The Jewish communities of the Iberian Peninsula had an origin story that placed their arrival in the peninsula after the destruction of the first temple in Jerusalem by the Babylonian King Nebuchadnezzar II in 587 BCE. Actual archaeological evidence (mostly tombstones), however, only testifies to their presence in the Iberian Peninsula during the Roman Empire and it is more likely that Jewish communities gradually established themselves in the Roman province of Hispania as the exiled Jewish diaspora spread across the Mediterranean following the destruction of the Second Temple by the Romans in 70 CE. Although they were persecuted during the post-Roman period in which the Christian Visigothic kings ruled the peninsula, the Jewish communities flourished economically and culturally in the wake of the Muslim invasion in 711 and Islamic takeover of most of the Iberian Peninsula. When the Muslim Umayyad caliphate of Cordoba collapsed in 1031, the various Christian kingdoms of the north (Portugal, Castile–León, Navarre and the Crown of Aragón) slowly began to expand southwards and increasing numbers of Jews came under Christian rule.

Until the end of the fourteenth century, Jews, Christians, and Muslims living in the various Christian kingdoms of the Iberian Peninsula coexisted in their daily lives—what historians have described as convivencia—although interfaith tensions always existed. The Jews who came under Christian rule were granted the same status as Jewish communities elsewhere in Christian Europe and their inferior status (relative to the dominant Christians) was enshrined in laws that threatened fierce punishments for Jews (and Muslims) whose actions threatened the religious status quo. Nonetheless, the frontier conditions in the Iberian Peninsula continued to create favourable economic conditions for Jews as Christian rulers, short of resources and manpower in their newly conquered lands, were keen to protect their Jewish subjects and to offer them inducements to remain under their authority.

In comparison with the Jewish communities of other areas of Europe, the size of the Jewish population in the Iberian Peninsula appears to have been large. Although the available evidence is scant, it is sufficient to allow historians to confi-dently guestimate that there were around a quarter million Jews in Castile alone in the fourteenth century, a number that may well have approached three hundred thousand if Portugal and the lands of the Crown of Aragón are included.

The previous chapter has examined developments in how medieval Christian theologians perceived Judaism and the Jews. This chapter departs from the discourses of theologians on the status of Jews to focus on the evolving perception of the Jews in medieval Christian society more generally. The Christian notion of a relationship between the Jews and the Devil and of a perpetual curse afflicting Jews and distinguishing them from Gentiles has its origins firmly in the New Testament, namely Matthew 27:24–25 (“His blood is on us and on our children”) and John 8:44 (“You belong to your father, the devil”). The medieval period witnessed what Joshua Trachtenberg accurately described in 1943 as a normalization of the representation of the Jew as an “alien, evil, antisocial, and anti-human creature, essentially subhuman,” a demonic Jew who “was born of a combination of cultural and historical factors peculiar to Christian Europe in the later Middle Ages.”

The rise of an anti-Jewish discourse that demonized Jews in western Christendom occurred gradually and at the same time as Jewish communities were expanding not just in terms of their demographic and geographical distribution but also in terms of their economic significance. Jewish merchants and their families seeking economic opportunities migrated northwards from the Mediterranean area and established themselves across France, Germany, and (after the Norman Conquest in 1066) England. The expanding economy and urban centres of medieval western Europe as well as the Church's prohibition on Christians lending money at interest encouraged Jewish migration and involvement in moneylending and tax farming. It also encouraged Christians to perceive usury and Jewish economic activity as synonymous, entrenching an image of Jews in Christian eyes as parasitical and rapacious moneylenders.

This chapter assesses the way in which Jews were dehumanized and demonized in medieval Europe. It departs from the theological discussions in the treatises and polemics of the previous chapter to focus on what could be described as “popular” anti-Jewish beliefs, prejudices, and stereotypes in the medieval period. The use of the term “popular” is employed to denote various ideas and concepts about Jews that were not officially endorsed by the medieval papacy but which were expressed in popular folklore, medieval iconography, or the writings of some churchmen.

Historical anachronism—the utilization or application by historians of concepts or key terms that did not exist in the period that they are studying—has long been held to constitute one of the cardinal sins that historians can commit. Accusations of historical anachronism have generated many debates amongst historians and the appropriateness of using the term “antisemitism” to refer to anti-Jewish rhetoric and sentiment expressed in the western world prior to the nineteenth century, and especially in the medieval period, is a salient example. Furthermore, the debate has been complicated considerably by the fact that there is no consensus about the definition of the term “antisemitism” itself or even whether the term should be spelled “antisemitism” or “anti-Semitism.” Whilst “antisemitism” is commonly used as a generic shorthand for a hatred of Jews, such a definition is far too general to be used uncritically by historians seeking to examine the complexities of pre-modern Christian–Jew-ish relations. This chapter sets out to examine the different ways in which historians have used the term “antisemitism” in a medieval context since the late nineteenth century. The existing literature on the history of “antisemitism” and Christian–Jewish relations is vast and this chapter will present only a concise analysis of the heated controversies generated by the use of the term “antisemitism.” As the concept of “race” is considered to be vital to any definition of “antisemitism,” it then endeavours to survey the different perspectives of scholars (both historians and non-historians) on the existence of “race” in Europe during the Middle Ages.

It has been repeatedly and rightly pointed out that the term itself was apparently first used by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904), who founded the League of Antisemites (Antisemiten-Liga) in 1879, and it became popularized by Marr and others in the 1880s. Moreover, for many historians of antisemitism, the concept carries a clear racial component. Marr and other antisemites defined Jews collectively by their supposedly shared ethnicity and “racial identity” as “Semites” rather than their adherence to the religion of Judaism in order to distinguish them from “Aryans.”

It was noted in the first chapter of this book that many modern historians have described the use of the term “antisemitism” before the nineteenth century as an anachronism. These historians have argued that the history of anti-Jewish rhetoric should instead be divided into a “religious” pre-modern period and a “racial” modern period. In many respects, however, this is even more of a historical anachronism. Moreover, it is a dangerous anachronism since it has been conveniently used by modern Catholic and Protestant theologians and apologists to diminish or even negate the responsibility of their churches in the horrors of the twentieth-century holocaust.

The developments in anti-Jewish thought and rhetoric in the medieval period were, from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onward, complex and cannot be labelled as merely amounting to an “anti-Judaism” based on a hostility to Judaism as a rival religious movement. Likewise, the concentra-tion on race as the defining feature of modern antisemitism oversimplifies its multifaceted nature. Modern antisemitism has been, and continues to be, characterized by a range of beliefs that go beyond the obsession with defining Jews as a distinct race. These are (i) the fixation on a secret Jewish conspiracy to take political and economic control of the world by subverting Christian society; (ii) the belief that modern Jews follow a form of Judaism that has been perverted by the Talmud and which incites them to undermine Christian society and attack Gentiles in general and Christians in particular; and (iii) the equation of Judaism and Jewish ethnicity.

Whilst the medieval papacy was more-or-less consistent in espousing the Augustinian position of a grudging toleration of the Jews as a “witness people,” it is important to note that its position was not always followed by many Christians, including many men of the Church. By the end of the medieval period, circa 1500, the notion that the Jews were intrinsically inclined to evil and the conflation of Judaism and Jewish ethnicity had become common across Europe. In a short pamphlet detailing a host desecration allegation printed in 1510, the German printer Hieronymus Höltzel, for example, asserted that a Jew attacking a consecrated host was acting out a “hate” and “envy” that was “congenital” (angeboren) among Jews.

In the first three centuries after the crucifixion of Christ, the relationship of the early church with Jews was dominated by anxieties about the identity of Christianity as a separate religious movement whose faithful included Gentiles as well as Jews. The debate between the Apostles Paul and Peter over circumcision and the decision to abandon compulsory circumcision “in the flesh” (the Old Covenant) did not abate worries that Jews would influence early Christians to “judaize.” This chapter, however, focuses on the perception of the Jew in Christian thought after Christianity became the dominant religious movement in the Mediterranean Basin and Western Europe. Its focus is on thinkers in Western (Roman Catholic) Christendom from the fifth century to the close of the fifteenth century.

What status should Jews, who refuse to accept Christ's Messiahship, have in a majority Christian society? This question exercised the minds and drained the inkwells of numerous Christian theologians throughout the medieval period. As it will become clear in this chapter, the work of St. Augustine in the early fifth century helped to establish a theological framework for a form of grudging religious pluralism in which Jews had a place in Christian society. The Augustinian concept of the Jews as a “witness people” to be tolerated proved to be enduring and became the guiding policy of the papacy. From the twelfth and thirteenth centuries onward, however, many theologians were influenced by the works of Jewish converts to Christianity and their “revelations” about the Talmud and rabbinical Judaism. The result was a distinct hardening of attitudes towards Jews and, in some cases, a renewed questioning of their status in Christian society. Just as significantly, the rise of a polemical Christian tradition that focused on the Talmud was to have very serious consequences for Christian–Jewish relations in the modern era.

St. Augustine's “Witness People”

The first Christian theologian to formulate a clear status for Jews in a majority Christian society was the prolific theolo-gian St. Augustine, bishop of Hippo in North Africa (354–430). To understand Augustine's doctrine regarding the Jews, it is important to remember the historical context in which the bishop was writing.

In October 2012, I was invited to give a research seminar paper on anti-Jewish propaganda produced in the late medieval and early modern Iberian world at an Australian university. The title of the paper included the term “antisemitic propaganda” and the terms “antisemitic” and “antisemitism” were used a few times during the paper. In the question and answer session that followed the paper, several academics in the audience—historians of twentieth-century Europe—vigorously questioned the appropriateness of using the concept of “antisemitism” in a pre-modern context. I was forcefully reminded that antisemitism is a “racial hatred of Jews,” linked to the rise of “scientific racism” in the nineteenth century. Therefore, whilst “modern” hatred of Jews is racial, pre-modern hatred of Jews was distinguished and defined by its purely religious character. It was the height of absurdity, a terrible anachronism even, for a historian to use the concept of “antisemitism” in a medieval or early modern context.

Such a reaction will not come as a surprise to historians who have worked on the subject of anti-Jewish sentiment and propaganda in medieval Christian Europe. “Antisemitism” is certainly a nineteenth-century term that defies any facile attempt to define it. Kenneth L. Marcus has articulated the crux of the problem:

In a twenty-first-century context, “antisemitism” has been used to define, alternatively, a refusal to recognize the legitimacy of the existence of a Jewish homeland (the State of Israel), criticism of Zionism as an ideology and movement, or indeed sometimes even criticism of Israeli government policies in Gaza and the West Bank. Some writers have even argued that these now constitute a “new” form of “antisemitism,” adding another layer of complexity to the problem of defining “antisemitism.” Even if it is reduced to its vaguest (and most imperfect) definition as “a hatred of Jews,” the use of “antisemitism” is problematic. Does it merely mean a hatred of Jews defined as a specific racial/ethnic group?