The Roman Ghetto

1.
National Catholic Reporter,
September 18, 1998.

2. Bunson,
The Pope Encyclopedia,
13–15.

3. Renata Segre, "Sephardic Settlements in Sixteenth-Century Italy: A Historical and Geographical Survey," in Ginio,
Jews, Christians, and Muslims,
117.

4. Roth,
History of the Jews of Italy,
179.

5. Quoted by Roth,
History of the Jews of Italy,
179.

6. Ibid.

7. Stow,
Catholic Thought,
xxxvii.

8. Ibid., xxxii.

9. Quoted by Synan,
The Popes and the Jews,
146.

10. Stow,
Catholic Thought,
xix f.

11. Goldhagen,
Hitler's Willing Executioners,
79.

12. Baron,
History of the Jews,
vol. 13, 217.

13. Goldhagen,
Hitler's Willing Executioners,
55.

14. Quoted by Baron,
History of the Jews,
vol. 13, 217.

15. Ibid., 218.

16. Quoted by Marius,
Martin Luther,
378.