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The History of their relationship
Throughout the last thirty years, beginning from Vatican Council the II, with the Nostra Aetate Statement (n.4), the Church has performed an important turning-point regarding the Hebraism, Judaism and Jewish people. In fact, this is the first solemn and official catholic Church document speaking, on friendly terms, certainly not polemically, concerning the Hebraism and starting a dialogue.
The Church taking of a stand had so a strong position that Norberto Bobbio, expert in politics, asserted that the statement represents a "real turning-point, even greater than the Reformation and the French Revolution."
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On march 1982 John Paul II declared: "It should be necessary that this teaching should have to present Jewish people [...] and Hebraism [...] in an honest and objective way without any prejudice.
It means that the christian attitude for many centuries has been the opposite.
Cardinal Edward Cassidy, President of the Committee for religious relationship with the Hebraism publicily admitted (on september 1990): "the fact that anti-semitism has found place in the mind and in the christian practice, requires an act of Teshuvah (contrition) and
reconciliation".
The need of an "historical examination of one's conscience" has suggested the meeting - given in the Vatican from october 30th to november 1st on 1997, with the participation of 60 among Bishops,Theologians and catholic experts besides some representatives of other christian churches - about anti-judaism in a christian background supporting the way of reconciliation, according to the wish expressed by John Paul II in his "Tertio Millennio Adveniente".
The controversy engaged between Christians and Jewish people along the first centuries.
Jesus, Hebrew and educated in conformity of Moses law carried on His ministry in Hebraic Land, but owing to the originality and the extraordinariness of His religious action, and owing to His pretension to be the Messiah, God's Son, he was adversed by the majority of Sauhedrin Chiefs and had been condemned to Crucifixion by roman authorities.
After Jesus death and resurrection, began a sort of religion conversions to a new faith in Jerusalem, the capital-city, as the Acts of the Apostles testify.
The first christian communities spread anywhere, first of all among Jewish people, grouped in Jerusalem around the "pillars" of the "circoncision Church": James, Peter and John, lightly disliking "the Hellenists" (Acts,6,1), and in particular way for Paul, accused of lack of orthodoxy because of his "universalism".
The Jewish religious authorities considered this an hateful sect inside the Hebraism and in consequence of this arose the first persecutions : Apostles' capture, Stephen's stoning lapidation, "the authorisation of leading enchained to Jerusalem men and women disciples of the teachings of Christ", the assassination of the apostle James, John's brother, from Herod Agrippa I, to win the favour of his Chiefs; the same James the Minor at that time chief of the Jerusalem community and faithful law-abiding, has been thrown down from the Temple and lapidated under Sanhedrin incitement (year 62).
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This enflamed tension between Jewish and Christians was reflectedinside christians Communities, between Judaic and Hellenic Groups. This interior tension has been perhaps the beginning of hard expressions we found in Mattehw's Gospel (anti-pharisaic controversy, Mth23,132),in John's Gospel (denunciation against "Jewish people" (John 8-9) and in some passages of Paul letters, as follows: "God does'nt like Jewish, as they are ennemies of all men and they prevent us preaching to pagans for their salvation.Thus they make up the measure of their sins. But now the wrath is at the height on their head." (1Ts2,15-16)
These expressions have to be seen just in the context and may be explained by the ardour of the polemics. " We have to be always on the alert - Card. Martini comments upon - not to give to these relative statements an absolute value. On the contrary the history of the Church for many centuries, has gone on another direction and controversies between Jewish and Christians became sharper and sharper ".
After the religious conversion of the Emperour Constantin starts a radical change for Jewish situation, since the controversy moves over from religious plan to the legal and political one. Christianity became the Empire religion and slowly Christians as victims of persecution became intolerants and persecutors!
Certainly the Fathers of the Church did not feel any racial hate against Jewish, and their intent was to preserve christians faith from Judaism contamination (usage sing and custom connected to Mosaic law), but they let them be transpoted by excessive and sometimes violent controversies.
To urge christians women not to attend the Synagogue, St.John Crisostomo thundered in this way : "The Synagogue is not only lupanar and theathre, but also a brigands cavern and a wild beasts refuge..." The same for St. Jerome (who owed a lot to the Rabbis) who dared to write: "if it were allowed to hate some men and detest people,the Jewish would be to me the object of a special hatred, as up to now they persecute Jesus Christ our Lord in their satanic Synagogues.
These centuries are plentiful of treatises "Adversus Judeos" (Tertulliano, St.Cipriano, St.Augustine, St.John Crisostomo). Fathers of the Church common attitude was that the Jews and not Pilate were the responsibles of Jesus'death anf above all Jews as a people, from which arose the charge of "God murderer's people". St.Ambrose spoke about Jews as a "parricidal people" going on to persecute Jesus .
If Jewish people are "God's murder ", all the following history is interpreted as God's punishment up to the destruction of Jerusalem, breaking over the Jewish peolpe just during Easter.
Eusebio writes (265 - 340) in the "Ecclesiastic History":"Divine Justice broke over the Jewish people... making that impious generation dissappear ": Eusebio wishes that generation would fully disappear from mankind !
"God's punishment"implies the denial of Israel as God's people and its replacement with the Church: this thesis is a common opinion of the Fathers of the Church, from Cirillo of Jerusalem to Augustine and it implies Israel loss of their land's right. The Jews must always remain slaves in foreign country! We found an echoe of this "religious hate" maturated in christians' heart in the cruel words pronounced by Bossuet in 1652 at the Cathedral of Metz: "God has scattered them everywhere...and the sign of His revenge is always impressed in their hearts".
This opinion has already been advanced repeatedly, in the Cassiodoro salms explanatory notes written between (540-550).
For Cassiodoro the Jewish people (which he often calls "wicked", "without intelligence", "hardened sinners") have lost their own identity not only religiously but also politically, as the appellation "Jewish" has been correctly saddled just to "believers" that is to christians, and their land's right now belongs to Christ's Church, "the real Judea".
Jerusalem and Holy land's right belong to christians: the franciscan Francis Quaresimi writes in his work published in Anversa in 1639. The Pope, Paul IV, in His bull "Cum nimis absurdum" published in 1555, deduces all a serie of pratical rules about Jewish political dependence.
The loss of intelligence is considered another consequence of "God's punishment" of knowing Holy Scripture : having refused Jesus Christ they have remained "carnals", that is strictly connected to the literal meaning, incapable of catching the spiritual sense. The Synagogue is symbolized, on Strasbourg cathedral portal as a repudiated and afflicted bride : in the Diaspora Museum, in Tel Aviv, we can find the two Strasbourg women as a silent remark!
Anti-judaic laws in christian rules.
Anti-judaic laws (438) were already issued under Theodosius II: the Jews were forbidden to accede to any public task: and to any proselytism (pain of death), they were forbidden to build new synagogues or to embellish the old ones.
In 388 St.Ambrose already opposed himself to the rebuilding of Callinico's synagogue destroyed by Christians!
The Emperour Justinian worsened these provisions, because he engraved on the same religious wrights: (Talmud forbiddance - 548 -) the forbiddance of the Talmud (548) and of the same rabbinic exegesis (founded on Targum, Midrash and on Mishna).
Under Islam dominio Jewish people enjoied more tolerant and favourable legal conditions than those imposed in the christian west.
In Crusades time starts the real calamity period of the history of Middle age Diaspora. The victims of anti-judaic movement were some thousand and they had been vaguely opposed by the same ecclesiastic authorities.
Later, the expulsion warrants spread everywhere: from England (1290), from France (1306), from Spain (1492), where even the converted Jewish should have been persecuted.
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In Rome too the ghetto absolute rule is imposed (Paul IV Bul), that is a quarter where all the Jewish should necessarily live, a quarter surrounded with walls and provided with just one Synagogue.
A racial discrimination mark is imposed: a disk of yellow material in France, a pointed hat in Germany, were imposed in Rome too toghether with the ghetto.
They were prevented from practising a long series of jobs. Even the stereotype of the Jewish as "usurer" (this should be considered separately) had already been developped over XII century.
Conclusion
In this article we have not touched the anti-judaic modern ideology, a wide subject leading to the atrocity of the Holocaust in the extermination camps.
Somehow we have already seen how in the Middle Age, the hate against Jewish people has definitely set up in christian hearts and it is a "christian" hate which will not end in a short time as it is strictly connected to the image of "God murderer's people"!
Cardinal Martini ends His article: "As men and christians we must and we have to kneel down in front of God and the victims of so much hate and we have to beg for forgiveness about the anti-Hebraism sin. We have to open our arms and our hearts trusting in the reconciliation embrace ".
Bibliographie:
- M.Pesce: Il cristianesimo e la sua radice ebraica, EDB,Bologna 1994.
- Il Regno - documenti, 21/97: Commissione teologico-storica del Giubileo, pp.686-688.
- E.Testa: La fede della Chiesa madre di Gerusalemme, EDB, Roma 1995.
- Card.Carlo Maria Martini: Di nuovo insieme fratelli ritrovati, in "Jesus", 10/97.
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