dlowan wrote:Hmmmmm - seems to me that several of us are speaking from countries with strong European cultural roots. I, for one. Remember, Great Britain has a strong anti-Semitic history as well, though spared some of the excesses of the Inquisition.
That's a non-starter. In every instance in which Jews were expelled from Britain, one can demonstrate that Jews were owed, in the aggregate, a great deal of money by the royal family and the "overmighty lords." There is no history of pogroms in Britain, although a casual anti-semitism is apparent--even the great bleeding heart of Dickens felt no qualm about ascribing vile character to Fagin in
Oliver Twist. After each expulsion, the Jews drifted back, and the illegal entry was overlooked, because in ages with no banking and no credit instruments, their primitive forms of venture capitalism were essential to an otherwise almost lifeless exchange economy. Usually, this meant that they were a prey of petty theives and blackmailers, but Charles II put an end to that after the Restoration. When you read this, keep in mind that i am entirely of Irish descent, and throughout most of my young adulthood, grew increasingly enraged at the Brits as i learned more about their pogroms against the Irish--one can not reasonably allege that i am a commentator biased in favor of the Brits. Catholics in Ireland and in Britain suffered far more in the 148 years from the passage of the Acts of Suppression to the Catholic Emancipation Act than did Jews in the entire history of the kingdom.
As for the Inquisition, in 350 years, they executed about 5,000 people (Catholic academics in Spain insist the number is closer to 3,000). There is a wealth of documentation from court records that people convicted of civil crimes attempted to commit heretical acts or make heretical statements in the hope of being turned over to the Inquisition, as the universal opinion of Spanish peasants was that they would be far and away better off in the church prisons than in royal prisons. The Indies Commission, created at the instigation of Las Casas, the priest who accompanied Columbus' first expedition to the "new world," was a branch of the Inquisition the purpose of which was to regulate the treatment of the indigenous populations of the Spanish empire. Although we many not think much of how they lived as
reparmientos, they were no worse off than the
peons of Estramadura, from which the overwhelming majority of
Conquistadores came, and many of whom, such as Pizarro, had been
peons themselves, until the
Reconquista and the
Conquista of the new world offered them a military path out of poverty. By contrast, in Germany, tens of thousands of people, mostly women, were executed as witches in the 17th century alone--conservative estimates run to 30,000, and not unreasonable scholars put the figure at between 60- and 80,000.
Additionally, in Germany and Poland, Jews were strictly regulated. In Germany, most cities had regulations which prohibited Jews with estates of less than a set figure to inhabit the city, thereby making the stereotype of the rich Jew moneylender a self-fulfilling prophecy. In 1763, against his inclinations, Moses Mendelssohn (grandfather of the brilliant composer, Felix Mendelssohn-Bartholdy) petitioned Frederick II for a release from legal disabilities, and status as
Schutzjude, a "protected Jew," meaning he would have unrestricted rights of residence in Berlin (and Berlin only). Jews in Berlin needed royal permission to marry, or change residence, and in Berlin, could only do so if upon the occasion of their wedding, they purchased a set amount of porcelain from the state factory in Berlin. Mendelssohn started out as a street sweeper (streets were then so full of horse manure that they required sweeping several times a day), and had made himself a wealthy man, and a valued director of many christian commercial enterprises. He highly valued education, and pursued his own to the extent that he was by then known as "the Socrates of Germany." He also unflinchingly worked for Jewish emancipation, and so was also known as "the Luther of the German Jews."
Schutzjude status was heritable, but only by a single child of the holder of that status. Mendelssohn at first held out against the petition, as being a surrender to institutionalized anti-semitism, but christian friends convinced him that he could best work for other Jews if he had the special status. In the history of monarchical Europe, Frederick is accounted, justifiably, one of the most, if not the most enlightened and tolerant of rulers. Nevertheless, he managed to "lose" the petition, and had to be harried by the likes of Lessing and Kant to sign the new petition which was promptly drawn up. He once said: "To oppress the Jews never brought any propserity to any government." Nevertheless, Frederick refused to admit Mendelssohn to the Academy in Berlin, saying it would give offense to the Empress of Russia (Catherine II, formerly the German princess Sophia of Anhalt-Dessau) who had recently been made a member; and when he took part in the first partition of Poland, expelled from those districts any Jew with an estate worth less than 1000 crowns (the old self-fulfilling stereotype of the rich Jew moneylender). This was a man who was considered a radical for his "tolerance."
All in all, were i to wake up tomorrow a Jew in 17th century Europe, i'd haul my fat @ss to Britain just as fast as i could; if i woke up tomorrow accused of heresy, i'd hope like hell it were the Inquisition i faced, and not the tender mercy of the Lutherans, the Calvinists or the Anabaptists.
But old stereotypical prejudices die hard, don't they, my good Protestant friends?
