Page:Jewish Encyclopedia Volume 2.pdf/48

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Apostasy and Apostates from Judaism

THE JEWISH ENCYCLOPEDIA

apostate, seems to have come under his influence and to have deserted the faith he at one time had so warmly espoused. Under the name of Geronimo de Santa Fe, he was body-physician and councilor of

Pope Benedict XIII., and became the terror of the Jews of Spain. He induced the pope to summon the most learned rabbis of Aragon singled out by him to a religious disputation at Tortosa, for which he had prepared a treatise proving Jesus' Messianic The debate character from Scripture and Talmud. lasted over twenty -one months, from February, 1413, to November, 1414. A little later Geronimo published a treatise accusing the

Talmud

of teaching

blasphemy, of counseling the Jews to break their oath by the Kol Nidre declaration, and of every kind of hostility toward the Christians, every reference to the heathen being by him interpreted as being directed against the Christians. From the initials of his name, Maestro Geronimo De Fe, he was called "

same

MeGaDeF. " (Heb.

class belong Levi

the Blasphemer).

ben Shem-Tob,

To the

called, as a

Christian, Pedro de la Caballeria, who advised King Manuel of Portugal, in 1497, to take Jewish children by force and have them baptized Astruc Sibili (of

who

slanderous charge of murder brought against the Jews of Majorca in 1435 and Henrique Nunes (de Firma Fe), who served as spy against the unfortunate Maranos, and was about to help Charles V. to introduce the Inquisition into Portugal when he was assassinated by some Maranos, and then canonized by the Church as a martyr. Sixtus of Sienna and Philip (Joseph) Moro incensed their Jewish kinsmen by traveling about in the Papal State preaching, at the bidding of Paul IV. sermons for their conversion; the former inciting the mob to burn every copy of the Talmud they could lay hands on after he himself had erected a pile for this purpose the other forcing his way into the synagogue while the people were assembled for worship on the Day of Atonement, and placing the crucifix in the holy Ark, where the scrolls of the Law were kept, in order thus to provoke a riot. This desire to calumniate the Jews and the Talmud seems to have become contagious among the Apostates of the time for there are mentioned five others that instigated throughout Italy and in the city of Prague the burning of thousands of Talmudic and other rabbinic books. Two of these were Seville),

testified to the





The

suming of the

Talmud.

grandsons of Elias Levita, Vittorio Eliano, and his brother Solomon Remano, afterward called John Baptista. The former, together with Joshua dei Cantori (ben Hazan), testified in Cre-

mona against the Talmud, corroborating the testimony of Sixtus of Sienna in consequence of which 10,000 to 12,000 Hebrew books were consigned to the flames in 1559. The latter, together with Joseph Moro, went before Pope Julius III. as a defamer of the Talmud, and these, with Ananel di Foligno, caused thousands upon thousands of copies of Hebrew books to be burned. similar accusation, made by Asher of Udine in the same year, resulted in the confiscation of every Hebrew book in the city of Prague. Alexander, a baptized Jew, drew up for the tyrannical Pope Pius V. the points of accusation against the Jews, their faith,

A

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their liturgy, upon which their expulsion was decreed in 1596. In Germany the first that became an accuser of his former coreligionists was Pesach, who, as a Christian, assumed the name of Peter in 1399. He charged the Jews with uttering blasphemous words against Jesus in the prayer 'Alentj, the letters of pi"l1 (" and vanity "), he said, being identical in numerical value with the name 1£J" ("Jesus"). The

and

of Prague were cast into prison, and many were killed because of the accusation. In the calamity that befell the Jews of Trent and Ratisbon three Apostates took a leading part "Wolfkan, who brought against the Jews the charge of slaying children for the ritual use of their blood; Hans Vayol, who had the effrontery to accuse the aged rabbi of Ratisbon of this crime, and Peter Schwartz,

Jews



who

published slanderous accusations against his former coreligionists, and had the Jews of Ratisbon brought to the church to listen to his insulting harangues. As regards another apostate, Victor von Karben, a man of little Talmudic knowledge, he was merely a willing tool in the hand of the fanatical Dominicans of Cologne in their attacks upon the Talmud and the Jews, as is seen by the material he furnished for Ortuin de Graes's book, "De Vita et Moribus Judfeorum, " Cologne, 1504. The climax, however, was reached by Joseph Pfefferkorn, of Bohemia. A butcher by trade, a man of little learning and of immoral Joseph conduct, convicted of burglary and Pfeffer- condemned to imprisonment, but rekorn. leased upon payment of a fine, he was admitted to baptism about 1505, and, under the name of " John " Pfeff crkorn, lent his name to a large number of anti -Jewish writings published by the Dominicans of Cologne. His first hook, " Judenspiegel, oder Speculum Hortationis, " written in 1507, contained charges, in somewhat milder form, against the Jews and the Talmud, though he rebuked them for their usury, and urged them to join Christianity, and at the same time admonished the people and princes to check the usury and burn the Talmudic books of the Jews. But this was soon followed by books each more violent than the other. These were " Die Judenbeichte, " 1508 " Das Osterbuch," 1509; "Der Judenfeind," 1509. He insisted that all Jews should be either expelled from Germany or employed as street-cleaners and chimneysweeps that every copy of the Talmud and rabbinical books should be taken away from the Jews, and that every Jewish house be ransacked for this purBut though Reuchlin was called upon to pose. participate in this warfare against the Talmud, he exposed the Dominicans and the character of Pfefferkorn, their tool. Entire Christendom was drawn into the great battle between the Talmud defamers and





the Talmud defenders, the friends of enlightenment siding with the Jews. Nor were Von Karben and Pfefferkorn the only ones of their kind. The monks were only too willing to use others as their tools. One of these was Pfaff Rapp by some said also to have been called Pfefferkorn in Halle, for whom even John Pfeffer-

— —

korn

felt disgust.

He was burned

iug committed sacrilegious theft.

at the stake, hav