Many familiar with the subject of Jewish life under premodern European Christendom frequently summarize it as an unending dystopia: Christian society not only impoverished Judaists in dilapidated ghetti but also figuratively and literally demonized, humiliated, tormented, expelled, and massacred Judaists.
That persecution certainly should not be overlooked, but it is also true that many premodern Christians (mostly lower‐class ones) befriended, assisted, defended, and cohabited with Judaists. These instances demonstrate that Jewish life under Christendom did not have to be dystopian.
Quoting Rodney Stark’s The Rise of Christianity: A Sociologist Reconsiders History, pages 68–9:
There is recent physical evidence (or what insiders sometimes call realia) suggesting that the Christian and Jewish communities remained closely linked—intertwined, even—until far later than is consistent with claims about the early and absolute break between church and synagogue. The realia are both archaeological and documentary.
Eric Meyers (1983, 1988) reported that a wealth of archaeological findings in Italy (especially in Rome and Venosa) show that “Jewish and Christian burials reflect an interdependent and closely related community of Jews and Christians in which clear marks of demarcation were blurred until the third and fourth centuries C.E.” (1988:73–74).
Shifting to data from Palestine, Meyers noted excavations in Capernaum (on the shores of the Sea of Galilee) that reveal “a Jewish synagogue and a Jewish–Christian house church on opposite sides of the street. […] Following the strata and the structures, both communities apparently lived in harmony until the seventh century C.E.” (1988:76). Finally, Meyers suggested that only when a triumphant Christianity began, late in the fourth century, to pour money into Palestine for church building and shrines was there any serious rupture with Jews.
Roger Bagnall reported a surviving papyrus (P.Oxy. 44) from the year 400 wherein a man “explicitly described as a Jew” leased a ground‐floor room and a basement storage room in a house from two Christian sisters described as apotactic monastics:
The rent is in line with other lease payments for parts of the city known from the period, and the whole transaction is distinguished by its routineness. All the same, the sight of two Christian nuns letting out two rooms in their house to a Jewish man has much to say about not only the flexibility of the monastic life but also the ordinariness of [Christian–Jewish] relationships. (1993: 277–278 )
These data may strike social scientists as thin, but they seem far less ambiguous and far more reliable than the evidence with which students of antiquity must usually work.
Markus Bockmuehl’s “Friendship between Jews and Christians in Antiquity” in Looking In, Looking Out: Jews and Non‐Jews in Mutual Contemplation, pages 308–9:
Chrysostom’s ill‐mannered rant eloquently attests the strength of what he rejects the widespread pattern of friendly social and religious relations between two remarkably interconnected communities. Christians kept feasts and fasts in the synagogues for the great autumn festivals of Rosh Ha‐Shanah, Yom Kippur, and Sukkot (Adv. Jud. 1.1.5), as well as Passover (3.3.6, 3.6.7; 4.4.4–5.4).⁵² A woman was required by a fellow Christian to seal a business transaction by an apparently superior oath in the synagogue (1.3.4).
Chrysostom’s concern at the widely intertwined lives of Christians and Jews was equally shared by church authorities in Asia Minor, including in Phrygia. The influential Council of Laodicea (c.363) sought to ban Christians from Sabbath‐keeping (Canon 29), celebrating festivals of the Jews or accepting gifts from them on such occasions (37), or indeed from eating their unleavened bread (38).⁵³
Meanwhile, by the late fourth century, Christians had long tended and perhaps appropriated the cult of the Maccabean martyrs, somewhat curiously translated to Antioch.⁵⁴
Despite Chrysostom’s best efforts, Antioch clearly showed very little inclination to effect a definitive “parting of the ways,” even while Christianity gained political and cultural ascendancy during the fourth century.
Chrysostom’s own teacher Libanius of Antioch (314–393), a prominent rhetorician and friend of the Emperor Julian, fostered networks of acquaintance with both Jews and Christians and numbered several future church fathers among his students. He corresponded with Priscianus the Governor of Palestine on behalf of the Jewish community and expressed to the Jewish Patriarch (probably Gamaliel V) his distress at recent harassment of the Jewish people.⁵⁵
In such relationships with both intertwined communities, this public intellectual attached great importance “to friendship […], to the rule of law and justice, and to divinely inspired human community as the essential foundation for human welfare.”⁵⁶
Joshua Trachtenberg’s The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism, pages 159–161:
It is a striking consideration, in this regard, that despite the virulent anti‐Jewish campaign of the early Church, relations between Jews and Christians were not materially embittered. Indeed, the period between the break‐up of the Roman Empire and the Crusades—roughly the sixth to the eleventh centuries—was comparatively favorable for the Jews.
Their unhappy experience in Visigothic Spain after its conversion from Arianism to Catholicism and the wave of expulsions during the seventh century were the result of official antagonism rather than of any strongly felt popular resentment. In general it may be said that social and economic relations remained good. Some Christians continued for a long time to observe their feasts and festivals on the Jewish dates and together with Jews.
The constantly reiterated fulminations of Church authorities against close social and religious intercourse between the two groups (“It comes to such a pass that uneducated Christians say that Jews preach better to them than our priests,” complained Agobard ¹), against eating and drinking and living with Jews, testify to their unimpaired and cordial intimacy. Even the clergy had to be forbidden from time to time to be friendly with Jews.
Reporting his amicable discussions with Rabbi Simeon Hasid of Treves, Gilbert Crispin, Abbot of Westminster in the eleventh century, says: “He often used to come to me as a friend both for business and to see me […] and as often as we came together we would soon get talking in a friendly spirit about the Scriptures and our faith.” ² In the tenth and eleventh centuries we hear of Jews receiving gifts from Gentile friends on Jewish holidays, of Jew leaving the keys to their homes with Christian neighbors before departing on a journey.
In Champagne, where Jews engaged extensively in viticulture and wine making, they freely employed Gentiles in their vineyards, and the rabbis set aside the ancient ritual prohibition against the use of this wine on the ground that Christians are not idolaters. Christians took service in Jewish homes as nurses and domestics, and Jewish traders dealt in ecclesiastical articles. Business relations were markedly free and close, and there are many instances of commercial partnerships between adherents of the two faiths.
Nor did the sporadic dissemination of anti‐Jewish propaganda by clerical preachment disturb these generally amicable relations sufficiently to arouse a sense of insecurity and alienness on the part of the Jew. The Jews of France, for instance, called the French language “our language,” and some eminent scholars of this period bore French names, e.g., Judah HaKohen, who was known as Léontin, and Joseph, known as Bonfils.
The use of French names was even more marked in England, where Norman French was the vernacular of the Jews no less than of the aristocracy; and a similar process of cultural adaptation prevailed throughout Central and Southern Europe. These are assuredly tokens of a cultural and social affinity which could not have flourished in an atmosphere of unrelieved suspicion and hostility.³
It will not do to idealize this situation; the distinction between the earlier and the later medieval periods, so far as the popular attitude toward the Jew is concerned, must not be overly formalized. Even in the earlier period, of course, there were signs pointing toward the later attitude, but they multiplied very slowly at first and gathered momentum only in the twelfth and the succeeding centuries, until the slowly changing picture was wholly transformed by that unmitigated hatred of the Jew which we have come to characterize as medieval.
Christopher Tuckwood’s From Real Friend to Imagined Foe: The Medieval Roots of Anti‐Semitism as a Precondition for the Holocaust:
Other sources confirm that it was common at the time for Christians and Jews to dine together on kosher food, discuss religious ideas, and for Christians to adopt Jewish customs such as resting on Saturday and celebrating Jewish holidays while neglecting their own. Such practices likely even extended to the imperial court, and clerical alarm is thus not surprising.¹²
Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators: The History of an Allegation, 400–1700, pages 106–107:
When the anonymous Christian author of the 1286 Majorca disputation addressed the Christian practice of using images and crosses in churches, the Christian interlocutor Inghetto Contardo, having been accused of idolatry by his Jewish opponent, put forward an unusual argument.⁷ He rejected the accusation by suggesting that if there was a [humanitarian] need, he would destroy an image himself:
We do not venerate idols and images but we venerate the God of heaven, the Father, and His only Son, our Lord Jesus Christ. […] And indeed I say to you that if I had a wooden cross or image, and I had nothing with which to heat water for my Christian brother, or my Jewish friend were they to fall sick, I would put the cross and the image in the fire and burn them.
Robert Chazan’s “Philosemitic Tendencies in Medieval Western Christendom” in Philosemitism in History, pages 47–8:
Jewish sources recurrently mention pleas on the part of friendly Christians to Jews, urging the latter to convert in order to save themselves. These pleas do not seem to have been inspired by genuine missionizing ardor. Rather, they seem to reflect the simple desire of Christians to save Jewish neighbors at all costs.
The story of the Jews of Regensburg is told elliptically in the Solomon bar Simson Narrative: The burghers of Regensburg “pressed them [the Jews of the town] against their will and brought them into a certain river. They made the evil sign in the water — the cross — and baptized them all simultaneously in that river.”³² The fact that the Jews of Regensburg are reported to have returned almost immediately to Judaism reinforces the sense of an act performed by well‐intentioned burghers in order to save endangered Jewish neighbors.
Curious and intriguing evidence of warm Christian–Jewish relations is available from more peaceful circumstances as well. Joseph Shatzmiller has studied in depth an unusual court record from fourteenth‐century Marseilles.³³ There, a Jewish moneylender named Bondavid was accused of attempting to collect a debt twice and chose to defend his reputation in court.
During the protracted deliberations, Bondavid brought on his behalf a set of Christian witnesses, who testified to his exceptional character and generosity. Human relations are always reciprocal. The testimony offered by the Christian witnesses attests to Bondavid’s warmth and generosity toward Christians in need. In return, the Christian witnesses to his largesse took the trouble to make court appearances and to praise Bondavid’s character lavishly.
Daniel Jütte’s Interfaith Encounters between Jews and Christians in the Early Modern Period and Beyond: Toward a Framework:
For instance, there is the well‐known case of the humanist and Hebraist Johannes Reuchlin (1455–1522), who became the target of a campaign spearheaded by the Dominicans, at least in part because of his close relationships with Jewish scholars.²²
Another example is the famous eighteenth‐century court Jew Joseph Süß Oppenheimer (“Jud Süß”), whose surviving letters to the Duke of Württemberg reveal a degree of intimacy that can be called friendship. Indeed, Oppenheimer even used the second‐person address “Du” in those letters—an extremely rare privilege reserved mainly for fellow sovereigns and immediate family members.²³
One can, of course, object that these cases were exceptional because they involved two unrepresentative protagonists, a scholar and a court Jew. To counter this argument, it is necessary to examine the dimension of everyday life. This does not imply an irenic concept of daily life—indeed, prejudice and hatred were a common feature of premodern social life in all strata of society.
On the other hand, recent studies on hatred as a social institution in premodern Europe show that except in times of crisis, everyday Jewish–Christian relations were quite the opposite of what one might expect. Daniel Lord Smail has convincingly shown that in late medieval Marseilles, “Jew–Christian confrontations were relatively infrequent.”
By contrast, cases of “intracommunity confrontations among Jews” were far more frequent, given the small size of the Jewish community.²⁴ In light of this, consigning minorities such as Jews to an “otherly status” in premodern society is debatable.²⁵
Katherine Aron‐Beller’s Christians in Jewish Houses: The Testimony of the Inquisition in the Duchy of Modena in the 17th Century:
When the nineteen‐year‐old Giuseppe Melli was prosecuted by the inquisitors in 1623 for holding a double wedding of poor Jews in his father Emilio’s house in Finale Emilia in 1620, he admitted to allowing Christians to take part in the singing and dancing.¹⁷ The inquisitorial vicar Don Baldassarre Passerini interrogated over twenty Christians, who were reprimanded for socializing and dancing with Jewish women.¹⁸
When Giuseppe was asked whether it was normal practice for Christians and Jews of the town to mingle together, he replied in the affirmative.¹⁹ When he listed some of the Christians who participated, the inquisitorial vicar Giovanni Vincenzo Reghezza was shocked that his list included some of the most prominent local Christian noblemen.²⁰
In fact, certain Christian witnesses testified that the whole of the town had come, many out of curiosity so that they might enter the home of a prominent Jew.²¹ Others noted that they had attended because the Jews were their friends.²²
[…]
In 1680, the situation was even more scandalous when it appeared that fraternization between Jews and Christians included members of the clergy. The inquisitorial vicar in Finale Emilia, Fra Girolamo Moretti, was denounced to the Holy Office by Father Provincial of the Conventual Franciscans of Bologna, for participating in social gatherings with Jews and even for eating unleavened bread during the Jewish festival of Passover.²⁸
One Jewish witness, Elia Benedetto Castelfranco, was able to confirm that the vicar had sat with him a few years earlier in his sukkah: the temporary abode (booth) which Jews build as an attachment to their home during the festival of Tabernacles.²⁹ These gatherings of Christians in the homes of Jews seem to have nurtured knowledge of Jewish practices and also personal friendships and genuine trust.
(Emphasis added in all cases.)
The enmity between many premodern Christians and Judaists cannot be deduced as some sort of natural and inevitable byproduct of Christian teaching. Rather, it was a political decision: whether it eliminating (potential) economic competition, seizing others’ property or distracting ordinary people from their real problems (typically the upper classes), those who reduce the cause to the Christian justification only put the cart before the horse.
May your presence be a blessing to Jews, as theirs is to you.