‘unbelievers.’  The word Hep (said to be the initials of Hierosolyma est perdita, Jerusalem is taken) throughout all the cities of the empire became the signal for massacres, and if an insensate monk sounded it along the streets, it threw the rabble into paroxysms of murderous rage.  The choice of death or conversion was given to the Jews; but few were found willing to purchase their life by that form of perjury.  Rather than subject their offspring to conversion and such Christian training, fathers presented their breast to the sword after putting their children to death, and wives and virgins sought refuge from the brutality of the soldiers by throwing themselves into the river with stones fastened to their bodies.” (McClintock and Strong Cyclop., 4, 908 f.)

All this happened under the most Christian rule of the Popes.  The characteristic temper of the Jew in the Middle Ages, his fierce hatred of Christianity, his sullen mood, his blasphemous treatment of matters and objects sacred to Christians, are the result of the treatment he received even from the members and high officials of the Church.  Now here comes Rome in our day asserting the kindness and generosity shown the Jews by their Popes, because these afforded them shelter in the Ghetto of the Holy City!  How differently, they say, was this from the treatment accorded the Jews by Luther.  Why, these Catholic writers do not tell the hundredth part of the truth about the attitude of their Church to the Jews in the Middle Ages.

Let this be remembered when Luther’s remarks about the Jews are taken up for study.  He is very outspoken against them; his utterances, however, relate for the most part to the false teaching and religious practises, to their perversion of the text and the meaning of the Scriptures, and to the blasphemies which they utter against God, Jesus Christ, and His Church, and to the lies which they assiduously spread about the Christian religion.  In all that Luther says against the Jews under this head he is simply discharging the functions of a teacher of Christianity; for Scripture says that it was given also “for reproof” (2 Tim. 3, 16).  No one can be a true theologian without being polemical on occasion.  In another class of his references to the Jews Luther refers to their character:  their arrogance and pride, their stiffneckedness and contumacy, their greed and avarice, which makes their presence in any land a public calamity.  Though their church and state has long been overthrown, and they are a people without a country, homeless wanderers on the face of the earth, they still boast of being “the people of God,” and are indulging the wildest dreams about the reestablishment of their ancient kingdom.  They are looking for a Messiah who will be a secular prince, and will make them all barons living in beautiful castles and receiving the tribute of the Goyim.  One may reason and plead with them and show them that their belief contradicts their