How medieval stories about desecrating the Eucharist were used to justify the murder of Jews. This is the third installment in a five-part series. Part 4, the case of Edith Stein, and, concluding the series, Messianic Judaism. In his new book, Constantine's Sword , he surveys the centuries since Christ and concludes that Christianity's rejection of the Jews was a fatal flaw at the very beginning of the long history of the church.
Christians are unlikely to be persuaded, unless they have already all but checked out of the faith.
How easy it would be, then, given Carroll's agenda, for believers to reassure themselves that they need not bother with the history that is Carroll's ostensible subject. Yes, yes, anti-Semitism is a terrible thing, and the Nazis were unspeakably evil, but we're enlightened now. How easy to settle for such complacent pieties, instead of trying to reckon with a history that is deeply troubling and twisted, endlessly tangled. The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews , published two years ago by Yale University Press, a haunting, provocative, beautiful book. The prose is, at times, lyrical and poetic.