What The Catholic Church Teaches About The Jews – Part 5
Christians Are Forbidden To Serve The Jews And Must Believe Christians Over Jews
The Catholic Church had many councils regarding how to handle the Jews, in the middle ages.
Moreover, the Popes issued many papal bulls regarding how to handle the Jews, in the middle ages.
These councils and bulls dealt with topics like Jews having Christian servants.
Even though Christians cannot hate nor harm the Jews, there is still a certain order that must be maintained in Christian society.
In Christian society, Christians should not serve those who aren’t Christian, or God forbid, anti-Christian.
For instance, in the late 6th and early 7th centuries, Pope St. Gregory the Great vigorously opposed Jews owning Christian slaves.
Moreover, the Third Lateran Council, which convened a few centuries later, in 1179 AD, says:
Jews and Saracens are not to be allowed to have Christian servants in their houses, either under pretense of nourishing their children or for service or any other reason. Let those be excommunicated who presume to live with them. We declare that the evidence of Christians is to be accepted against Jews in every case, since Jews employ their own witnesses against Christians, and that those who prefer Jews to Christians in this matter are to lie under anathema, since Jews ought to be subject to Christians and to be supported by them on grounds of humanity alone. If any by the inspiration of God are converted to the Christian faith, they are in no way to be excluded from their possessions, since the condition of converts ought to be better than before their conversion. If this is not done, we enjoin on the princes and rulers of these places, under penalty of excommunication, the duty to restore fully to these converts the share of their inheritance and goods.
Third Lateran Council, Canon 26
Decades later, Pope Innocent III also makes it clear that, if anything, Jews should serve Christians:
Although Christian piety tolerates the Jews . . . whose own fault commits them to perpetual slavery . . . and allows them to continue with us (even though the Moors will not tolerate them), they must not be allowed to remain ungrateful to us in such a way as to repay us with contumely for favors and contempt for our familiarity. They are admitted to our familiarity only through our mercy; but they are to us dangerous as the insect in the apple, as the serpent in the breast … Since, therefore, they have already begun to gnaw like the rat, and to stink like the serpent, it is to our shame that the fire in our breast which is being eaten into by them, does not consume them … As they are reprobate slaves of the Lord, in whose death they evilly conspired (at least by the effect of the deed), let them acknowledge themselves as slaves of those whom the death of Christ has made free.
Migne, Patrologia, CCXV, 1291
And the same Pope Innocent III also admonished the French King Philip II to enforce the Canon:
Although it be not displeasing to the Lord, but rather acceptable to Him, that the Jewish Dispersion should live and serve under Christian princes …they greatly offend in the sight of God’s Divine Majesty who prefer the offspring of the Crucifiers before those who are the heirs of Christ.…
…although it was decreed in the Lateran Council that Jews be not permitted to have Christian servants in their homes, either as tutors for their children or for domestic service, or for any reason whatsoever, they still persist in having Christians as servants and nurses, with whom they commit abominations of a kind which it rather becomes you to punish than us to explain. And again, although the same Council laid it down that the testimony of Christians against Jews is to be admitted, even when the former use Jewish witnesses against Christians, and decreed that in a case of this kind anyone who would prefer Jews before Christians is to be condemned as anathema, yet up to the present time things are so carried on in the kingdom of France, that the testimony of Christians against Jews is not believed, whereas Jews are admitted as witnesses against Christians. And at times, when they to whom Jews have loaned money with usury produce Christian witnesses about the facts of payment, THE DEED WHICH THE CHRISTIAN DEBTOR THROUGH NEGLIGENCE INDISCREETLY LEFT WITH THEM IS BELIEVED RATHER THAN THE WITNESSES WHOM THEY BRING FORWARD….
We warn and exhort Your Serene Majesty in the Lord (adding the remission of your sins) that you force the Jews from their presumption … and see to it that due punishment be meted out to all such blasphemers, and that an easy pardon be not given to delinquents!
Etsi non displiceat
More than a couple decades later, Pope Gregory IX also said:
The Jews, who are admitted to our acquaintance only through our mercy, should never forget their yoke of perpetual slavery, which they bear through their own fault…. We therefore command that each and every one of you to have all the excesses of the Jews completely repressed…. In this matter calling to your aid the help of the civil power, inflicting upon Christians, who offer opposition, due ecclesiastical punishment…
Bull. Rom. Pont., III, 497.
Two centuries later, the Council of Florence, in 1434 AD, reaffirms:
Furthermore, renewing the sacred canons, we command both diocesan bishops and secular powers to prohibit in every way Jews and other infidels from having Christians, male or female, in their households and service, or as nurses of their children; and Christians from joining with them in festivities, marriages, banquets or baths, or in much conversation, and from taking them as doctors or agents of marriages or officially appointed mediators of other contracts.
Council of Florence, Session 18
And in 1442 AD, Pope Eugene IV also said:
We decree and order that from now on, and for all time, Christians shall not eat or drink with Jews; nor admit them to feasts, nor cohabit with them, nor bathe with them. Christians shall not allow Jews to hold civil honors over Christians… nor can they have association or partnership with Christians…. Against them Christians can testify, but the testimony of Jews against Christians in no case is of any value…
Dundum Ad Nostram Audientiam
Finally, in the late 16th century, Pope Gregory XIII also condemned Jews having Christian servants.
Thus, in the Catholic State it is the case that Christians cannot serve the Jews, and that Jewish testimony isn’t to be held in high esteem.
The Jews, if allowed to stay, must be second class citizens.
In conclusion, I will leave you with this quote from Our Lord:
