Constantine's Sword, Pt. 2
Debunks
behaved in a manner that was explicitly defined as un-Christian appeared no
longer as erring souls in a temptation-filled world, but as subverters of the
world’s new course..."27 This certainly played a role in enhancing a view of
the Jews as outsiders in the creation of the Christian world.
Carroll, however, attributes the rise in anti-Jewish outbreaks directly with
the Crusades and its emphasis on the Cross. While certainly crusading rhetoric
involved at times slander of Jews – and violent anti-Jewish outbursts – the
era was far more complicated than Carroll’s simplistic notion of cause and
effect. Certainly, there was a renewed emphasis on evangelization and religious
conformity. But the primary concern of the era for the Church in Europe was
internal reform that would lead to spiritual awakening among Christians.
Additionally, a stronger papacy would lead to greater protection – rather
than a greater threat – for the Jewish population of Europe. The Church and
the hierarchy roundly condemned attacks on Jews by the first crusaders. Pope
Calixtus III (1119-1124) issued the papal bull Sicut Judaesis that condemned
any violence against the Jews, a bull reaffirmed by 20 of his successors. St.
Bernard of Clairvaux, who preached the Second Crusade, would speak out
forcefully against anti-Jewish violence and is generally held responsible for
limiting such incidents. Though Carroll tries to link a stronger papacy with
increased anti-Jewish acts, 28 the opposite appears true. A stronger Church and
papacy that can influence secular authorities in European history rather than
be controlled by secular authorities, the less likely were anti-Jewish
outbreaks. (This would be clearly seen in the Reformation where anti-Semitism
exploded in Protestant Germany where the local church was under the complete
control of local authorities.)
Carroll sees the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, under Pope Innocent III, as
another part of the linkage between the early Church and the Holocaust. Citing
Hans Kung’s interpretation, he sees the council as fundamentally changing the
situation of the Jews both legally and theologically.29 The Council was a
historic event in Church history, solidifying two centuries of Church reform.
The Council "tackled an enormous range of issues, all of them practical: the
establishment of orthodox teaching, especially on the sacraments – this was
the Council which defined the doctrine of Transubstantiation – new
regulations requiring every Christian to get to confession and communion at
least once a year, improvements in record-keeping in Church courts…rules for
the better discharge of episcopal duties and especially preaching ands
catechizing in the language of the people, and reform of the monasteries.
Behind much of this the distinctive concerns of the Pope can be detected, and
the Council was the high point of the medieval papacy’s involvement with and
promotion of the best reforming energies in the Church at large."30
Carroll points out that certain conciliar decrees, however, placed restrictions
on Jews and such legislation did isolate the Jewish community more formally.
Among the restrictions the Council asked for was a special form of dress so
that Jews could be more clearly identified, that Jews should be forbidden to go
out during Holy Week and that they be forbidden from holding public office. It
is clear that in such anti-Jewish regulations, Church leadership was reflecting
some of the worst aspects of contemporary culture. At the same time, it is also
clear that any number of such regulations were also intended – from the
perspective of the time – to protect Jews from attacks. The Holy Week
legislation, for example, was clearly intended for their protection, as Holy
Week became in certain areas a time for attacks on Jews.
Carroll was more concerned, however, that this Council clearly showed the
"universalist absolutism of Roman Catholic claims" to the teaching of Christ
which "is causally related to the unleashing of Catholic anti-Judaism."31 In
other words, Carroll sees a stronger Church, with a stronger papacy and with
certitude of belief as generating anti-Semitism because Jews are "the original
dissenters." Yet, such a causal link is never established. In fact, greater
centralization of the Church would generally result in a lessening of
anti-Jewish practices. As will be seen in the discussion of the Spanish
Inquisition, severe anti-Jewish activities took place more often where papal
authority was co-opted by local authorities, or where Church authority had
succumbed to secular authority. For example, anti-Jewish actions increased
during the Plague years of the 14th century where Church authority was less
effective. "Blood libel" stories had evolved, claiming that Jews would
sacrifice Christian children, or that Jews conspired to poison wells. The
papacy quickly condemned such stories, but they persisted in different areas by
local legend. Carroll’s history consistently shows the opposite of what it
intends. Anti-Jewish activities persisted in history despite the Church, rather
than because of the Church. When Church authority was weakened, the outbreaks
tended to increase. When dangerous racial anti-Semitism would grow in the 19th
Century, the Church was effectively at its weakest in influencing government or
society.
Carroll, of course, does not see the anti-Jewish legislative aspects of the
Lateran Council as its most damaging aspects. Papal authority and "Catholic
absolutism" are his greater concerns. And most important, he sees the Council
as firmly establishing in Catholic thinking the theological concept of
Christ’s death as atonement for sin. To Carroll’s thinking, this central
Catholic belief is fundamental to anti-Jewish attitudes as the "longest lie"
created by New Testament writers. What Carroll does not concede, however, is
that central to the concept of Christ’s atonement in Catholic belief is that
He died for the sins of all mankind. Proper understanding of that belief means,
as has been understood in Catholic doctrine since the days of the early Church
fathers, that Christ died because of sin. The concept of "Jewish deicide" –
that the Jews "killed" Christ – is contradictory to that essential Catholic
belief. Christ died, according to ancient Catholic belief, because of the sins
of all, not the actions of a few.
There can be no doubt that ignorance and false Scriptural interpretation helped
to create an atmosphere of anti-Judaism within Western society. There was, as
Carroll shows, an "ambivalence" toward Jews within Catholic teaching that
contributed to anti-Jewish actions. While Church leadership forthrightly
condemned violence against the Jews, it tolerated abusive anti-Jewish homilies
and pronouncements. Church leadership too often shared in the sentiments of the
culture. However, Carroll’s fundamental flaw is in arguing that anti-Semitism
was the conscious creation of the Church, rather than a cultural legacy to
which many in the Church too often compromised. His claim that a "theology of
atonement" generated anti-Semitism is self-contradicting, as such an
understanding removed any concept of alleged Jewish "guilt" in the death of
Christ by teaching that all mankind was guilty.
When Carroll moves on to discussion of the Inquisition he falls into the
historical trap of seeing the Inquisition both as a consistent papal-dominated
institution that existed in a clear line from the 13th century virtually to the
mid 20th century, as he considers his one encounter with the Index of Forbidden
Books in the seminary as "my inquisition."32 Carroll states that the
Inquisition was the means that "Catholic medieval absolutism exacerbated
anti-Jewish religious hatred, fueled new levels of violence, and sponsored an
even more hysterical conversionism, which, when up against continued Jewish
resistance, finally led to modern anti-Semitic racism."33
To speak of the Inquisition fails to understand that no such individual
universal entity existed. The Inquisition as a single unified court system
directly responsible to the pope and controlled solely by the papacy is a
historical fiction. Even within the Papal States in the 16th century, the
papacy had difficulty maintaining effective control over local inquisitions.
The local church in alliance with local secular authority usually controlled
inquisitorial courts. Though it began in the 13th century as a papal-designated
juridical system to remove "heresy-hunting" from control of the mob or secular
authorities, it evolved rather quickly as a device of the local church and
secular authorities to address local, and later national or dynastic goals.
There were many inquisitions, rather than a singular "Inquisition."
The many inquisitions that took place existed sporadically in different
regions, at different times, and to meet different local needs. The medieval
inquisition barely existed, for example, in Spain and Portugal. For hundreds of
years, the inquisition in many places existed only sporadically, if at all. In
the 16th century, it existed primarily in Spain, Portugal, the Papal States and
other Italian cities. It existed sporadically – dominated by the state – in
France and, early, in England.
Carroll’s argument is that the Spanish Inquisition created "racial"
anti-Semitism and, as such, was generated by the Church and linked directly to
Nazism. Spanish anti-Semitism was not a religious prejudice, but a racial one.
It derived from the success in Spanish culture of Jewish converts to
Catholicism and the goal of a racially unified Iberian peninsula, free of the
"foreign" Muslims and Jews. In 1391, anti-Jewish riots swept through Spain.
More religious than racial – though this has been disputed – these riots
led to major forced conversions of Jews to Christianity. These Jewish converts
would be called conversos or New Chistians, to distinguish them from
traditional Christian families. The converso identity would remain with such
families for generations.
Converso families were welcomed into a full participation in Spanish society
not available to Jews and they would soon become leaders in government,
science, business and the Church. Though it was legislated in certain areas
that those forced to convert could return to their own religion, many did not.
These converso families obviously faced the scorn of those who remained Jews.
At the same time, however, over the years the Old Christians saw them as
social-climbing opportunists. They claimed that they secretly maintained the
faith of their forefathers. It would be complaints about these alleged "secret
Jews" that would lead to the establishment of the Spanish Inquisition.34
Curiously, Carroll argues, with no documentation, that most of these converts
remained "secret" Jews. It is a curious argument because it accepts as fact the
reason given for Spanish persecution of the Jews. In fact, after a generation,
most of these converts were as Catholic as the Old Christians. But racial
prejudice against their Jewish ethnic roots remained. They were considered
racially apart. The children’s children of these converted Jews were not
considered "pure" Spaniards and would become the primary target of the Spanish
Inquisition.
Carroll points out that in 1449, the city council of Toledo passed an ordinance
decreeing that no converso of Jewish descent may hold office. Pope Nicholas V
(1447-1455) responded furiously, excommunicating the drafters of the
regulation. He wrote that "all Catholics are one body in Christ according to
the teaching of our faith." The King of Castile, however, formally approved the
regulation.
"If the beginning of what we think of as modern antisemitism can be located
anywhere, it is here," Carroll writes. "The shift from religious definition of
Jewishness to a racial one is perhaps the most decisive in this long narrative,
and its fault lines, reaching into the consciousness of Western civilization,
will define the moral geography of the modern age. The Church’s worry, for
example, that its very own conversos were corrupting Christians would find a
near permanent resonance in the modern European fantasy of Jews as parasites
– successful and assimilated, but feeding on the host society. The ultimate
example of this image would emerge in Germany, of course, but the fear that led
Nazis to regard Jews as bloodsuckers to be excised was anticipated by the
Iberian suspicion that Jews were more to be feared as assimilated insiders than
as dissenting outsiders."35
It is true that the racial prejudice against Catholic families of Jewish stock
was the primary instigator of the Spanish Inquisition. However, it contradicts,
rather than confirms, Carroll’s basic thesis that anti-Semitism that led to
the horror of the Holocaust came from essential Christian theology. Spanish
anti-Semitism was aimed at Jews racially. Religion was used as a club of
enforcement to knock ethnic Jews down from the successful heights they had
attained as Catholics. But the faith was the excuse, not the cause, of Spanish
racial anti-Semitism. And that is why Pope Nicholas, and successor popes, would
deplore the actions of the Spanish Inquisition against the conversos. In Rome,
it was viewed not as an attempt to root out heresy, but as a means to attack
generations of successful coverts.
In March 1492, Queen Isabella and King Ferdinand ordered the expulsion – or
conversion – of all remaining Jews in Spain. Many conversos had already fled
to Rome and the Papal States where they would be free of persecution. Those who
remained Jews fled to Rome as well, known as the most tolerant of European
cities toward Jews. The intent of the declaration of expulsion was more
religious than racial, as Jewish conversion was certainly the intent, not "the
beginning of a strategy of elimination"36 as Carroll contends. While many Jews
fled, a large number converted, thus aggravating the popular picture of secret
Judaizers within the Christian community of Spain. Up through 1530, the primary
activity of the inquisition in Spain would be aimed at pursuing conversos. The
same would be true from 1650 to 1720. While its activities declined thereafter,
the inquisition continued to exist in Spain until its final abolition in 1824.
The attacks in Spain on the conversos were viewed as despicable in Rome and
condemned by the popes. Italians "felt that Spanish hypocrisy in religion,
together with the existence of the Inquisition, proved that the tribunal was
created not for religious purity, but simply to rob the Jews. Similar views
were certainly held by the prelates of the Holy See whenever they intervened in
favor of the conversos. Moreover, the racialism of the Spanish authorities was
scorned in Italy, where the Jewish community led a comparatively tranquil
existence."37
If there is a connection between the Spanish Inquisition and the Holocaust
generated by the German Nazis it is in the racial hatred that motivated both.
It is not, however, to be found in a connection between Catholic Spain and
Protestant Germany. And it is certainly not to be found in the faith whose
leadership spoke out forcefully against the attacks on the conversos, or a
theology that argued that conversion knew no racial boundaries.
Carroll leaps from the early Spanish Inquisition to the Council of Trent
(1545-1563), called by the Church in response to the Reformation. He points out
that the Council had very little to say about the Jews. The Council primarily
concerned itself with Church renewal in light of the Reformation and defending
clear Catholic teaching in response to Protestant attacks. Among those clear
Catholic teachings confirmed, as Carroll points out, was that "responsibility
for the death of Jesus belonged to sinners – to all persons, that is, in
their having sinned. The old question Who killed Jesus? Was explicitly
answered: Human sinners did."38 The declaration by Trent was another
contradiction of what Carroll asserts throughout his book: that the theology of
the atonement created anti-Semitism by blaming Jews for the death of Jesus and
led directly to the Holocaust.
But Carroll argues that if "this perception had maintained its firm hold on the
moral imagination of Christians, the history of Jews would be quite different.
That something else happened, beginning with the Gospels’ own scapegoating of
Jews, only proves Trent’s point that ‘we’ are sinners."39 Perhaps,
however, the exact opposite is true. The thesis that the "Jews killed Jesus"
was a popular misinterpretation of the New Testament that the Church taught as
wrong in its theology of atonement. If anti-Semitism persisted, it was because
it was persistent in the popular imagination, not in the teachings of the
Church as Carroll claims. Again, anti-Semitism existed despite essential Church
teachings, not because of them, as Carroll charges.
The inquisition in Rome was established during the Reformation period and has
generally been regarded by historians as one of the more lax courts. The
inquisition court in Rome should not be understood as a universal court, but as
one of the inquisition courts within the Papal States. As in most regions, the
local Roman court focused primarily on clergy wrongs and on issues of lifestyle
– adultery, drunkenness and other forms of impropriety as Rome did not have a
racial problem with conversos, 40 and the Inquisition itself had nothing to do
with the Jewish population. Pope Paul III (1534-1549) had authorized the
inquisition in Rome as a means of protecting the Church there from the
influence of the Reformation in 1542. He was a protector of the Jews who banned
various anti-Jewish activities. Pope Paul IV (1555-1559), however, had a short
but troubled reign. It was Pope Paul IV who established the separate Jewish
ghetto in Rome, enforced segregationist regulations on Jews and, mistakenly,
affirmed the "blood purity" statute in Toledo that had rightly been condemned
by previous pontiffs. Carroll sees both events as a definitive sign of the
Church embracing, despite the reforms of Trent, a definitive anti-Semitic
stance, particularly in its seeming endorsement of the Spanish racial policy of
limpieza de sangre aimed at the converso families of Jewish ethnic heritage.
Carroll explains that the "culture-wide trauma of the Reformation was part of
what prompted the shift in papal strategy toward the Jews,"41 a shift that
Carroll sees as momentous.
Limpieza de sangre was part of the "blood purity" restrictions on Jews who had
converted to Catholicism and limited their ability to hold public office or
offices within Spain. This was the ugly racial element that had infected
Spanish society. As we have seen, Pope Nicholas V rightly condemned limpieza
vociferously. Pope Paul IV as a cardinal "had singlemindely devoted his whole
life to reform of the Church…(yet) under Paul IV reform took on a darker more
fearful character. Creativity was distrusted as a dangerous innovation,
theological energies were diverted into the suppression of error rather than
the exploration of truth. Catholicism was identified with reaction...For the
rest of the Tridentine era, Catholic Reformation would move between those
poles, and it would be the task of the popes to manage the resulting
tensions."42 Depending on the perspective of the individual pontiff,
restrictions on Jewish life within the Roman ghetto would wax and wane. His
decision on limpieza, however, was reversed and generally abandoned from
Catholic life outside of Spain. A few orders with strong Spanish roots, such as
the Jesuits, maintained a form of limpieza. But no serious student of history
would make the claim that this unique Spanish cultural prejudice reflected
overall Church practice. Carroll himself recognizes that the anti-Jewish racial
theories of the 19th Century that created the anti-Semitism of the Nazis had no
relationship to Spanish limpieza.
Pope Paul IV’s pontificate was short. New popes would reverse his policies
– his approval of limpieza was quickly abandoned – and treatment of the
local Jewish community in Rome would vary from pontiff to pontiff. Popes would
change and policies would change. These policies were generated as papal
governance of the Papal States, however, not pronouncements of the universal
Church. And what Carroll sees as a continuous linkage was shifting sand. There
was no uniform anti-Jewish policy aimed at the local Jewish community from
papacy to papacy. The policies reflected the emphasis and mind-set of
individuals. However, the different perspectives popes adopted show anything
but a continuous chain that is the fundamental thesis of Carroll’s book; nor
were there theologically infallible papal statements of defining Catholic
belief. The Jewish ghetto in Rome is a dark spot on Church history. The
long-held notion that popes must be rulers of an independent Papal States or
the papacy would be dominated by secular rulers, while theoretically
understandable and with historical roots from earlier centuries, placed popes
in the difficult position of holding secular authority. Not a few of them
exercised that secular authority poorly. That ended in 1870 when Italian
nationalist troops occupied the city as "liberators." But within a generation
after, that nationalist tide would also result in the emergence of Benito
Mussolini and the Italian Fascist state.
Carroll marches quickly through the early Enlightenment, represented by
Voltaire, touches on Spinoza and the French Revolution, then on to Vatican I
(1869-1870) and the declaration of papal infallibility. "Liberalism and
modernism," Carroll writes, "were seen as bearing the fruits of the destruction
of civilization itself, and the dark side of the new order would make itself
all too clear in the twentieth century. There was much in the new age the
Church was right to suspect, so the Catholic strategy of arming the leader of
the Church with the spiritual mace of infallibility made some sense."43
His understanding of the definition of papal infallibility as conferred on the
papacy in 1870 is not, of course, the definition given by the Council. Vatican
I dealt with the office of the papacy and the nature of papal authority because
these issues were at the very center of the life of the Church in the 19th
Century. The emergence of the modern liberal states had reconfirmed to many
within the Church the vital importance of the ancient belief of the central
authority of the bishop of Rome as the successor of St. Peter. There were
divisions over such a definition, however. Some argued that it would be
inopportune to make such a definition in the turmoil of the 19th Century, while
others wanted papal infallibility applied to virtually everything the pope said
or wrote. The accusation is made that a definition of papal infallibility was
demanded by Pope Pius IX and forced on an unwilling Council by papal pressure,
curial conspiracies, and squelched debate. However, debate went on for months,
and the final definition of papal infallibility fell far short of the desires
of the "ultramontanes" who wanted an elevated definition of infallibility. The
fact was that consensus emerged, except for extremists on each side, which
spelled out a definition of papal infallibility clearly in line with Church
tradition and the theology of the papacy. The Council proclaimed no new
teaching that extended papal authority beyond a point the Church had understood
for centuries.
Carroll sees the definition of papal infallibility as a "pivotal event" for his
story as "the Church’s relationship to the modern fate of the Jews is
entertwined, in a particular way, with efforts to extend the political power of
the papacy."44 Carroll will therefore lock himself in early to the Cornwell
thesis that the sole motivation of Pius XII in World War II was the extension
of papal power. At the same time, there is Carroll’s blithe acknowledgement
of what was taking place in the 19th Century: "the dark side of the new order
would make itself all too clear in the 20th century." That is Carroll’s
primary reference to what in fact was going on in European thought in the 19th
Century and what it would lead to in the 20th Century.
The culture of thought in the 19th Century – secularism, communism, racialism
and nationalism – would lead to the First World War, the Communist revolution
in Russia, Stalin’s pogroms, the rise of Fascism and Nazism, World War II and
the Holocaust. That is the dark side to which Carroll refers. It also makes a
mockery of his essential argument that the anti-Semitism that played its own
role in so much of this horror was the creation of the Church, or sustained by
the Church. The stew of secular philosophies that led to these 20th century
horrors was a creation of the 19th century, that had limited roots in the
so-called Enlightenment of the 18th century. These philosophies were definitive
breaks with Christian thinking, not evolutions. As Paul Johnson notes, they
involved the "birth of the modern" – an entirely new way of viewing self,
one’s role in culture, one’s entire mode of thinking and acting. These were
not subtle changes or a grafting on to Christianity. These were philosophies
that the Church fought against because they were a fundamental break, a
fundamental confrontation, with an entire Christian philosophy, theology,
culture and worldview. Carroll’s failure to present that adequately in order
not to upset his thesis that the Church was to blame for the Holocaust is the
fundamental flaw of his book. The fundamental blasphemy is that he would do so
in order to put forth a meager list of liberal bromides for alleged Church
reform.
Carroll approaches the age of Pius XII and the Holocaust itself after winding
his way through the German Kulturkampf and the Dreyfus affair in France. He
adds nothing new to his story in either recital. Successful Catholic action in
response to the Kulturkampf is seen as setting what could have been a standard
in reaction to Hitler, forgetting that Bismarck was not Hitler and the Germany
of 1870 was not the Nazi Germany of 1933. The Dreyfus affair – where a Jewish
officer in the French army was convicted of treason – was a high-profile case
of anti-Semitism within the French army. Carroll uses it to excorciate the
French Catholic newspaper "La Croix." The newspaper, operated by a religious
order, engaged in hot anti-Jewish rhetoric during the Dreyfus affair. While
Carroll points to this as symbolizing the entrenched nature of Catholic
anti-Semitism, it far more reflected a turn-of-the-century Europe where
anti-Semitism was increasing as the influence of the Church decreased in the
modern secular states and "modern" thought predominated.