Wombaticus Rex » Tue Jul 02, 2013 8:54 am wrote:If you started a thread to discuss the Vatican’s history with exorcism in any detail, yes, the issues of homophobia and anti-semitism would both come up within the first page. Because we’d be discussing
Catholics.
But maybe not really fair to put it that way, wrt the anti-Semitism. It might not have been a very rigorously and consistently enforced thing, but as far as it went, the official Vatican position was pro- until c. the sixteenth century. (
Sicut Judaeis).
On the other hand, popular anti-Semitism was, um, popular and (in one form or another) widespread/common for most of the part of Christian-European history that came before that. It was explicitly Christian. And all Christians were then Catholics, very nearly. So a case could be made.
But I don't know. With reference to that era, I think it's probably more accurate to call it "Christian anti-Semitism" than "Catholic anti-Semitism" if/when a distinction of that kind is called for.
Because it was really the non-ecclesiastical PTBs of the day (Most Christian Majesties and so on) who benefited from promoting and perpetuating it. And in the grand scheme of things, they were actually in a power struggle with the Vatican, although they were quite frequently also allied with it.
But that was more or less non-optional for a really long time. It's literally how the European west became itself, in a big-picture sense. Without the church, it would just have been a bunch of Franks, Vandals, Goths, and Huns fighting with each other over the territory formerly occupied by the Roman empire until some other power with enough organizational scope to be a long-term continental force came along.
And that sure wouldn't have been the Jews. Very decentralized.
...
I'm not actually even sure how that part of the Eternal-Jew argument goes, precisely. Come to think of it. No banks to speak of until the 15th century. And no Jewish bankers to speak of until....Well. I suppose
also the 15th century if you date it to the expulsion of the Jews from Spain and consequent arrival in not-yet-Italy where some of them took up banking. But arguably earlier, as in -- for example -- England. However, since there was an expulsion there, too, which happened prior to the one in Spain and didn't result in any banking trends (afaik), I'm calling it for the 15th century.
Summing up:
* The Vatican was offficially pro-Semitic during the Middle Ages.
* Judaism has no inherent natural power center.
* Anti-Semitism leads to banking.
* Christianity is a civilizing force. .
* Jews and Judaism have been a reliable and popular proximate occasion for numerous, varied divide-and-conquer-type stratagems on the part of temporal powers in the Christian west virtually since there's been one.
* There was no media until much, much later.
I'm not ignoring the homophobia. It's just difficult to quantify and qualify it prior to there having really been an alternative, culturally speaking.
Sorry that was dull. Medieval ecclesiastical history is actually mad interesting. Very political. I recommend it.