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style. Hello

1:02

I'm Matt Lewis. Welcome to Gone

1:04

Medieval from History Hit, the podcast

1:06

that delves into the greatest millennium

1:08

in human history. We've got the

1:11

most intriguing mysteries, the gobsmacking details,

1:13

and latest groundbreaking research from the

1:15

Vikings to the printing press, from

1:17

kings to popes to the crusades.

1:20

We cross centuries and continents to

1:22

delve into rebellions, plots and murders

1:24

to find the stories, big and

1:26

small, that tell us how we

1:28

got here. Find out

1:31

who we really were with Gone

1:33

Medieval. Medieval

1:37

Christians had a problematic relationship

1:39

with Jewish populations as the

1:41

period progressed. Frequently persecuted,

1:44

targeted, and pushed out by societies

1:46

across Europe, they were the focus

1:48

of hatred and violence. In

1:51

England, Edward I issued the Edict of

1:53

Expulsion in 1290 and it

1:56

remained illegal to be Jewish in England

1:58

for 350 years. years.

2:01

Antisemitism is a word that we still

2:03

hear a lot today too, but how

2:06

and when did it emerge in the

2:08

medieval Christian West? To try

2:10

to answer that question I'm delighted to

2:12

be joined by Ivan Marcus who is

2:14

the Frederick P. Rose Professor of Jewish

2:16

History at Yale University. Ivan's

2:18

new book How the West Became Antisemitic

2:20

is available now from Princeton University Press

2:22

and Ivan is joining me to answer

2:25

some of my questions about this complex

2:27

topic. Welcome to Gone Medieval Ivan. Thank

2:29

you, good to be here. I've

2:31

read the book, I really enjoyed it.

2:34

It's a really fascinating way of exploring

2:36

how antisemitism was kind of

2:38

born in the Christian West and there was a

2:40

few things I wanted to pick out and talk

2:42

to you about if I may. Sure. One thing

2:44

that you mentioned is latrine blasphemy is something you

2:47

explore in the book. So why are Jews engaging

2:49

in that kind of behavior? What is latrine blasphemy

2:51

and why are the Jews doing it? The

2:54

problem starts with the definition of what

2:56

is holy and it's

2:58

a shared definition between Judaism

3:01

and Christianity and in conceiving

3:04

of the holy there is the notion

3:06

that is the opposite not

3:08

only of the physical but of that

3:10

aspect of the physical which is the

3:12

least attractive namely bodily

3:14

elimination and in different

3:17

ways Jews developed this antithesis

3:20

between the holy and bodily

3:22

elimination and applied the absolute

3:24

opposite of the holy to

3:27

Christianity and particularly the religious

3:29

cult of Christianity and the association of

3:31

the most holy figures in

3:34

Christianity with latrines or bodily

3:36

elimination. In a reverse parallel

3:38

way some Christians thought

3:41

of Jews themselves as belonging in

3:43

latrines and we have some stories

3:45

about Jews landing in latrines and

3:47

not being rescued and Christian clerics

3:49

giggling about this but on the

3:52

Jewish side there's also a serious

3:54

aspect to it and that Jews

3:56

could not conceive of the incarnation as

3:58

something possible. and they thought

4:01

of Jesus and in Mary's body

4:03

as being not too anatomically correct

4:05

in the wrong canals and therefore

4:07

connected to elimination. And so that

4:09

was another reinforcement of that negative

4:11

association. Interesting. So does it grow

4:13

out of Christianity's connection to that

4:15

idea of virgin conception and virgin

4:17

birth and a Jewish desire to

4:19

explain that that can't be real?

4:21

Yes, I think so. I think

4:23

it's an attack on that idea

4:26

as inconceivable and then

4:28

a counter-argument that the real

4:30

holy is on the Jewish side

4:32

and in the promotion of real

4:35

Jewish families producing real Jewish children

4:37

so that the holy family in a

4:39

sense becomes for Jews the opposite of

4:41

what Christians think of it as. And

4:44

each one is talking about the other

4:46

in a kind of oppositional, polemical fashion.

4:48

They use the same terms but they

4:50

see them in opposite meanings. Yeah. I

4:52

mean if it wasn't for the fact

4:54

that this is obviously on a continental

4:57

scale, it sounds like squabbling children a

4:59

little bit, doesn't it? You smell bad,

5:01

no, you smell bad, you smell worse.

5:03

It's that kind of thing. Right,

5:05

sort of toilet behavior. But

5:07

I think that there's a deep

5:09

association between the physical and the spiritual

5:12

which is introduced largely on the

5:14

Christian side by Paul in

5:16

his letters of the body versus the spirit.

5:18

And Jews pick that up, I think, but

5:20

then apply it in the opposite meaning of

5:23

what Paul would want it to mean. Yeah.

5:26

One of the other things that you mentioned in the

5:28

book that I thought was quite interesting is that we

5:31

never consider the Jewish population to be part of the

5:33

three main groups that we

5:35

talk about in medieval Europe and the Near East.

5:37

So we talk about Christians, we'll talk about the

5:39

Byzantines and we'll talk about the Muslims, but

5:42

we don't particularly talk about the Jews. Why

5:44

do you think they're excluded from that sort

5:46

of overview that we have? I

5:48

think our notion of historical

5:50

reality is conditioned by 19th

5:52

century nationalism and the

5:54

whole notion of a history of a

5:56

people is defined by the land that

5:58

they occupied and over. And

6:01

so Jews didn't occupy territory, they

6:03

didn't rule over territory, and that

6:05

denied them historical agency in the

6:08

mind of Western historical narrators. And

6:10

so even when we think about

6:12

avoiding Eurocentrism by adding European contact

6:15

with the Muslim world or with

6:17

the Byzantine Christian world in the

6:19

East, historians who see themselves as

6:22

very broad-minded by doing that and

6:24

avoiding just looking at Latin Christendom

6:26

forget that within Latin Christendom there

6:28

was an entire civilization of communities

6:31

of individuals who actually had a

6:33

certain kind of local power, but

6:35

they didn't own land in the

6:37

territorial sense of either any of

6:39

the other three and therefore they

6:42

basically are not seen, they're basically

6:44

invisible. Yeah, it's a fascinating mission

6:47

on behalf of history and it's interesting that

6:49

you connect it to that to the 19th

6:51

century nationalism in history. I quite

6:53

often say that I think in an

6:55

Anglo-centric way our view of what

6:58

makes a good and bad king of England

7:00

during the medieval period is still very fashioned

7:02

by that 19th century idea of the kings

7:04

who went and conquered somewhere are great and

7:06

the ones who didn't are poor. And it's

7:08

interesting that we're still so affected by a

7:11

hangover from that view of history, I think. Right,

7:14

I think it's very hard to think

7:16

of Jewish history as a legitimate field

7:18

because of the concern about land and

7:21

territory and rulership. It would be similarly

7:23

difficult in some ways to think of

7:25

the history of the church as being

7:28

an historical institution even though there were

7:30

lands in Italy that the church was

7:32

in charge of, papal lands and so

7:34

on, and Jews didn't even have that.

7:37

But it becomes a kind of abstraction

7:39

to think of a group without territory that

7:42

it ruled over as having a history. And

7:44

so one of the purposes of the beginning

7:46

of the book is to reassert that Jews

7:48

had a history in Europe, in

7:50

fact they even helped shape the majority's history.

7:53

And this is a story which has been

7:55

not really confronted directly

7:57

before. Christian

8:01

Europe then, was the relationship

8:03

between Christians and Jewish populations kind

8:06

of complicated by a shared heritage that

8:08

had diverged? Because there are some ways

8:10

in which we might have thought that

8:12

could have kept them fairly closely knitted

8:14

together, but it seems to be

8:16

what drives a wedge between them, that shared heritage. Right.

8:19

I think you have to think for a

8:21

moment about the biblical narratives of

8:23

the patriarchs of the brothers, starting

8:26

with Abraham's children, Ishmael and

8:28

Isaac, and then Isaac's two

8:30

sons, Esau and Jacob. Both

8:32

traditions understood that story as

8:35

their own story, but they

8:37

understood each one as the

8:39

story of the younger brother

8:41

who receives the promise in

8:43

the Bible, not the older brother.

8:45

So that Jews thought of themselves

8:47

as Isaac bearing the promise and of

8:50

Jacob of bearing the promise. And the

8:52

notion as in the Bible in Genesis

8:54

25, that the elder shall

8:57

serve the younger. This notion of

8:59

the elder serving the younger, this was

9:01

then understood by Paul in the opposite

9:03

way, that it was the church

9:05

who was Isaac, the church that was Jacob,

9:07

and the Jews were Esau and the Jews

9:09

would be serving the younger. So

9:12

that you have a shared biblical

9:14

heritage, but each is rival for

9:16

the birthright. And so each one

9:18

sees each of the brothers in

9:20

the opposite way. It's interesting how

9:22

those things can be used for

9:25

whatever purpose, but was that

9:27

rivalry then kind of made

9:29

inevitable by this competing claim

9:31

between Christianity and Judaism, that

9:33

they were God's chosen

9:35

people? Yes, I think

9:38

that's the ultimate bedrock assumption

9:40

that leads to the conflict.

9:42

And it's very difficult, if not

9:44

impossible to overcome it, unless you

9:47

abolish the notion of

9:49

the biblical promise to begin with. If

9:51

you move into a secularized world where

9:53

individuals have equal human rights, and you

9:56

forget about the biblical legacy, which really

9:58

could never be forgotten. But

10:00

if you focus more on the more

10:02

18th century modern concept of individual dignity

10:04

and human rights, then you can overcome

10:07

it by simply bypassing it, and you

10:09

can separate church and state. You can

10:11

try to create more of a voluntary

10:13

set of communities where they may still

10:15

believe this, but under the state they

10:17

will not be able to theoretically do

10:20

harm to the others if it came

10:22

to a real dispute. The problem in

10:24

the West, though, is that for hundreds

10:26

of years, this was the only basic

10:28

dichotomy. And there

10:30

was no neutral public sphere.

10:33

So that Jews and Christians lived in their

10:35

own communities, they provided their own social services

10:37

for each other, there was no neutral sphere.

10:41

And so this could become

10:43

a major source of divisiveness

10:45

when circumstances provoked a departure

10:47

from every day getting along,

10:50

which I think was mostly the norm. I

10:52

think most of the time we forget that Jews

10:54

and Christians lived in the same towns, and

10:57

they lived nearby each other. There were no ghettos. And

11:00

most of the time they interacted with

11:02

each other economically and even socially. We

11:05

have lots of evidence from stories about this and legal

11:07

material as well. But

11:09

there were occasions when there were huge

11:11

disruptions and the differences became more important

11:14

than the similarities. And given

11:16

all of that sort of inherent

11:18

and growing rivalry throughout the medieval

11:20

period, why is it

11:22

that we still see Jewish communities

11:24

living with Christian communities across Europe?

11:27

There are places where Jews were frequently

11:29

unwelcome, England being a pretty good example

11:32

of that at various times. But

11:34

there were lots of places in Europe where

11:36

these communities did live together really

11:39

well, despite the religious differences. Should that be a

11:41

surprise to us? Because we think

11:43

of religion dominating the medieval mind so

11:45

much. How were they able to overcome

11:47

that and sort of set it aside? Right.

11:50

Well, I think you had

11:52

two major institutions promoting Jews

11:54

living in a Christian society. One were

11:56

the Papal tradition, which goes on and

11:58

on. back to

12:01

Pope Gregory I,

12:03

and even beyond that to the church father

12:05

Augustine of Hippo, and behind

12:07

him, St. Paul, that Jews

12:09

really belonged in a Christian

12:11

society. They were not to be

12:13

expelled from it. The parable of the wild olive

12:16

tree in Paul's letter to the Romans, chapter 11,

12:18

sees the Jews as

12:20

lopped off of the promise, which is

12:22

biblical Israel, and we're talking about the

12:24

two brothers before, but they are not

12:27

to be rejected, ejected. They're supposed to

12:29

be inside society for the day when

12:31

they will eventually see the light and

12:33

convert so they have a place in

12:36

Christian society. That notion was

12:38

turned into policy by all the

12:40

popes of Rome, at least until

12:42

the 16th century, when there

12:44

was a tremendous reaction to the Protestant

12:46

Reformation and the Catholic Reformation, Paul

12:48

IV, argued really for

12:50

the first time that Jews should actively

12:52

be converted to Christianity, and

12:55

there is no place for Jews

12:57

in a Christian society. The other

12:59

institution were the temporal rulers, mainly

13:02

kings, but also aristocratic counts. They

13:04

saw Jews as bringing liquid capital

13:06

into their society, which was mostly

13:09

rural, so they saw an

13:11

economic advantage to them and supplying

13:13

them with luxury goods in the court, and

13:16

so there were two basic arguments

13:18

for Jews to be in society

13:20

with Christians, one from the papal

13:22

tradition and the other from the

13:24

royal or temporal tradition. When

13:26

those were disrupted, it was only

13:29

because Jews were understood at a

13:31

certain moment as more dangerous within

13:33

the society than beneficial to

13:35

the rulers and to the majority of the

13:37

population. You mentioned a little bit earlier that

13:40

we can view the Jewish populations as

13:42

helping to craft Western civilization

13:44

and the Latin Christian traditions to

13:46

some extent. In what

13:48

ways can we see Jewish populations

13:50

in Christian Europe being able to

13:53

assert themselves in communities? Well,

13:55

Jews were understood as having

13:58

certain abilities. to partner

14:00

with Christians, particularly even in the

14:03

10th century when Jews began to

14:05

migrate into the North after the

14:07

great invasions were over and there

14:09

was some degree of pacification, Jews

14:12

were able to do business as merchants alongside

14:15

Christian merchants. So

14:17

we have lots of evidence in legal

14:19

and story material from the 10th century

14:22

of cooperation, partnerships, in fact,

14:24

special commercial relations between a

14:26

Jew having a monopoly relationship

14:28

with a Christian client, which

14:31

has an Arabic name for friendly

14:33

partner, Ma'arufiyyah. And we

14:35

have a lot of cases of this

14:37

so that Jews and Christians played a

14:39

commercial role with each other and also

14:41

because most Christians were farmers, they were

14:44

involved in agriculture, the Jewish

14:46

story was almost from the beginning, a

14:48

middle class urban story in tiny towns

14:50

that developed in market towns on the

14:52

rivers. And Christians were sometimes

14:54

seen as competitors with them, the first

14:56

charter that we get to protect Jews

14:58

in Germany is in the town of

15:01

Speyer and the bishop there gives a

15:03

Latin charter which still exists today

15:05

indicating that he was building a wall to

15:08

protect them from their burger

15:10

competitors because he anticipated the

15:12

possibility of some rivalry. But

15:15

the bishop wanted to increase the honor of

15:17

the town and make it from a village

15:19

into a town by bringing Jews there. So

15:21

this was an example of a local

15:23

ruler seeing Jews as a positive asset

15:26

and he took advantage of a fire

15:28

in nearby Mainz where Jews were homeless

15:31

and he invited them to come to

15:33

his smaller town, his bishopric town. Mainz

15:35

was an archbishopric, a larger city and

15:38

to benefit his own Christian population, even

15:40

though he knew that sometimes there might be some

15:42

tension between them. And

15:45

do we see that ability

15:47

of Jewish populations to assert themselves and

15:50

to be involved in mercantile

15:52

activities potentially as rivals to Christian merchants

15:54

too? Do we see that driving an

15:57

emergence of antisemitism at all? Not

16:00

in the beginning. I think in

16:02

the beginning you have the interaction

16:04

of Jewish and Christian merchants as

16:06

mostly cooperative, and the

16:08

turning point that made this more

16:11

complicated was the First

16:13

Crusade, which was launched by

16:15

a reformed pope, Urban II in

16:17

1095, which very clearly developed quickly into

16:23

a campaign not only against the

16:25

enemy Muslims abroad who are occupying

16:27

the holy places, the Church of

16:29

the Holy Sepulchre, and an effort

16:31

to rescue the Byzantine Christian brethren

16:33

who were being attacked by the

16:35

Seljuk Muslim Turks. It soon

16:37

quickly became something in Europe

16:39

itself, and arguments were made

16:42

both in Latin and in Hebrew sources.

16:44

If you, the fighters of the First

16:46

Crusade, the knights who were going off

16:48

at great risk to their lives and their

16:50

property, if you are ready to go and

16:52

fight the Muslims far abroad,

16:54

enemies far abroad, you certainly should

16:56

fight the enemies who are nearby.

16:59

The reference is the first time to

17:02

the Jews of Europe as the inner

17:04

enemy, and this made things very complicated

17:06

after the end of the 11th century.

17:09

How does that idea of

17:11

Jews as an enemy within

17:14

European society, how does that emerge? Because

17:16

if people have been working together for

17:19

a long time, is it just that

17:21

crusading further begins

17:23

to identify anyone who isn't a Christian as

17:25

an enemy? Yes, I think

17:27

that's what happens. You know, we hear these

17:29

stories about genocides in different

17:31

parts of the world, and how

17:34

neighbors suddenly turned against each other

17:36

and began to kill each other. We

17:38

don't have the documentation from the late

17:40

11th century that we do for contemporary

17:43

times. We can't interview in depth, and

17:45

we don't have letters and diaries. It's

17:48

pretty clear from the text that we

17:50

do have that there was no reference

17:52

to Jews as inner enemies before this

17:54

attack from the east, and suddenly everyone

17:56

who wasn't Christian was suspect, and

17:58

Jews being insul. were

18:01

considered the inner enemy. And then everything

18:03

that could be negative from biblical sources

18:05

of the death of Jesus, the passion

18:07

accounts, all of these things suddenly were

18:10

redeployed in order to justify this sense.

18:12

And it was really a kind of

18:14

panic. The way we went after the

18:17

frenzy for AIDS, the way we went

18:19

after the fear of COVID, the way

18:21

we went after communism, after World War

18:23

II, there was a kind of

18:25

hysteria about anyone who was

18:27

not promoting Christian faith and seeing

18:30

them as enemies and Jews

18:32

became suspect. It did not

18:34

turn into an unmitigating history

18:36

of Jewish, anti-Jewish persecution, however.

18:39

It was a phase that existed for several

18:41

months. And then it was always

18:43

there as a memory, but it did

18:45

not become a continuous reality. There was a

18:47

reversion back to some degree of a modus

18:49

vivendi, but it was always there in the

18:51

memory of those who survived. And it was

18:53

preserved in the memory of those who wrote

18:55

about it. So. In

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and fee supply. Can

21:12

we consider antisemitism then, at this

21:14

period at least, as a reaction

21:16

to losing that connection

21:18

between that doctrinal imperative that we've

21:21

talked about to keep Jews within

21:23

Christian communities? Is that becoming lost

21:25

or overridden by crusading zeal a

21:29

kind of root cause of a growth in

21:31

antisemitism? I think it was a main trigger.

21:34

I think then different forms

21:36

of imagining what Christianity meant,

21:39

particularly the notion of the body of Christ

21:42

in contemporary Christian thinking, also

21:45

fed the conception that the

21:47

Jews were potentially threatening to

21:49

this. For example, if the

21:52

body of Christ meant during the first crusade

21:54

riots in Germany, which took place as an

21:56

ancillary attack, not on Muslims, but on Jews

21:58

by the end of the by Christians who

22:00

were enthusiastically then trying to find

22:02

an enemy. If we think about

22:04

the crucifixion as a motivation, avenging

22:07

the killing of Christ in the

22:09

past, the body of Christ then

22:11

could be reinterpreted to refer to

22:13

the body of a Christian boy,

22:15

a Christ-like innocent potential saint that was

22:18

then being accused of being killed by

22:20

Jews in the present. And so you

22:22

begin to get in the middle of

22:24

the 12th century in Norwich in England,

22:27

the first time, an instantiation of what

22:29

got to be called the ritual murder

22:31

accusation. If the Eucharist becomes extraordinarily important

22:34

in the early 13th century with fourth

22:36

Lateran council and that lay people are

22:38

supposed to take communion at least on

22:40

Easter once a year, you

22:42

begin to see that the blood of

22:44

Christ becomes something which is

22:47

now sacred and potentially attacked by

22:49

Jews. And the ritual murder accusation

22:51

morphs into the ritual blood libel

22:54

that Jews ingest Christian blood. They

22:56

don't just kill Christian youth and

22:58

make them into saints. And then

23:00

the host itself becomes a special

23:02

object in the 13th century of

23:04

sanctification as the body of Christ.

23:06

And as the body of Christ

23:08

keeps developing, the Jews as the

23:10

enemy of the body of Christ

23:12

keeps changing. And these are all

23:14

fantasies. These are all imagined Jews

23:16

in the minds of Christian, mostly

23:18

clerics who are engaged by this

23:20

as their reality. And they

23:22

see this developing out of the antagonism

23:26

that began in the first crusade, the

23:28

inner enemy, and then it gets

23:30

developed into new forms of antagonism

23:32

towards the sacred body of Christ.

23:34

That development is really interesting in

23:36

the book. And I was struck

23:38

by the ways that you describe

23:41

that Judaism was very

23:43

good at differentiating between

23:46

Christianity as a

23:48

religion and Christians as individual people

23:51

in a way that Christianity failed to do

23:53

between Judaism as a religion and

23:55

Jews as people. And so Christian

23:58

sort of lost this view. of

24:00

individual Jews as people. And

24:03

I guess that facilitates the growth

24:05

in these fantastical stories of blood

24:08

libel and murders and all of

24:10

this kind of thing, because they're

24:12

dehumanizing Jewish people by

24:15

focusing on Judaism rather than Jews as individuals.

24:17

And I haven't asked the question yet, but

24:20

why do you think Judaism was so good at

24:22

making that distinction and Christianity so bad at it?

24:26

Well, I think you're right that there's

24:28

a distinction, there's an asymmetry between

24:30

the way Jews looked at

24:32

Christianity, Christians, and the way

24:34

Christians looked at Judaism, Jews.

24:37

So you have two potential

24:39

targets or sources of appreciation

24:41

or of criticism. The most

24:43

overwhelming pattern that I saw,

24:46

and this is why medieval

24:48

Christian antisemitism could become modern

24:50

secular antisemitism, is that

24:52

while Jews tended to see, based

24:55

on a rabbinic statement in the Talmud,

24:57

that Christians were not really pagans

24:59

or idolaters, they were just misguided,

25:01

they didn't understand the truth. And

25:04

therefore, Jews were not hating Christians

25:06

per se, they hated the idolatry

25:08

as they saw it of the

25:11

Christian cult, so that

25:13

it was all the invectives and

25:15

the latrine gestures and language was

25:17

all directed at Jesus and Mary

25:19

and the holy icons of

25:21

Christianity per se, but Christians were people

25:23

you could do business with, live next

25:26

door to, and eventually form

25:28

some form of a commonality in

25:30

society. Whereas on the other

25:32

side, the church was really

25:34

not able to totally attack

25:36

Judaism, because Judaism was ultimately the

25:39

underlying basis of Paul's

25:41

reinterpretation of the Hebrew Bible into

25:43

Christianity. But on the other hand,

25:45

it could hate Jews. And if

25:47

you hate Jews per se, meaning

25:49

Jews who haven't converted yet, or

25:51

Jews who are doing Judaism, but

25:53

not Judaism itself, as you

25:55

move into the modern period, hating

25:57

Jews could be transformed from.

26:00

religious hatred into other kinds of

26:02

hatred of Jews. The object of

26:04

the attack allowed for the transformation

26:07

of the earlier religious form of anti-Semitism

26:09

into what became later racial and other

26:12

forms of anti-Semitism in this imagined Jew.

26:14

You created this Jew in your

26:16

imagination and it was the source of

26:18

your anger and distrust. Yeah and that

26:21

idea of an imagined Jew I

26:23

think is interesting and if

26:25

I'm reading it right that's the idea that

26:27

you almost remove the fact that you know

26:30

I might have a next-door neighbor who's Jewish and I

26:32

get on with him and it's absolutely fine but

26:34

I have this imagined Jew who is a threat

26:37

to me and I almost

26:39

am able to erase that personal connection

26:42

to the man next door by focusing

26:44

on this idea of an imagined enemy

26:46

existing within society who is out to

26:48

get me. Right I think we have

26:51

this great ironic situation where the Jews

26:53

where we talked before never had coercive

26:55

territorial power over Christians

26:57

or over anyone else whereas in

27:00

the 12th century and following after

27:02

the crusade hysteria they were now

27:04

imagined to be an insidious form

27:07

of power over Christians

27:09

a power that threatened their very lives

27:11

and so while bodies of children might

27:13

be found in rivers or

27:15

in the forest based on some

27:18

accident or some local parental neglect

27:20

or some other form we have

27:22

lots of stories about children being

27:25

found dead suddenly when certain children

27:27

were found usually boys were found

27:29

they suddenly said it's the Jews

27:32

who ritually have murdered him so

27:34

it took a certain kind of

27:36

preset notion of an imagined Jew

27:39

as potential murderer of children or

27:41

of reenacting the crucifixion on young

27:44

innocent boys this is invented and

27:46

this invention comes about only at

27:48

a certain time and we can

27:50

see it spreading so that

27:52

I think that this is something which takes

27:55

over the reality of everyday existence

27:57

and you can coexist with your

27:59

neighbor We're at one level,

28:01

but at certain moments, the imagined

28:03

Jew kicks in and evidence

28:06

is no longer important.

28:08

Don't give me the facts, I've made up

28:11

my mind means I've imposed my cultural grid

28:13

about what reality must be on whatever

28:16

it is you actually see. And

28:18

that's why it's very important not to

28:20

confuse, well, if we knew more, we

28:22

would be able to clear up all

28:24

these kinds of confusions. This is really

28:26

a form of religious ideology, where

28:29

it's impervious to quote facts, it

28:31

makes up its own facts. And I was

28:33

struck as well, as we see

28:35

all of that divergence and antisemitism growing

28:37

and beginning to take a grip, you

28:40

get these ideas that older

28:42

Jewish men can't legitimately be

28:45

converted to Christianity. And that becomes a

28:47

way to almost hive off parts of

28:49

the Jewish community that must have alienated

28:51

the whole community, because if you're not

28:53

allowed to bring the older men with

28:55

you, what's the incentive for

28:57

anybody else to convert? And

28:59

that felt like another way in which these

29:02

lines were being drawn between communities that didn't

29:04

need to be there. Right. I

29:07

think you've hit that important point. In

29:09

the structural analysis that I tried to

29:11

make sense out of all of these

29:13

different stories and facts and laws, it

29:16

seemed to me there were three basic

29:18

elements that stuck out. One

29:20

was this story about inverted power, which

29:22

starts with Paul, that the elder shall

29:24

serve the younger and who's the elder,

29:26

who's the younger, varied between the two

29:28

religions. The second was the inner enemy

29:30

from the frenzy of the First Crusade.

29:32

And the third was this notion you

29:34

just brought up, mostly from

29:36

the second half of the 13th

29:39

century on, that conversion, when it

29:41

could possibly take place, tended to

29:43

be gender-based and even

29:45

age-based, that it would be possible,

29:47

more possible for women to convert

29:50

to Christianity than men, and that

29:52

among men, younger men, adolescents in

29:54

particular, might be more likely to

29:56

convert, whereas older men, now we're

29:59

being seen as having certain

30:01

physical characteristics, not just circumcision,

30:04

which would not change, but something

30:06

else. There are other factors. The

30:08

notion of the big hooked Jewish

30:10

nose, for example, appears about men,

30:12

older men, not about women, not

30:14

about young boys in most of

30:16

the sources, even in the pictorial

30:18

versions as well. There is the

30:20

notion that Jewish men are somehow

30:22

effeminate, but in a negative way,

30:24

and even bleed once a year,

30:27

that they menstruate on Easter or some other

30:29

kind of bleeding, which makes them like women.

30:31

They're not really men. And that

30:34

there's something physical about Jewish men,

30:36

especially older men, that makes it

30:38

impossible for them to really convert.

30:40

So that, again, if they

30:42

did convert, you suspect that they're really still

30:44

Jewish. It's a kind of parallel to the

30:46

inner enemy idea. I mean, it just strikes

30:49

me as horrendously sad that

30:51

this should have developed in a really

30:53

unnecessary way, that you have these communities

30:55

who initially get on really, really well.

30:57

And then because of a Christian drive

30:59

to go to the Near East to

31:02

fight a Muslim population, the

31:05

Jewish population within Europe gets

31:07

wrapped up in that wave. And

31:10

that connection that had existed between the

31:12

two communities is severed, and not just

31:14

severed, but walls are built

31:16

between it. And this imagination

31:18

of a threat that was never

31:20

really there, it all seems so

31:23

unnecessary. And as you've kind of said,

31:25

not based in any kind of fact

31:28

at all either. Well, I think the

31:30

crusade frenzy was actually an extension of

31:32

a program that had begun in Europe,

31:35

particularly in France, a few

31:37

decades before, in an

31:39

attempt to make the Christian European world

31:42

a perfect society based on Christian law

31:44

and theory. And this was done by

31:46

a group of reform popes, one of

31:49

whom was the Pope Urban II who

31:51

preached the crusade, which was an extension

31:53

to the Holy Land of the proper

31:55

hierarchy of Christians being on top and

31:58

in charge of their society.