From: KELLY@SUVM.BITNET
Newsgroups: soc.culture.turkish
Subject: Christian Anti-Semitism in the Ottoman Empire-2
Date: 12 Aug 92 17:07:07 GMT


  Stanford J. Shaw (Professor of Turkish History, University of California
  Los Angeles),  'Christian Anti Semitism in the Ottoman Empire,' Belleten,
  C. LIV, 68 (1991).

  page 1073-1074:


  <<CHRISTIAN ANTI SEMITISM. Anti Semitism originated as a Christian and
  not a Muslim phenomenon. Jews were driven from the Holy Land by Pagan
  Rome primarily for political rather than religious reasons. The Jews of
  Eretz Israel refused to accept Roman rule and wanted to remain independent.
  But once rule over Palestine was settled, Pagan Rome had no antipathy
  to Jews, and allowed them to settle freely elsewhere in its domains,
  particularly in Anatolia where they constituted a large portion of the
  population. It was only after Rome converted to Christianity, and in
  particular after the East Roman Empire became Byzantium and developed
  its own form of Orthodox Christianity, which was particularly virulent
  regarding Jews, that the latter came to be subject to intense persecution
  so that hardly any Jews were left by the time the Ottoman Turks came
  onto the scene.

  Just as the Turks began moving into the Middle East and Anatolia from
  Central Asia at the end of the eleventh century, thus beginning the
  process by which they would take over the area and establish the Ottoman
  Empire, the Jews who earlier had found refuge and relative prosperity
  in Europe as they had fled from late Roman pressure and attacks,
  themselves began to experience new waves of persecution that accompanied
  the political and moral degeneration of European Church and society.
  In 1078, the Pope decreed that Jews should not occupy important positions
  in Christian countries and that in particular no Jew could be superior
  to any Christian. Jews who had settled in France and Germany found their
  occupations increasingly narrowed by economic and religious prejudice
  to trades associated with banking and money changing, which in turn
  exacerbated long-held religious prejudices into ever-deepening political
  and economic persecutions based on racial and religious anti-Semitism [2].
  Jews had long been accused of being Christ killers, those who had caused
  the Crucifixion. Added to this, however, were new accusations, of which
  the most influential were the popular myths known as the 'blood libel',
  or 'ritual murder' accusations, invented by the ancient Greeks, the idea
  that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children and drained their
  bodies of blood for use in religious ceremonies, especially those
  associated with wine and the making of unleavened bread, or 'matzoh' [3].
  Added to this was the myth of 'desecration of the host', by which Jews
  were alleged to be profaning the wafer consecrated in the Catholic
  ceremony of the Eucharist which, since the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215,
  was believed to [be] the actual body of Jesus, which the Jews were said
  to be stabbing, tormenting or burning in order to subject Christ once
  again to the agonies of the cross [4]. These accusations seem utterly
  absurd in the modern world. It stretches the imagination to believe that
  such ideas could stir people up to such frenzies of emotion that they
  could attack even aged and crippled Jews in the street, not only stoning
  them and pulling their beards and hair but massacring them and destroying
  their shops and homes, particularly during the week preceding Easter when
  Christian religious passions were at their peak. Yet such incidents took
  place repeatedly in Europe, starting first at Norwich, England in 1144 [5],
  and continuing into the late nineteenth century, and also, with even more
  vehemence and violence, in the Middle East by native Christians infected
  by the prejudices of their European coreligionists.>>


[2] 'Anti-Semitism', EJ III (Jerusalem, 1972), 87-159; Hermann L. Strack,
    La Superstition du Sang dans l'Humanite et les Rites Sanguinaries
    (Munich, 1892); Salomon Reinach, 'L'Accusation du Meurtre Rituel',
    Revue des Etudes Juives, XXV (1892), 161-180; J.W.Parkes, Conflict
    of the Church and the Synagogue: A Study of the Origins of Antisemitism
    (1934). A. Tcherikover, Hellenistic Civilization and the Jews (1961).
    G. Kisch, jews in Medewal Germany (1949). B. Blumenkrantz, Juifs et
    Chretifens dans le monde occidental 430-1096 (Paris, 1960). Philip P.
    Argenti, The Religious Minorities of Chios: Jews and Roman Catholics
    (Cambridge, 1970).


[3] On the blood libel, see 'Blood Libel', EJ (Jerusalem, 1972) IV, 1119-
    1131; 'Blood Accusation', The Jewish Encyclopedia: New Edition III
    (New York, 1925) 260. M. Samuel, Blood Accusation (1966). Cecil Roth,
    The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jew (1935). Bernard Lewis, Semites
    and anti-Semites: an Inquiry into Conflict and Prejudice (New York
    and London, Norton, 1986), 101. On its invention by Greeks in the
    Ist century A.D. see Philip P. Argenti, The Religious Minorities of
    Chios: Jews and Roman Catholics (Cambridge, 1970), 20.

[4] 'Host', EJ.

[5] 'Blood Libel', EJ (Jerusalem, 1972) IV, 1121, The Jewish Encyclopedia:
    New Edition III (New York, 1925), 260. Jessopp and James, St. William
    of Norwich (Cambridge, England, 1899). 'England', EJ VI, 747.

(To be continued)

Nejat
Xref: sparky soc.culture.turkish:8882 soc.culture.europe:7309