MARTIN LUTHER, THE X CATHOLIC MONK
The dilemma that the reformation only began after Martin Luther gives a tainted picture that all the time before him, Christendom (since is was all Catholic) has always persecuting the Jews.
The fact of history is that million of Christians never even joined the Catholic Church.
This false assumption is wrong, even Luther himself admitted that he was not the first who tried to reform the Church: "We are not the first to declare the papacy to be the kingdom of Antichrist, since for many years before us so many and so great men...have undertaken to express the same thing so clearly....".
Martin Luther who unfortunately inherited many false Replacement Theology ideas taught by the Catholic Church was not the first Christian who tried to reform Catholicism. Many centuries before Luther a movement among priests and monks calling for a return to the entire Bible(both Jewish Old Testament and Jewish New Testament) began many centuries before Luther. In reality the first reformer was the Priscillian Bishop of Avila who was falsely accused of witchcraft by a Synod in Bordeaux, France in A.D. 384. The false charges can easily be refuted by seven of his recently discovered writings in the University of Germany’s Wurzburg library.
Priscillian and six others were beheaded at Trier in 385 and many martyrdoms followed. These persecutions went all the way to the late 1300s when John Wycliff who was given the title "morning star of the Reformation," championed the authority of the Scriptures, translated and published them in English and preached and wrote against the evils of the popes and transubstantiation. Influenced by Wycliff was Jan Hus, a fervent Catholic priest and rector of Prague University. He was later excommunicated in 1410, and burned at the stake as a "heretic" in 1415.
Despite Luther’s writings, it is not fair to blame all the divisions of Christendom of persecuting the Jews. Many throughout the centuries who fought the evils of the Catholic Church tried to stop the killings and denounce the Catholic Church. During the tenth century, a council at Rheims by the Bishop of Orleans called the Pope "The Antichrist". In the eleventh century Rome was denounced as "the See of Satan" by Berenger of Tours. The Waldensians identified the Pope as Antichrist in an 1100 treatise titled "The Noble Lesson." In 1206 an Albigensian conference indicted the Vatican as the woman "drunk with the blood of the martyrs".
Many also blame Anti-Semitism on Martin Luther's writing against the Jews. While it is true that Martin Luther at the last few years of his life changed his position on the Jews and wrote evil essays regarding the Jews. At the beginning of his career, Luther was apparently sympathetic to Jewish resistance to the Catholic Church:
"The Jews are blood-relations of our Lord; if it were proper to boast of flesh and blood, the Jews belong more to Christ than we. I beg, therefore, my dear Papist, if you become tired of abusing me as a heretic, that you begin to revile me as a Jew."
In 1523 A.D Martin Luther wrote "Jesus Christ was born a Jew" he makes reference to the origins of Christianity, later the aging reformer did not see this 'return to the right path' during the following years, he then turned bitter. Strong polemic works emerged at this point, like The Jews and their Lies.
A further reason for Luther's anti-Semitic position, other than his disappointment with the Jews for not accepting his "true belief", could be that in many respects his education was still based on the Replacement Theology which was prevalent in the Catholic Church taught by Augustine. Luther who was an Augustinian wrote many anti-Semitic statements which were often used to accuse non-Catholic Christians of persecuting the Jews.
On his infamous writing "On the Jews and their Lies" of 1543, among Luther's vile rantings against Jews were texts like the following excerpts:
"Their breath stinks for the gold and silver of the heathen; since no people under the sun always have been, still are, and always will remain more avaricious than they, as can be noticed in their cursed usury. Therefore know, my dear Christians, that next to the Devil, you have no more bitter, more poisonous, more vehement and enemy than a real Jew who earnestly desires to be a Jew...Do not their Talmud and rabbis write that it is no sin to kill if a Jew kills a heathen, but it is a sin if he kills a brother in Israel? It is no sin if he does not keep his oath to a heathen. Therefore, to steal and rob - as they do with their moneylending - from a heathen,
is a divine service...Now what are we going to do with these rejected, condemned Jewish people?...(Luther, On the Jews and their Lies, 1543).
"set fire to their synagogues or schools and to bury and cover with dirt whatever will not burn... I advise that their houses be razed and destroyed... I advise that all their prayer books... in which such idolatry, lies, cursing, and blasphemy are taught, be taken from them... that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of
loss of life and limb... that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews... that all their treasure of silver and gold be taken from them... But if the authorities are reluctant to use force and restrain the Jews' devilish wantonness, the latter should, as we said, be expelled from their country and be told to return to ... Jerusalem where they may lie, curse, blaspheme, defame, murder, steal, rob, practice usury, mock, and indulge in all those infamous abominations which they practice among us, and leave ... our Lord the Messiah, our faith, and our church undefiled and uncontaminated with their devilish tyranny and malice." (Luther, On the Jews and their Lies, 1543).
THE PERSECUTION OF JEWS BY "CHRISTENDOM"
306 AD. Decrees by the early Catholic Church (partial list) Synod of Elvira prohibited intermarriage and sexual intercourse between Christians and Jews, and prohibited them from eating together. During the 4th and 5th centuries synagogues were burned by Catholics and the first synagogue was destroyed as ordered by Catholic bishop Innocentius of Dertona in Northern Italy.
388 A.D. The first synagogue known to have been burned down was near the river Euphrat, on command of the bishop of Kallinikon.
527-564 A.D, the Justinian Code was an edict of the Byzantine Emperor Justinian). A section of the code negated civil rights for Jews. Once the code was enforced, Jews in the Empire could not build synagogues, read the Bible in Hebrew, gather in public places, celebrate Passover before Easter, or give evidence in a judicial case in which a Christian was a party.
533-541 A.D, Councils of Orleans prohibited marriages between Christians and Jews, forbade the conversion to Judaism by Christians, and banned contact with Jews the forbidding of the reading of the Torah exclusively in Hebrew. (see Parkes, 251ff, 392).
553 – 545 A.D. Confiscation of Jewish property and the prohibition of the sale of
Christian property to Jews.
692 A.D. Trulanic Syno prohibited Christians from being treated by Jewish doctors.
694 A.D. Council of Toledo, Jews were enslaved, their property confiscated, and their children forcibly baptized.
1010 A.D The Bishop of Limoges (France) had signs in the cities' Jews, who would not convert to Christianity, must be expelled or killed.
1050 A.D Synod of Narbonne prohibited Christians from living in
Jewish homes.
1078 A.D Synod of Gerona required Jews to pay taxes to support the Church.
1096 A.D. First Crusade were 12,000 Jews slaughtered in Mainz, Cologne, Neuss, Altenahr, Wevelinghoven, Xanten, Moers, Dortmund, Kerpen, Trier, Metz, Regensburg, Prag and others (All locations Germany except Metz/France, Prag/Czech.
1147 A.D. Second Crusade were hundreds of Jews were slain in Ham, Sully, Carentan, and Rameru (all locations in France).
1179 A.D. Third Lateran Council prohibited certain medical care to be provided by Christians to Jews.
1189 A.D. Third Crusade: English Jewish communities sacked in Fulda/Germany.
1215 A.D. Fourth Lateran Council required Jews to wear special clothing to distinguish them from Christians.
1235 A.D. 34 Jewish men and women slain.
1267 A.D. Jewish communities of London, Canterbury, Northampton, Lincoln, Cambridge, and others exterminated.
1290 A.D. in Bohemian (Poland) 10,000 Jews were killed.
1337 A.D. Starting in Deggendorf Germany a Jew-killing frenzy reaches 51 towns in Bavaria, Austria, and Poland.
1348 A.D. All Jews of Basel/Switzerland and Strasbourg/France (two thousand) burned.
1349 A.D. In more than 350 towns in Germany all Jews murdered, mostly burned alive (in this one year more Jews were killed than Christians in 200 years of ancient Roman persecution of Christians.
1389 A.D In Prag 3,000 Jews were slaughtered.
1391 A.D Seville's Jews killed led by Archbishop Martinez, 4,000 were slain, 25,000 sold as slaves. Their identification was made easy by the brightly colored "badges of shame" that all Jews above the age of ten had been forced to wear.
1431-1443 A.D. Council of Basel forbade Jews to attend universities, acting as agents in the conclusion of contracts between Christians, and required that they attend church sermon, the removal of former religious and governing privileges, the curtailment of Rabbinical jurisdiction, Prohibition of missionary work, Jews were no longer allowed to hold high office, and have military careers (e.g. legislation in 537 A.D. which prohibited local Jewish people from serving on municipal bodies).
1492 A.D. In the year Columbus set sail to conquer a New World, more than 150,000 Jews were expelled from Spain, many died on their way.
1648 A.D Chmielnitzki massacres: In Poland about 200,000 Jews were slain.
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