Oh, Bestia Synagoga! The Representation of Jews in Czech Sermons at the Turn of the 17th and 18th Centuries

WROCŁAW THEOLOGICAL REVIEW 26 (2018) No 1 DOI: 10.34839/wpt.2018.26.1.19-32 Daniel Soukup OH, BESTIA SYNAGOGA! THE REPRESENTATION OF JEWS IN CZECH SERMONS AT THE TURN OF THE 17TH AND 18TH CENTURIES Among the most progressive genres of the Early Modern Czech literature was homiletics. The allure of the Baroque preaching especially lied in a performative character of its rendition (elocution); moreover, a gradual spread of literacy among the population of the Czech lands secured popularity also to the printed collections of the Sunday and festive sermons or occasional prints used for special events. In Baroque homiletics, connection between its persuasive and aesthetic function was a guarantee of its far-reaching impact on the society and at the same time of its influence on forming its ethic, religious and cultural values. The following paragraphs focus on an area which has played in the Czech homiletics of the 17th and 18th century rather a marginal role so far. The study discusses the ways the characters of Jews are construed on the pages of several, mainly Sunday Czech-language postils and trace the tension between the real Jewish community of the time and the so called textual, fictional or literary Jews. The main aim of this study is thus to explore the discursive reality, that is, the then concept of “Jewish presence in the midst of the Christian world”. In the paper, the argumentation mainly follows the propositions made by Jeremy Cohen, who, using medieval texts, showed that in the Christian literature, the Jews were for centuries depicted according to how a Christian learning wanted them to be and not according to the reality.1 To a considerable degree, this premise can be applied even to the corpus of Czech sermons at the turn of the 17th and 18th century. Christian theology perceived Jews as witnesses proving the authenticity of the Hebrew Bible (in Christian terminol1 Cohen, Living letters of the Law. 20 Daniel Soukup ogy, the Old Testament); such was their theological-historical part as already defined by St. Augustine.2 In view of these facts, besides demonstrating the continuity of this medie val perception of the Jews, we will also try to turn the attention to the current approaches to the Jewish community, reflecting the social situation of the time. The vast majority of the Czech sermons where the Jews appear in the form of brief mentions, invectives or exempla, continue in the tradition of conventional preaching methods. Texts paying more detailed attention to the Jews, or even using some elements of Judaism as a subtle rhetorical concept are incomparably less frequent and therefore we will leave them out of our discussion as they represent a certain anomaly in the context of Czech literary production. Early Modern preachers perceived the Jews as a marginal group. On the pages of approximately a dozen mainly Sunday Czech-language postils which I analysed, the Jews were given minimal attention even though after the Thirty Years’ War, they constituted almost the only legally tolerated non-Catholic group in the country. Hand in hand with the growing Catholic triumphalism also grew the pressure on the Jewish community as well as efforts aiming at its reform, separation and limiting the number of its members.3 Homiletic texts at the turn of the 17th and 18th century thus reflect the era of the so called bureaucratic anti-Semitism which culminated in tightened anti-Jewish legislation (the Familiant Laws and the Translocation Rescript of 1726–1727) which had a devastating impact on the Jewish community in the Czech lands.4 Especially since the 1690s, characteristic of its dramatic case of a “made-up” Jewish martyr and convert Šimon Abeles (allegedly killed by his father ex odio fidei, that is in hatred of the Christian faith), efforts increased to continuously exert influence upon the Jews and convert them to Christianity.5 Traditional portrayal of the Jews which had its origin in the medieval hagiography was petrified in the domestic homiletics by repeatedly quoted miraculous stories – miracula – usually used as exempla.6 Miracula became the main narrative texts in which an Early Modern Catholic believer could have encountered a rather diverse range of Jewish characters, from the die-hard enemies of Christianity to potential converts.7 Blumenkrantz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins; Fredriksen, “Excaecati Occulta Justitia Dei,” 299–324; Fredriksen, “Divine Justice and Human Freedom,” 29–54; van Oort, “Jews and Judaism in Augustine’s Sermones,” 243–265. 3 Putík, “The Prague Jewish Community,” 4–140. 4 Miller, Rabbis and Revolution, 29–40. 5 Carlebach, The Death of Simon Abeles; Soukup, “Šimon Abeles,” 346–371; Louthan, Converting Bohemia, 300–316; Greenblat, To Tell Their Children, 161–165; Greenblat, “Saint and Countersaint,” 61–80. 6 Gregg, Devils, Women, and Jews, 169–235. For a case study see Marcus, “Images of the Jews,” 247–256. 7 For a comprehensive overview of conversions from Judaism see Carlebach, Divided Souls. 2 Oh, Bestia Synagoga! 21 Among the wealth of these texts, especially popular was, for example, the miraculum on the purported desecration of the hosts which took place in the upper Hungarian town of Pressburg in 1591. In this miraculum, the Czech preachers describe a dramatic profanation of a Eucharist allegedly perpetrated by the Bohemian Jews. According to the story, a certain Jew Lev of Prague, a convert to Christianity, supposedly stole three hosts and after a short stay in Nikolsburg, the seat of the Moravian Chief Rabbi, sold them to his former fellow believers in Pressburg. When the Jews tried to torture the host, a lightning killed some of those present. As a punishment for their blasphemy, the rest was arrested and executed by impalement. Different versions of this legend were inspired by the German graphic sheet by the Nuremberg printer Lucas Mayer.8 The renowned Jesuit poet Friedrich Bridel (1619–1680) even put this miraculum into verse and included it in a section on Eucharist in his versed Catechism.9 Similarly, the Jesuit Matěj Václav Šteyer (1630–1692) or, in a later period, Bohumír Josef Bilovský (1659– 1725) who quoted this miraculum in their sermons on Maundy Thursday10 respectively on the Feast of Corpus Christi11 used it to illustrate the Catholic Eucharist doctrine and in this way stressed one of the crucial constituents of pietas Austriaca.12 The use of exempla thus also had a significant dimension of confessionalization or recatholization. It cannot be ruled out that this exemplum was chosen by the preachers also for its regional context. As a matter of interest, let us add that this miraculum can be found even in the handbook for missionaries and formators of Jewish converts by the Hebraist and Jesuit Franz Haselbauer (1677–1756) from the beginning of the 18th century.13 In a missionary catechism, printed in German and also in mirror Hebrew characters showing elements of Judendeutsch (Yiddish), this anti-Jew (...truncated)