Selections of St. John Fisher’s Writings on the Jews

Compiled from Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio (1523), De Veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia (c. 1527), and the English Works (sermons, c. 1508–1535). All passages are direct quotations from the scanned texts. Latin passages are accompanied by English translations; Early Modern English passages are reproduced verbatim with modernised glosses.

Preface: The Shape of the Corpus

St. John Fisher (1469–1535), Bishop of Rochester, Chancellor of Cambridge, and cardinal martyr under Henry VIII, was one of the foremost Catholic controversialists of the early Reformation. His principal Latin works — the Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio (a point-by-point refutation of Luther’s condemned articles) and the eucharistic treatise against Oecolampadius — are primarily anti-Protestant in character. His English works, printed by Wynkyn de Worde, comprise sermons on the Penitential Psalms, memorial sermons, a sermon against Luther preached before Henry VIII, and a Good Friday sermon on the Crucifix.

None of these four works is a dedicated adversus Judaeos treatise. Fisher belongs to the tradition of scholastic polemicists for whom anti-Jewish theology is embedded in larger arguments — supersessionist typology underpinning ecclesiology, the abrogation of the Mosaic Law underpinning sacramental theology, and the Passion narrative underpinning devotional preaching — rather than a free-standing polemical genre.

The Adversus Judaeos content identified in these texts operates in five registers:

  1. Supersessionism — the Synagogue of the Jews as the shadow and figure of the Christian Church; the Jewish people as the figure (figura) of the Christian people; the Old Covenant as an anticipatory shadow now fulfilled and replaced.
  2. Abrogation of the Mosaic Law — the Law given to the Jews characterised as fearful, cruel, and merciless; superseded by the law of liberty, grace, and mercy brought by Christ.
  3. Deicide and collective responsibility — the Jews as those who crucified the Lord of eternal glory, not knowing His Godhead; the “cruel Jews” at the Passion actively named as agents.
  4. Abolition of Jewish sacrifice and worship — the oblations and sacrifices of the Jews in the Old Law explicitly declared abolished and no longer pleasing to God.
  5. Jewish Cabala as parallel to (and inferior to) Christian tradition — the Cabala cited as the Jews‘ own unwritten oral tradition, used to legitimate Christian apostolic tradition against Luther while simultaneously framing the Jews as a people whose own precedent validates extra-scriptural authority.

Sixteen verified passages are presented below, ordered thematically. Each entry includes the original Latin or Early Modern English text, a translation or gloss where needed, the source work, and a brief note.

I. The Synagogue as Shadow of the Church

Source: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article XXV (also De Veritate Corporis, same passage)

Latin

“Palam est igitur Synagogam Iudaeorum, ecclesiae (quae iam Christianorum est) umbram quandam fuisse, & populum illum huius populi fuisse figuram. Sed & iter quod illi per solitudinem egerunt versus terram eis promissam, nostrum iter, quod per huius mundi desertum agimus, versus patriam caelestem, quae nobis est promissa, significat.”

Translation

“It is therefore clear that the Synagogue of the Jews was a certain shadow of the Church (which is now the Church of Christians), and that that people was a figure of this people. Moreover, the journey which they made through the wilderness toward the land promised to them signifies our journey, which we make through the desert of this world toward the heavenly homeland promised to us.”

Note

This passage is the most sustained supersessionist statement in the corpus and appears in both surviving Latin works (Articles XXV of the Assertionis and the corresponding section of the eucharistic treatise), confirming it as a considered doctrinal position rather than an incidental remark. The typological argument is systematic: the Synagogue is not merely surpassed but explicitly designated as a shadow (umbra), an anticipatory, incomplete image of the reality that is the Christian Church. The Jewish people are a figura — a figure or type — of the Christian people, meaning they existed, in Fisher’s theology, primarily as a prophetic prefiguration of those who came after. Fisher develops the typology further in the same passage:

II. Pharaoh, Egypt, and the Jews as Figures of Christian Realities

Source: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article XXV (also De Veritate Corporis)

Latin

“nempe Pharaoni, diabolum; Aegypto, peccatum; Exitui ab Aegypto, exitum a peccati tenebris; Iudaeis, Christianos; itineri, itineri; deserto, mundum; caelestem patriam, Iudaea: ita Moisen & Aaron velut umbras item quarundam suis veritatibus respondere necesse est. Et hi nimirum sunt Christus & Petrus.”

Translation

“Pharaoh corresponds to the devil; Egypt, to sin; the Exodus from Egypt, to the departure from the darkness of sin; the Jews, to Christians; the journey, to the journey; the desert, to the world; the heavenly homeland, to Judaea: so too Moses and Aaron, as shadows of certain realities, must correspond to their truths. And these are, without doubt, Christ and Peter.”

Note

The typological substitution here is total and explicit. The Jews, as a historical collective, serve the function of a type for Christians: they are not valued in themselves but as prophetic placeholders whose role is exhausted once the antitype — the Christian people — arrives. Pharaoh becomes the devil; Egypt becomes sin; Judaea becomes heaven; and the Jewish people as a whole become Christians. Moses and Aaron are shadows of Christ and Peter respectively. The theology is not original to Fisher — it belongs to the Pauline-Augustinian interpretive tradition — but its systematic deployment across both major Latin works indicates Fisher’s deliberate embrace of the full supersessionist framework.

III. The Jews as Killers of the Preachers of Christ

Source: De Veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia

Latin

“…vt & Judaei occiderent praedicatores Christi, putantes se officium Deo facere.”

Translation

“…so that the Jews would kill the preachers of Christ, thinking they were doing a service to God.”

Note

The passage draws on Christ’s own prediction in John 16:2 — “the hour is coming when whoever kills you will think he is offering service to God” — and applies it directly and specifically to the Jews as the agents of the persecution. The phrase putantes se officium Deo facere is a conscious echo of the Gospel text, making the Jews‘ homicidal activity not merely culpable but self-deceived: they killed in the name of the very God whose servants they were slaying. Fisher uses this point in a larger argument about the providential order of historical eras, in which Jewish persecution of Christians precedes the Gentile persecutions under Rome — establishing the Jews as the first persecutors of Christ’s Church.

IV. Josephus as a Sharer in the Perfidy of the Jews

Source: De Veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia

Latin

“…perfidiae Judaeorum fuisse consortem, in hoc ipso sermone, quem de eorum supplicio manifestavit. Quorum (inquit) arma deseruit, eorum tamen sacrilegia non reliquit. Deploravit rerum ruinam, sed ipsorum ruinae causam noluit intelligere.”

Translation

“…[Josephus] was a sharer in the perfidy of the Jews, in that very discourse in which he made known their punishment. ‘He abandoned their arms,’ [says the source], ‘yet did not abandon their sacrileges. He lamented the ruin of their affairs, but refused to understand the cause of their own ruin.'”

Note

Fisher here cites Hegesippus (the Latin paraphrase of Josephus, attributed in his time to St. Ambrose) to turn Josephus’s Jewish War against its author: even as Josephus describes the destruction of Jerusalem as punishment, he fails to grasp why the punishment fell, because he remained complicit in the Jews‘ rejection of Christ — their perfidia. The word perfidia, a technical term in medieval and early modern Catholic theological language for Jewish unbelief, is used without qualification. Fisher’s use of Josephus here is characteristic of the adversus Judaeos tradition: the Jewish historian is usable as witness to Jewish suffering and punishment but condemned for his failure to draw the correct theological conclusion from the evidence he himself provides.

V. Christian Sacraments Surpass the Sacraments of the Jews

Source: De Veritate Corporis et Sanguinis Christi in Eucharistia

Latin

“…nostra Sacramenta Judaeorum praestent Sacramentis, non podum non in hoc inferiores nobis esse, tametsi fide quidam eorum fuerint superiores.”

Translation

“…our Sacraments surpass the Sacraments of the Jews, [we] being in this respect no whit inferior to them, though some of them were superior to us in faith.”

Note

The argument occurs in the context of a debate about the relationship between Old Testament and New Testament rites, in which Fisher follows Augustine’s position that Christian sacraments are of a superior order to Jewish ones. The concession that “some of them were superior to us in faith” refers to the faith of individual Old Testament figures (Abraham, Moses, David) — a standard scholastic qualification that does not soften the structural claim: the Jewish sacramental system is now subordinate to and surpassed by the Christian.

VI. Deicide: They Would Never Have Crucified Him Had They Known

Source: English Works — A Sermon… upon a Good Friday (c. 1526)

Early Modern English

“For as Sainct Paule fiiyeth, si cognouiffent nunquam dominum gloriae crucifixiffent, That is to faye, if they had knowne the fonne of God, which was and is the Lorde of euerlafting glorie, they voulde neuer haue crucified hym. They fawe his manhood which was in outwarde fight, but they fawe not hys Godheade whyoh was coueried within the fame.”

Gloss

“For as Saint Paul saith, si cognovissent nunquam Dominum gloriae crucifixissent — that is to say, if they had known the Son of God, which was and is the Lord of everlasting glory, they would never have crucified Him. They saw His manhood, which was in outward sight, but they saw not His Godhead, which was covered within the same.”

Note

This is Fisher’s most direct statement on the Deicide question. The Pauline text (1 Corinthians 2:8) is deployed in the classic adversus Judaeos manner: the Jews‘ ignorance is presented not as an exculpating factor but as evidence of their spiritual incapacity. The framing is carefully structured — they saw the manhood but could not perceive the Godhead hidden within — which places their failure in the category of moral and spiritual blindness rather than mere factual ignorance. They had before them all that was needed to recognise the Lord of glory; their failure to do so reflects on their condition, not on the evidence available to them.

VII. The Cruel Jews at the Passion

Source: English Works — A Sermon… upon a Good Friday

Early Modern English

“Thefe cruell lewes put vpon hys heade a Crowne of thornees, and preffod it downe vpon the fame, as hard as they myght prefle it by vyolence, beatyng it downe with a ftrong Reede. Et Arundine percuciebant caput eius. And hys bleffed heade fo Crowned, they dyd beate it downe with a gadde, or a harde Reede.”

Gloss

“These cruel Jews put upon His head a Crown of thorns, and pressed it down upon the same, as hard as they might press it by violence, beating it down with a strong reed. Et arundine percutiebant caput eius — And His blessed head, so crowned, they did beat it down with a rod, or a hard reed.”

Note

The epithet “cruel Jews” (lewes in the original) is used without qualification or distancing. Fisher is preaching devotional homiletics at its most direct: the Passion narrative is being narrated as an immediate present-tense reality for the congregation, and the agents of the cruelty are named by their collective identity. The Latin interjection (Et arundine percutiebant caput eius, from Matthew 27:30 / Mark 15:19) is incorporated into the vernacular text, reinforcing the scriptural grounding of the attribution. This passage belongs to the planctus tradition of Good Friday preaching, in which graphic enumeration of the sufferings of Christ serves to awaken compunction; but the explicit naming of the Jews as the instruments of cruelty is characteristic of the pre-conciliar homiletic tradition and is here unambiguous.

VIII. The Law Given to the Jews Was Fearful and Cruel

Source: English Works — Sermon on Psalm CXXX (De Profundis)

Early Modern English

“the lawe gyuen to the lewes was very feiefull and cruall, for that caufe named the lawe of feare and deth. But now all fuche feremonyea, ferafulnes, fubgeccyons, and craelte ordeyned for brekyngs of it be paft and done, As foynt Poule fayth a newe lawe is made and publyffhed whiche is the lawe of lyberte and grace, the lawe of lyfe and mercy.”

Gloss

“The law given to the Jews was very fearful and cruel, for that cause named the law of fear and death. But now all such ceremonies, fearfulness, subjections, and cruelty ordained for breakings of it be past and done. As Saint Paul saith, a new law is made and published, which is the law of liberty and grace, the law of life and mercy.”

Note

Fisher’s characterisation of the Mosaic Law as “fearful and cruel” (feiefull and cruall) and specifically as the “law of fear and death” is a direct application of 2 Corinthians 3:6–7 (“the letter kills, but the Spirit gives life”) and Hebrews 10:28 (“Anyone who violated the law of Moses died without mercy”). The entire legal-ceremonial apparatus of Judaism is declared “past and done” — abrogated, finished, replaced. This is supersessionism applied to Jewish religious observance in its totality: not merely the Temple and its sacrifices (which were obviously defunct in Fisher’s day) but the entire body of Mosaic legislation as a living religious system. The contrast between the “law of fear and death” (Jewish) and the “law of liberty and grace” (Christian) is absolute.

IX. The Oblations and Sacrifices of the Jews Utterly Abolished

Source: English Works — Sermon on Psalm LI (Miserere)

Early Modern English

“Amonge the lewes in tholde lawe were certayne oblacyone and facrefycea whiche he now utterly fordone, they be no more pleafynge to almyghty god.”

Gloss

“Among the Jews in the old law were certain oblations and sacrifices which are now utterly abolished; they are no more pleasing to Almighty God.”

Note

The statement is unambiguous: Jewish religious worship, in the form of its sacrificial and oblatory system, is not merely superseded in the sense of being replaced by something better — it is no longer pleasing to God. Fisher is developing a typological argument in which the Old Law’s sacrificial rites were shadows (fhadowe or fygnie) of the true sacrifice of Christ, and whose meaning is therefore exhausted by the Crucifixion. Continued performance of these rites after the coming of Christ is, on this reading, not merely futile but displeasing to God, since it implicitly denies the sufficiency of Christ’s sacrifice.

X. The Jewish Cabala: Their Own Oral Tradition

Source: English Works — Sermon against Luther (Sermon Made Agaynst the Pernycyouse Doctryn of Martin Luthee, 1521)

Early Modern English

“Seynt Paule meaneth here by oure fathers the lewees. of whom we fpiritualy defcended. for Abraham that was theyr carnal fader is oures alfo fpirituall… yet was there many moo thynges which they fpoke vnwrytten that was of as grete authoryte, as that that was wrytten which the mayifter of lewes calleth cabala, which is deriued fro man to man. by mouthe onely & not by wrytynge.”

Gloss

“Saint Paul meaneth here by our fathers the Jews, of whom we spiritually descended, for Abraham that was their carnal father is ours also spiritual… yet were there many more things which they spoke unwritten that were of as great authority as that which was written, which the master of the Jews calleth Cabala, which is derived from man to man by mouth only and not by writing.”

Note

This passage is theologically double-edged. Fisher invokes the Jewish Cabala — the oral tradition of Jewish religious learning — as a precedent for the legitimacy of unwritten Christian apostolic tradition against Luther’s sola scriptura. The argumentative move is: if even the Jews recognised an authoritative oral tradition alongside their written scriptures, how much more must Christians accept the unwritten traditions of the Apostles? The Jews are thereby made witnesses against the Protestant position — their own religious practice refuting Luther’s claim that Scripture alone is the rule of faith. At the same time, Fisher’s framing establishes a hierarchy: the Jews‘ Cabala is an analogue of, but inferior to, the apostolic tradition; the Jews are “our fathers” only spiritually and only by way of Abraham, not by any continuing religious validity of their own. The Jews‘ own tradition is deployed to serve Christian polemic, while the Jews themselves remain, in the larger argument of the sermon, the rejected figura replaced by the Church.

XI. The Governance of the Synagogue Was But a Shadow of the Church — In English

Source: English Works — Sermon against Luther (1521)

Early Modern English

“the lawe of Moyfes. & the gouemannce of the fynagoge of the lewes. was but a fhadowe of the gouemaunceof the vniuerfal chirche of chrift. So fayth faynt Paole. vmbram habens lex futurorum bonorum. that is to fay the lawe had but a fhadowe of thyngea for to come. And ad corinthios. Omnia in figura contingebant illis. All theyr gouemaunnce was but a fygure & fhadowe of the chirche.”

Gloss

“The law of Moses and the governance of the Synagogue of the Jews was but a shadow of the governance of the universal Church of Christ. So saith Saint Paul: umbram habens lex futurorum bonorum — that is to say the law had but a shadow of things to come. And to the Corinthians: Omnia in figura contingebant illis — all their governance was but a figure and shadow of the Church.”

Note

This passage is the vernacular counterpart to the Latin supersessionist formulation in Entry I. Where the Assertionis and De Veritate make the argument in scholastic Latin, here Fisher preaches it directly to a lay audience at the English court in 1521. The structural move is identical — Paul’s two proof-texts (Hebrews 10:1 and 1 Corinthians 10:6) are deployed to collapse the entire Jewish legal and governmental apparatus into a mere prefiguration — but the register is pastoral rather than disputational. The word “governance” (gouemaunce) is significant: Fisher does not limit the shadow-claim to Jewish ritual but extends it to the whole constitutional order of the Mosaic polity. Everything the Jews were as a religious community is, in this formulation, merely the outline of what the Church is in substance.

XII. The Olive Tree: The Natural Boughs Cut Away

Source: English Works — Sermon on Psalm CXXXVI (Super flumina Babylonis, c. 1509–1535)

Early Modern English

“we came of the gentyles and grafled tb in the Tery olyne tree of fayth, fuffrynge the natuiall bowes of it to be cnt away, the olyue tree fygnefyeth the people of lewes.”

Gloss

“We came of the Gentiles and were grafted into the very olive tree of faith, suffering the natural boughs of it to be cut away; the olive tree signifieth the people of the Jews.”

Note

The image of the olive tree and its broken natural branches is drawn directly from Romans 11:17–21, Paul’s most concentrated statement on the supersession of Israel. Fisher applies it without qualification: the Jews are the natural boughs (natural bowes), now cut away; the Gentiles are the wild shoot grafted in to take their place. The passive construction — “suffering the natural boughs to be cut away” — does not mitigate the image but makes it a precondition of Gentile incorporation. The Jews‘ removal is what makes room for the Church.

XIII. The Jews Confirmed as Now Unbelieving

Source: Assertionis Lutheranae Confutatio, Article XXXV

Latin

“Caeterum Paulus propterea Deum omnia sub incredulitate conclusisse testatur, quod gentes prius fuissent incredulae, quemadmodum & nunc vicissim Iudaei sunt. Sic enim ait ad Romanos undecimo: Sicut enim aliquando & vos non credidistis Deo, nunc autem misericordiam consecuti estis propter incredulitatem illorum, ita & isti nunc non crediderunt in vestram misericordiam, ut & ipsi misericordiam consequantur.”

Translation

“Moreover, Paul testifies that God concluded all things under unbelief, because the Gentiles were formerly unbelieving — just as now in turn the Jews are. For thus he speaks in Romans eleven: ‘For as you also in times past did not believe God, but now have obtained mercy through their unbelief, so these also now have not believed, for your mercy, that they also may obtain mercy.'”

Note

The phrase quemadmodum & nunc vicissim Iudaei sunt — “just as now in turn the Jews are [unbelieving]” — is Fisher’s own doctrinal gloss inserted into his exposition of the Pauline text. He is not merely citing Paul; he is confirming, as a present theological fact in 1523, that the Jews are currently in a state of unbelief. The argument is made in the context of refuting Luther on original sin and free will, but the identification of the Jews‘ present incredulity as the structural parallel and providential cause of Gentile mercy is an anti-Jewish position stated as a settled axiom, requiring no argument. Fisher treats the continuing unbelief of the Jews as a theological datum on the same order of certainty as the Pauline text itself.

XIV. The Jews and the Tyrants: Manifest Enemies Who Killed the Body

Source: English Works — Sermon against Luther (1521)

Early Modern English

“for as for the lewes & the tyrauntee they were manyfeft enemyes vnto chryft & abhorred his fcripture. but thefe herytykes pretend a fpecyall fauour vnto chrift. & coloure all theyr herefyes wttA hia fcrypturea. The lewes & the tyrauntes whan they had flayn the bodyea of chriften men. yet they fent theyr foules to euerlaftyng glorye. but the heretykes mifconftruynge the fcriptures of god, by theyr falfe doctryne… doth kille the foules of chriften people.”

Gloss

“For as for the Jews and the tyrants, they were manifest enemies unto Christ and abhorred his scripture. But these heretics pretend a special favour unto Christ and colour all their heresies with his scriptures. The Jews and the tyrants, when they had slain the bodies of Christian men, yet they sent their souls to everlasting glory. But the heretics, misconstruing the scriptures of God by their false doctrine, do kill the souls of Christian people.”

Note

Fisher’s rhetorical strategy here is to intensify the condemnation of Luther by comparing him unfavourably with the Jews. The Jews are cast as straightforward, declared enemies — their hostility is at least honest. They killed the bodies of Christians; heretics like Luther kill souls, which is a graver crime. The comparison is not exculpatory of the Jews: calling them “manifest enemies unto Christ” who “abhorred his scripture” is an explicit theological condemnation. But the comparative structure — Jews worse than Roman tyrants, heretics worse than Jews — places the Jews firmly in a hierarchy of enmity toward Christ, used as a rhetorical baseline from which Lutheran heresy is then measured as an even deeper apostasy.

XV. The Inflexible Cruelty of the Jews at the Nailing

Source: English Works — A Sermon… upon a Good Friday

Early Modern English

“whan cruelly without mercy or pyte his mooft tender body fo fore beten was lyfte vpon the crofle, there ryolently uayled bothe handes and fete with giete and boyftoua nayles of yren. inflexyble and meruaylons craelte of the lewes, how fwyftly came the blode out at that tyme from thofe latge and grete woandes.”

Gloss

“when cruelly without mercy or pity his most tender body, so sore beaten, was lifted upon the Cross, there violently nailed both hands and feet with great and boisterous nails of iron — the inflexible and marvellous cruelty of the Jews — how swiftly came the blood out at that time from those large and great wounds.”

Note

The phrase inflexyble and meruaylons craelte of the lewes is a rhetorical apostrophe — Fisher breaks out of narrative description to address or characterise the cruelty of the Jews directly. The word inflexyble (inflexible, unbending) is morally loaded: it implies a will that refused to be moved by the sight of suffering, a hardness of heart that persisted throughout the Passion. This is not a description of individual perpetrators but of the collective moral character attributed to the Jews as a group at the moment of the Crucifixion. The passage is structurally consistent with the earlier cruell lewes apostrophe (Entry VII) and confirms that this characterisation is habitual in Fisher’s Good Friday preaching rather than incidental.

XVI. The Devils’ Engines Exceed Even the Malice of the Jews

Source: English Works — A Sermon… upon a Good Friday

Early Modern English

“Looke howe far the mallice and wit of the diuils paffeth the mallice and witte of the lewes, fo farre exceede the engynea which the diuilles haue conceiued and forged for the dampned fouleB to be tormented. Aboue them that the lewes malicioufly deuyfed agaynft our fauiour Chrift.”

Gloss

“Look how far the malice and wit of the devils passeth the malice and wit of the Jews, so far exceed the engines which the devils have conceived and forged for the damned souls to be tormented — above those that the Jews maliciously devised against our Saviour Christ.”

Note

This passage is theologically the most arresting of the six newly identified entries. Fisher uses the Jews‘ malice against Christ as his unit of measurement for suffering: the torments of hell surpass even what the Jews inflicted on Christ at the Passion by the same margin as the devils’ malice exceeds the Jews‘ malice. The phrase malicioufly deuyfed agaynft our fauiour Chrift — attributing the instruments of the Passion explicitly to Jewish malice and deliberate invention — goes beyond simple collective guilt to the claim of purposeful, calculated cruelty. The Jews are not merely agents of an event; they are the designers of torment. This makes the passage the most extreme adversus Judaeos formulation in the English Works corpus, all the more notable for being embedded in a devotional argument about the comparative severity of hellfire rather than in any polemical context.

Sources

All passages in this compilation are drawn from the following works, available in full at the Internet Archive:

No significant Talmud criticism or anti-Zionist polemic (sensu stricto) was identified in these three volumes. Fisher’s works are primarily anti-Protestant in character; the adversus Judaeos content is structurally embedded in typological, sacramental, and homiletic arguments rather than constituting a free-standing polemic against Judaism. The closest equivalent to explicit anti-Zionism — the framing of Jewish messianism as a carnal error — is present implicitly in the abrogation-of-Law passages but is not developed with the systematic explicitness found in, for example, Fray Luis de León’s De los Nombres de Cristo.