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- The phenomenon of antisemitism in patristics has been studied in detail in recent years, when scholars sought to examine at what extent the writings of the Church Fathers were used to justify the ulterior persecution of Jews. The bishops of the patristic era sometimes argued, like Augustine, that the Jews should be left alive and suffering as a perpetual reminder of their murder of Christ. While many of these authors have been recognized as saints, none of them ever advocated physical violence or murder, except perhaps John Chrysostom and Cyril of Alexandria. Eusebius of Caesarea, in 325, blames the calamities which befell the Jewish nation on the Jews' role in the death of Jesus: "that from that time seditions and wars and mischievous plots followed each other in quick succession, and never ceased in the city and in all Judea until finally the siege of Vespasian overwhelmed them. Thus the divine vengeance overtook the Jews for the crimes which they dared to commit against Christ. " Saint Ambrose, Bishop of Milan (340-397) - A bishop was accused of instigating the burning of a synagogue by an anti-Semitic mob, and Emperor Theodosius was preparing to order the bishop to rebuild it. Ambrose discouraged the Emperor from taking this step because it would appear to show special favoritism to the Jews: (1) no action was taken against those responsible for burning the houses of various wealthy individuals in Rome; (2) no action was taken against those responsible for the recent burning of the house of the Bishop of Constantinople; (3) Jews had caused several Christian basilicas to be burnt during the reign of Julian, yet had never been asked to make reparation, and some of those basilicas were still not rebuilt. Ambrose asked that Christian monies not be used to build a place of worship for unbelievers, heretics or Jews, and reminded Ambrose that some Christian laity had said of Emperor Maximus, "he has become a Jew" because of the edict Maximus issued regarding the burning of a Roman synagogue. Ambrose did not oppose punishing those directly responsible for burning the synagogue. He halted the celebration of the Eucharist until Theodosius agreed to end the investigation without requiring reparations to be made by the bishop. Augustine of Hippo in Book 18, Chapter 46, of The City of God wrote "The Jews who slew Him [Jesus], and would not believe in Him, because it behoved Him to die and rise again, were yet more miserably wasted by the Romans, and utterly rooted out from their kingdom, where aliens had already ruled over them, and were dispersed through the lands (so that indeed there is no place where they are not), and are thus by their own Scriptures a testimony to us that we have not forged the prophecies about Christ. " Augustine deems the survival and the scattering of the Jews as willed by God for them to give testimony everywhere that the prophecies that Christians interpret as proving that Jesus is the Messiah are no Christian invention, being preserved also by what he calls the Church's enemies, the Jews. Thus, he says, the survival and scattering of the Jews fulfills the prophecy: "My God hath shown me concerning mine enemies, that Thou shalt not slay them, lest they should at last forget Thy law: disperse them in Thy might. " Ephraim the Syrian wrote polemics against Jews in the fourth century, including the repeated accusation that Satan dwells among them as a partner. These writings were directed at Christians who were being proselytized by Jews and who Ephraim feared were slipping back into the religion of Judaism; thus he portrayed the Jews as enemies of Christianity, like Satan, to emphasize the contrast between the two religions, namely, that Christianity was Godly and true and Judaism was Satanic and false. Like John Chrysostom, his objective was to dissuade Christians from reverting to Judaism by emphasizing what he saw as the wickedness of the Jews and their religion. In his Dialog of Justin, Philosopher and Martyr, with Trypho, a Jew, the Christian scholar Justin Martyr advanced arguments for the truth of Christianity and wrote to his imaginary Jewish opponent: "You think that these words refer to the stranger and the proselytes, but in fact they refer to us who have been illumined by Jesus. For Christ would have borne witness even to them; but now you are become twofold more the children of Hell, as He said Himself. " Saint Jerome (374-419) - He denounced Jews as "Judaic serpents of whom Judas was the model". In his The Jews in the Roman Empire (Les Juifs dan L'Empire Romain) [Is this really a work by Jerome, or a modern history?] he wrote: "The Jews seek nothing but to have children, possess riches and be healthy. They seek all earthly things, but think nothing of heavenly things; for this reason they are mercenaries. " Saint John Chrysostom (c. 344 - 407) wrote of the Jews and of Judaizers in eight homilies, Adversus Judaeos (Against The Jews, or Against the Judaizers). "Shall I tell you of their plundering, their covetousness, their abandonment of the poor, their thefts, their cheating in trade? the whole day long will not be enough to give you an account of these things. But do their festivals have something solemn and great about them? They have shown that these, too, are impure. " (Homily I, VII, 1) "But before I draw up my battle line against the Jews, I will be glad to talk to those who are members of our own body, those who seem to belong to our ranks although they observe the Jewish rites and make every effort to defend them. Because they do this, as I see it, they deserve a stronger condemnation than any Jew. " (HOMILY IV, II, 4) "Are you Jews still disputing the question? Do you not see that you are condemned by the testimony of what Christ and the prophets predicted and which the facts have proved? But why should this surprise me? That is the kind of people you are. From the beginning you have been shameless and obstinate, ready to fight at all times against obvious facts. " (HOMILY V, XII, 1) Demons dwell in the synagogue, not only in the place itself but also in the souls of the Jews ... while they were making themselves unfit for work, they grew fit for slaughter. (Against The Jews, I, 6). Saint Fulgentius of Ruspe (467-533) - In his "Writings", written about 510 CE, he states "Hold most firmly and doubt not that not all the pagans, but also all the Jews, heretic and schismatics who depart from the present life outside the Catholic Church, are about to go into eternal fire prepared for the devil and his angels. " Cyril of Alexandria, while not committing to writing much against the Jews, nevertheless incited great violence against them. As Edward Gibbon puts it: Without any legal sentence, without any royal mandate, [Cyril], at the dawn of day, led a seditious multitude to the attack of the synagogues. Unarmed and unprepared, the Jews were incapable of resistance; their houses of prayer were levelled with the ground, and the episcopal warrior, after rewarding his troops with the plunder of their goods, expelled from the city the remnant of the [Jews] The Great Thursday liturgy of the Eastern Orthodox Church uses the expression "impious and law-breaking people", and also speaks of "the swarm of deicides, the lawless people of the Jews", and, referring to "the gathering of the Jews", prays: "But give them, Lord, their requital, because they plotted against you in vain."
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