446 THE MIDDLE AGES. A.D. 1049-1294.
The path of anti-Semitism was early struck by Church and Christian state. The mediaeval legislation followed closely the precedent of earlier enactments.1 The synod of Elvira, 306, forbade Christians to eat with Jews and intermarry with them. Theodosius II., 489, excluded them from holding pub lic office. The civil edicts, offering the alternative of baptism or death, were inaugurated by King Sisibut of Spain. When princes, as in Lyons, protected Jewish merchants, prelates violently protested, as did Agobard, archbishop of Lyons, apostle as he was in some particulars of modern enlighten ment.2 Among the enactments of this period are the follow ing: The Jews were forbidden to employ Christian nurses, servants, or laborers, to publicly sell meat, to work on Sun days or feast days, to employ Christian physicians,3 or to practise usury, and were commanded to make a money pay ment to the priest at Easter, and to wear a distinguishing patch or other object on their garments. On the other hand, Christians were forbidden to attend Jewish funerals and marriages, and were punished for borrowing from Jews.
None of the regulations was so humiliating as the one requiring the Jew to wear a distinguishing costume or a distinguishing patch upon his garments. This patch was ordered placed on the chest, or on both chest and back, so that the wearer might be distinguished from afar, as of old the leper was known by his cry " unclean," and that Chris tians might be prevented from ignorantly having carnal con nection with the despised people. At the instance of Stephen Langton the synod of Oxford, 1222, prescribed a woollen patch, and Edward I., 1275, ordered the yellow patch worn by all over seven. Louis IX. ordered that the color of the
1 See art. The Treatment of the Jews, in Bibl. Sac., 190o. 552 sqq. and the authorities there cited.
2 Agobard wrote five tracts against the Jews. See Wiegand's instructive brochure, Agobard von Lyon und die Judenfrage, Erl., 1901. Agobard asserted that Judaism and Christianity were as far apart as Ebal and Gerizim.
3 The reason given by the synod of Salamanca, 1335, against the employ ment of Jewish physicians was that they were bent upon the extermination of the Christians.
§ 77. THE JEWS. 447
patch should be red or saffron, the king of England that it should be yellow. Its size and shape were matters of minute enactment. The Fourth Lateran gave the weight of its great authority to this regulation about dress, and decreed that it should be enforced everywhere. Dr. Graetz pronounces this law the culminating blow in the humiliation of his kinsmen. He declares that Innocent III. brought more misery upon the Jews than all their enemies had done before, and charges him with being the first pope who turned the inhuman se verity of the Church against them.1
The position Innocent took was that God intended the Jews to be kept, like Cain, the murderer, to wander about on the earth designed by their guilt for slavery till the time should come in the last days for their conversion.2
With this view, the theologians coincided. Peter the Ven erable, a half-century before Innocent, presented the case in the same aspect as did the great pope, and launched a fear ful denunciation against the Jews. In a letter to Louis VII. of France, he exclaimed, " What would it profit to fight against enemies of the cross in remote lands, while the wicked Jews, who blaspheme Christ, and who are much worse than the Saracens, go free and unpunished. Much more are the Jews to be execrated and hated than the Sara cens ; for the latter accept the birth from the Virgin, but the Jews deny it, and blaspheme that doctrine and all Chris tian mysteries. God does not want them to be wholly ex terminated, but to be kept, like the fratricide Cain, for still more severe torment and disgrace. In this way God's most just severity has dealt with the Jews from the time of Christ's passion, and will continue to deal with them to the end of the world, for they are accursed, and deserve to be."3 He coun selled that they be spoiled of their ill-gotten gains and the money derived from their spoliation be applied to wrest the holy places from the Saracens.
1 VII. 4, 16.
2 In letters to Alfonso of Castile, 1205, and to the count of Nevers, 1208.
3 ad majus tormentum et ad majorem ignominiam . . . sic de damnatis damnandisque Judaeis, lib, IV. ep. 36 ; Migne's ed., vol. 189, 365-367,