Louis Veuillot (11 October 1813 – 7 April 1883) was a French Catholic journalist, polemicist, and lay apostle, universally acknowledged as the foremost ultramontane publicist of the nineteenth century. Born in Boynes (Loiret) to a barrel-maker, he was converted to Catholicism during Holy Week in Rome in 1838, and thereafter devoted the whole of his formidable talent entirely to the defense of the Church and the Papacy. For over forty years as founder and editor-in-chief of the Catholic daily L’Univers — the leading Catholic organ in France, with a readership concentrated above all among the lower clergy — he was the dominant voice of French Catholic journalism. Pope Pius IX praised him publicly and granted him a personal audience; Leo XIII called him a “lay Father of the Church”; and Paul Claudel described him as “a paladin, not merely a fighter — he fought in defense of a holy cause, that of the Holy City and the Temple of God.”
His most sustained writings on Jews and Judaism were the articles he published in L’Univers during and after the Mortara affair (October 1858 – February 1859), collected in Volume V of his Œuvres complètes (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1859) and reprinted in Mélanges religieux, historiques, politiques et littéraires, 2e série, tome 4 (Paris: Gaume frères et J. Duprey, 1860). His chief polemical target was the Talmud — which he held to be the source and engine of Jewish separatism, misanthropy, and enmity toward Christianity — and his critique extended into a comprehensive theological and social indictment of Judaism and of the Jewish presence in French society. The Jewish rabbi E. Aristide Astruc wrote a book-length refutation of these articles in 1859, confirming the impact they made on the Jewish community. These writings exercised a direct and acknowledged influence upon the subsequent antisemitism of Édouard Drumont. The quotations below are drawn exclusively from Veuillot’s published writings; all French texts are cited from the Garnier Œuvres complètes edition as quoted and referenced by Arnold Ages, “Veuillot and the Talmud,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 3 (January 1974), pp. 229–260, with volume (v) and page numbers corresponding to that edition.
I. The Talmud as the Obstacle to Jewish Integration — The Root of Enmity
“The obstacle is JUDAISM, as it is formulated in the monstrous and mysterious book called the Talmud… There is the nerve of Judaism, and the unfortunately sacred source of that unsociable spirit which invincibly separates the Jews from Christians and from the rest of mankind.”
— Œuvres complètes (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1859), vol. V, p. 207
“The Talmud is the most complete code of cunning and equivocation…”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 192
“This book, which has made them what they are, is everything to them: their true religious and civil Code, and at the same time their literature. Among the depths of the people, it alone reigns. There is the nerve of Judaism, and the unfortunately sacred source of that heedless spirit which invincibly separates the Jews from Christians and from the rest of mankind.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 207
“We shall convince ourselves that the Talmud is the true obstacle preventing Jews from entering the family of nations. It condemns them to isolation, to suspicion, to hatred; it nails them to their superstitions, to their miseries, to their often odious trafficking. It is the Talmud that prevents them from having a homeland in the land where they sojourn. French Jews speak often of their patriotic sentiments; they even make something of an ostentatious display of it. If they are sincere in this, it is proof that they are no longer Jews, or at least no longer Talmudists. For true Jews, the true homeland is in Palestine.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, pp. 199–200
“Wherever the Talmud recedes, humanity reappears.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 198
II. On the Gemara and the Babylonian Talmud
“This Gemara, complement or perfection of the Mishnah, is a veritable code of unsociability and hatred against all non-Jewish peoples. According to the Talmudic definition, the Gemara is the aromatic liqueur, the Mishnah is the wine, the Mikra or written Law is nothing but water — this pure water has received all the colors and all the flavors that a delirious rabbinism wished to give it. It has changed in face, in nature, and in spirit under the multitude of interpretations, a thousand times interpreted in their turn, of commentaries commented themselves to infinity. The sum of these glosses, these legends, these monstrous conceptions, forms the true Talmud of Babylon — a veritable ocean, whose bed, originally dug by the Pharisaic tradition and ceaselessly widened, has received as equally sacred revelations everything that the rabbis of East and West could dream under the spur of hatred during eleven centuries of ignominy.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 218
“The more modern summary books, and above all the Shulchan Aruch, have a tendency more intolerant than the Talmud itself.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 214, citing Chiarini
III. On the Spirit of the Talmud — Hatred of Christ and Christians
“Here, in a few words, is the spirit of the Talmud: Pharisaic interpretation of the Law for the benefit of human passions and cupidities, ridiculous subtleties and refinements in external practices, pride without bounds towards God and men, hatred without bounds for Christ and for Christians.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 220
“The hatred of the Gentile, the contempt for the Christian, the art of deceiving the Christian, of dominating him, of crushing, of annihilating the Christian — that is the spirit of the Talmud, which has far too much become the spirit of Judaism.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 253
“It is by this spirit that they make themselves detested by the peoples who give them shelter. As for us, we offer them the means of making themselves agreeable by ridding themselves of this book that is formidable for the whole world.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 275
“The most pernicious weapons against Christianity, says Bishop Kidder, have been forged by the Synagogue. Unbelief has borrowed them from it, and the arsenal is the Talmud.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 227 (approx.), citing Bishop Kidder
“And should anyone believe that all this is hard to believe and hard to practice, at first one takes some of it and leaves some; and afterward, this someone is not a Jew and does not know the charm of hating Jesus Christ.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 277
IV. On the Authority of the Talmud Binding the Whole Jewish People
“Everything that is found in the Talmud is obligatory for the whole Israelite nation… for the entire body of the doctrines of the Talmud has been approved by the Israelite nation, and the scholars who composed it received… the foundations of all the Law, and that orally, from mouth to mouth, since Moses, our teacher of blessed memory.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, pp. 222–223, citing Maimonides via Chiarini
“As for the insults, they are rabbinical. We have always thought that ‘rabbi’ came from ‘rabies.’ A blessing of a rabbi would not be complete if there were not some explicit or implicit curse against the disciples of the Crucified.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 188
V. On the Jewish Homeland — Against Zionism’s Precursors and the Rejection of France
“It is the Talmud that prevents them from having a homeland in the land where they sojourn. French Jews speak often of their patriotic sentiments… If they are sincere in this, it is proof that they are no longer Jews, or at least no longer Talmudists. For true Jews, the true homeland is in Palestine.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, pp. 199–200
“How could they love these lands of captivity, when they console themselves for living in them with the thought that at least God will not leave their bones there!”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 200 (footnote), on the Talmudic doctrine of resurrection exclusively in the Holy Land
“All other land is profane and unclean, full of bad odor and idolatry, and has not even a spark of divine majesty.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 200, citing Talmudic tractates Bava Batra and Kethouvoth via Chiarini
VI. Talmudism as Pharisaic Heresy — The Jewish Rejection of Moses and of Christ
“A free-thinking Jew was telling us the other day that the authors of the Talmud are the Jesuits of Mosaism. No; they are its Protestants. Like the Protestants, they have protested against the word of God while claiming to interpret it; and their protestation, extending to the Law of Moses as well as to that of Jesus Christ, leads logically to nothing but negation. They deny Moses in fact just as they deny Jesus Christ, because it is as impossible for them not to find Jesus Christ in the Law of Moses, as it is impossible for Protestants not to find the Catholic Church in the Law of Jesus Christ. On account of this shared protest, which has become a shared negation, the civilized Jews make common cause with the Protestants, even though the latter are Christians and have so bitterly hated, persecuted and despised them; and the Protestants, for their part, extend a hand to the Jews, in spite of Luther’s abusive and furious anathemas.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 212
“And what does it matter, after all, that the Jews have preserved the letter of the Bible, if they no longer have its spirit, if they do not understand the prophets, if they do not see Jesus Christ, if they no longer see God in it?”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 236
“For the rationalist Jew is as repelled by the believing Jew as the Christian himself is. It is not reason, it is religion that binds men together; it is through faith that they are brothers. The first reasoner, after Satan, was Cain. Cain has no brothers.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 235
VII. Supersessionism — Christianity as the True Completion of Mosaism, Judaism as Heresy
“The Church received it from divine hands and communicated it to her children with all the lights with which Christ clothed it — a light which the Synagogue, once blind and faithless, and now repudiated, never saw nor tasted. Far, then, from Christianity being a sect of Judaism, it is Mosaism itself, but restored to its purity and at the same time completed, according to the divine promises, by the coming of the Messiah… And present-day Judaism, far from being biblical Judaism or the religion of Moses, is at its origin nothing but a heresy of that true religion; the Pharisaic heresy, which, persisting and plunging ever more deeply into its proud darkness, has ended, like all heresies, by becoming a radical negation of the truth of which it had taken possession. It calls itself sometimes Mosaism — it has no right to that name; it is called Judaism — and that is not its right name either: it must bear a newer name, that of the relatively modern code in which is heaped the confused mass of its opinions, often incomprehensible and contradictory. That name is Talmudism.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 211
“One does not borrow what one already possesses.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 210, on the absurdity of the claim that the Church borrowed its morality from Judaism
“And if society could at last, by a crime more horrible than the first deicide, remove itself from Christ entirely, it would be the ancient night — but thicker still, without dawn, without torches, without hope; and God, to make Hell a reality, would need only to let eternity descend upon it.”
— Mélanges religieux, historiques, politiques et littéraires, t. 13, p. 341; repr. in Abbé J. Charbonnel, Pensées de M. Louis Veuillot, recueillies de tous ses ouvrages (Paris: Librairie Poussielgue frères, 1868), p. 20
VIII. On the Jewish Character in History and in Society
“This mark of race is still visible when most of the others have almost faded. But while they inveigh against the Middle Ages, we have before our eyes, in various countries of Asia and Europe, the Jew of the Middle Ages. A few years ago, the Damascus trial showed him to us in the East, exactly as he is depicted by traditions uselessly accused of lying; we have found him thus in Algeria; thus he is still in Russia and Poland, more the slave of his customs and his superstitions than of the secular hatred and horror they have drawn upon him. He encamps, he forms a separate people, given over to base industries, gnawing through usury the fruits of a soil he never tills, servile when he is trampled upon, ungrateful when he has been raised up, insolent as soon as he believes himself strong. That is the Jew of the Middle Ages; he explains all too well the harshnesses and recrudescences of aversion of the Middle Ages.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 204
“Even before the Dispersion, their ancestors had often exhausted the clemency of God.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 204
“The simple reason for all of this is, as Veuillot explains, that the Gentiles do not belong to the human species; they are beasts — and what beasts! The doctors of the Synagogue teach in express terms that the goi is not worth the dog: ‘The dog is more esteemed’ (Schehac keleb nichbad mimmennu). The goi is conceded the rank of the ass and the pig.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 301, citing Talmudic texts via Chiarini and Drach
IX. On Jewish Commercial Power and the Conspiracy Against Christendom
“A very celebrated Jewish banker was saying to me recently: ‘We are a dozen Israelites in Paris who absorb all business and all capital, and patronize all enterprises. Fortunately for all of you uncircumcised, we cannot stand one another; we make war on each other with all our might, and yet even in this state of struggle and division in which we find ourselves, we fleece you very closely. Pray God that we never come to an agreement; for instead of fleecing you, WE WOULD DEVOUR YOU!'”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 214 (footnote)
“Christians, by various means, have taken many steps towards the Jews; the Jews have not taken a single one towards Christians, although they practice the same morality and address to the same God the same prayers.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 214
X. On Talmudic Law Regarding Injury to Christians, Usury, and Intermarriage
“The Talmud expressly forbids saving a non-Jew, returning his lost objects, taking pity on him. The rabbis say: ‘Since the life of the idolater is at the Jew’s discretion, all the more so is his property.'”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 273, citing the converted rabbi Drach
“The commandment to exterminate Amalek, says the great Maimonides, is binding forever.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 198
“According to the Talmud, ‘the best among the Jews deserves death.'”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 188, citing the Talmudic dictum on Gentiles as understood by Veuillot
XI. On the Deicide People and the Jewish Press — The Mortara Affair Polemic
“The deicide people, nourished by hatred for the human race — whose malevolent seeds must be sought in Pharisaism and the Talmud.”
— L’Univers, 19 November 1858; repr. in Mélanges, 2e série, t. 4
“Every newspaper is a relay station for the Jews. There are three at the Charivari, more at the Journal des débats, and we do not know how many at the Siècle — not counting the reserves in the provinces.”
— L’Univers, 20 November 1858; repr. in Mélanges, 2e série, t. 4
“In all of this, the Jews in general, and the Jewish press in particular, play the leading role. They claimed, as did their numerous allies, to be demanding nothing but freedom of conscience. In reality, knowing perfectly well that freedom of conscience was not under threat, they wanted only to attack the papacy — and that is all they were doing.”
— Mélanges religieux, historiques, politiques et littéraires, 2e série, t. 4, “À propos de l’affaire Mortara,” Preface (Paris: Gaume frères et J. Duprey, 1860)
“The Synagogue is powerful. It teaches in the universities, it controls the newspapers, it controls the banks, it is unbelieving, it hates the Church; its adherents and agents are numerous. It has set them all in motion everywhere, and its success surpasses the hopes it could have entertained — since, if we are to believe the Constitutionnel, governments themselves, yielding to the false opinion it has managed to create, are coming to its aid. Rarely have the Jews better demonstrated what they are capable of doing in Europe: yet they are acquiring the habit of employing accomplices who will demand a high price.”
— L’Univers, January 1859; repr. in Mélanges, 2e série, t. 4
“Supposing that the Christian education given to a baptized Jewish child appears to him an execrable crime, he well knows that the annals of Judaism contain stories of stolen Christian children that are even stranger and more tragic.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 186
XII. On the Theological Enmity Between the Church and the Synagogue
“We are enemies of Judaism and of Jewry without being enemies of the Jews… We bear no ill will toward the liberty of the children of Abraham; since we wish them to become our brothers, we cannot resent that they be our equals and our fellow citizens.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 263
“The Talmud is spoken of with a certain disdain, as a book that contains good and bad things, that some Popes have prohibited, that others have tolerated, that does not merit being spoken of so much and that is no longer studied.”
— Œuvres complètes, vol. V, p. 206, on the disingenuous presentation of Judaism by its apologists
Sources
- Louis Veuillot, Œuvres complètes (Paris: Garnier Frères, 1859), vol. V — the primary source for all passages in Sections I–XII above, as cited by Arnold Ages. This volume collects Veuillot’s polemic articles from L’Univers during and immediately following the Mortara affair (October 1858 – early 1859), including his extended attack on Judaism and the Talmud. The page references (v, p. xxx) throughout this document correspond to this edition.
- Arnold Ages, “Veuillot and the Talmud,” The Jewish Quarterly Review, New Series, Vol. 64, No. 3 (January 1974), pp. 229–260 — the scholarly article from which all French texts and page references in this collection are drawn and verified. Available at JSTOR: https://www.jstor.org/stable/1454133
- Louis Veuillot, Mélanges religieux, historiques, politiques et littéraires, 2e série, t. 4 (Paris: Gaume frères et J. Duprey, 1860) — reprints the same articles, including the full preface “À propos de l’affaire Mortara.” Full text accessible at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/s2mlangesreligie04veuiuoft
- Louis Veuillot, Mélanges religieux, historiques, politiques et littéraires, 1re série (Paris: L. Vivès / Gaume frères, 1857–1875). Multiple volumes at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/mlangesrelig02veui; and at Gallica (BnF): https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k9611410m
- Abbé J. Charbonnel, Pensées de M. Louis Veuillot, recueillies de tous ses ouvrages (Paris: Librairie Poussielgue frères, 1868). Full text at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/pensesdemlouis00veui
- L’Univers (newspaper), various issues October 1858 – January 1859, accessible through the Bibliothèque nationale de France digital collections at Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr
- E. Aristide Astruc (Grand Rabbi of Belgium), Les Juifs et L. Veuillot (Paris, 1859) — the primary Jewish-authored refutation of Veuillot’s anti-Jewish campaign, quoting his articles in extenso and confirming their authenticity. Digitized at Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k996077q
- Eugène Tavernier, Louis Veuillot: l’homme, le lutteur, l’écrivain (Paris, 1913). Digitized at Gallica: https://gallica.bnf.fr/ark:/12148/bpt6k405868r
- Michel Winock, “Louis Veuillot et l’antijudaïsme français lors de l’affaire Mortara,” in Les racines chrétiennes de l’antisémitisme politique (fin XIXe–XXe siècle), Publications de l’École française de Rome, 306 (Rome, 2003), pp. 79–88. At Persée: https://www.persee.fr/doc/efr_0223-5099_2003_act_306_1_7366
- Louis Veuillot, The Liberal Illusion (L’illusion libérale, 1866), trans. Msgr. George Barry O’Toole (Washington: National Catholic Welfare Conference, 1939). Full English text at Internet Archive: https://archive.org/details/LiberalIllusion
- Marvin Luther Brown, Louis Veuillot: French Ultramontane Catholic Journalist and Layman, 1813–1883 (Durham, N.C.: Moore Publishing Company, 1977).