As headlines daily remind us, antagonism towards Jews is the most enduring hatred in our world. The Lost Mirror: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain examines one segment of this phenomenon at the time that Spain held the largest Jewish community in Europe. This exhibition catalog is a joint project of the Prado in Madrid and Catalonia’s National Museum of Art for a show recently hosted by both institutions. The largely unfamiliar medieval works featured 1 include striking images by Spanish masters that deserve wider exposure as well as others almost too painful to view. These illustrations are integrated into the text of eleven interpretative essays that analyze the exhibits for historical rather than aesthetic significance.
Ironically, the show tells us little about actual Jews, but much about what medieval Spaniards imagined them to be.
Jews had been accounted deicides since Patristic times but were permitted to exist—subjugated, of course—as a warning to Christians. They were condemned as a carnal race, unable to experience transcendence because they were bound by Law and not by Grace. Jews were blind, unable to see Jesus Christ as the Image of the Father, as well as deaf, unable to hear the words of the Eternal Word.
Because Jewish rejection of religious images conflicted with Christians’ attachment to them, some Christians concluded that Jews must be bitter enemies of sacred art. Thus, the Second Council of Nicaea (787) blamed a Jewish conspiracy for the Iconoclast controversy of that era. Legends about Jews profaning or destroying holy images also filtered west despite the absence of such crimes. Miracle stories about Jews mutilating crucifixes or Eucharistic wafers until they bled was a way to confirm medieval Europeans’ own beliefs. The punishment—or conversion—of Jewish perpetrators demonstrated the truth of Christian doctrine. Jewish “Otherness,” their stubborn—and provocative–sense of their own identity, made them convenient pawns for inter-Christian debates. These conflicts played out with special intensity in medieval Spain because Jews were so numerous there. Judaism was Christianity’s mirror.
Settled in Iberia since ancient times, Jews had survived alternating periods of tolerance and repression under pagan, Christian, and Muslim rule. Although their Golden Age of convivencia (“living together”) after the Moorish conquest (711-18) was never quite as golden as myth would have it, the status of Jews eroded as the Reconquista advanced. By the middle of the thirteenth century, most of the peninsula was back in Christian hands. The disruptive fourteenth century brought the Great Western Schism, the Black Death, and the Castilian Civil War (1351-69) in which an anti-Judaic ruler (Henry of Trastamara) replaced a philo-Judaic one (Peter the Cruel)
Then, in 1391, inflammatory preaching in Seville provoked mob violence: the local Jewish quarter was sacked and its residents massacred. As the disorders spread to other cities, thousands of Jews perished. Many of the survivors in Castile and Aragon accepted baptism, often under duress or as a pragmatic choice to gain status. No more than half of Iberia’s Jewish population remained, distinct from the tens of thousands of conversos or “New Christians” whose sincerity was questioned by non-Jewish “Old Christians.”
Despite these traumatic events, Christians and Jews could still interact in positive ways when generous royal policies allowed. The communities remained porous. Christians were welcome to visit synagogues and Jews could visit churches. Christian artists illuminated Jewish ritual books; Jewish craftsmen made Christian liturgical objects. Carpenters of both religions worked on each other’s houses of worship. The era’s most remarkable interfaith collaboration was the Arragel Bible (1433), which the Grand Master of the Order of Calatrava had invited a rabbi to translate from Hebrew into the local vernacular. He was assisted by a Franciscan and a Dominican friar on the glosses and Christian artists as illustrators.
But tensions increased again after the middle of the fifteenth century. New Christians who retained old associations and customs, even housekeeping practices, drew suspicion of “Judaizing.” Wealthy ones found it prudent to advertise their piety by founding monasteries, building chapels, or donating sacred vessels. Similarly, displaying pictures of Jesus, Mary, and the saints in the home could forestall criticism. Eventually, failure to own holy pictures was evidence of Judaizing.
But because Old Christians still resented the New ones as competitors for social and economic privileges, they supported proselytizing campaigns and exclusionary rules like those promoted by St. Vincent Ferrer (d. 1415). They wanted Jewishness scrubbed from the conversos’ lives yet enforced “purity of blood” statutes that treated Jewish descent as a permanent taint. (Race in the genetic sense was a concept first applied to Jews.) Harsh laws forbade practicing Jews from living, eating, bathing, sleeping, or working with their converted brethren. Anxiety about secret cabals of Judaizers (Marranos) prompted the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition in 1478. Finally, to remove the Judaizing temptation permanently, all remaining Jews were expelled from Castile and Aragon in 1492.
The Lost Mirror traces these grim developments through art. Although the exhibition concentrates on works from late medieval Spain, anti-Jewish imagery and narratives had been bubbling up across Europe during the second millennium. The Crusades, Blood Libel accounts2, Eucharistic theology, the new Feast of Corpus Christi, and affective piety centered on the Passion of Christ unfortunately fed popular hostility toward Jews. Many Christians came to believe that Jews routinely mocked sacred elements of Christianity. Could there have been a degree of projection at work?
Illustrations in The Lost Mirror, the earliest from the thirteenth century, show Jews profaning holy images, abusing the crucifix, desecrating the Eucharist, and torturing Christian boys to death, each defiled item taking the place of the Messiah they had rejected. But as catalog contributor David Nirenberg says, following mass conversions in Spain, representations of Jews “became an even sharper weapon in the struggle to define and detect difference between Christianity and Judaism.”3
Not all imagery turned ugly overnight. Even after 1391, Old Testament patriarchs and prophets can appear as honorable Forerunners of the Faith, freed from Limbo by the Risen Christ. New Testament scenes of Jewish ritual also get Christian touches: a rabbi vested like a bishop circumcises Jesus in a Gothic sanctuary; High Priest Zachary venerates a tabernacle on an altar in the Holy of Holies. The most audacious of these images are paintings by Bartolomé Bermejo, a converso with converso patrons. Three of his works exhibited here show Christ clad in transparent drapery to highlight his humanity “complete in all the parts of a man” and to remind viewers that his body is circumcised.
Despite these exceptions, anti-Jewish art multiplied, especially in the latter half of the fifteenth century. Synagoga, the personification of Synagogue, becomes ugly and decrepit, unlike her more neutral appearance in Dark Ages art. Her blindfold, which is sometimes a serpent, is the characteristic sign of Jewishness. Thus, Jews attacking the allegorical Fortress of Faith in the popular polemical tract Fortalitium fidei fight blindfolded; allied Muslims, heretics, and demons do not.
The Lost Mirror’s most sophisticated example of Jews’ willful blindness is The Fountain of Life, a painting commissioned from the workshop of Jan van Eyck by a King of Castile (1430-40). It depicts St. John’s final vision in the Book of Revelation: God the Father enthroned with the Lamb in the heavenly Jerusalem. Communion Hosts float along as the impossibly clear River of Life flows down to a fountain flanked by Christians on God’s right and Jews on his left. Led by pope and emperor, the Christians regard the Water with reverence. But the Jews, led by their blindfolded but authentically costumed high priest, shrink away. They cover their eyes and ears, rend their garments. If only they had the eyes of faith, they could read the nonsense message on their Torah scroll and convert; the Living Water would wash them and they Eucharist would feed them.
A blunter approach was to emphasize Jews—not Romans–as the Savior’s tormentors in Passion scenes. Even stand-alone figures of Jesus, for instance Christ on the Cross by Gil de Siloé (1488-90), could serve as visual aids for anti-Jewish sermons. So that the enemy could be easily recognized, artists perfected the enduring stereotype of the swarthy, hook-nosed Jew with bushy beard and greasy curls, clad in mandatory cloak and hood. (Jewish women, however, were not caricatured.) As his very name indicated, Judas was the quintessential Jew. His vile appearance under a black halo in Joan Reixach’s Arrest of Christ (ca. 1454) could scarcely be matched outside of Nazi propaganda.
Acutely sensitive to the power of images, the Spanish Inquisition legitimated itself through visuals. For example, Inquisitor General Tomás de Torquemada commissioned Pablo Berruguete to paint heresy-fighting Dominican saints for a friary of the Order at Ávila. (These pointedly include martyred inquisitor St. Peter of Verona, murdered in 1252.) Berruguete’s St. Dominic presiding over an auto-da-fe (1490s) is the only survivingpicture of these dramatic public spectacles for punishing or executing those the Inquisition condemned. The rest were destroyed by government edit in 1813.
Expelling Jews from Castile and Aragon in 1492 failed to solve the Jewish Question. There were still conversos contaminating the land of the Catholic Kings. But a ritual murder case tried by the Inquisition a year before the expulsion turned into a popular cult that cast suspicion on New Christians.
Although the Blood Libel was known to Spaniards and had been mentioned in the thirteenth century law code of Castile, the only local instance was a legend about the choirboy Dominguito de Val dismembered in Zaragoza in 1250. Then three Jews and six conversos were executed in 1491 for kidnapping and crucifying a little boy whose heart they had planned to use in a black magic attack on the Church. There was no evidence that the nameless victim had ever existed, much less been murdered. But the killers’ confessions extracted under torture sufficed to prove their guilt.
Although no further Blood Libel accusations emerged, this case was spun into a bathetic tale as the “Holy Child of Guardia.” A luridly illustrated account published in 1583, won the Holy Child a mass following. A surviving altarpiece at his shrine in Guardia is the earliest disparaging image of a converso in Spanish art. No longer identifiable by Jewish costume, conversos were hidden menaces circulating freely in society.
Although never recognized by Rome, the cult of the Holy Child flourished in the seventeenth century and beyond. Despite the suppression of other ritual murder “saints” following Vatican II’s decree Nostra Aetate (1965), a 1780’s fresco honoring the Holy Child still adorns the Cathedral of Toledo. The little martyr’s annual festival continues in Toledo to this day, anti-Jewish character and all.
So, what will readers gain from The Lost Mirror, beyond exposure to some unfamiliar topics and imagery? For some, the book will arouse distress, regret, remorse for what was done to Spanish Jews in defense of the Catholic Faith. Surely, most will absorb another lesson about the tenacity of ancient evils: century after century, hateful images shape hateful thoughts, words, and deeds. Then as now, when Christians treat Jews as their cultural mirror, what they see is themselves—darkly.
The Lost Mirror: Jews and Conversos in Medieval Spain
Edited by Joan Molina Figueras
Museo Nacional del Prado | Madrid and Barcelona, 2023
Hardcover, 239 pages
Endnotes:
1 Despite her knowledge of medieval art, this reviewer had previously seen only four of the hundred illustrations in this book.
2See “A Short History of the Lie of the Blood Libel” (Apr 17, 2023) by Sandra Miesel
3 Nirenberg’s Anti-Judaism: The History of a Way of Thinking. New York, 2013, argues that the need to distinguish one’s culture from Jewishness is a perennial theme in Western history.
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I would recommend to readers that they go to this website: http://WWW.MEMRI.ORG.
Warning – do so on an empty stomach.
The site you referenced is brimming with hatred. I have absolutely no desire to hate Jxws or anyone for that matter and yet my heart is severely troubled by attempts to do away with anti semetic messages which seek in the process to ban the biblical accounts of the death of Christ. This is where it gets tricky and awkward. For their own good they should dissociate themselves from this entirely. The same metric applies to muslims who in the main fail to condemn violence carried out in their name.
Alice;
I fully agree with you. The reason I referenced MEMRI is so people can get an idea of what is DAILY written in the mid-east. Many years ago when on my daily internet journeys I visited there frequently until it got to be too much. Now I might go there once a month or so, and it is even more sickening now than it used to be.
Meisel concludes: “Then as now, when Christians treat Jews as their cultural mirror, what they see is themselves—darkly.” At least two images, distant and recent, are called to mind…
Reflecting on the “legend about the choirboy Dominguito de Val dismembered in Zaragoza in 1250,” we note from Eusebius’ “Ecclesiastical History” the persecution of Christians under Diocletian: “[summarizing]…Again not less than thirty, then about sixty, and yet again a hundred men with young children and women, were slain in one day, being condemned to various and diverse torments.”
And, today, we have the pagan piety of dismembered children via late-term abortion rights (rites!)—as defended thusly by the crypto-Aztec Pelosi & Co.: “As a practicing and respectful Catholic, this is sacred ground to me when we talk about this,” (June 2013): https://www.catholicnewsagency.com/news/27444/catholic-groups-slam-pelosis-claim-that-abortion-is-sacred-ground
It’s interesting how many people in Latin America are descended from Converso Jews. It was a perfect place to escape to. And not a few Jews later on escaped pogroms in eastern Europe or the Third Reich by relocating to places like Argentina and Mexico.
Jews are ever resilient and resourceful.
An acquaintance of Mexican parents was very surprised to see her DNA test results.
Unlike the nazi “Boys from Brazil” clandestine mass exodus from Germany to Argentina in order to escape justice, the Spanish presence in the Western hemisphere beginning with the Conquistadores, brought along with them and were themselves Conversos, being, more often than not, blood relations. I am of Spanish ancestry, both Conquistador and Sephardic Jew. The common Hebrew surname found in my maternal family line is HaLevi, or “The Levite”.
I, for one, embrace both my Spanish and my Jewish heritage.
Yes, Mr. Paul I’ve heard about that also but I’ve also heard that a number of Conversos kept things well under cover even after coming to the Americas, so much so that their descendants lost touch with every part of their Jewish heritage save for some recipes.
Yes, conversos did come to the New World. But the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions came, too. (There was even a branch of the Portuguese one in Goa.) I remember a lecture on the Inquisition in Brazil that cited case records. A woman was brought in for questioning about her cooking choices. “Why do you cook in oil?” “I like the taste.” “Well,” said the Inquisitor, “We suggest you learn to like the taste of lard,” and let her off with a warning.
I believe the Jews had an early settlement in Brazil (1500’s?) under the Dutch but when the Dutch lost that to Portugal, the Jews left & ended up in New Amsterdam (New York).
Conversos were among the Portuguese settlers of Brazil and the Inquisition was concerned that they not revert. Some Sephardic Jews and insincere conversos did flee to the Low Countries where they found a friendly welcome.
History’s really interesting & complicated. I saw this online about the Dutch West India’s Company’s colony in Brazil:
“Maurits also restored discipline and attempted to conciliate the Portuguese living under Dutch control and restore the economy of the region. He increased protection for the large number of Dutch Jews, the great majority speaking Spanish or Portuguese, who had made a home in Brazil. A much smaller number of New Christians already living in the Northeast abjured the Catholicism forced upon their ancestors and openly proclaimed their Judaic heritage. Jews living in Dutch Brazil had their own synagogues. It is estimated that in 1645 the Jewish population under the protection of the Dutch West India Company was at its peak and numbered 1,450, a little less than half of the total white civilian population.”
And then these folks from what I understand left Brazil when the Dutch did & became New York’s first colonial Jewish community.
Going back 600 to 800 years to find evidence of antisemitism falls under the category of “beating a dead horse” for me. Certainly it is terrible things like this ever happened. But most ethnic groups have encountered periods of suppression or attack throughout the course of history.The Jews more than most, but they are not alone. Ask the Armenians. My concern with such books is that somehow there is an expectation that present day people are targeted to take the blame over something they never participated in.
Yes, the old paintings etc are full of stereo-types. Its because they reflect the times in which they were created. Which is not now. Those ordinary folks persecuting Jews 800 years ago were generally ill-educated and illiterate. This sort of hate flourishes in the absence of education. Remarkably and sadly, we see this racist stupidity erupting on our college campuses even as we read this. The solution is better education, and more honest and less partisan teachers, though we must keep our eyes wide open to be certain that propagandizing does not quietly replace education, as it appears to have done on our college campuses.
I cannot imagine any scenario in which it is helpful to unearth old hurts and hatreds. Like those who try to erase famous people who made major contributions to our society because they may have been slave owners, no positive change will come from such suppression.
My suggestion is that we stop beating the dead horse and walk on together from there.
Sadly though LJ, the anti Semitic horse never died. It just plays possum from time to time.
Thank goodness for the decree of Nostra Aetate from the Second Vatican Council.
Thanks Sandra for an informative perspective from the historical mirror of distortion and the travail of Jews. We do know in the end Jew and Christian will be reconciled in Christ as foretold by Paul. Paul once Saul the arch Jew who passed through the mirror.
I am a Catholic with some German Jewish ancestry. They came to the US in the late 19th century and one married a Catholic.
The Holocaust was 80 years ago. Not 600 years ago. Fighting antisemitism is not beating a dead horse. It is imperative.
I agree Will. I’ve seen people with concentration camp numbers tattooed on their arms. It was just yesterday.
Let us also remember that Roma people (Gypsies) were also to be exterminated as a nation, totally, together with Jews and a huge proportion of them were murdered and/or suffered horrendous medical experiments. Next, according to the plan, Slavs had to go. And before them communists, homosexuals, handicapped.
My problem is that too often the Holocaust is spoken as all about Jews while Gypsies and other huge groups of people are forgotten.
“In December 1942 Himmler issued an order to send all Gypsies to concentration camps (with only a few exceptions) Gypsy people were identified in concentration camps by a brown triangle on their uniform. Medical experimentation and sterilization were also a large part of the role of Gypsies in concentration camps. The best known doctor who led medical experimentation was Dr. Mengele at Auschwitz Birkenau. Mengele took a particular interest in Gypsy children. At the Nuremberg war crimes trials murders of Gypsies did not even get a mention.”
The Gypsy Holocaust: Forgotten Victims
https://www.gypsy-traveller.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/01/FFT-The-Gypsy-Holocaust-Booklet.pdf
I likely have some converted Hebrew blood in me, as do many with ancestors from Europe, and anti-Jew “christians” lose sight of our own temple/sacrifice culture origins, where we simply see our worship as and extension/fulfillment of the Jewish religion and prophecy.
BUT, the article and artwork collection commentary both skip entirely over the period of history where both under Roman and Muslim rule Christians were betrayed to the rulers by the Jewish communities, igniting that then long lasting hatred and mistrust of Christians for Jews.
It also skips entirely over the fact Jews had no prohibition against lending money with interest/usary, while Christians were forbidden from collecting interest, leading eventually to vast Jewish fortunes financing wars and crusades, and accrual of debts by princes and kings, who found stoking anti-Jew policies a handy way to welch on debt.
Mr. Bob, Jews historically were prohibited from many of the occupations & land ownership that afforded Christians ways of accumulating wealth. Lending money was one of the few things left to Jews.
Muslims back in the day were much more welcoming to Jews. I think if I remember correctly the Ottoman sultan actually helped evacuate many from Spain during the Inquisition. That’s how so many Sephardic Jews flourished in the Ottoman Empire until fairly recently.
One of my oldest friends had Sephardic grandparents who moved here from Turkey. Her grandmother was one of the kindest, most gracious ladies I’ve ever known. And super hospitable. You couldn’t leave her home without being fed. The Turks in general seem like that from my limited experience & their food is amazing.
I am not blaming Jews for working with what they had and building financial empires despite disabilities. I am only pointing out far more base reasons for much persecutions, that being money. And same reason later the Roman Church was persecuted in large swaths of Europe, vast land holdings and wealth accrual desired by greedy kings and princes.
Again, it a virtual certainty a great great grandfather was a migrant convert to Christianity, from east of Poland area. I have vast respect for the Hebrew religion, same as I do for any ancestor.
Mrscracker, you write: “Back in the day Muslims were more welcoming to Jews.” But, much further “back in the day,” long before the Ottoman Empire, a different picture emerges. Shortly after Muhammad fled from Mecca to Medina (A.D. 622), here from the Qur’an is the earliest picture involving astute Jews and naive Christian clerics:
“Thou shalt find the Jews to be very great Enemies to the true Believers; and the Christians to have great Inclination and Amity towards them, for they have Priests and Religious, that are humble, who have Eyes full of Tears when they hear mention of the Doctrine which God hath inspired into thee, because of their knowledge of the Truth, and Say, Lord we believe in thy Law, write us in the number of them who profess thy Unity. Who shall hinder us from believing in God, and the Truth wherein we have been instructed. We desire with Passion, O Lord, to be in the number of the Just” (Q 5:82).
Every era looks a little different Mr. Peter.
I’m so tired of Christians being blamed for all tension between Christians and Jews. Are Jews incapable of wrongdoing? Was it not the Jews who initiated these tensions by rejecting Christ and persecuting the early Church? Regarding these specific instances in Spain, William Thomas Walsh adds a lot of important context that Miesel overlooks. In the La Guardia trial, for example, one of the suspected Jews, Yucé Franco, confessed to the ritual murder without torture. Also, Ferdinand and Isabella established the Spanish Inquisition in order to prevent Conversos from being massacred. Since these massacres were often provoked by an evil deed by some rich Converso or other, bringing the guilty ones to trial would prevent innocent Conversos from being slaughtered. It is interesting to note that there were no massacres of Jews or Conversos in Spain after the Inquisition was established, so the Inquisition actually saved the lives of innocent Jews and Conversos. I encourage everyone to read Walsh’s response to Jewish historian Cecil Roth which I have linked below.
https://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Walsh_letter_to_Roth.htm
Harry Crocker deals fairly with such issues, Jews, Inquisition etc in his great history of the Church, and without minimizing, shows both subjects covered were not near as bad as often portrayed, far fewer victims than often stated, but that there certainly were horrid excesses in places, but also how much good was done in preventing those excesses.
I don’t buy into corporate guilt for Jews, nor do I buy into the now fashionable corporate guilt for Christians/Catholics.
Yes, I’ve read William Thomas Walsh’s statement. It was cited when CWR published my essay on the Blood Libel last year. But Cecil Roth’s original critique needs to be read as well:
Roth makes a much stronger case by pointing out factual errors in Walsh’s biography of Queen Isabella. In one particular, Roth thought that the Holy Child of La Guardia’s alleged murder contributed to the expulsion of Spain’s Jews. Historical consensus is now against that theory.
Walsh’s books are of their time and have long been rendered obsolete by better and more accurate histories. I suggest that anyone wanting to read up on the Inquisitions–note the plural–should consult Henry Kamen, Edward Peters, William Monter, Stephen Haliczer, Jean-Pierre Dedieu, or Helen Rawlings, to name a few good contemporary historians.
The ultimate point of “The Lost Mirror” was to examine how images demonize people, a chronic human failing. It happened in late medieval Spain and it goes on happening today. In Spain, it happened through institutional policies pursued by Church and State, not just through individual prejudice. Let’s do our best to see neither form operates in our time.
Here’s Cecil Roth’s own letter critiquing William Thomas Walsh’s book on Queen Isabella:
https://www.jrbooksonline.com/HTML-docs/Roth_letter_to_Walsh.htm
Roth has much the better of the argument.
I still find Walsh more convincing. Roth’s statement is full of emotional arguments and personal attacks like “wildest anti-Semite.” He also misrepresents Walsh on numerous occasions, as Walsh points out in his response. Walsh, however, responds to Roth’s objections calmly and rationally, often citing Jewish sources in support of his claims. Walsh is by far the more objective and balanced of the two historians. Roth is clearly biased in favor of his ethno-religious group, but Walsh is more willing to present objective facts whichever way they lead. I think too many people today are biased in favor of Jews and unwilling to accept the possibility that they might, occasionally, have provoked the hostility they have experienced throughout history. Walsh’s objectivity is therefore necessary in order to prevent such hostility from being provoked once more. If Jews direct their ethnic identity towards Christ instead of treating it as an end in itself, they will go a long way in healing their relationship with the rest of the world.
LJ. You make an interesting point I was thinking about. There have massive ethnic murder for centuries. You mentioned the Armenian genocide. How many people know that more than a million were massacred or what day is the Armenian Genocide Day. Then there is the Ukrainian man made famine created by the Soviet Union that killed millions from 1030 to 1933. Going back in history is the Irish Potato famine that Britain did nothing to help since most dying were Catholic. How about what is going on now in the killings of Christians daily by the Moslems, there is no one crying out against this daily slaughter. If there is a need for a book it is to address
the Christians who live their faith, that try to stop the murder, and end up killed themselves.
There are several here claiming Jewish ancestral heritage almost like New Yorkers on Saint Patrick’s Day. Now Jewish heritage is something to be proud of for a variety of reasons. First Christ, Our Blessed Mother, the Apostles, and great men throughout the centuries [discounting Shakespeare’s Shylock of course]. Although I’m sorry to disappoint my Irish friends because Saint Patrick was Italian, a Roman Brit captured by Irish Celts.
Now for those of us who cannot claim the distinction of possessing Jewish heritage by ancestry, I think I can boast, humbly of course, that I have Jesus and Our Blessed Mother’s blood flowing within and their flesh for a kind of spiritual protein strengthening me beyond my capacity because I consume both every day. Now without denigration of either which is the better identity?
That is a really strange dichotomy you are setting up. Why didn’t you use Adam and Eve who predate them all? I merely pointed out my own dim ancestry (also clouded much by one side of family coming from orphan adoptees of southern Spanish and Lombard origins) as one who would not hate Jews unless I were willing to hate myself, where I then pointed out the Jews early on honestly earned the animosity of Christians by aiding in the persecutions of the Christians under a long succession of Caesars. Those specific Jews were guilty. Same as those specific Christians who later persecuted Jews were guilty. I don’t really believe “Jews” and “Christians” to be a genetic thing, but adopted the use since various persecutors of both certainly believed it a racial thing.
I didn’t see Fr. set up any dichotomy. Jews are as much in need of conversion as anyone else and depending on the individual case, in greater need too. And when anyone comes into Christ it is never a recapitulation back into Judaism. The first teacher and primal example of this is the BVM.
Comparing (mostly drunken and false) Irish blood ancestry claims, to true Jewish blood ancestry mentioned by way of explaining commentary, and then switching to spiritual ancestry but ONLY of the Christian era, but ignoring we are all spiritual hiers of Adam, Eve (that includes bloodline, too, plus Original Sin), Abraham, David, the Prophets, all leading to Jesus and Mary…well, yes, I found the switcheroo and omissions strange…
But freely admit my reply was mostly driven by the dismissive way ancestry claims were treated, and especially by the poorly chosen NY St.Patrick’s Day boozefest direct comparison where it well known EVERYbody’s Irish then, which nearly seemed to be calling folk liars.
Fr. outlined an election in keeping with the demand of faith as distinct from anything else including archaeological-determined non-switching bloods and non-breaking ancestries. Jesus did say that a man must give up everything he has in order to be His true disciple – once the hand is on the plow, etc.; and the reality is this has to be followed with a purity due to Christ that can not be substituted or improvised or ignored.
That does not accept to be earthly-bound, either.
It’s not to be offended by, it’s to be open to God by it. The same problems the Jews had affect everyone else, they’re not specially reserved to Jews. What the Jews of the time demonstrated in rejecting Jesus, describes what everyone and anyone does, who will not receive Him.
In the link below, Francisca Nunez de Carvajal de la Cueva (BIRTH 1540 • Villa de Mogodorio, Portugal / DEATH 08-DEC-1596 • Mexico City, Distrito Federal Mexico) is ny 1st Cousin, 11 generations back.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luis_de_Carvajal_the_Younger
When it came down to it, on all too many occasions, the Christian attitude and behavior toward the Jews was anything but Christian. Regarding Ferdinand and Isabella’s alleged ambivalence toward the Jews in Spain, on the day Christopher Columbus sailed for the New World, the Spanish Catholic Monarchs issued an edict requiring all Jews to leave Spain.
It was under Ferdinand and Isabella that the last Muslim enclave in Spain was taken, and Jews were seen as collaborators to the Muslims, and often were. History is replete with Christians and Jews betting on the wrong side in attempts to survive and then paying heavily, and such is still going on today all over the world, whether Africa, India, South Pacific, or Middle East.