How did the Protestant Reformers think of Jews? Its relatively well known that Martin Luther was quite anti-Semitic and that Oliver Cromwell let the Jews back into England but what did John Calvin or Jacobus Arminius or the Puritans think of the Jews?
Wikipedia is your friend: John Calvin and the Jews
The reformers stuck to the Christian principle that Jews are deficient because they are not Christians. Beyond that, they maintained the same beliefs prevalent today. Clearly, Cromwell must have been tricked by the Jews into letting them return to England. I don’t know about Calvin or Hobbes or Arminius (was he that weird looking kid?), but Puritans had no qualms with burning little girls at the stake, or hanging Quakers (and it’s easy because they don’t fight back), but as long as they didn’t need a doctor, lawyer, accountant, or Nobel winning scientist, they would have done the same to Jews.
How so? Cromwell advocated letting Jews live openly in England for a few reasons:
- He believed it would help bring about the second coming.
- He believed the Jews were specially blessed by God and that England would be judged on its treatment of them.
- The bible said that Jews would be converted to Christianity, and how could they be converted if they weren’t in England to hear preaching?
- Jews had spied for Parliamentary forces during the Civil War, providing information about Royalist movements and actions
- Jewish merchants had investments in the Levant, Germany, and the Dutch Indies, and he wanted to let England tap into that trade.
- There was a Marano community of crypto-Jews in London anyway, and with the outbreak of war with Spain, making them English was the only way to prevent them from being expelled with the rest of the Spanish community of London.
No trickery is needed there.
incidentally, Cromwell was not separate from “Puritans”. He was a prominent Puritan political leader and had theological opinions within the general trend of that movement.
In the Protestant Netherlands / Holland the authorities were always tolerant of the Jews, along with being equally tolerant of pretty much all Christian denominations. The one big minimal requirement for both Christians and Jews in Holland was the doctrine of the immortality of the soul, which is what got Spinoza in some trouble for heresy even there.
Sorry, forgot to mark the sarcasm. Or maybe those are just stories made up by Jews as part of their plan to control the banks.
Why would you give a sarcastic answer as the second answer of a legitimate General Question?
At what point in history did Christian Western societies views of the Jews change from “Christ killers” into the “holy people”?
Christianity always had a kind of multiple personality when it came to the Jews. On the one hand, the Jews were wicked, obstinate, ignorant people, who rejected Christ and the obvious truth of Christianity, and were responsible for Jesus’s death. On the other, they were God’s chosen people, the descendants of the biblical Israelites, had been forgiven by Christ because they killed Him through their ignorance, and the responsibility of the Church to protect, because eventually, when Jesus returned, they’d all convert to Christianity.
So there was that inherent contradiction within Christianity from the beginning. Jews were always at the same time “Christ killers” AND “holy people”.
I do not have a good reason. It was poor form to do so. Sorry.
During that time, according to my research, most Europeans had a lot of superstitious and less than factual beliefs about Jews because most had never actually encountered one (due to expulsions and such.)
There were stories told of Jews stealing a communion wafer and torturing it (it being the body of Christ and all) and such.
I think even the vehemently anti-Semitic persons were coming from a place of pure ignorance. The prevailing opinion, however, in that time, was that Jews were stupid (often depicted in art with a yellow dunce cap) and were cruel to a suffering Jesus during crucifixion. There was artwork depicting the dunce capped Jews with long noses and red hair sticking vinegar soaked sponges into Christ’s mouth.
There were pogroms when a Christian child disappeared because it was believed that Jews sacrificed Christian children.
It was believed Jewish men menstruated and that they had horns.
I mean, really, people on the whole had some crazy ideas about Jews back then.
So were the Reformist leaders in the middle of the pack, just reflections of the anti-Semitism of their time, maybe even mild for their time and place, or did they form opinion and lead the rest of the public from mere ignorance into active hate?
Luther I recognize was a bit of a special case. He had at first reached out to Jews, believing in his … arrogance? … ignorance? … that Jews would flock to his new Christianity. His vicious screeds, as I understand it, were written as a result of the fact that his Reformed Christianity was also rejected by Jews. Before that he had argued that Jews could be won over with kindness and the prevailing mistreatment of Jews was an ineffective means of winning converts and souls. So he went from what was then one pole (treat them well and maybe convert them), to leading the way to a new level of Jew hatred (after he was rebuffed).
But the others? Were they actually less bad than the prevailing times and than what had been by then established by Luther as the norm?
Oh, now I remember why I was sarcastic. Yes, people had crazy ideas about Jews back then. Luckily, we now know that Jews control the media and the banks, wile their way into positions of power, and are responsible for 9/11. Good thing we don’t have crazy ideas any more.
Just as a note, the dunce cap didn’t have that connotation at that time. What you’re describing is the “Jew’s Hat”, picture here. The Lateran Council of 1215 said basically that since Jews and Muslims didn’t look any different than Christians, Christians were having sex with them without realizing it, which is against the law (for Christians to have sex with non Christians). Therefore, Jews and Muslims should have to wear distinctive clothing so Christians will know they’re not Christian.
