Selections of St. Titus Brandsma’s Writings on the Jews

Titus Brandsma (born Anno Sjoerd Brandsma; 23 February 1881 – 26 July 1942), known in religion as Fr. Titus, was a Dutch Carmelite priest, professor of philosophy, and journalist who was murdered by lethal injection at Dachau concentration camp on 26 July 1942, after his arrest for organizing Catholic press resistance to Nazi propaganda. He was beatified by Pope John Paul II in 1985 and canonized by Pope Francis on 15 May 2022. His principal published works bearing on the themes below are the article De Waan der Zwakheid (1935), the encyclopedic entries he contributed to De Katholieke Encyclopaedie (1938), the devotional article Een vriendenklacht (1922), the Frisian-language essay Roomske Blydskip / Dutch: Roomse Blijdschap (1921), the lecture series Carmelite Mysticism: Historical Sketches (delivered 1935, published 1936), and the article Een samenspraak over het H. Sacrament des Altaars (1939).

A critical note to the reader: Brandsma is not a major figure in the Adversus Judaeos literary tradition. His published corpus contains far fewer and far less systematic passages of this kind than, for example, Edith Stein. What survives is largely typical of pre-Nostra Aetate (1965) Catholic theological assumptions: incidental typological supersessionism, uncritical repetition of medieval hagiographic claims including the ritual murder accusation, and one indirect evocation of the deicide charge. No Talmud criticism, no explicit anti-Zionism, and no systematic theological polemic against Judaism appear in any text so far published in his critical edition. His biographer Ton Crijnen (2008) noted that Brandsma “combined a very negative theological look upon Jewry with a strong rejection of any kind of antisemitism in Hitler’s Germany.” The passages below document that theological framework as it appears in the digitized critical edition maintained by the Titus Brandsma Institute at Radboud University Nijmegen. All Dutch originals are given first; English translations are editorial, made for this compilation. No word of any original has been altered.

I. The Deicide Allusion: The Jews at the Crucifixion

Een vriendenklacht (“A Lament for Friends”), 1922

(Published in: Kijkjes uit het Missieleven, Vol. II, November 1922, pp. 67–69. Archived at the Dutch Carmelite Institute, Boxmeer. Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2022.)

The article is a devotional meditation on praying for souls in Purgatory through the merits of Christ’s Blood. In contrasting the prayer of the souls in Purgatory with the cry of the crowd at the Crucifixion, Brandsma invokes the classical deicide text (Matthew 27:25).

Dutch original:

“In hoe anderen zin dan eens de Joden op den dag der Kruisiging roepen de zielen in het Vagevuur: ‘Zijn Bloed kome over ons’.”

English translation:

“In how different a sense from that of the Jews on the day of the Crucifixion do the souls in Purgatory cry out: ‘His Blood come upon us.'”

II. Typological Supersessionism: Catholics Surpassing Israel‘s Praise of God

Roomske Blydskip (Frisian) / Roomse Blijdschap (Dutch translation: “Catholic Joy”), 1921

(Original Frisian text published in: Roomsk Frysk Almenak in it jier 1921, ed. J. Rypma, JJ van der Weij, and Titus Brandsma O.Carm., Roomsk Frysk Boun. Publisher: Dagblad Ons Noorden, Groningen, 1921. Imprimatur: Oss, 16 July 1921, Dr. Titus Brandsma O. Carm. Censor deputatus. Dutch translation by Jan K.H. van der Meer. Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2020.)

Brandsma argues that the joy of Catholic faith surpasses even the happiness of the Jewish people before God, because Catholics possess the Eucharist and the continual presence of Christ. He invokes Israel‘s own Psalm of closeness to God (Deuteronomy 4:7) and reassigns it to the Church.

Dutch translation (van der Meer):

“Wat de Joden ooit zongen om uitdrukking te geven aan het waarom van hun geluk, groter dan dat van elk volk in de wijde omgeving, [dat] kunnen wij als Roomsen hun nazingen en niemand kan zingen zoals wij: ‘Waar is het volk dat zijn God zo dicht bij zich heeft.'”

English translation:

“What the Jews once sang to express the reason for their happiness—greater than that of any people in the wide surroundings—we Catholics can echo after them, and no one can sing it as we can: ‘Where is the people that has its God so close to it.'”

III. Typological Supersessionism: The Passover Lamb as Prefiguration of the Eucharist

Een samenspraak over het H. Sacrament des Altaars (“A Dialogue on the Most Holy Sacrament of the Altar”), 1939

(Published in a Dutch Catholic periodical, 1939. Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2023. The text is a commentary on a medieval Dutch manuscript redaction of the Soliloquium of St. Bonaventure.)

Brandsma’s text presents the soul being instructed to prepare for Holy Communion in the manner of the Jews eating the Passover lamb—a standard piece of Eucharistic typological supersessionism in which Jewish practice is cast as a preparatory foreshadowing, now surpassed by the Sacrament.

Dutch original:

“De mensch verwijst de ziel naar het eten van het Paaschlam door de Joden. Met woorden ontleend aan Sint Paulus, Sint Gregorius en Sint Ambrosius wordt de ziel er aan herinnerd, hoe zij zichzelve moet onderzoeken en haar schuld moet belijden in een rouwmoedige biecht, haar lendenen moet omgorden met versterving en in haar hand den stok moet nemen, het kruishout, waar de Heer aan stierf.”

English translation:

“The man refers the soul to the eating of the Passover lamb by the Jews. With words borrowed from Saint Paul, Saint Gregory, and Saint Ambrose, the soul is reminded how it must examine itself and confess its guilt in a contrite confession, must gird its loins with mortification and take in its hand the staff—the wood of the cross on which the Lord died.”

IV. The Jewish Power Trope (in a Pro-Jewish Context): De Waan der Zwakheid

De Waan der Zwakheid (“The Illusion of Weakness”), 1935

(Published in: Comité voor Bijzondere Joodsche Belangen, Stemmen van Nederlanders over de behandeling der Joden in Duitschland, Amsterdam 1935, pp. 6–7. Also published in: Provinciale Geldersche en Nijmeegsche Courant, 7 February 1936, p. 9. Typescript archived at Dutch Carmelite Institute, NCI OP56.24. Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2020.)

This article was written expressly in defense of Jews against Nazi persecution, as a contribution to a pamphlet organized by the Committee for Special Jewish Interests. Nevertheless, its argumentation rests on a framework that acknowledges—without challenging—the trope of disproportionate Jewish power provoking historical resentment. The passages below are presented in full context; they are not anti-Jewish in intent, but they reflect and reproduce ambient stereotypes of the period.

Dutch original (passage 1):

“Nu wil ik niet alle Joden groote mannen noemen, maar iedereen zal erkennen, dat in het Joodsche volk groote gaven, sterke energie, aanpassing aan de omstandigheden om die gaven te gebruiken, schuilen. Daardoor is het Joodsche volk, verspreid over de wereld, in de landen, waar het leeft en werkt, in een machtspositie geraakt, welke men het meer dan eens benijdt.”

English translation:

“Now I do not wish to call all Jews great men, but everyone will acknowledge that in the Jewish people great gifts, strong energy, and an adaptability to circumstances in order to use those gifts lie hidden. As a result, the Jewish people, spread across the world, in the countries where it lives and works, has reached a position of power that has been envied more than once.”

Dutch original (passage 2):

“Dat is niet een feit van dezen tijd. In de vele eeuwen van de geschiedenis zijn er meer tijden aan te wijzen, waarin de macht der Joden anderen lagen der bevolking een doorn in het oog was en men tot vervolging en onderdrukking is overgegaan om die macht te knotten. Het is begonnen in het oude Egypte, waar de Pharao’s de wreedste wetten uitvaardigden om de Joden klein te krijgen, hun de groote macht, waartoe zij waren geraakt, te ontnemen.”

English translation:

“This is not a fact of our own time. In the many centuries of history one can point to more periods in which the power of the Jews was a thorn in the eye of other layers of the population and people resorted to persecution and oppression in order to curtail that power. It began in ancient Egypt, where the Pharaohs issued the cruellest laws to keep the Jews down, to take away from them the great power to which they had risen.”

Dutch original (passage 3 — Brandsma’s conclusion, condemning persecution):

“Wat nú tegen de Joden wordt gedaan, is een daad van lafheid. De vijanden en bestrijders der Joden zijn wel klein, dat zij zoo meenen te moeten optreden, zoo optreden. Te meenen, dat zij daardoor de volkskracht openbaren of versterken, is ‘de waan der zwakheid’.”

English translation:

“What is now being done against the Jews is an act of cowardice. The enemies and opponents of the Jews are indeed so small-minded that they think they must act thus, and act thus they do. To believe that by this they reveal or strengthen national vigour is ‘the illusion of weakness.'”

V. The Ritual Murder Accusation: Encyclopedic Entries

The following two entries were written by Brandsma for De Katholieke Encyclopaedie (Vol. XXI, 1938). They repeat medieval hagiographic claims about ritual murder without endorsing them as historically certain; in the case of Simon of Trent, Brandsma explicitly flags the doubtful reliability of the trial record. Nevertheless, he presents the accusation as a standard feature of Catholic hagiography, including it in a reference work without calling for its deletion from the canon of saints.

Va. Simon of Trent

Simon van Trente, encyclopedic entry, 1938

(Published in: De Katholieke Encyclopaedie, Vol. XXI, c. 546–547. Printer’s proof preserved at Dutch Carmelite Institute (NCI). Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2022.)

Dutch original:

“Simon van Trente, Heilige, vereerd en dikwijls aangehaald als voorbeeld van een slachtoffer van een → ritueelen moord, aan hem als knaapje van twee en een half jaar voltrokken door eenige Joden van Trente op den Witten Donderdag (22 Maart) 1475. De akten van het daarna tegen deze Joden gevoerde proces worden te Weenen en te Rome bewaard. De Joden werden schuldig verklaard en hun synagoge verwoest, terwijl op de plaats daarvan een kapel ter eere van den kleinen martelaar werd gebouwd. De betrouwbaarheid van het proces, waarbij de verklaringen onder zware pijnigingen der beschuldigden werden verkregen, wordt niet zonder grond ernstig in twijfel getrokken en het proces beschouwd als een der vele excessen, uit haat tegen de Joden begaan op grond van een schijnbare schuld.”

English translation:

“Simon of Trent, Saint, venerated and frequently cited as an example of a victim of a → ritual murder, perpetrated upon him as a child of two and a half years by some Jews of Trent on Maundy Thursday (22 March) 1475. The records of the trial subsequently conducted against these Jews are preserved in Vienna and Rome. The Jews were found guilty and their Synagogue destroyed, while in its place a chapel was built in honour of the little martyr. The reliability of the trial, in which the statements were obtained under severe torture of the accused, is not without good reason called seriously into question, and the trial is regarded as one of the many excesses committed out of hatred of the Jews on the basis of an apparent guilt.”

Vb. Werner of Oberwesel

Werner, encyclopedic entry, 1938

(Published in: De Katholieke Encyclopaedie, Vol. [W volume], 1938. Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2022. The full entry text is preserved only in the search snippet of the critical edition database; no further body text was accessible in the digital edition at the time of this compilation.)

Dutch original (as preserved in the critical edition database snippet):

“Werner, Heilige. Volgens een niet geheel verwerpelijke overlevering slachtoffer van een Joodschen ritueelen moord op 19 April 1287 te [Oberwesel].”

English translation:

“Werner, Saint. According to a tradition not wholly to be rejected, a victim of a Jewish ritual murder on 19 April 1287 at [Oberwesel].”

VI. The Blinding Glory of God and the Jews of Sinai

Carmelite Mysticism: Historical Sketches, Lecture I: “In the Spirit and Strength of Elias,” 1936

(Published in: Titus Brandsma, Carmelite Mysticism: Historical Sketches, Carmelite Press, Chicago, 1936, pp. 7–21. Delivered as a lecture tour in the United States in summer 1935. Critical edition: Titus Brandsma Instituut, 2020. Text is original English by Brandsma.)

In this passage Brandsma contrasts Moses’ direct contemplation of God with the incapacity of the Jews to look at the reflected light on Moses’ face—a standard patristic and medieval exegetical trope used to imply the spiritual inadequacy of the Jewish people to receive the full divine revelation. Brandsma deploys it in the context of Carmelite mystical theology.

Original English (no translation required):

“The Holy Scriptures say of Moses that when he descended from Sinai after his conversation with God, on his face was spread the brightness and glory of divine light, so that the Jews dared not look at his face. The same is not said of Elias, but we see him coming to the Jews, as if from another world, from the courts of Heaven, and declaring at his appearance, Vivit Deus, in cujus conspectu sto [God lives, before whose face I stand]. This is the foundation of his life of prayer.”

Sources

All passages are drawn from, or independently confirmed against, the following primary editions and the critical edition project of the Titus Brandsma Institute (Titus Brandsma Instituut, Nijmegen / Radboud University). No word of any original has been altered.

Critical Edition Project — Primary Repository:

Individual Texts Cited:

Secondary Sources and Biographical Context: