Holy Enemies of Freedom preview

HOLY ENEMIES OF FREEDOM How Martin Luther Unleashed the Beast of Anti-Semitism SECOND FULLY REVISED EDITION A.J. Deus PREVIEW Holy Enemies of Freedom How Martin Luther Unleashed the Beast of Anti-Semitism SECOND FULLY REVISED EDITION Copyright © 2024 by A.J. Deus All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be transmitted, reproduced, or stored in an information retrieval system in any form or by any means (beyond that permitted by copyright law), including the training and use in systems with artificial intelligence, without the written permission of the author or the publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. Inquiries concerning reproduction outside the scope of the above should be sent to the publisher. You must not circulate this work in any other form and you must impose this same condition on any acquirer. The views expressed in this work are solely those of the author and do not necessarily reflect the views of the publisher, and the publisher hereby disclaims any responsibility for them. Missing Element books may be ordered through booksellers or by contacting the publisher at www.missingelement.media. Because of the dynamic nature of the Internet, any web addresses or links contained in this book may have changed since publication and may no longer be valid. ISBN: 978-1-9995270-8-2 (hardcover) ISBN: 978-1-9995270-9-9 (paperback) ISBN: 978-1-9995270-2-0 (e-book) Library of Congress Control Number: 2024904316 To future generations… My friend, it is not a question of what you know or what you wish to know, but of what you ought to know, what you are obliged to know. – Martin Luther – You wish to know my experiences while disentangling truth lost in the medley of sects and divergencies of thought, and how I have dared to climb from the low levels of traditional belief to the topmost summit of assurance […] Each sect, it is true, believes itself in possession of the truth and of salvation, ‘each party,’ as the Qur’an saith, ‘rejoices in its own creed;’ but as the chief of the apostles, whose word is always truthful, has told us, ‘My people will be divided into more than seventy sects, of whom only one will be saved.’ This prediction, like all others of the Prophet, must be fulfilled. – Imam Ghazali, twelfth century1 – 1 Imam Ghazali, Deliverance from Error and Attachment to the Lord of Might and Majesty, Introduction (1109), from Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East (Parke, Austin & Lipscomb, 1917) Vol. VI 99 -133. Table of Contents Introduction: Juden-Sow I: Compassion 1 13 In the Ghetto 13 The Vatican’s Banker 36 Holy Lord of Wars 45 Another Reformation 54 Inclination to Evil from Youth 64 The Monk’s Concubine 76 A Word from God 79 Censor Librorum 85 Denial of Reality 90 The City of God 95 Knight George 104 Pitchfork Rebels 125 II: Grandeur 133 A Land Grab 133 A New World Order 144 Dynamics of Self-Destruction 156 The Iron Rod 165 Perfect Treachery 182 The Rapture 199 Monsters at War 211 A Wakeup Call 220 III: Messiah 227 The Butcher Pope 227 Heap of Ruins 254 Another Forerunner 265 Spinning the Web 274 Free Will 297 A Deal with the Devil 303 War is Love 313 IV: Revolt 335 The Antichrist 335 Radicalizing Children 351 The Messiah in Luther-land 362 Rise of Hatred 385 Turning Up the Heat 392 V: War 404 Jews and Their Lies 404 Bind Him Up in Hell 431 Table Talk 445 The Mahdi’s Last Words 452 Dying in Hatred 471 VI: Destruction 482 Hadrian’s Choice 482 The Holocaust 494 It Is Just History 507 Charity, Love, and Peace 534 Exit 545 Bibliography 555 Internet Research Sites 563 Copyright Notices for the Holy Bible and the Koran 564 The author has made reasonable efforts to locate and contact rights holders to copyrighted material used in this work. In cases where these efforts have not been successful, the publisher welcomes communication from copyright holders so that the appropriate acknowledgments can be made in future editions and to settle other permission matters. Some quotations have been slightly edited for style. Introduction: Juden-Sow Imagine that those speaking against Jews were heroes. Here is what one such man had to say: *** [The Jews] boast of being the noblest, yes, the only noble people on earth. In comparison with them and in their eyes, we Goyim [non-Jewish] are not human; in fact we hardly deserve to be considered poor worms by them. For we are not of that high and noble blood, lineage, birth, and descent. […] They live among us, enjoy our shield and protection, they use our country and our highways, our markets and streets. Meanwhile our princes and rulers sit there and snore with mouths hanging open and permit the Jews to take, steal, and rob from their open money bags and treasures whatever they want. […] Why, their Talmud and their rabbis record that it is no sin for a Jew to kill a Gentile, but it is only a sin for him to kill a brother Israelite. Nor is it a sin for a Jew to break his oath to a Gentile. […] they cannot treat us too harshly or commit sin against us, for they are the lords of the world and we are their servants, yes, their cattle [...]. What shall we Christians do with this rejected and condemned people, the Jews? First, to set fire to their synagogues or schools [...] Second, I advise that their houses also be razed and destroyed. […] Third, I advise that all their prayer books […] be taken from them. Fourth, I advise that their rabbis be forbidden to teach henceforth on pain of loss of life and limb […]. Fifth, I advise that safe-conduct on the highways be abolished completely for the Jews. [...] Sixth, I advise that usury be prohibited to them, and that all cash and treasure of silver and gold be taken from them and put aside for safekeeping […]. If they wish to apply Moses’ law again, they must first return to the land of Canaan [Israel] [...]. Seventh, I recommend putting a flail, an ax, a hoe, a spade, a distaff, or a spindle into the hands of young, strong Jews and Jewesses and letting them earn their bread in the sweat of their brow, as was imposed on the children of Adam.2 […] No, one 2 This refers to the punishment from God for having eaten from the forbidden tree in Genesis 3:17-3:19 (NIV). 1 A.J. Deus should toss out these lazy rogues by the seat of their pants. […] compute with them how much their usury has extorted from us, divide this amicably, but then eject them forever from the country. […] Therefore, in any case, away with them! […]3 *** Such hate speech is outlawed in many countries today. An exception exists where diatribes like this continue to be tolerated: in places of worship, where sacred texts are being read that are protected by freedom of religion. How do I know? The author is Martin Luther,4 who was the founding father of the Protestant Reformation, ‘the Reformer’. Even those who are otherwise well acquainted with history might be surprised to find Martin Luther cited in the foundation of Adolf Hitler’s antiJewish thought framework.5 In ‘Mein Kampf,’ the Führer admired Luther as a great reformer.6 The rebellious theologian became a role model for Nazis. Long before Hitler was democratically elected, he had published how he would fight against perceived Jewish manipulation of Germany’s democracy. Parroting the Reformer, the German leader insisted that Jews were determined to wipe out humanity for their own gain. Hitler was standing with the will of God to fight against them.7 The Führer – a monster – thought that he was saving the world from destruction by Jews. Hitler’s accusations against them echoed their historic predecessors: Jews engaged in treachery, infiltration, and financial enslavement. He pointed out that Jews had already bankrupted the Bavarians and the Prussians through their financial machinations.8 His answer was National Socialism and anti-Semitism.9 This reasoning creates an inconvenient bond between the Holocaust, during which six million Jews lost their lives, and the Protestant churches. The Lutheran agenda was for centuries set against Jews and other religious groups. Hitler mirrored Luther. Luther foreshadowed Hitler. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 Martin Luther, On the Jews and their Lies, part XI (1543), translated by Martin Bertram (Fortress Press & Augsburg Fortress, 1971). Martin Luther, 10 November 1483 – 18 February 1546. Johannes Wallmann, The Reception of Luther's Writings on the Jews from the Reformation to the End of the 19th Century, n.s. 1 (Lutheran Quarterly, Spring 1987) 1:72-97. Adolf Hitler, Mein Kampf, official Nazi translation by James Murphy (Hurst and Blacket, 1939) Chapter VIII. Ibid. Ibid., Chapter VII. Ibid. 2 Holy Enemies of Freedom Germans did not elect Hitler despite his well-known hatred of Jews. With the support of Protestants, they elected him because his policy promised their destruction, the same fate fervently preached by their founder and from the pulpits of Protestant churches. It was part of the political package-deal that German Protestants then embraced. Documentary footage of the rise of Hitler shows in chilling brutality how the masses saluted the alienation of their hated Jewish contemporaries. The age-old tactic that the Führer employed was to dehumanize Jews while lifting his nation above all: Germany first. The German race was to be set above all others. Hitler had learned from history. Executions of the public enemy were conducted in secret. Atrocities took place far away from scrutiny. This was meant to prevent a backlash to the otherwise effective propaganda machinery. Compassion would have thwarted Hitler’s plans. It eventually did. Since some Western nations are in the process of tearing down safeguards against passions of organized religion, this book embarks in answering a simple question about the Holocaust: Why? These accusations echo through the millennia. Meanwhile, nobody appears to be interested in basic questions whether any of this hatred was based on factual historical trauma that might have been inflicted by Jewish leaders. The reasons for the Holocaust or for hatred of Jews cannot be explained in simple terms, but Martin Luther’s era provides valuable insights into the mechanisms at play. Through the Reformer’s soul we can see into the abyss. In all fairness, Lutheran sects today are typically embarrassed by their founder’s anti-Semitic teachings. The living memory of the Holocaust compels them to emphasize a message of charity, peace, and love. This was not always the case, however, and Luther’s sermons and books were widely used until the Second World War. Many of them contained anti-Semitic statements, even though they typically relied on the Bible. They will be used again. But Luther is not the only culprit. The Protestant Reformation in the sixteenth century sparked a radical break from the authority of the Catholic papacy in Rome. The tragic legacy of the conflicts between the two churches is 500 years of religious wars that cost millions of lives. In between the fronts, one holocaust after another took place. 3 A.J. Deus Distrust between Catholics, Protestants, and Jews endures today. The inter-Christian conflicts since Luther’s era devastated half the world. They were about differences in religious dogma and rituals that are so minute that they cannot easily be extracted from the Bible, which is almost identical for both Catholics and Protestants. The exceptions are a couple of books that exert negative influence on the economic motivation of Catholics but do not otherwise merit discussion here. It is little wonder that sectarian wartimes also brought forth a series of civilization-shattering famines and diseases that indiscriminately decimated populations. History has shown that these are part of the devastating collateral damage inflicted on weakened populations. Through the effects of warfare, people succumb to the silent violence of hunger and vermin. As time progressed, the advancement of humanism and secularism entered the conflicts in an attempt to liberate societies from the grip of organized religion. The churches were then not hesitant to inject their disciples’ blood into the struggle for freedom from religion to hold on to their tyrannical rule. They were enemies of freedom. The centuries were filled with external conflicts as well, markedly those connected to the madness of missionizing and colonizing distant lands around the world. The human toll is mind-boggling. Savages needed to be enlightened with the teachings of Christ. Sectarian fights were extended under the guiding hand of missionaries into the new territories in America. In fact, religious violence forms the very foundation of (religious) liberties in the Constitution of the United States. A geographical demarcation line at the intersection of Muslim and Christian civilizations has moved little in a thousand years. The consequence were neverending beheadings between disciples of the two great Abrahamic religions. Still today, devout Christians hate Muslims and devout Muslims hate Christians. Jews hate both. Both hate Jews. They view one another as infidels. At least, the two successor-religions have some fundamental differences over problems such as whether Jesus, the founder of Christianity, was a divinity or whether Muhammad, the founder of Islam, can be accepted as a prophet. These issues are earth-shattering. Literally. Only prophets are acceptable as recipients of divine inspiration. And popes. Or supreme imams. Or high priests. The internal sectarian flexibility was always enormous. The external stubbornness remains without bounds. 4 Holy Enemies of Freedom The ‘other’ side can be witnessed today. The fire between Sunnis and Shi’ites in the Middle East has refused to burn out. It may take another few centuries to do that. What was the role of the Jewish leadership in all this fighting? To be sure, there are black sheep within every nation and ethnicity. But it is unique that Jews are looked at collectively as some sort of menace. Modern Muslims find it easier to hate them by the existence of the state of Israel alone. In addition, Jews are singled out by the Koran as one of the groups that deserves the deadly wrath of followers of Islam. But, to use one of the politically incorrect stereotypes about Jews, if anything, they are an industrious and intelligent people. Except for extremist Ultra-Orthodox zealots, most of them work hard and strive for social and economic advancement. In particular in America, they are so well integrated that many Jews have to communicate Jewishness to not blend in perfectly. There must be more to it. We will have a close look at the zealous machinations of Ultra-Orthodox Jewry. It is a hotbed of hatred and is a source of some of the worst anti-Semitic tropes – tropes that turn out to be supported by undisputable evidence. Neither Christians nor Muslims had a nation of Israel to hate before the twentieth century. Or so, we thought. Jews were dispersed and formed their busy minority communities all over the world. Yet, they were often segregated from non-Jewish populations. That created easy targets for hatred. We will open this Pandora’s Box. Could Christians hate Jews for having killed Jesus? The question itself is offensive. Because they did not. Romans did. At least according to the Christian Gospels. Some may have wanted to hang the one Jew responsible for betraying Jesus Christ. However, convicting entire communities collectively for any specific crime is outrageous by any measure. In particular, when it was committed 2,000 years ago. Further, that one Jew, Judas, was among the first twelve followers of Jesus. Technically, Judas was already a former Jew. Among the first Christians. In addition, the betrayal of Jesus is part of prophecy. Without its fulfillment, there is no salvation – and no Christianity. The argument is circular. The accusation of having killed Jesus is an expression of already simmering hatred rather than a biblical ‘fact-based’ rejection of Jews. However, according to the Gospels, Jews acted like a lynch mob, shouting for the crucifixion of Jesus Christ. They proclaimed, ‘let his blood 5 A.J. Deus be on us and on our children!’10 This is an expedient escape hatch for extremists. It justifies hatred for all generations to come. In his last writings, Luther made a heart-wrenching remark that the responsibility has come to find them.11 History disagrees even with the basics of the alleged murder and the successive crucifixion or resurrection of Jesus Christ. Muslims say that Jesus is still alive, like their Mahdi, their own kind of savior who lives on. The two are just hidden away, waiting for their moment – undead, so to speak. It may be true that Muslims entered the theater of religious history 600 years after Jesus. Yet, they relied on traditions that are just as old as those used by the Catholic Church. Instead, Christianity and Islam pretend to have lived through sharply differing religious world histories, even though both evolved as enemies in the same cultural environment. However, only one can be true. I know. Yours. Moreover, Jewish biblical texts form the foundation of Christianity. They are like the cornerstone upon which a house is built. Except for some minor deviations that are irrelevant for the layman, the base is the same. It has worked both ways. Large Jewish groups have embraced Jesus Christ as the Messiah as well as sections of the Christian scripture.12 The Koran does this as well. One foundation. Different floors. Same house. On the other hand, the Bible contains self-portrayals of the Israelites as a hated nation from the moment Hebrews stepped into the biblical story. There must have been deep-seated cultural trauma already at the beginning of this tale. The questions are by whom was it inflicted and why? This self-representation as a reviled group serves as an unfortunate binding mechanism for the Jewish people. It compels them to stick together against everybody else. However, this line of thought has not been advocated for hating Jews. There is one exception: the argument that the god of the Israelites abandoned the Jews 2,300 years ago. He despised them for their disobedience. This claim is one of the preferred spins for Christian-Jewish animosities that have frequently re-emerged. But again, it rationalizes negative attitudes that were already present. It is not the deeper cause for hating Jews. 10 11 12 Matthew 27:22-27:26 (NIV). Martin Luther, Vom Schem Hamphoras and the Lineage of Christ (Wittenberg, 1543) 19. In particular The Gospel of Matthew. 6 Holy Enemies of Freedom To answer this question – why? – I will guide you through Luther’s intellectual evolution. I am not going to present a lineup of the usual religious terrorists-turned-folk-heroes – martyrs, as they are called in all Judaic sects. In its place, I will put the spotlight on the religious leadership itself. Martin Luther’s story provides insight into a mechanism that has been repeated many times through the ages. It takes place in one of the darkest eras of our past. Accordingly, I discuss the events along the evidence of the historical record. Considering the difficult topic, one important point needs to be clarified upfront: now as then, every human being is equipped with extraordinary gifts of intellect and reason. No man can exonerate himself from the responsibility of injuring or killing another human being, except for self-defense. Religious madness has nothing to do with defense. The survival of humanity lies in global cooperation, not in the democratization of nuclear weaponry or in religious urges for bloody revenge. Religious leaders understand the world through the Bible, the Gospels, the Koran, or whichever scripture or role models they follow. Therefore, we need to get into their heads. In order to drill down to the heart of religious hatred and violence against Jews, we will need to look at scripture itself. It provides a looking glass into the future. In educating ourselves about the sources of anti-Semitism, moderns need to understand the essence of the underlying beliefs as understood in Luther’s time. The evidence leaves no room to overlook his calls to violence and to robbing his followers of all their freedoms. While this book investigates Luther’s path to anti-Semitism, the contemporary interactions between leaders of organized religions and their sects and also with nobility are made visible. Through this contextual mutual involvement, the causes of anti-Semitism and other religious hatred surface in unprecedented ways. Without full understanding, humanity is unable to recognize that yet another holocaust is approaching. We remain incapacitated to prevent the next wave of religious terrorists. The three Judaic religions present themselves in the public eye as being peaceful, loving, reconciliatory, and charitable. It may be viewed as unfair to single out religious violence over political brutalities. Indeed, the world has plenty of poke marks from fatal political events that were frequently selfinflicted. They were a factor even before the first signs of Judaism. However, there is a crucial difference between political follies and religious passions. 7 A.J. Deus The former are temporary and typically heal within a couple of generations, even though some of these have risen to near-religious creeds. As a contrast to organized religions, the atrocities committed by Stalin’s atheist communist regime in Russia are just one of countless examples of grandiose leadership gone rogue. However, Communism also resembles a quasireligion with an indoctrinated, faithful following. Nationalism falls into the same class. We need only consult a map that depicts income levels to realize that there is a relationship between religiosity and systemic poverty. The correlation to economic and intellectual mass poverty – one of the most effective forms of religious and quasi-religious violence – in South America, Africa, Asia, as well as the Middle East is obvious to the naked eye. Communist China, I need to emphasize in this context, has grown richer not through its own success, but rather with the help of a worldwide development effort through free trade. This concerted effort of humanity has been hugely successful, brought over a billion people out of extreme poverty, and constitutes the modern foundation of global welfare. Now, ignorant leaders have forgotten how we got here and lash back at our planet’s most significant peaceful achievement in history instead of eliminating loopholes of abuse and sending aggressors back into the dark age. The difference with violence through organized religion is its longevity and its permanent hierarchy that continues to subvert the internal bond and peace of entire civilizations. Christianity has been in charge since the fall of the Roman Empire; Islam since the fall of the Persian Empire. Unless humans understand its causes and effects, religious violence will bring suffering to generations for thousands of years into the future, as it has for thousands of years in the past. Not a single century has gone by without atrocities by any of the three Judaic religions that have been orchestrated from the highest authorities, despite their claims to the contrary. Once their deadly long-term gameplan is transparently understood, they might be able to focus on their positive characteristics and leave aspirations to power at all costs behind. In Luther’s story, we will see how religious leaders pulled the strings, notwithstanding attempts to attribute all responsibility to the political class. That class was installed and controlled by the religious leadership. Non-conformists were habitually terminated. In the spotlight, the shadows of spiritual leaders’ crimes are long enough for us to recognize the gravity of the disease: Without checks and balances, man relies on faith and force alone. 8 Holy Enemies of Freedom Indeed, minute details in creeds about matters beyond the understanding of ordinary people have created the religious division between East and West today. Can you tell the difference in how Islam views Jesus compared to Christianity? If you can explain how the two religions relate the Word of God to Jesus’ humanity, you might count yourself among experts. The point is that no person in their right mind goes about killing other people over such issues as whether the divinity of its leaders rests on a spirit or on the leader itself. Instead, the divination of emperors, kings, or religious bosses was customary throughout history. Even though we see bloodshed over changes in royal succession, it is hardly conceivable that the choice of their oppressor, or the question of divination could have been taken by common folks of the past as a justification for ramming pitchforks into their neighbors’ chests. There were ringleaders who stood behind the scenes without getting blood on their hands. These guiding hands are at the center of our interest in answering this most pressing question of our time – why? There is a tangible difference between secular and religious violence. Indeed, quite frequently, secular violence has found its roots in holding back religious aggression. In its very core, the secular fight for freedom is a fight against the tyrannies of organized religion and despots. The enjoyment of religious freedoms is the happy consequence for the faithful. It is self-evident and confirmed by a large body of data that secular social organization has outdone theocracies in wisdom, welfare, social advancement, and wealth – if we manage to continue nurturing the delicate balance needed to maintain this success. In contrast, systemic intellectual and economic poverty was the norm for social organization under the yoke of religion for thousands of years. For eternity, they have been praying for the destruction of the entire world to bring about a religious renewal. Those who disagree will need to wait just a few pages more until the evidence starts pouring in. Some will criticize the approach here as an oversimplification of complex issues and will claim that it jeopardizes peace efforts. Quite the contrary. It is a matter of perspective: addressing the issue head-on through the leadership renders the complexities rather clear and straightforward. The bosses are in command. There is no excuse for the originators of the violence. 9 A.J. Deus As a researcher, it may help that I have been taught in a Franciscan Catholic convent.13 Admittedly, I may have been an apocalyptic nightmare for the Capuchin monks. Why? Why, and why again. This Franciscan monastic order was established in Luther’s time. Originally, Capuchins were not allowed to touch money, had to live in extreme austerity and survive exclusively from begging. They were to go bare-footed and to preach among the underprivileged. They missionized poverty upon the poor! The vast majority of religious people and of those free from religion on this planet are repulsed by violence. I will demonstrate that the peaceful majority is irrelevant. The commands for the feet to march come from the head. A cautious approach is sought out here for the scriptural foundations. The educated reader must refuse to either selectively look the other way or to see something where there is nothing. The bone holds plenty of beef for common men to get a taste of the juice. The topic is uncomfortable and bears the risk of attracting hatred from every direction. But not to have an honest conversation about this defining problem of humanity is disingenuous, even self-destructive. In organized religion, only one Truth can be true. There cannot be a competition in Truths or compromises with half the Truth. The one who owns the Truth must defend against all untruths and not cooperate with these untruths. After all, only the religious disciples with the correct Truth will find salvation. Organized religion did not spread because of silent prayer. Inter-sectarian violence acted as the billboards of the time, forcing otherwise peaceful populations to take sides. Usually, leaders would make those decisions for entire communities. Martin Luther had this to say: For there are other beliefs which the world calls faith. The Jews, the Turks [Muslims], the Papists [Catholics], claim they also believe in God who created heaven and earth. That such belief is not the true faith, however, is proved by the fact of its ineffectiveness. It does not contend and overcome, and it permits the believer to remain as he is, in his natural birth and under the power of the devil and sin. But the faith which believes Jesus is the Son of God is the true, triumphant sort. It 13 Order of Friars Minor Capuchin. 10 Holy Enemies of Freedom is an invincible power wrought in the hearts of Christians by the Holy Spirit. It is a sure knowledge that does not gaze and vacillate hither and thither according to its own thoughts. It apprehends God in Christ the Son sent from heaven, through whom God reveals his will and his love and transfers us from sin to grace, from death to a new and eternal life; a refuge and trust that relies not upon its own merit or worthiness, but upon Christ the Son of God, and in his might and power battles against the world and the devil. Therefore, the Christian faith is not the cold, ineffective, empty, lifeless conception which Papists and others imagine it to be; no, it is a living, active power, ever followed by victories and other appropriate fruits. Where such fruits are lacking, faith and the new birth are not there.14 Luther agrees – except when it concerns his own Truth. Call to mind, when Luther wrote this, he represented a new ‘religion,’ one that had just broken away from the Catholic Church. His words are particularly troublesome, because the experts who could tell how the Word of God relates to Jesus in Islam and in Christianity are now in trouble: how on earth does the Protestant Church preach the Truth about the Son of God while the Catholic Church does not? The same claims about the Truth can be found in the scriptures of both, Jews and Muslims. These are just different Truths. Each of them is worth dying for? A quick note to diligent students is opportune: No artificial intelligence has been deployed anywhere in the research and creation process of this book. It is perhaps one of the last such works that rely entirely on the limited intellect of human beings. Since artificial intelligence relies on quantity, the window of opportunity to find underlying causes to the historic progression may very well soon close, and the narrative of tradition may become eternally petrified through the overwhelming power of this technology. The narrative is simplified for popular language and reduced to the most important events. Primary evidence constitutes the guiding principle of this book’s storyline. There is plenty to talk about where there is no dispute, and where there is, I will make the reader aware of it. This second edition is much more advanced with facts that have been found and incorporated since the first edition was published. While the big picture has become clear, students need to take particular care when quoting non-consensus material. Do not turn a rock if you fear snakes hiding underneath. 14 Martin Luther, Sermons, Sunday After Easter, ca. 1536, translated by John Nicholas Lenker. 11 A.J. Deus Deep historical discoveries are dependent on sound methodology. First, post-apocalyptic prophecy offers insights into our past and future. Second, a string of messiahs or saviors in their historical context reveals biblical patterns. Third, only leadership and power structures matter. Individuals and beliefs are mere tools for power. Fourth, it is better to be proven wrong in assuming deception than to fall for one. This includes our own historical environment. Now that we have that sorted out, lastly, sticking as hard as possible to properly vetted and contemporary primary evidence. My preference is to always provide in-page primary evidence in the footnotes. However, the tremendous number of sources and their associated copyright costs would render this book unattainable. When it comes to history as well as many other issues of life, final truths have come too easy. Any finding must remain subject to continued scrutiny, criticism, and evolution. Evidence, opinions, and judgement in any one issue remain in flux, including what is laid out in this book. The Catholic Church, the Protestant Church, and Islam were masterfully persecuting Jews. It is impossible to investigate the root-causes of anti-Semitism without these religious organizations coming under the wheels of inconvenient evidence or without making errors. Focus on the big picture, not on petty details. By all means, I appreciate issues being addressed with me. History is not what we wish it to be. It is what it is. For future students embarking on a journey into the depths of any historical era, I recommend beginning with the original (!) text of Benjamin of Tudela’s eye-opening account of Baghdad. By comprehending the power structures at play, one gains fresh insights into our collective past. For those who harbor doubts about the narrative presented here, I encourage them to set this book aside momentarily, delve into Tudela’s passage, and then seamlessly continue their exploration of this saga.15 I have no qualm with any believer and ask those with religious sensitivities to keep this in mind. I ask for tolerance for my intolerance of intolerance. Now, we embark on finding answers. Why? 15 The passage and its consequences are summarized in the chapter The Iron Rod on pages 178-180. 12 I: COMPASSION In the Ghetto 1492. After Ottoman-Turkish Muslims conquered Constantinople,16 modern day Istanbul, the traditional transportation route for goods through the Silk Road to Europe became too dangerous. In the quest to find an alternative trade route from Europe to India and China, a potential course around the Cape of Good Hope of South Africa was found by the Portuguese. Based on a proposal by an astronomer17 from the Italian city-state of Florence, Christopher Columbus and his brother were determined to attempt a crossing of the Atlantic Ocean to reach the Indies. But because Portuguese authorities thought that sailing around Africa might be easier, they rejected the brothers’ ambitions. Neither England nor the Italian city-states of Genoa and Venice showed interest. A feasibility study by the Catholic Monarchs of Spain18 concluded that the Columbus brothers significantly underestimated the distance to the Indies and advised against supporting such an exploration. The breakthrough for Columbus came in April 1492. Against the opposition of the top functionary of the Catholic Church in Spain, Christoph Columbus finally received the blessing of the Spanish monarchs to prepare for his journey from Spain across the Atlantic Ocean. One man – stubborn beyond the reason of conformity – would come to beat all odds that were stacked against him. This one man’s perseverance to achieve the impossible, as thumbed down by learned men of the time, marks the dawn of unbelievable discoveries on unknown continents that brought new opportunities to European white Christian men. His errors in sound judgement, his underestimation of risks, or his willingness to lose his life did not matter. The accomplishment of his vision would come to speak for itself, even though he missed it by the margin of a full continent plus another ocean. An era of exploration began that led to the migration of streams of white settlers into the American continents. An escape route for religiously persecuted families 16 17 18 The conquest of Constantinople was conducted by Mehmed II in 1453, commonly known as Mehmed the Conqueror, ruler of the Ottoman Empire 1444 – 1446 and 1451 – 1481. Paolo dal Pozzo Toscanelli, 1397 – 1482, was an astronomer who presented his idea to the Portuguese King Alfonso V in 1474 that ships could sail westwards to reach the Indies. Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon. Isabella I was Queen of Castile 1474 – 1504. Ferdinand II of Aragon was King of Castile and Léon 1475 – 1504 and King of Aragon 1479 – 1516. 13 A.J. Deus opened. At the same time, a road to hell for non-white people was paved. The period symbolizes the seed of the free world and the establishment of the United States of America, the land of the free. It did not come easy. A month before entering into an agreement with Columbus, the Catholic monarchs of Spain issued the Alhambra Decree, ordering the expulsion of all practicing Jews from Spain within four months. Jews in Spain had previously prospered for centuries under Muslim rulers. However, with the re-conquest of the Iberian Peninsula (the Spanish Reconquista) under the leadership of the Catholic Church, forced conversions became the norm. Involuntarily converted Jews were known by the demeaning term Marranos – literally sows – and forceconverted Muslims were called Alpujarras after their core region. The decree accused Jews of subverting the Catholic Church with covert Jewish practices and of attempting to convert Marranos back to Judaism.19 Now that the Spanish Reconquista came to a close, Jews were given three choices: convert to Christianity with conviction, leave, or face ‘summary execution.’20 Saying it like that sounds almost as though nothing else should be expected from the Catholic Church other than getting rid of all Jews who refused to convert. Our judgment needs to patiently wait for the evidence. As for Martin Luther’s path to radical anti-Semitism, it was a pan-European practice of the Catholic Church to collectively dehumanize Jews and to brand them as sows. Anti-Semitism was part of the cultural Zeitgeist, which was under the control of the Catholic Church. The man behind the decree was the Catholic Cardinal Cisneros.21 Cardinals are the second highest ranked officials in the Catholic Church, second only to the pope. Their assembly, the College of Cardinals, primarily elects the pope from its own ranks and advises him in all matters of church business. At this time, Cisneros was not yet a cardinal. But the barbaric Alhambra Decree followed immediately after he became the Spanish Queen’s Catholic confessor.22 This was the religious ‘counselor’ in state and private affairs to the queen – the man who pulled the strings of royal puppets. At the time, the Vatican retained the sole right to nominate royals. 19 20 21 22 Isabella I of Castile and Ferdinand II of Aragon, Alhambra Decree, March 31, 1492. Ibid. Francisco Jiménez de Cisneros, 1436 – 1517, became Cardinal and Grand Inquisitor for Castile and León in 1507. Daniel Eisenberg, Cisneros y la quema de los manuscritos granadinos (Journal of Hispanic Philology, 16, 1992) 107-124. 14 Holy Enemies of Freedom The Catholic Church was in control of the culture, including its antiSemitism. With this power behind him, Cisneros arranged the royal marriage in Spain between Isabella of Castile and Ferdinand of Aragon. His predecessor had also been confessor to the queen. This was the Grand Inquisitor Tomás de Torquemada23 – the hammer of heretics – whose family appears to have been Jewish conversos. Torquemada was a radical zealot who managed the growth of the Spanish Inquisition from one tribunal to an entire network of ‘Holy Offices.’ Inquisitors were part of the religious police that had been deployed by the Catholic Church all over Europe to persecute crimes of thought and imagination – heresies, which deviated from the ideas that the Catholic Church approved of. The role of inquisitors can be envisioned today by looking at the religious police in Saudi Arabia, only much worse. It was state sponsored terrorism by the Papal States of the Catholic Church. Under Torquemada’s direction, Spain was to be cleansed of all heresy. This targeted Muslims, Jews, and non-Catholic Christians. He was the boss of the Spanish Inquisition when a twelve-year-old daughter of a shoemaker, Ines of Herrera, was burned for announcing Elijah as the forerunner of the Jewish Messiah. According to the court records of the Inquisition, she announced that the Jews would return to the Promised Land. There, they would find all they needed.24 The souls of those who had been burned by Torquemada were now living there in abundance and glory.25 The ‘clarity’ – the Holy Spirit – started to reveal visions to her in the fall of 1499, and she was arrested by the Inquisition in the coming spring. Similar stories occurred in Chillon, about 100 miles north of Herrera, and Valencia, further to the north-east. In Chillon, a peasant girl by the name of Maria made trips to heaven, announcing that the conversos should return to Judaism to be carried off to the Promised Land. In Valencia, one Miguel Vives was himself reincarnated as Moses.26 23 24 25 26 Tomás de Torquemada, 1420 – 1498 Mary E. Giles, ed. Women in the Inquisition: Spain and the New World (JHU Press, Copyright © 1998, reprinted with permission of Johns Hopkins University Press) 143, 46-50. John E. Longhurst, Luther's Ghost in Spain (1517 – 1546) (Coronado Press, 1964) 86. Ibid., 87-88. 15 A.J. Deus Jews had gone undercover, keeping the knowledge of the Talmud alive in the remotest regions of Spain. This was evidenced in the thorough biblical knowledge that was apparent in Ines’ prophecies.27 Even today, the Talmud continues to be the primary source of Jewish learning. Previously force-converted Jews believed that their redemption would begin on March 9, 1500. That day, ‘the conversos will leave behind all their businesses [and their jewelry], and the old Christians will quarrel and kill each other in the fight to possess them.’28 The superstitious looked for heavenly signs – a comet, for example – that are typically associated with messianic hopes. Many children of conversos joined the movement,29 playing, singing, and dancing.30 Indeed, passive aggression can include playing, singing, and dancing. Some of them had been led to believe that a deceased parent or someone close to them would rise from the dead if they fasted. And fast they did. Girls as young as nine or ten were tried by the Inquisition for having followed Ines’ lead. Many were handed over to a faithful Christian family for reeducation. That was the best case. The idea was to brainwash the brainwashed. In the worst case, children, girls and boys, were sentenced to life in prison or to be burned at the stake. At Herrera, Chillon, and Valencia, the Inquisition put an efficient end to it all. This Torquemada had no moral compass. This is the reward for parents when they raise fundamentalist children: they never make it out of imaginary role plays. The father of Ines of Herrera had managed the silly scheme. He should have been tried for child abuse and conspiracy in his daughter’s assassination. These children were dangerous, all right, brought up to become the terrorists of their time – or perhaps freedom fighters, freedom dancers, perhaps. Ines’ father had no moral compass. As Grand Inquisitor, Torquemada was the national leader of an army of exterminators. Soon thereafter, Cisneros became Grand Inquisitor himself. He was now the boss of Catholic thought control. Just wait for what was in store from this barbarian. 27 28 29 30 Giles, 1999, 46 and 48. Ibid., 48. Ibid., 49. Ibid., 50. 16 Holy Enemies of Freedom Also involved in the engineering of the royal wedding was the Sephardi Jew, Rabbi Abraham Senior,31 a banker and member of the most important tax farming dynasty for the Crown of Castile. Tax farming was widely used in feudal Europe and in the Ottoman Empire of Martin Luther’s time. The idea of the Catholic Church was to stabilize revenue streams in the absence of a bureaucracy – illiterate as Christians were. They leased out entire provinces to individuals who then raked in tremendous profits by extorting taxes from the population by the principle of whim. That was not Senior’s only source for cash flow. He also supplied provisions to the royal army. He was a weapons dealer. And he was treasurer of the Holy Brotherhood, a militia that policed the towns under its influence. It ensured that the income streams continued flowing. This man had his bed made. Senior was also the chief rabbi of Castile – the crown rabbi. We will learn more about this function of the crown rabbi. For now, we can compare him with the role of a prime minister in a royal governmental organization. One with dictatorial powers. In his function as crown rabbi, he was involved in the permission for Christoph Columbus’ voyage. One of Senior’s sons32 appears to have been aboard Columbus’ second voyage. This son would become Constable of the Indies. Rabbi Senior chose to convert to Catholicism upon the execution of the Alhambra Decree. He retained his privileges with a new, Catholic identity, chosen after his godfather (!), King Ferdinand, himself of marrano heritage.33 Senior morphed from the loftiest Jewish ranks to Spanish Catholic nobility. Jewish royalty in Spain? That is easy to answer with a question: in a sea of illiteracy, Jews were the only group that was not only highly educated but globally organized in a tightknit and loyal network, the Diaspora. How could there not be Jewish royalty anywhere this feudal system of oppression was in place? Senior was transfused from officially being of the blood of sows to blue blood. His Catholic name was now Coronel. 31 32 33 Rabbi Abraham Seneor, aka Senior, 1412 – 1493. He converted to Catholicism in 1492 and was renamed to Ferran, Fernan, or Fernando Perez Coronel, aka Fernando Coronel Nunez or Perez Nunez Coronel. Coronel had been an extinct noble lineage. Pedro Fernandez Coronel. Eliyahu ben Elqana Capsali (c1490-c1555), Seder Eliyahu Zuta (Hebrew University, Jerusalem, 1975) Chapter 58 in volume I, p. 182-184. 17 A.J. Deus His ‘house’ in Segovia tells a jaw-dropping story of income inequality and of the immense riches that could be amassed through tax farming and profiteering from every business activity under the sun. While Christians were commanded to live in intellectual and economical poverty and serfdom, emperors would have felt right at home in the neo-noble’s not-so-humble dwelling. The forced conversions of Jews amounted to a massive brain gain for the otherwise uneducated Christians. Without being able to read, write, or compute, the latter were largely unable to manage the financial affairs of a tax farming operation. At the same time, Christianity invited itself to be subverted through this process. Jews were – and still are – a religiously and economically ambitious people. It may have been their intention to continue their ritual adherence in secret. Who could blame them? Since there was no freedom of conscience under the yoke of the Catholic Church, they were repeatedly charged for doing so and were dragged in front of the Inquisition’s courts for religious show trials. And convicted to burn at the stake. Many conversos ended up in top positions in the Catholic Church. Even in the ranks of the Inquisition. For example, Senior’s brother was secretary to none other than Cardinal Cisneros, the Grand Inquisitor. This makes no sense for someone who was just force-converted. Perhaps we are dealing here with ulterior motives. I lack the understanding how the persecuted could have turned into the persecutor. The simple answer may be that there was just too much money at stake for a tax farmer to stick with the ‘wrong’ religion. But why become killers? For show? Or were they indifferent to those against whom the habitual killings were carried out? Was it perhaps shameless vanity? Were they already killers before their conversion in the name of extorting taxes? Staying close to the winners at the time – the Inquisition – was probably an economically shrewd choice. I would not be surprised to find Jewish converts on the throne of the papacy in Rome or on more thrones of European royalty than just in Spain. Advances in genetics will bring about a sea-change in our understanding of how Jewish and Muslim brain-gain penetrated Europe’s elite. Rabbi Abraham Senior had a close friend: Isaac Abrabanel,34 an even more important Jew. 34 Isaac ben Judah Abrabanel, aka Abravanel, Abarbanel, Avravanel, Barbernell, or Barbanel, 1437–1508. 18 Holy Enemies of Freedom His name alone bears a heavy burden. It literally means high priest of God: ‘Ab’ (father); ‘Rabban’ (priest); ‘El’ (of God). This renders him among the highest Babylonian Rabbinic authorities. His family identified itself as direct successors of King David. This is the royal originator of the tribe that is believed to be entitled to bring forth a messiah, the savior who is to come to snatch Israel from its owners. In the late thirteenth century, one of Abrabanel’s ancestors35 had become a treasurer and tax farmer for the Spanish crown of Castille. In his role as top rabbi, he also financed wars.36 He eventually fled to Portugal and ‘reverted back’ to Judaism. In his absence, Abrabanel’s family retained high positions in Spain. One was royal treasurer in Andalusia and later comptroller in Castille.37 Like Senior who had turned into Coronel, Abrabanel was among those who were in charge of raising tax revenues for Portugal and the Catholic Church. Similar to his ancestor, he had risen into this position through the rewards of financing wars. This Jewish career in high finance was not the exception. It was repeated throughout European history and territories.38 Indeed, for hundreds of years, every Christian and Muslim community in the Iberian Peninsula was managed by an ‘arrabi’. That was a Jewish functionary of the crown. An outpost of royal authority.39 These ‘arrabis’ oversaw the royal administration. And the courthouses. And tax collection. And trade. Banking. Distinct from spiritual rabbis, the crown rabbi presided over the ‘arrabis’ and sat at the table of kings, almost like a parallel throne. He reported to the king and oversaw the kingdom’s audits of their own corruption!40 Such positions over subservient populations are attested for centuries in Castile, Aragon, and Navarre. We are told that this was rare during the Golden Age of Jewish Culture in Spain. It was the norm. We find one Samuel ibn Naghrillah, the Prince, tax 35 36 37 38 39 40 Don Judah Abravanel was treasurer and tax collector for King Sancho IV of Castile (1284–95) and King Ferdinand IV of Castile (1295–1312). The siege of Algeciras. Samuel of Seville aka Juan Sánchez (de Sevilla). For example Yahia Ben Yahi III – the Nasi – aka Jahia Negro Ibn Ya’isch, Yahya Ha-Nasi, Yahya Ibn Yaish or Dom Yahia ‘o Negro’, died 1185. King Afonso I of Portugal made Yahia Ben Yahi III tax collector and confirmed him as the first Chief-Rabbi of Portugal. His grandson, Joseph Ben Yahia, aka Jose Ibn-Yahya, still profited from this position. Another example is the Benveniste family tree, also with the title Nasi. They first appeared in the French city of Narbonne in the eleventh century. They would be found as tax farmers in the Provence, France, Barcelona, Aragon, and Castile. Jonathan Ray, Jewish Communal Organization and Authority, The Sephardic Frontier: The Reconquista and the Jewish Community in Medieval Iberia (Cornell University Press, 2006) 124–128. Cardozo de Bethencourt, J Leite de Vasconcellos (ed.), Inscriptions Hébraïques du Portugal [Hebrew Inscriptions of Portugal] (Museu Ethnográphico Português, 1903) 8 (2): 37. 19 A.J. Deus collector and vizier of Granada’s ruler. And elsewhere. Portugal followed their model of punitive administration by Jewish overlords. Where else was this in play? We can find it at various times in France and Germany as well. Even in the provinces of the early Roman Empire and beyond into deep history. Above all, the latest research demonstrates that handing Jewish leaders and their functionaries an all-encompassing monopoly over the Islamic administration was the standard form of state organization for hundreds of years since the beginnings of Islam.41 I will share more details about it as the story progresses. Saying that the riches of these high-flyers provoked considerable resentment by those at the bottom of the food chain would be putting it prudently. The injustice was obvious in particular for the illiterate and penniless, meaning the entire population with the exception of the top one percent of the noble strata. Can you understand that the Jewish administrative system would sooner or later be overthrown? Abrabanel was not only the successor to David – the king of the world in waiting – but also the treasurer of the King of Portugal. This was an important man; so important, indeed, that he had to flee from Portugal to Toledo in Spain when the Portuguese King died. His co-conspirator was executed. In his new home of his ancestors in Spain, he rose to again become a tax farmer for Queen Isabella of Castile. Together with Rabbi Abraham Senior, he also was supplier of provisions for the royal army. Another arms dealer. He helped to send Columbus abroad. Abrabanel, had three sons: Samuel, Joseph, and Judah Abrabanel Leone Ebreo – the Hebrew Lion. The latter happened to become the personal doctor of the royal family. How did his clan and Senior’s become so intermingled with Portuguese and Spanish royalty? Christian or Muslim subjects glorify poverty, obey the priesthood, and do not lend money against interest. Less than one percent could read or write. This is not so with Judaism. With universal literacy, the learned Jewish minority was sought after for the upper echelons on the courts of kings, emperors, and popes. Isaac Abrabanel chose not to convert. 41 A.J. Deus, Iran’s Poisoned Qibla Arrows (2024) available at academia.edu. 20 Holy Enemies of Freedom In the wake of the Alhambra Decree, he and his family had to flee for Naples, Italy, where Jews still found protection for a short period. There, again, he became a ‘financial advisor’ to the King of Naples. When this royal family had to flee to Messina in Sicily, Abrabanel was among them. Given the loss of Abrabanel’s and the Jewish people’s homes and easy fortunes, it is little wonder that he advocated the Coming of the Jewish Messiah. His messianic works incorporated Christian interpretations and were consequently widely used in Jewish and Christian scholarship alike. The books focused mainly on salvation, meaning the redemption of Israel, and the return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. When this time came, the dead would be resurrected, the Temple would be rebuilt, and God would again sanctify the people of Israel, Abrabanel predicted, meaning putting them back above all others. Finally, the entire world would come to accept Judaism under the rule of a king of the Jews. He prophesied the arrival of the Messiah in the year 5263 AM (Anno Mundi, calculated from God’s Creation of the universe). The Messianic Age was to commence with the fall of Rome, which he predicted to occur in 1531,42 a year chosen not by chance but by the anticipated passing of Halley’s Comet. It appears as though Abrabanel predicted himself as the Messiah, the King of the Jews. It would not be difficult for Christians to understand this his prophecies as an intention by Jews to subvert Rome and to bring about its collapse. That Christians would take a violent stand against such provocation could be expected. On the other hand, Jews could not have understood the prediction in any other way than being obliged to subvert Rome politically and economically. Without Rome’s fall, the Messianic Age could not begin. After short stays in Greece and southern Italy,43 Abrabanel finally settled in Venice in 1503, which happened to fall together with the prophecy of the arrival of the Messiah in the year 5263 AM. There, he made a name of himself as a negotiator for a commercial treaty between Venice and Portugal. He would die in Venice five years later. Before we engage in compassion about this man’s endless flight from place to place, we should review the evidence as it rolls in. If this is a messiah, then the function of this rabbi is one of deception. This man is literally the Deceiver. To deceive us is his and his successor buddies’ job. 42 43 Julius H. Greenstone, The Messiah Idea in Jewish History (Jewish Publication Society, 1906) 189. Corfu and Monopoli. 21 A.J. Deus He was not fleeing. He was forming a global alliance against Christianity. The only thing between him and success was death. Abrabanel’s burial place in Padua was next to Mahari Minz.44 The latter died in the same year. His full name was Judah ben Eliezer ha-Levi Minz, a German immigrant and then the most prominent Italian rabbi. His name identifies him as the leader of the Palestinian Rabbinic creed. These two were members of a Sanhedrin substitute, which was a council with the authority to approve messianic missions. These men were among a few select who were holding command over the worldwide Jewry. One of his granddaughters would come to be known as a descendant of King David.45 We will hear more about Abrabanel shortly. I need to come back to the Grand Inquisitor Cardinal Cisneros for just a moment longer. Legend has it that this guy was such a radical ascetic that he doubled his fasts and slept on the bare floor of his cell in the convent. Nevertheless, he would become regent of Spain – twice – a position that was second in command after the king. He was the man of Catholic royalty standing behind the veil. This is the same position that was before held by the crown rabbi whose brother was now Cisneros’ secretary. This cocktail may be difficult to grasp: the messianic spirit must rise from Abrabanel’s tomb to descend onto his firstborn. His brother was likely already secretary of the second in command (crown rabbi Abrabanel), and he simply continued his job under Cisnero. Better yet, one from the Jewish messianic linage sat at Cardinal Cisnero’s dinner table. A few years after the Alhambra Decree, the grand Cisneros commanded the Franciscan Order’s members to become celibate. As a consequence of his enforcement, 400 monks and friars fled with their concubines to Africa and converted to Islam. I will discuss the issue of celibacy a little later. For now, let us understand it as a concept that rests on the misogynist idea that any contact with women defiles men and deprives them of salvation. This is why monks did not marry. 44 45 Judah ben Eliezer ha-Levi Minz, ca. 1405 – 1508. Albert Montefiore Hyamson, A History of the Jews in England (1908) 182. 22 Holy Enemies of Freedom Regardless of the imagined consequences, they had plenty of sex with their concubines, partners out of wedlock. However, for most of these monks, we do not need to imagine a whorehouse with revolving doors. Because marriage was not allowed for monks, they formed their relationships outside of the bond of Catholic Canon Law. They were similar to modern common law couples. But there were others, those who would turn into sexual predators. And they would not fail to make it into the news of the historical record. Cisneros also guided the brutal suppression of the First Rebellion of the Alpujarras. It arose after he ordered forced mass conversions of Granada’s Muslims and the burning of all their Arabic manuscripts.46 He had overruled a less violent approach to conversion by the archbishop in charge.47 The latter was dragged before the court of Cisneros’ Inquisition for having been the bastard son of a Jewess. After Cisneros was through with applying his style of conversion, in his own words, there were no longer non-Christians left in the city of Granada and all mosques were converted to churches.48 This cardinal in the top rank of the Catholic Church was out of control. We can feel the pride that the cardinal expressed for having conducted a successful ethnic cleansing operation. Such over-confidence can typically be found in extremists of faith who believe that they are doing the ‘right thing’ in the name of God. The people of Granada could choose to convert, to leave, or to die. What Cisneros unleashed was just another holocaust among many. Sent by the Vatican in Rome,49 this man was a terminator. Could the pope in Rome have stopped Cisneros? Of course. He did not. It was not an accident that Cisneros arrived in this position. He was a born inquisitor. In his early twenties, he became an advocate for the Catholic Church in the Vatican. There, his inquisitorial successes already attracted the attention of the pope so much that he was sent back to Spain with a papal benefice. This is an endowment of a territory to those who ensure submission to the Catholic Church and transfer the church revenues to the Vatican. 46 47 48 49 Eisenberg, 1992, 107-124. Archbishop of Granada Hernando de Talavera, 1428 – 1507, was a monk of the Order of Saint Jerome. Cardinal Cisneros in William Hughes, Western Civilization: The Earliest Civilization Through the Reformation (McGraw-Hill, 1993) 152. Pope Innocent VIII, 1484 – 1492, Pope Alexander VI, 1492 – 1503, Pope Pius III, 1503, and Pope Julius II, 1503 – 1513. 23 A.J. Deus So, like Abrabanel, Cisneros was a tax farmer? Both in Toledo? We do not have the evidence, but Abrabanel’s flight and demise appear legendary. So are Cisneros’ ‘humble’ beginnings. How did he get through law school at a time when 99% of Christians were illiterate? Did Abrabanel convert to become Cisneros just like Senior became Coronel? For now, I have nothing to go by, but we better be on high alert. A deceiver is roaming the landscape. Nevertheless, Cisneros provides us with insight how crown rabbis and their arrabi hordes would have treated the populations under their feet. Holders of benefices were typically also the military rulers of their areas. These people were called nobles. In the realm of the Catholic Church, the feudal system was in total control over Europe’s land holdings. So was the creation and confirmation of nobles. Or dragging them to the scaffold. Cisneros’ mission was to cure souls for money. Souls who needed the cure were not in line with the official doctrines and beliefs of the Catholic Church. Jews and Muslims were first in his line of fire. But also Christians of competing sects. A cut from the cash flow was for himself. He was set for life. Everybody else was stuck in dung – and dependent on Cisneros’ charity, as they called the breadcrumbs that were thrown back at the cheated population – those who survived the ordeal. This guy was a radical thoroughbred, trained and deployed by the pope of the Catholic Church – who must have failed to order a background check on this psychopath. History is full of irony, and this is one of these incredible coincidences. Cisneros’ deadline for Jews to leave or die fell within one week of Columbus’ first voyage. The start of the journey that would lead to one of humanity’s greatest accomplishments fell together with one of man’s darkest hours. Jews were forced to depart penniless, prohibited from bringing ‘gold or silver or minted money’50 on their journey to nowhere. It would take Spain 500 years to acknowledge the ‘shameful events in the country’s past.’51 The Catholic Church never did. 50 51 Alhambra Decree, 1492. Sephardic Jews eager to apply for Spanish citizenship, Washington Post, February 17, 2014. 24 Holy Enemies of Freedom It also left us in the dark about the abusive system that Jewish leaders had maintained for so long. A few years later, Jews would also be expelled from Portugal. For better understanding, we will have a closer look at the ethnic cleansing in that place. Through the intervention of the chief rabbi of Turkey, Moses Capsali,52 the Ottoman Navy sent a relief mission to Jewish refugees. Muslims were ordered to welcome the new arrivals as citizens of the Ottoman domain. Anyone who abused a Jew would be punished with death. The Ottoman ruler knew that it was prudent to appreciate the economic value of Jews.53 However, this created friction with Muslims who had learned from the Koran and the Hadiths, their religious traditions, how to hate and mistreat Jews. During the next two decades, Spanish Jews in Turkey became an important factor in an enormous expansion of Sunni Ottoman rule. Essentially, OttomanTurks came to swallow the competing Muslim nations in the Middle East, except for Persia (Iran). With the surrender of the Mamluk Sultanate, Egypt, the eastern part of modern-day Libya, the eastern coastal area of the Red Sea down to Mecca, and the Levant up to modern-day Turkey were soon joined to the empire. Because the expanding Portuguese Empire aimed at controlling the trade routes to India, it was necessary for Muslims to prepare for the defense of Mecca, Islam’s holiest place. Out of the concerns about a rising Christian world power, Mecca fell to the Ottomans without a shot being fired.54 In the face of Portuguese Christian aggression and with the help of Jews, the next Ottoman-Turkish leader became the first caliph over the entire Sunni Muslim world. This happened against the will of Shia Islam, the remaining Muslim main competitor, which was centered in Persia (Iran). The Catholic Church and its subservient rulers across Europe were horrified by the news of Ottoman-Turkish expansion. Rabbi Capsali was in extraordinarily good standing with Ottoman rulers. He held a seat next to the grand mufti of Islam, its highest leader in religious ‘law.’ Capsali’s couch next to the leader needs to be called ‘Throne of David,’ a parallel throne next to the sultan as commanded by the Koran.55 Not unlike the crown 52 53 54 55 Moses b. Elijah Capsali, 1420–1495. Isidore Singer, Cyrus Adler, The Jewish Encyclopedia: a descriptive record of the history, religion, literature, and customs of the Jewish people from the earliest times to the present day, Vol.2, (Funk and Wagnalls, 1912) 460. Philip Mansel, Constantinople: City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924 (St. Martin's Griffin, 1998). Koran 38:26 (Rodwell). 25 A.J. Deus rabbi in Spain, Capsali was responsible for the Jewish system of administration in the Ottoman realm. Unfortunately, Capsali’s leading Rabbinic successors at the Ottoman court fall into obscurity despite the fact that their positions would be important to Luther’s story. Not to worry, though, there is plenty of smoke for us to see through. Capsali seems to have played a role in the capture of Constantinople (Istanbul) by Ottoman-Turks, where he had been chief Rabbi of the thenChristian city. The fall of Constantinople marked the end of the Byzantine Empire. The city was then the capital of the last fragment of the ancient Roman Empire. Symbolically, Ottoman-Turks had conquered Rome. This had tremendous biblical and koranic consequences. For all three – Christians, Muslims, and Jews – it was understood as a warning that the End of the World was near. When Constantinople was under siege, the Byzantine Emperor had managed too late to submit to the conditions for assistance by the Catholic Church. The age-old enmity between the two Christian churches in Greece and Rome was suicidal. A Greek priest would ‘not approach an altar upon which a Latin priest has celebrated the sacred mystery unless he has first provided for repeated ablutions of the altar.’56 It was a disgusting public demonstration of sectarian hatred. The pope preferred to have a Christian empire go up in flames rather than sending his forces to the city’s defense, unless the Orthodox churches submitted to the Vatican. This tells us quite a bit about how the Catholic Church may have been able to rise to become the dominant force in Europe. Through granting or refusing assistance in warfare, the pope could have managed to slowly encroach over entire continents. He would win either way. In entering an alliance, he could play Catholic Monopoly. In rejecting it, he could parade the love of Christianity. Sword or word, the Catholic Church had figured out how to bring about totalitarian control over its regional leaders and their subjects. Another destination that welcomed Sephardi Jews was Amsterdam. The city became a New Jerusalem from where they would lead reform movements. 56 Libellus, 664-665 in Kenneth M. Setton, The Papacy and the Levant, Volume III (The American Philosophical Society, 1984) 147. 26 Holy Enemies of Freedom Many Jews also found a home in the Berber Kingdom of Tlemcen, which was situated south of Spain on the North African coastal areas, stretching from modern day Algiers to Morocco under the little known Zayyanid dynasty. This clan ruled the Berber Kingdom between the middle of the thirteenth and the middle of the sixteenth centuries. Under the advice of a Jewish viceroy,57 Tlemcen welcomed Jews and Muslims fleeing from Spain. The capital city Tlemcen lies about 50 km inland, approximately halfway between modern day Algiers and Tangier, which is situated near the Strait of Gibraltar. It was regarded by Jews as the Jerusalem of the West58 and was also the main trading place in the central Maghreb (North Africa, west of Egypt), as well as its intellectual center. There, Jews found respect as a protected minority. For a while. Around the turn of the sixteenth century, the Kingdom of Tlemcen’s Muslim religious authority, the fanatic Al-Maghili,59 targeted Jews with an outpour of hatred. Apparently, Jews were associated with the Muslim ruling class, and they were too successful in their gold trade. Indeed, the caravan routes carrying African gold and merchant goods through the Sahara to Europe passed through Tlemcen. Of course, they were associated with the ruling class. The Koran instructs its rulers so. And they were too successful with gold because of their close association with the ruling class. Those who managed the administration and taxed people, land, and trade enjoyed a de facto monopoly. It was a not so noble cartel. The arrangement between the Rabbinic leadership and royalty was not unusual. We have already seen a similarly high level of Jewish involvement in Spain, Portugal, and Turkey. With the appearance of Al-Maghili, the Jewish administrative system was overthrown. The Muslim leader had previously converted the ruling class to Islam and was now engaged in eliminating his Jewish competition. He thought that Jews subverted the royals. Was it not he who just subverted the royals with fundamentalist Islam? 57 58 59 The viceroy’s name was Abraham. John Hunwick, Jews of a Saharan Oasis: The Elimination of the Tamantit Community (Wiener, Copyright © 2007, reprinted by permission of Wiener). Muhammad ibn Abd al-Karim al-Maghili, ca.1440 – ca. 1505. 27 A.J. Deus Thinking of it, the ruling dynasty should have been Muslims long before. What did they convert from? Al-Maghili made it legal to kill Jews and to plunder their property.60 Their synagogue in the capital city Tlemcen was destroyed. Henceforth, Jews were humiliated, beaten, deported, thrown out of their homes, and wanted nowhere that Al-Maghili’s preachers showed their enlightened faces. Within just a few years, the kingdom was transformed from being a welcoming home for the feudal Jewish administrative system of oppression to triggering a holocaust. Tlemcen was in chaos. The Catholic Church under the personal command of Cardinal Cisneros, the radical Spanish Grand Inquisitor, took advantage of the situation and captured the kingdom’s north-western trading city of Oran shortly thereafter.61 At around the same time as the Tlemcen expulsion and for a few years prior to that, Jews in Germany were ousted from the area of Nuremberg where they had enjoyed a similarly lofty status. While many Sephardi Jews were rescued by Ottoman-Turks, a significant number of German Ashkenazy Jews seem to have found a home in northern Italy, in particular Milan, which was then under the protectorate of the Kingdom of France.62 Venice. The elegant city in the Adriatic lagoon, is famous for its canals and romantic gondolas, for good Italian food on summer evenings, and for strolls among its treasures of architecture and art. Tightly aligned with the now-defunct Byzantine Empire in Constantinople (Istanbul), the Republic of Venice had been a tremendously successful naval and trading power. During the previous few centuries, it had become the richest place in Europe. It boasted over 3,000 ships under the banner of the winged lion and over 30,000 sailors. However, for the last fifty years since the Muslim Ottoman-Turks had conquered Constantinople, Venice was in trouble. From that time on, the city state started to lose its eastern Mediterranean territories to the Ottomans. The opening of the sea route to India around the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa in 149963 put a final spell on Venice’s commercial fortunes. Through its successful gamble, Portugal had a 60 61 62 63 Ibn Askar (ca. 1575), in Bat Ye’or, The Decline of Eastern Christianity under Islam (Associated University Presses, Copyright © 1996, reprinted by permission of Associated University Presses) 360-361, the brackets () are part of the text in Bat Ye’or. The sack of Oran took place in 1509. Among the expelled was Elia Levita who will come to play a role in this story. The explorer was the Portugese Vasco da Gama, c. 1460s – 1524 28 Holy Enemies of Freedom huge first-mover advantage that led to its rise as a world superpower. Venice failed to keep up with the race to colonize the New World after Christoph Columbus discovered America for the Spanish crown. At this junction, the Republic of Venice was attempting to reform its churches and submit the clergy of the Catholic Church to secular tribunals, disregarding the ‘jurisdiction’ of the papacy. In 1509, Venice suffered a total defeat against the armies of the Papal States under the personal command of the pope. The city recanted its aspirations to freedom from the Catholic Church by the force of blood dripping from the holy spear. The word ghetto was coined here, in the romantic lagoon. The Venetian Ghetto is claimed to have been the first of its kind. This is not so. One had already existed in Cracow, Poland a few years earlier, and another 300 years earlier in Constantinople,64 but they did not know that it was supposed to be called a ‘ghetto.’ The idea of keeping Jews away from Christians was already established at the Third Lateran Council of the Catholic Church in 1179. If historians were to dig deeper, they would probably find them even a thousand years before that. Having said that, we could not even imagine what the origin of the ‘ghetto’ was. We will learn that it was entirely different than we thought. For now, we must not envision Jews living among Christians and being driven into the Jewish quarter by force. Their homes were there all along. On March 29, 1516, Doge Leonardo Loredan decreed the total segregation of Jews in the Venice Ghetto. They now had to wear a sign of identification, and the rates at the city’s pawnshops were regulated. The Doge was like an elected president of the city’s governing Council of Ten, which was responsible to the Great Council of the Republic of Venice. The council was constituted by the nobles of the town. They were all Christians, of course. Under the deadly patronage of the Catholic Church. Christian soldiers guarded the Jewish quarter, which was now called ‘ghetto’. The gates were closed between six in the evening and noon on the next day. Yet, in this microcosm, where one should expect universal solidarity, competing sectarian synagogues dominate religiously zealous Jewish bands. There were Germans with the Ashkenazi rite, Portuguese and Spaniards with the Spanish rite, Palestinian Jews with the Sephardic rite (which is an older 64 The Itinerary of Benjamin of Tudela (1171) 23-24. 29 A.J. Deus Spanish rite), and Italians with the Italian rite. Each group had its own synagogue. This little world shows how organized religion binds ethnic groups together and keeps them inside their tragic segregation – even behind walls with armed guards. Worse, Jews would see their debasement as the fulfillment of prophecy that had warned them of unbearable consequences should they fail to obey their god’s commands.65 This would only strengthen their resolve in suffering. So, history tells us that the Doge Jews in the first ghetto that bore the name, but it does not help us understand why he ordered the segregation at that precise juncture. Could it have been that the Catholic Church insisted on an ethnic cleansing operation similar to the one executed earlier in Spain? Could they have been in control of the administration in Venice, too? The engagement of the Catholic Church against Jews in a similar context was not limited to Germany, Spain, and Sicily. After all, the Venice Ghetto had something systemic and permanent about it, rather than isolated and random. In any case, Martin Luther could not have had anything to do with the Venice Ghetto. His reform movement had not yet become active. A little over a decade earlier, Jewish communities in Europe had been in uproar over ‘the year of penance’. A German Jew by the name of Asher Lemmlein had appeared in Istria, which is a peninsula not far to the east of Venice by the Adriatic Sea. He claimed to be the forerunner of the Jewish Messiah who was to appear in Palestine during Passover in the next year. Then as well as now, Passover is the most important Jewish holiday. It glorifies how their god sent plague after plague over Egypt’s population, culminating in a godly killing spree. The god of the Israelites would ‘pass over’ the houses, which secretly bore a Hebrew mark66 – the one that is symbolically attached to virtually every doorpost in modern Jewish households. All the firstborn in Egypt, both human and animal, were stricken dead.67 Passover plainly celebrates the murdering of all Egyptian firstborn children by the god of the Israelites. The excuse for the divine monstrosity is that Jews were held in slavery by the pharaoh. 65 66 67 Leviticus 26:16, Leviticus 26:20, Leviticus 26:22, Leviticus 26:25-26:26, Leviticus 26:29-26:30, Leviticus 26:32-26:33, Leviticus 26:36-26:37. Exodus 12:7. Exodus 12:12. 30 Holy Enemies of Freedom The tragedy of the Passover disaster is that it was not necessary. The god of the Israelites had personally made the Egyptian monarch, the pharaoh, forbid the Israelites’ departure from Egypt.68 This god would have had the power to soften the opposing leader and to simply plant its spirit into the ruler’s mind in order to let them leave. Instead, the divinity intended to impress with its power to terrorize an entire nation. Terror for show. The point of the story is that the readers are supposed to be scared into submission to the omnipotent powers of this god. The killing of firstborn Egyptians never actually happened. It is mere myth.69 Archaeology has not been able to bring forth a single piece of evidence of over 600,000 fighting Israelite men70 in ancient Egypt. Not even of one man. For this reason, most histories of Israel do not include this part of Israel’s foundation myth, called the Exodus. Regardless, Jews continue to celebrate the rampage of their god as if it was the greatest real event in the history of Judaism. It is an overt display of hatred against mankind. Besides, the word ‘slavery’ serves to trigger compassion. It means that they were ‘slaving’ in Egypt to maintain an oppressive administrative system.71 Lemmlein’s prophecy came with the condition that all Jews had to spend six months in repentance and be charitable. Jews believe that they can bring about their redemption through ‘hard,’ outwardly ‘work’ of faithful behavior. Hence, the forerunner found a sizable Jewish and Christian following in Italy, Germany, and Austria, but especially around Venice.72 Like lunatics, they prayed and fasted in preparation of the coming of the Messiah. However, Lemmlein appears to have vanished after having pronounced himself King of the Jews.73 Since there are no further sources, it is unclear whether the loss of the forerunner mattered for the event of the Messiah to show up in Jerusalem. Yet, it appears that the messianic aspirations could be 68 69 70 71 72 73 Exodus 11:9–10. For foundation myths see Kenton L. Sparks, Genre Criticism, in, Thomas B. Dozeman, Methods for Exodus (Cambridge University Press, 2010) 73. Exodus 12:37–12:38 and Numbers 1:46. Talmud - Mas. Kiddushin 70b. Greenstone, 1906, 190. Harris Lenowitz, the Jewish Messiahs (Oxford, Copyright © 1998, reproduced with permission of Oxford University Press through PLSClear) 100. 31 A.J. Deus understandable in context of their earlier expulsion from Spain, Germany, and Tlemcen, among others. The homeless were in search of a home. An anti-Semitic polemicist, Johannes Pfefferkorn,74 a convert from Judaism to Dominican Catholicism, was offended by the faith in Lemmlein. He mocked Jews for not having had a king since Jesus Christ and for having lost the Temple in Jerusalem a long time ago. Pfefferkorn ridiculed them for having hoped for the destruction of all churches in Christendom and for being brought up in a fiery pillar together with a cloud when they would return to the Promised Land.75 Nothing of that sort has happened – yet. Briefly, the arrival of the Messiah is the most important event in all Judaic religions, signifying the redemption of Israel and a return of the Jewish people to Jerusalem. After each historical holocaust, we can find apologetic Rabbinic voices that claim that the messianic mission is irrelevant to Judaism. But this does not hold water. The messianic chain of events can be summed up with the End of the World, culminating in the conquest of the Promised Land. Judaism, Christianity, and Islam merely distinguish themselves as armed adversaries to the same end. They work toward their final war for world supremacy on the battlefield at Armageddon. ISIS dared its Western and Jewish adversaries to show up at that very place. Modern Ultra-Orthodox Jews work hard toward this goal. Ask any Christian, and you will find them in the comfortable territory of an alternate reality. In other words, Lemmlein’s skull could have been clubbed in a dark alley, and it would not have led to the slightest deviation from the historic trajectory. I say this not only because you will find clarity by meeting a number of these messiahs, but also for the reason that Lemmlein was encouraged by the prominent Portuguese Jewish leader – who had before been expelled from Spain – Abrabanel. Since Jewish leaders habitually use different names for individual languages, we cannot figure out how Lemmlein fits it. By design, this custom disjoints historical events from the leadership. After the fact, rabbis claimed that they had feared that a figure like him could rise. Instead, it was part of their calculation. 74 75 Johannes (Josef) Pfefferkorn, 1469–1523. Johann Pfefferkorn, (the Jew-Glass) der Judenspiegel (1507) transl. A.J. Deus. 32 Holy Enemies of Freedom Lemmlein had retold Abrabanel’s story of the arrival of the Messiah in 1503 and the beginning of the Messianic Age in 1531. This was a forerunner, one who made the announcements for the coming messiah and the successive redemption of Israel. When the Doge came to shut the gates to the ghetto a few years later, the successor of Abrabanel was the ‘Rabbi of Venice,’ again, the highest Jewish authority in Europe. Lemmlein appears to have merely been a cleverly placed messenger, rather than a Jewish individual that has gone rogue. If Abrabanel was a deceiver, then the Rabbi of Venice was a deceiver. When put into the context with the broad Jewish involvement with royalty and with the messianic aspirations, the anti-Semitic actions in Tlemcen and Venice as well as all across Europe appear reactionary, almost as though executed in self-defense. There is no excuse for collective punishment of an ethnic group. But as inconvenient as it may be, we must embark on this journey to better understand the causes and effects of religious hatred and violence, in particular when it comes to anti-Semitism. Pfefferkorn’s booklet had nothing flattering to say. Jews ridiculed Jesus Christ in a blasphemous manner, calling him a seducer of the people, hung, or born from an unclean union.76 The churches, they called shithouses.77 They had special prayers against Christians. One of them went as follows: There is no hope for the baptized, and all infidels will soon be gone and all the enemies of your people Israel will be suppressed and destroyed. This will happen soon. As the pamphlet goes, these words were prayed ‘every day three times with great devotion’ and while being obliged to stand. Likewise, they prayed for the ‘Roman Empire, that it may be broken up and destroyed.’ Another prayer sounds even less friendly: May God destroy the thoughts and counsel of our enemies with death, sword, starvation, plague, and other scourges, and may it happen for our sake. Who are the enemies? We all are. Why? For not being Jewish. 76 77 Erika Rummel, The Case Against Johann Reuchlin (University of Toronto, Copyright © 2002, reprinted by permission of University of Toronto Press) 54. Ibid., 55. 33 A.J. Deus Then Pfefferkorn set out to describe how Jews were plotting ‘how to uproot the power and might of Christians and destroy them.’ Since they are not able to accomplish this, the author continues, ‘they use usury and other kinds of deception.’ The way they went about their lending business was hinted at earlier in the regulation of pawnshops in Venice: lend little against something worth exponentially much more. Jewish shops always won, even more when the client could not pay back a loan or when it involved stolen goods. In order to protect their businesses and get ahead, Jews were ‘allowed to swear a Jewish oath,’ even if it was false, Pfefferkorn said. The Jewish Oath of Treachery. Like that, they could disown almost anyone they pleased even if they robbed them personally. This is how Jews ‘usually prevail in court and quite rarely lose their case.’78 Luther would come to agree that with Jews, bearing false witness ‘was quite a common and ordinary matter.’79 Is this even possible? The answers lie in monopolized judiciaries, administrations that are responsible for permits, and tax systems that would favor their own. We see this mechanism at play in modern day Palestinian territories that are controlled by Israel. The legal system simply disowns the natives. We must wonder just how widespread such practices of hatred against mankind might persist among Jews whom we consider our friends today? If you are being greeted with ‘Seind wilkum’, you might not perceive that anything is wrong. The supposedly benign corruption of ‘Seid wilkum’ (be welcome) to ‘Seind wilkum’ is not as welcoming as it might seem. It means ‘Devil, be welcome.’80 Some of the rules in the book of Deuteronomy, for example, encourage deceitfulness, indeed. We will later see how a treachery would lead to the inheritance of a nation. But the Bible is peppered with stories where Jew betrayed Jew. For example, a Jewish mother and one of her sons lied to the patriarchal father in order to get their way.81 Late in the son’s life, the deceiver himself was betrayed by his sons.82 Even the god of the Israelites, who has the power to simply impose his will, at times engaged in ridiculous treacheries, testing subjects for a dare, sending disasters just to impress, and on and on. 78 79 80 81 82 Ibid., 60. Martin Luther, The Large Catechism, Second Edition (1529) WA 30 I,125-238. Rummel, 2002, 56. Genesis 27:20. Genesis 37:31-37:33. 34 Holy Enemies of Freedom Such fables teach believers in the Bible that anything goes if it serves the purpose of getting ahead of others. Treachery, deceit, fraud, betrayal, lying, stealing, killing, even the termination of entire nations of other races is tolerable ─ even commanded by God ─ as long as it serves the organized religion of Judaism. Not surprisingly, the accusations are not accidental oddities but a disturbing motif that constantly re-emerged throughout Jewish history. It rose to historical prominence with financial empires that were based on usury. This readiness to betray the trust of others to get ahead is taught to children in modern-day Jewish schools through the Bible as a cultural and ethical foundation. It works against the basic human instinct of relying on mutual trust. But if treachery is to be assumed, then a potential cycle of violence is created once it turns out that trust is not merited – not even among family members. Currently, we do not seem to be aware in what kind of danger our oblivious civilization is. We need to find ways to regulate these packs of wolves dressed in sheepskin and to stop these leaders – first and foremost – from teaching such nonsense to children. It is child abuse to infiltrate cradles with hatred. Thus closes Pfefferkorn his pamphlet, ‘the Enemy of Jews:’ […] as long as the Jews live freely, it is not possible to avoid such evil. For it would not be enough for them to abandon usury and go on living in great wealth. Rather, one should oblige them to do all kinds of lowly work, such as keeping the streets clean or sweeping chimneys or, similarly, sweeping latrines and collecting dog droppings, etc. And, in the meantime, one must not, as I have sometimes said, leave them the false book of the Talmud, but take it from them, and leave them nothing except the text of the Bible.83 We will see that Martin Luther fitted right in. 83 Rummel, 2002, 62. 35 A.J. Deus The Vatican’s Banker October 31, 1517 marks the start of the Protestant Reformation. The date when Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the door of the All Saints’ Church in Wittenberg, Germany falls, within a fortnight or so, a full year and a half after the gates at Venice were first closed on Jews. This opening act is free of anti-Semitism. Atrocities against Jews were instead committed in Cracow, Poland, and in Berlin, Germany, during the preceding decade. But there is no mention of Jews and no hint at animosities between the Reformer and them. In the absence of anti-Semitism, why did Luther want to break ranks with the Catholic Church? Luther’s intent was to return the Catholic Church to a purer and poorer form of faith. He criticized the customs of selling forgiveness of sins to the destitute and the selling of indulgences, a practice that had recently been applied to the dead as a new way to generate revenue for the church.84 However, Luther was more concerned about the use of the money from indulgences rather than the indulgences themselves. He approved of these.85 In its search for revenues, the Catholic Church created fictional forms of money. It partly paid for its soldiers with indulgences, the forgiveness of all their sins. They needed only to serve long enough under arms or die on the battlefield as martyrs. Payments for indulgences would free the dead’s soul from purgatory. This is an imaginary place of infernal suffering. There, the sins of the deceased are cleansed in order for their souls to achieve the holiness necessary to ascend to heaven. This is the place where paradise is located. For example, an encyclical by one of the popes of our story encouraged holy war in Africa by promising everlasting felicity in the Kingdom of Heaven for those who participated.86 To be clear, remission of sin was to come through the shedding of infidels’ blood. Better yet, the dead on the front were frequently Catholics on both sides. Such was the level of superstition in the Christian civilization. Those who think that religion is limited to questions about a god may be surprised that their view might be simplistic. Organized religion comes in a variation of sectarian package deals. It is complicated and expensive. 84 85 86 The practice of applying the sale of indulgences to the dead was established by Pope Sixtus IV (1471– 1484), see James Patrick, Renaissance and Reformation (Cavendish, 2007) 1231. Martin Luther, Letter to Christoph Scheurl, March 5, 1518. Raynaldus, ad ann. 1505, no. 5, vol. XX. P. 21, in Setton, 1984, 38. 36 Holy Enemies of Freedom Luther intended to enforce the Gospels’ concept of poverty and modesty and bring the church back to its good old days. In his focus was the lack of openness of the church and its reluctance to put its treasures to good use for the needy.87 Luther condemned the Catholic Church for its secrecy and whim. It was a corrupt religious organization, he thought. He criticized the opulence of the pope’s entourage and the bishoprics, which were swimming in riches. In addition, the pope had initiated a lavish building project for the new church of Saint Peter in Rome. Luther said that the papacy should pay for the construction out of its pocket, rather than extorting its cost from the disadvantaged.88 Indeed, a Jewish chronicle noted that the pope went as far as having earrings stripped off women and girls to pay for the extravaganza.89 Perhaps the strongest point was Luther’s assault on papal authority, which was enforced through the terror of the Inquisition.90 Luther’s 95 Theses had a lot to do with clerical malpractice in the Catholic Church. According to Luther, faith and the Christian principles of poverty and social rejection should be enforced. The eighteenth-century historian David Hume claimed that the priesthood had enriched itself through cashing in on the poor.91 He also alleged that Luther’s core motivation was economic. Under the first Medici Pope Leo X,92 the Catholic Church diverted the task of collecting revenue from the Austin Friars, also called the Order of St. Augustine, to the Dominican Order.93 They lost the revenue streams that had fed their Augustinian bellies. In short, Luther was already an active Austin leader when the river of money dried up. To understand the circumstances better, the ‘Medici’ suffix of the then-pope warrants a short detour. 87 88 89 90 91 92 93 Martin Luther, 95 Theses (1517). Ibid. Joseph Ha-Cohen aka Rabbi Joseph Ben Joshua Ben Meir, the Sphardi, The Chronicles, Vol. I, translated by C.H.F. Bialloblotzky (Valpy, 1836) 430. Luther, 95 Theses, 1517, 90. David Hume, The History Of England (M’Creery, 1807) Volume IV, 31. Pope Leo X, born Giovanni di Lorenzo de' Medici, was pope 1513 – 1521. Hume, 1807, Volume IV, 33-34. 37 A.J. Deus About 200 years earlier, a man by the name of Salvestro de’ Medici ‘il Chiarissimo’ (‘The Very Clear’) arrived in Florence from an unknown home.94 This city-state was one of the richest in the Italian Peninsula. Its citizens and business bosses were early political Renaissance activists. Florentine enterprises, merchants, and financiers of the era had their powerful economic networks laid out across Europe. Salvestro’s son was Averardo de’ Medici. The name of this second known generation is an indication that the family intended to link itself to the legendary Knight Averardo under the French King and emperor of the Holy Roman Empire, Charlemagne.95 The Medicis’ pro-French attitude showed in their earliest appearance and persisted during Luther’s era. Since it constitutes an important part of the foundation of the sixteenth century Lutheran religious environment, I need to highlight the big picture of this relationship. Charlemagne’s son96 exempted Jews from laws against usury. Since their banking monopoly is part of the divine Law of the Bible,97 there was nothing a Christian or a Muslim could do about it. While similar privileges existed before elsewhere, the Carolingian monopoly opened the doors to financial engineering for cash-strapped governments and warfare. How the tax farming dynasties of the Seniors, Abrabanels, and others we will meet rose to their lofty positions is no mystery. Rabbinic leaders seem to have had it all figured out for themselves. At the cost of everybody else, they were laughing all the way to the bank. You could hate them and drive them into ghettos, but nothing stopped Jewish leaders from making money. Tons of it. 94 95 96 97 While the origin of the Medicis is in the dark, another family serves as a template to Florentine’s special status of a French-oriented bastion. We hear first in the early eleventh century from a family with vast riches and properties: the feudal Ricasoli Dynasty. […]. Charlemagne, Charles the Great (742 – 814), was Holy Roman Emperor 800 – 814, King of the Lombards from 774, and King of the Franks (the French) from 768. Louis the Pious, 778 – 840), the Fair, was King of the Franks and co-Emperor with Charlemagne from 813 – 840. He was also King of Aquitaine from 781. Deuteronomy 23:19-23:20. 38 Holy Enemies of Freedom For centuries before Luther, Franco-Carolingians had already clashed at Rome with a Spanish flavor of Christianity, which was influenced by Jewish and Muslim rituals. The French version was at the heart of a simpler, Germanic form of Christian rituals.98 Averardo de’ Medici was not living in poverty. A grand estate outside of Florence – a fortress – was known as ‘Gafaggiolo de’ Medici’ during his lifetime.99 The fortress had previously belonged to the Republic of Florence. In plain English: he was already among the super-rich before the Medici Bank even started. The third member of this dynasty was Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici, founder of the Medici Bank, which would become the largest bank in Europe and its dynasty the wealthiest in Europe. Ultimately, their later royal power found its roots through a marriage arrangement that came to be forged in Luther’s time by a Medici pope. Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici was trained by and worked with a distant cousin, Vieri di Cambio who was a banker in Florence. His name, Change or Exchange in English, suggests that the Medici cousin di Cambio may have been a Jewish money changer, and that the Medici bankers could have originally been Jews100 who migrated from France. The mechanism appears similar to Abrabanel’s and Senior’s. At the time, the Catholic Church enforced strict usury laws, essentially endorsing the Jewish monopoly for interest-bearing businesses. In the laws’ consequence, Christians were not allowed to take interest. However, in di Cambio’s time, the seat of the Catholic Church was not in Rome but in Avignon, in modern southern France. This era is called ‘the Babylonian Captivity of the Papacy,’ because the Vatican was occupied by so-called anti-popes. This latter term is generally understood to refer to illegitimate claimants to the papal throne, but it probably stands for popes of competing sectarian denominations. The popes in Avignon were supported by the French kings and the Medici. 98 99 100 Opposed to Catholics, Arians do not believe that Jesus Christ was both, man and God. God and Jesus were distinct. The Germanic beliefs go back to the fourth century Paulinic Ulfilas Bible. However, the original Arian position is not clearly documented in the historical record. John Shearman, The Collections of the Younger Branch of the Medici (The Burlington Magazine 117 No. 862, January 1975) 17. JewischHistory.org. 39 A.J. Deus According to mainstream history, the anti-popes were upheld by Italians.101 Before continuing with the Medicis, let me zero in on Cambio’s name. When the Catholic Church was talking about usury, it was not only referring to interest on loans. As our modern banks vividly visualize, a banking business dependent on interest revenues alone is like a cake half-baked. Of course, when you pay little or no interest on deposits and take a lot on loans, then you should make a bundle. Should. But there is a little pitfall built in that is often overlooked: risk. If a loan defaults, large amounts are being lost that need to be made up by the small trickle of interest from other loans. A way around it is to ask for collateral to secure loans. We have already heard from Pfefferkorn’s accusation against the Jewish pawnshop principle and the respective regulation in Venice. The riches came not from the interest but from the liquidation of assets worth much more than the loan. The lender had a hidden interest in the failure of the borrower. However, in government loans, the collateral could be as big as tax farming. But there is another way to reduce the risk and make more money: lend out money that you do not have. In simple terms, taking and giving out loans depends on the scale of the operation. The bigger the lending business gets in any particular market, the more the bank can lend out money without having it. The loan of one client becomes the deposit of another. This works best wherever a lender enjoys a monopoly in any given market. It works even better where deposits are prohibited from receiving interest. Since there were no regulations in Luther’s time, except for the usury laws, the lending business could be driven up infinitely – until the ‘bank’ collapsed through a bank run. The small depositors lost everything. The bankers always won. Respectable as they were, they lived in palaces. But then, there are other banking businesses. The big ones back then engaged in what today would be called investment banking and arbitration, the exchange of currency. In ‘investment banking,’ the mainly Jewish banks financed wars on both sides and trade voyages, entire ships, complete with crew and all of their merchandise. A single successful venture could enrich them beyond belief. A sunken ship translated into a total loss. 101 This is not always so clear, because sometimes – as the Catholic Church chose – the roles between Avignon and Rome were reversed. These anti-popes were more likely connected to a Spanish sect that has not yet been properly identified. 40 Holy Enemies of Freedom The trouble with this was that they already needed to be big to play big. Unless they pooled the money of many to the same goal. And that is exactly what they did. In the process, the organizer of the venture eliminated all his risk. Win or lose, money poured in either way. Which brings us finally back to di Cambio’s name that relates to money changing operations. Other than for arbitration in modern banks, I used to think of exchanging money as a sort of small-minded business idea. Change a hundred bucks here and there from one currency to another and make a couple from it. My late father-in-law – a Muslim man who was full of wonders – used to own a money exchange business. Because I never thought of scale, I was in sheer disbelief over how much money the business made with its small operation. In Afghanistan, he told me, moneychangers advertised their services with Euros and Dollars bundled up on transport pallets. Since the local currency was worthless, exchange of hard currency was an essential factor of business. These exchanges made so much money that their owners could literally swim in it. And they never paid a single dollar in taxes. Since many transactions ran off the books, business partners were able to enrich themselves by funneling away a little here and a little more there. Nobody would ever know. Back then, there were no unified currencies as we know them today. The more fractured currencies were, the more money could be made with exchange services. Money, money, money. Before founding his own bank, Giovanni di Bicci de’ Medici had been promoted to general manager of di Cambio’s branch in Rome. In this capacity, the Medici supported the return of the Avignon papacy to the Vatican, developing a deep business relationship with the papal court. At some point, di Cambio’s money business broke into three banks. Giovanni took partnership of the one in Rome and eventually moved its headquarters to Florence. He cashed in when it was finally time for the Avignon popes to move to the Eternal City. Being grateful for his continuing support, his Rome branch was awarded control of the Apostolic Chamber. As unbelievable as it may seem, Medici took command over the beating heart of the finances of the Catholic Church, its treasury. Similar to the King of the Jews, Abrabanel, in Portugal and Spain, Giovanni was now treasurer of Europe’s largest business, the Catholic Church. It does not appear to have been unusual. At the end of the twelfth century, the treasurer of Pope Alexander III was a descendant of the great Talmudist Rabbi Nathan. 41 A.J. Deus From there on, the Medici Bank expanded and branched out into virtually everything: trade, factories, jewelry, transportation, politics, philanthropy, charity, warfare, and tax farming – the world’s most lucrative business, a contract to extort taxes from the poor sheep of the Catholic Church with whatever means it took and to keep a good portion of the proceeds. This was one ruthless tribe. The Catholic priesthood insisted on a biblical right to taxation to line its own pockets,102 and the Medicis lent their hand, axe, knife, and sword as the enforcers of the cash flow. The Medici Bank’s success was unstoppable under Frenchfriendly popes, and its stamp would eventually be on – everything. Giovanni died one of the richest men in one of the richest cities in Europe. Thanks to the usury laws, the Medici Bank did not even have to pay interest on the tax money that they owed the Vatican. 100 years later, the Vatican in the Medici banking empire still provided for over half of its profits. For a business, that generally constitutes an uncomfortable lump risk. Nevertheless, with their good relations to the Vatican, the political influence of the family grew with their wealth. Cosimo and Piero di Cosimo de’ Medici were de facto rulers of Florence. The political situation in the Italian Peninsula and the Medici business grew unstable during the time of the next generation with Lorenzo the Magnificent. The latter remains famous today with connoisseurs for his support of two of the great Renaissance artists of the time, Botticelli and Michelangelo. Lorenzo was ‘il primo cittadino d’Italia,’ first among Italy’s citizens. He was the most prominent and important of all men in the Italian Peninsula. One of his daughters gave birth to two sons who later became cardinals, and one of his grand daughters became mother of Pope Leo XI. Another daughter was married to the son of Pope Innocent. One of their sons also became a cardinal. But Lorenzo could not always enjoy smooth sailing. 102 Sirach 7:30–31. 42 Holy Enemies of Freedom A Dominican friar by the name of Savonarola103 turned Florence into a war zone. Under siege by a French army, and instead of submitting to orders from the Catholic Church, the Florentine extremist combined his puritan teachings with armed youth gangs and managed to have the French-friendly Medicis thrown out of their hometown – together with all Jews.104 Thenceforth, the Medici family spent the years between 1494 and 1512 in exile. Their business went belly up. Savonarola promised to become the center of a new imperial power with riches to bless the city like never before.105 Given Florence’s wealth, one might think that was a preposterous thing to say. However, in organized religion, wealth is measured by the number of paying believers. The fanatic was intent on creating a New Jerusalem in Florence. For this to happen – we will learn about the mechanism later – he needed a messiah and he had to hasten the End of the World. If one were to look for a really radical reformer, he was the one. Luther looked like a frightened lamb compared to this guy. Both bedeviled the corrupt clergy of the Catholic Church. A pattern emerged: New Jerusalem was multiplying. Savonarola was excommunicated by the pope for his hostile refusal to join the Vatican’s fight against the French King. The Catholic Pope at the time was Alexander VI, the Spanish-born Borgia (Borja).106 Political opponents described the Borgia clan as ‘Marranos’ – with the unmistaken meaning of sows – converts from Judaism. Alexander VI was now the one under fire by Savonarola. Things turned sour. The Florentine populace lost its faith in the holy man.107 Savonarola ended up hanged and burned in Florence’s main square, the awe-inspiringly beautiful Piazza della Signoria. 103 104 105 106 107 Girolamo Savonarola, 1452 – 1498. [On December 26, 1595, Savonarola] expelled the Medici and the Jews from Florence. The Jews, who had previously served as the Medici's bankers, were replaced by the Monte di Pieta, a public loan bank. (Jewishhistory.org.il, retrieved September 22, 2017). Girolamo Savonarola in Donald Weinstein, Savonarola and Florence Prophecy and Patriotism in the Renaissance (Princeton, 1970) 143. Pope Alexander VI aka Rodrigo de Borja (Borgia), Roderic Llançol i de Borja, Rodrigo Lanzol y de Borja, 1431 – 1503, was pope 1492 – 1503. Niccolò Machiavelli, The Prince, Concerning New Principalities Which Are Acquired By One's Own Arms And Ability (1532). 43 A.J. Deus Whoever travels to Florence should visit the Convent of San Marco, just a couple of busy blocks north of the cathedral and the city’s traffic-free main sights. The preacher had his quarters there from 1482. Looking past the incredible art, Savonarola’s and his friar brothers’ cells speak an unmistaken language of a place of religious radicalization. Perhaps any convent that can be visited by the public would provide for a similar aha-moment for just how low human life is willing to degrade itself to halt or reverse progress in the name of superstition. Another Giovanni de’ Medici with the suffix ‘delle Bande Nere,’ was a son of the most significant woman of the Renaissance, Caterina Sforza, raised humanist at the Sforza court in Milan. Money attracts money. By this time, Caterina’s reputation could be summed up in her nickname, ‘The Tiger of Forlì.’ In the chaos of Savonarola’s aftermath, the Milanese humanist ‘Tiger of Forlì’ ended up in Castel Sant’Angelo, a prison in the Vatican with the name of an angel, in which the Medici wife was incarcerated. Allegedly, she had tried to poison the Borgia Pope Alexander VI. Martin Luther studied some of Savonarola’s writings. He praised him as a martyr. The extremist Savonarola was one of the forerunners of the Protestant Reformation108 after whom Luther would come to shape his approach to separating from the Catholic Church. The two Medicis who we are really interested in are Lorenzo’s sons Giovanni di Lorenzo and Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici.109 The former was now himself Pope Leo X, the one in Martin Luther’s eye. Through his family connections to previous popes, he had been named a cardinal at the age of sixteen. Sent to Florence by his predecessor, Pope Julius II (della Rovere), with a papal army, he himself came to reinstate Medici rule in the city just before ascending to the papal throne in Rome. Giulio later became Pope Clement VII. The Medicis were not sucking their thumbs in exile. They were working hard behind the scenes with a very long-term outlook. The game plan could well have gone wrong. But putting a Medici on the papal throne was a genius strategy. When Giovanni di Lorenzo was made Pope Leo X, he was only thirty-seven years old and was not even yet ordained a priest. Business can only be merry, one might think. 108 109 Donald Weinstein, Savonarola: The Rise and Fall of a Renaissance Prophet (Yale, 2011) 360, note 26, drawing on works in German (Nolte) and Italian (Simoncelli and Dall' Aglio). Because the son of Lorenzo’s brother had been murdered, Giulio ended up being adopted by the family patriarch. 44 Holy Enemies of Freedom After returning to their home base, the Medicis established themselves as the hereditary rulers of Florence. When Luther talked about corruption in the Catholic Church, it would have been imprudent of him to engage in name-calling. However, there is little doubt that his contemporaries, including the pope, knew exactly what he was talking about. Holy Lord of Wars While the Medicis were important for the flow of hard currency for the Vatican, we need also to understand the internal workings of the Catholic Church. We remember that income had been redirected from Luther’s Augustinian Order to the Dominicans. Under the leadership of the Augustinian Vicar General Egidio Viterbo,110 the order of the Austin Friars was ‘unified’ into regular Catholic congregations. This consolidation appears to have been the result of a short-lived pan-European alliance111 that was forged to get the rebellious Venetians in line. As a member of the Erfurt Augustinian convent at the time, Luther was opposed to this merger. Six other Augustinian convents rebelled against the command to submit to the Catholic creed. As a representative of the disobedient friars, Luther had already been in Rome in the fall of 1510. He thought of the Catholic Church as stubborn, butting their way through in an all-or-nothing approach.112 The deal fell flat, and many Augustinian convents celebrated their independence. Consequently, there was an inter-Augustinian schism; those for integration and those for ‘freedom’ from the yoke of the Catholic Church. That Luther ended up as an Augustinian leader is sort of a surprise. He did not seem to have found his footing in life. Having started to study law and then switching to philosophy and theology, he lacked orientation. In philosophy, he learned how to reason. It did not satisfy his faith. 110 111 112 Egidio Viterbo (Ægidius Viterbensis), aka Giles Antonini, aka Giles of Viterbo, 1472 – 1532, was an Austin Friar, bishop of Viterbo and cardinal of the Catholic Church. The League of Cambrai. Martin Luther, On war against Islamic reign of terror (On war against the Turk, 1528) WA 30 II, 107148. 45 A.J. Deus A terrifying moment when lightning struck near him113 led him to subscribe to life as a hermit in the Augustinian cloister at Erfurt in 1505. It is almost as though he attempted to reconnect with a lost faith and punish himself for his sins.114 Lack of purpose is a feature that is frequently found among extremists. The St. Augustine Monastery in Erfurt reaches back to the late thirteenth century. Its prison-like structures had been built through public donations and the sale of indulgences.115 Almost 150 hermits resided there with Luther. In addition to living off donations, they traded in a blue indigo dye that was processed from the woad plant. Erfurt was a medieval center for this color.116 For a decade after Luther’s arrival, a large library was under construction in the monastery. Erfurt was the point of no return on Luther’s march to radicalization. Surrounded by like-minded monks, the Reformer henceforth focused on the imaginary. He was isolated from reality behind the monastery’s walls. His human interactions were limited to admirers of divinities with a singular Augustinian worldview. Luther was ordained in 1507. The next year, he became a teacher at Wittenberg University. He rose like a star. Two years later, he represented the rebellious Austin Friars in Rome, even before he was awarded the title of Doctor of Theology. By the time of his 95 Theses, he was in charge of eleven monasteries. He would later come to declare monastic houses as ‘nothing more than an estate founded by worldly wisdom for the sake of getting money and revenues.’ Still in his words, ‘everything about it is merely external, temporal, perishable pomp.’117 He would come to call them ‘death traps, the very ramparts of hell.’118 113 114 115 116 117 118 Martin Brecht, Martin Luther, translated by James L. Schaaf (Fortress Press, Copyright © 1985–93, reprinted by permission of Fortress Press) 1:48. James Kittelson, Luther The Reformer (Fortress Publishing, 1986) 79. Theresia Simon, Die Augustiner-Eremiten im Spätmittelalter: Am Beispiel des Augustinerklosters in Erfurt (AV Akademikerverlag, 2014). Joan Thirsk, Alternative Agriculture: A History: From the Black Death to the Present Day (Oxford, 1997) 81-82. Martin Luther, A Sermon on Keeping Children in School (1530), from Luther’s Works, Vol. 46 (Fortress, Copyright © 1967, reprinted by permission of Fortress) 213-57. Ibid. 46 Holy Enemies of Freedom Indeed, these are places of radicalization. A monk might enter with good intentions. But the inhumane environment could turn him into a monster with a mind full of demons sooner rather than later. Egidio Viterbo and Martin Luther were arch enemies. This Viterbo opened the Fifth Lateran Council of the Catholic Church at Rome in 1512. At the start of the Reformation, he already had become cardinal. An Austin friar, or rather the boss thereof, he was by now a fully integrated member of the top leadership of the Catholic Church. Soon thereafter, Viterbo came to be considered a favored successor to the papal throne. With this career outlook, it is little wonder that he was willing to sell out his Augustinian friends. Two issues should help us understand the complex religious context. First, it appears essential to know what was going on in the Fifth Lateran Council. We need to spend some time with it, because it will provide some answers for Luther’s later behavior. Secondly, we need to learn what the Austin Friars believed in. There is no better way than to ask St. Augustine himself. The Fifth Lateran Council was held in sessions over a period of six years and ended a few months before Luther nailed his 95 Theses to the church door at Wittenberg in 1517. However, most of the bishopric outside of the Italian Peninsula or Spain did not, or refused to, attend. This lack of attendance highlights the dire circumstances that the Catholic Church was in. Luther was only one of the problems to come. The pope at the time, Julius II,119 had higher ambitions. He intended to rid the Catholic domain of feudal kings and, with this move, to ensure the ‘independence’ of the church from earthly influence. Julius wanted the Catholic Church to rule the world through its clerical network alone. It should be a full-fledged theocracy, rather than the ill-conceived one that it was. To implement this would neither come easy nor be without resistance and bloodshed. For hundreds of years, Catholic kings and princes were hanging in a delicate balance with the papacy. Church and nobility fed each other by mutual reinforcement. The Catholic Church created noble overlords preferably from its own ranks. In return, the nobility promised to uphold the power of the church. 119 Pope Julius II was pope of the Catholic Church 1503 – 1513. 47 A.J. Deus This allowed feudal states to emerge and to be maintained under the tyranny of church-allied royals. These were sort of dual governments that lived according to biblical prescriptions. The papacy played shepherd, and its noble dogs kept the sheep in check and milked taxes for the Vatican. Following the Bible,120 noble families typically delegated one of their sons to a clerical career. This acted like an insurance policy for their own privileges within the ecclesiastical inner circle. However, biblical rules are deceptions. The Bible mandates the highest despots to be from the leading Jewish class, the Levites.121 This safeguards the priestly succession and nobility to remain a closedknit network. Ordinary Jewish or Christian families could send their firstborn sons to the monasteries as they wished. The biblical hierarchy was rigged against their ascent into the noble class. They were tricked not only to send their firstborns with no prospects for their livelihoods but also to sustain the system of their own oppression with taxes. The way to break into the caste would have been to become pope. He was the one with the power to give or take away the benefices necessary to ascend to the one percent – nobility. To make oppression perfect, they did not tolerate dissent or violence against the ruling class, even if it concerned one of their staunchest enemies. The offender ended up before the hangman.122 The success and riches of the upper class were pre-programmed. They rose to become bishops and cardinals or popes in Rome. The Vatican created and maintained the royals’ power and enforced it through the word of their god. It was an utterly corrupt system of governance. Martin Luther opposed the pope’s ideas to limit the power of nobility. He thought that they were responsible for ‘protecting’ the people and that the church should take care of spiritual questions. Luther wanted to strengthen the status of nobility. Because of their difference, Luther called Pope Julius a ‘wicked iron-eater’ in reference to his function as a leader in wars and thought of him as ‘half devil.’123 The approach of the Reformer rested on right-wing tradition, preservation, and opposition, rather than on innovation. 120 121 122 123 Exodus 22:29–30. Numbers 3:11. An example of the mechanism is in Ha-Cohen, Vol. II, transl. Bialloblotzky, 1836, 52. Luther, On War, 1528, WA 30 II, 107-148. 48 Holy Enemies of Freedom The geo-political currents can be understood through the election speech of Julius. It may just be gossip, but he is said to having flat-out refused to be in the same room that his Spanish-born predecessor, the Borgia Pope Alexander VI, had lived in. Julius claimed that Borgia had ‘usurped the papal power by the devil’s aid.’ Considering an otherwise inexplicable transfer of Borgia’s palace in Rome to the cardinal who was responsible for the election of Pope Alexander VI and also recipient of the vice-chancellorship of the Vatican,124 Julius might have had a point. His intent was to wipe out Alexander’s memory. He wanted his body sent back to Spain,125 so it is said. Given the support of all corrupt cardinals in the room, including Alexander’s nephew, Cardinal Cesare Borgia, and ten other Spanish cardinals, Pope Julius might have thought to say something like it. But he likely did not risk having his life cut short. In contrary and on other occasion, the pope held Alexander VI in ‘happy memory.’126 How treacherous the path of a pope was is apparent with Julius’ direct predecessor.127 He lasted for less than a month. For his election, he was too sick to walk and too lame to kneel, according to mainstream history.128 To play for time, they had elected a member of the walking dead to replace the Borgia Pope Alexander VI – a compromise candidate, so they say. However, because this papacy was not long enough to cash in, the Spanocchi Bank of Siena was ruined. They had invested in a dead man? The pope’s election was corrupt. The Italian cities of Florence and Pisa had long been disobedient to the Catholic Church, particularly when the pope was not friendly with the Kingdom of France. Julius deployed the troops of the Papal States in order to rectify their religious spirits through armed intervention. He was not nicknamed ‘The Warrior Pope’ by mere chance. The pope was a holy lord of wars. 124 125 126 127 128 Setton, 1978, 434. Pope Julius II in Nigel Cawthorne, Sex Lives of the Popes (Prion, 1996) 219 [unable to verify the original source]. Archive di Stato di Roma, Introitus et Exitus, Reg. 535, fol. 182, cited by Pastor, Hist. Popes, VI. 224, note, and Geschichte der Päpste, III-2 (repr. 1956) 693, and note 8, in Setton, 1984, 36. Pope Pius III aka Francesco Todeschini Piccolomini, was pope from September 22, 1503 to October 18, 1503. Setton, 1984, 4. 49 A.J. Deus Since Pope Julius wanted to rid himself of royalty, the bishoprics of the Kingdom of France had deemed it within their right to withdraw from the Catholic Church. The papal forces had lost decisive battles at Milan, Bologna, and later Ravenna. The French victors organized a general council at Pisa, which amounted to another anti-papal schism. The pope was invited. He refused to attend. French Christians had their own kind of reformation. Modern Pisa boasts a medieval city core second to none. Just outside, its massive cathedral and Leaning Tower attract millions of visitors every year. Back then, the city was an utterly unsuitable place for a council, the pope contended. Indeed, ‘Pisa had suffered so grievously in a full fourteen years of siege and desolation that there were hardly any houses still left with their walls intact.’129 In light of the dangers to the bishops and cardinals while travelling to the council, the meetings at Pisa did not take place with the planned crowds. Because of the possibility of assault, the rebellious undertaking was moved from Pisa to Milan and finally to Lyon in France. Thanks to the mutual bickering of the few cardinals in attendance, it amounted to nothing. Among other non-issues, they decided to suspend the authority of Pope Julius II.130 The damage to the papacy was inflicted anyway. With Pandora’s Box already open, the authority of the Vatican was again criticized by Martin Luther. Nevertheless, all sides insisted on profound church reformation and some kind of enforcement of peace among the feudal overlords. The ulterior goal of pope and clergy was to plan holy war against the Ottoman-Turks to restore the Holy Land and Jerusalem to Christian rule.131 To this end, they needed to bring the royals to a pan-European peace and war treaty. In other words, the thinly attended Fifth Lateran Council at Rome was not entirely voluntary, even though the corrupt package-deal for the election of Pope Julius II contained the obligation to call for a council within two years. 129 130 131 Ibid., 95. Ibid., 120. Pastor, History of the Popes, VI, append., no. 76, pp. 647-48, in Setton, 1984, 51. Also page 75. 50 Holy Enemies of Freedom The council focused on suppressing the schism with Pisa-Milan, which was under the protectorate of the French king,132 one of those monarchs on the pope’s list to be militarily eliminated. The holy lord of wars did not seem to have taken into account that when God’s intermediary shot, the arrows might come back for him. Like the pope, the French king’s ambition – he bore the honorary title ‘Most Christian King’ – was to attain a ‘world monarchy.’133 Revolt was written all over. Under guard by armed Knights Hospitaller, Egidio Viterbo, Luther’s Austin Friar anti-friend, opened the council by addressing the evils of the church and pleading for its reform. He insisted that men must act in accordance with immutable religion, not religion with men.134 Calling for peace among the onepercenters, he wanted to shift the focus such that the ‘arms of our kings be turned upon Mohammed, the common enemy of Christ.’135 In almost every religious council in history, the meaning of peace is the same: war against heretics, those who dare to disagree. We know next to nothing about the discussions during the few sessions that took place. At least, we are in possession of the council’s proclamations. Viterbo seems to have been an advocate of concordance (one united doctrine) and church reform. He attempted also to uphold some of the Augustinian principles. This must not have been an easy feat, in particular because his adversaries of the Dominican order were to argue reform from their radically different point of view. The man on the other side was the Dominican Master-General, Cajetan,136 master of terror by the Papal States, that is – the Inquisition. Cajetan was the boss of the national grand inquisitors. He would become a saint in which capacity he remains patron of Argentine – and of gamblers and document forgers – Saint Cajetan. But wait! I am confusing Saint Cajetan with another by the name of Thomas Cajetan. He had two faces and one mind. It is an artful maneuver. Both lived around the same time, pursued the same professional obsession, and roamed the Vatican at the same time; one disappeared into life in the service of religious ‘charity’ – an 132 133 134 135 136 Louis XII was King of France 1498 – 1515, Duke of Milan 1499 – 1512, and King of Naples 1501 – 1504. Setton, 1984, 29, 61. Ibid., 121. Ibid. Thomas Cajetan, aka Gaetanus, aka Tommaso de Vio or Thomas de Vio, 1469 – 1534. 51 A.J. Deus euphemism for advertisement, paid for with the money extorted from the poor – while the other appeared at that moment as a papal diplomat; of one we know where he studied and of the other where he worked; one spoke a lot, but nothing is written down, and the other left a pile of works behind, but he spoke of nothing. Some of the works by the one who knew how to write were later ‘expunged’ by the University of Sorbonne in Paris. They came to be viewed as heretical. The term expunged is a red flag. It indicates engineering of history to align with wishful thinking. The works have been censored in order to merit the approval of the Catholic Church. The intention of the council was to restore peace in the Catholic domain and to overthrow heresies and schisms. The words peace and overthrow form a poetic pair. They wanted to organize a campaign to weed out the enemies of their Truth ‘so that the mouths of all schismatics and enemies of peace, those howling dogs, may be silenced and Christians may be able to keep themselves unstained from such pernicious and poisonous contagion.’137 Silencing the howling dogs. This is not some unfortunate misstep. It is part of the written resolution as agreed on at the council. Poisonous contagion? In the definition of Cardinal Cajetan, Christians live their lives in the efficacy of the sacraments under the tutelage of a priesthood obedient to the pope, the Supreme Pontiff of the Catholic Church138 – the equivalent to the Pontifex Maximus of the long-gone Roman Empire – a dictator. The pope’s authority is second only to his god’s. All citizens owe total submission to him. It was a wholly totalitarian system that was designed around a despot by leveraging the superstitions of the subjected populations. Infidels upset the harmony of the divinely ordained society. There is no place for them – except for six feet under. According to this Truth, everyone who does not follow it is among those needing correction. 137 138 Fifth Lateran Council, Session 2, May 17, 1512. Setton, 1984, 126-127. 52 Holy Enemies of Freedom A diabolic plan was being drawn up by the council to restore the only Truth that was ‘sure knowledge.’ Luther soon became the bull’s-eye. Although the pope’s intention was to rid the world of feudal overlords, he made a disastrous mistake. He sent none other than Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici to wrest the city of Florence back from the enemies of the Catholic Church. This ended the Medici family’s exile and – we know nothing about it – might have spelled the pope’s own end. Supposedly, the Medici cardinal was captured by French troops and ended up in the contested city of Milan. There, he is said to have absolved Milanese and Frenchmen and promoted that nobody should work against the church.139 A cousin of the cardinal, Giulio de’ Medici, appears to have been the messenger for the renewed submission of Kingdom of France and the Medicis to the power of the Catholic Pope. Trust – but whom? The two, Giovanni di Lorenzo de’ Medici and Giulio di Giuliano de’ Medici, just so happened later to become popes of the Catholic Church. ‘In the last minute,’ the Medici cardinal had escaped from French captivity. The Medicis were no turncoats. They had been playing on the French team all along. 139 Ibid., 129. 53 A.J. Deus Another Reformation The council prohibited the sale and purchase of church offices. Including the throne of the pope. The practice has been attempted to be rooted out countless times through the centuries. Its varnished technical term is simony. Corruption does not follow laws. In addition to its enforcement of the Truth, the Catholic Church had a nose for money. In its regulation against simony, one can find ‘intermediaries, brokers, and bankers’ barred from ‘making or benefiting from a will.’ The church gave itself the authority to confiscate their property.140 The council also included secular banking businesses. In these cases, they consented to such property being seized by the ‘secular’ authorities. Those nobles in bed with the Catholic Church. The disdain of the papacy could bankrupt them in the blink of an eye. The greed of royalty could bust them in an instant. The power of the Truth was enforced by creating noble dependencies. There was no business without supporting the Catholic Church. Apologists claim that the resulting disasters were caused by the political situation. With this council, we have the primary evidence that royalty had no choice but to advertise Catholicism. The ringleaders were the heads of the Catholic Church, the pope, his cardinals, and his enforcers from the terror network of the Inquisition. If the nobles did not sufficiently uphold and expand Catholicism or failed to send growing tax revenues to Rome, they lost their feudal privileges through the intervention of the Inquisition. Could they have rebelled? Of course – in rags. Under Luther’s leadership, some would soon come to refuse compliance. However, the Catholic Church did not need Martin Luther to enlighten its leaders about the corruption in its religious organization. They were fully self-aware. As it is with warfare, things do not always work out as planned, and a stroke of luck turned the tide on the French front in favor of the papacy. French troops had to withdraw into their trenches at home. Their king had to declare his allegiance to the Vatican. 140 Fifth Lateran Council, Session 5, February 16, 1513. 54 Holy Enemies of Freedom Now we can see just how corrupt the feudal system was: in advance of the victory, the pope had made a most secret arrangement with the King of England. In it, the latter would not only be granted the title and rights to the Kingdom of France, but in gratitude, the title ‘Most Christian King’ would be transferred from the King of France to him.141 The pope was the Vicar of Christ. The Triple Crown of the Vatican symbolized emperors and kings as his vice-regents. The pope was in charge, and royal obedience paid off. At least, it should have. The French-averse Pope Julius II died around the time of the total defeat of the Francophones – surprise! – and the French-friendly Medici pope, Leo X, started out powerless, so it is said, only to immediately pick up the trail of the ongoing council. The schism with Pisa-Milan was ended. The formerly disobedient clerics had their honors and dignities restored. They appeared as though they had won the challenge to papal authority.142 We know nothing about how Julius found his martyrdom. He died of a fever, so history records, or perhaps of grief. He should have been more careful whose wine he sipped in celebration of his victories. Having a Medici buoy to the top is an indication that the printed laws did not prevent the progression of worldly realities of corruption. That is how important a pope was for the Medici clan and the other banker families. The here-portrayed preference of the pope conflicts with mainstream history. Wait for actions to speak for themselves. What had happened was that the papal alliance basically disintegrated over the spoils of its success against the Kingdom of France. Venice, traditionally not on good terms with the Vatican, quickly rebuilt its relations with the defeated to hold the hated Pope Julius in check. That the Venetians would jump ship at first opportunity was a given after they had earlier been stabbed into religious submission by the papal troops. Put into this equation the French-friendly Florence as well as Genoa. Things could have turned against the papacy in a heartbeat. 141 142 Setton, 1984, 124. Ibid., 150. 55 A.J. Deus Pope Julius was under the protectorate of the Holy Roman Empire and the half-hearted English. But the death knell was the invitation of Spain to battle against the Kingdom of France. It resulted in the re-encroachment of Spanish interests over the Italian Peninsula. The blood-dripping swords of France had merely been replaced with the blood-soaked daggers of Spain. Christian blood, that is. On all sides. Leo’s goal now was to enforce peace among the Christian rulers – and then go after the ‘enemies’ of the Catholic faith.143 The idea was not universal peace but a unification of Catholic forces against everybody else – still. Simply put, the dream – or rather the nightmare – was ultimately to obliterate all competing Christian sects, Judaism, and finally Islam. The collective idea in this council was that they could solve the pan-European sectarian differences by deciding – for all others – what was right or wrong. The council’s decisions were written down and distributed as evidence. The paper put the opposition on fire. Those men had no soul. The human soul is a marvelous idea, if one considers it to be the spirit of humanity. When we refer to a person’s good soul, we do not mean something tangible, much less so something worth fighting over how ‘it’ should be understood. Back then, beliefs were different, much more deep-seated than they are today, even among the best of Christians. The council insisted on an immortal soul. This terminology sought to eliminate all doubts about what ‘it’ was supposed be.144 For that, they were willing to condemn anyone who either rejected or doubted its immortality. The issue was not belief. Their determination to impose the Catholic version of faith with terminal love was a crime against humanity. On the other hand, the problem for the church was straightforward: without immortality of the soul – since they must have recognized that the body is given to worms after death – the Gospels’ promise for eternal life seemed impossible to fulfill; there would be no resurrection; no salvation. In consequence, there would be no End of the World and, with this, no New Jerusalem. Without the immortal soul, Christianity was to collapse by the weight of its religious rationale. 143 144 Fifth Lateran Council, Session 6, April 27, 1513. Fifth Lateran Council, Session 8, December 19, 1513. 56 Holy Enemies of Freedom What is the soul? Is there any evidence to show for this mysterious creature? Any at all? Believe it or not, an eyewitness account reports that the soul of a pope was ‘carried to heaven in a fiery globe,’ at midnight.145 The same witness lists a host of other miracles and armies of souls that went to heaven. Spectacular! The witness was Pope Gregory146 from the turn of the seventh century. Given the conflict of interest, he was probably not the most credible of all possible witnesses. In the absence of tangible evidence, we need to look a little deeper. In the biblical story of the first humans, the god of the Israelites warned Adam under threat of life not to eat from the tree of knowledge of good and evil. In ‘disobedience,’ Eve gave Adam fruit to eat from the tree, consequently giving humanity the gift of intellect147 – soul. Had this act not taken place, humans would be no smarter than chimpanzees. Devoid of understanding, primate apes (the hominid state of Adam and Eve before eating the fruit) could not have been responsible for the disregard of the godly warning. Eve’s deed was the cause of human enlightenment. Judaic believers are eternally thankful by declaring her noncompliance as the original sin. It is for this ‘sin’ that all of humanity needs to suffer until a savior comes to our rescue. Luther said that a woman adopts her husband’s name as ‘confirmation of the punishment or subjection which the woman incurred through her sin.’148 This crime was not committed by Eve alone. Adam went along. And her action was nothing but curiosity. Nevertheless, by the reasoning of all Judaic religions, Eve’s guilt was collectively transferred to the next generation of the entire female gender. And the next. Up until today. The original sin is the eternal justification for treating women as second class. The merciful, almighty god was tricked by Eve. The god banished the arch-couple from the Garden of Eden to make sure that humans did not eat from the tree of life also. Eating from it would have enabled humanity to live forever. 145 146 147 148 Gregory the Great, Dialogues (ca. 600 AD) IV:VII. Pope Gregory I was pope of the Catholic Church 590 – 604 AD. Genesis 3:7-3:12 (NIV). Luther’s Works, Volume I, Lectures on Genesis, Chapters 1-5, Edited by Jaroslav Pelikan, translated by Georg V. Schick (Concordia, Copyright © 1958, reprinted by permission of Concordia) 235. 57 A.J. Deus The god even placed angry angels and a flaming sword in front of the garden in order to block access to the tree.149 He could simply have commanded them to stay off his property. After all, he is God. But in the myth, Adam and Eve were given knowledge, intellect – soul. Sooner or later, boundless human curiosity posed a threat to the Truth of organized religions of Judaic origin. Targeting the teaching of philosophy at its church-censored universities, the council’s argument was that study that lacked ‘the flavoring of divine wisdom and the light of revealed truth – sometimes leads to error rather than to the discovery of the Truth.’150 The study of philosophy was limited to five years. After this, only those devoted to theology were permitted to continue. The idea was that those would cleanse and heal ‘the infected sources of philosophy and poetry.’151 They had a religious police academy in mind. Moderns still rely on church-‘cleansed’ literature, because all too often, that is all that is left of what was not destroyed in this process. Expunged. Some apologists and even respected scholars might like to say that this is just history. We are living in the twenty-first century, after all. But since we have been blessed with Eve’s gift of a soul, this position is intellectually lazy. It is also patently false. Scripture discourages believers to think on their own.152 After all, thinking derives from the original sin. The rejection of curiosity provides for the rule of turning a blind eye to religious abuse and puts sound judgment into the hands of the clergy alone. Faith requires the unconditional submission to the church’s institutions and their leaders, to the synagogues, and to the mosques. So says the Bible. Therefore, it must be true. The real goals are in the symbolism of the Vatican City’s coat of arms. On its flags, it depicts the Tiara with the Triple Crown, the symbol of king of kings – world leadership. 149 150 151 152 Genesis 3:22-24 NIV. Fifth Lateran Council, Session 8, December 19, 1513. Ibid. Sirach 3:21–24. 58 Holy Enemies of Freedom The King of the Jews is the king of the world; the pope of the Catholic Church is the leader of the planet; the Muslim caliph is the supreme boss of the universe. This is not a trivial problem. It defines our time. It had, has, and will have grave consequences for all of humanity. We need to carefully consider the evidence at hand. The violent and hateful content of the Bible as a ‘moral compass’ of humanity is perhaps not the best way forward considering those who wish to freely choose not to have anything to do with it. The next topic in the council was Bohemia, which today is essentially the Czech territory between Germany and Hungary. Bohemia had long fallen off the Catholic faith through the reformer Jan Hus.153 He was another forerunner of the Protestant Reformation, providing Martin Luther with a roadmap on how to organize his church 100 years after Hus. The Hussite Revolution was an era during which the Bohemians withstood five crusades that were organized by the pope to get Hus’ followers back under his fatherly control. In its essence, their shortlist of demands, known as the Four Articles of Prague, sounded similar to Martin Luther’s 95 Theses. The subjects to be considered were ‘intended mainly to expose the corruptions of the church, the avarice, extortion, lewdness, and hypocrisy of the clergy. […] These are the prohibition of gross public sins whether in laity or clergy; the inconsistency of large revenues and pomp with the simplicity of ministers of Jesus Christ; the freedom of the word of God to be read and preached in all places, ‘without any inhibition of either spiritual or earthly power;’ and the communion of the body [bread] and blood [wine] of Christ as he ordained [also to disciples].’154 153 154 Jan Hus, 1369–1415. Ezra Hall Gillett, The life and times of John Huss: Or, The Bohemian reformation of the fifteenth century (Gould and Lincoln, 1864) Band 2, 369. The full articles are on page 442-443. 59 A.J. Deus The revolution ushered in religious resistance along the line of thought of the Four Articles of Prague – until it was finally crushed again by the Catholic Church 100 years after Martin Luther. The conflict left behind tens of thousands of widows, orphans, and mothers who lost their sons. How do I know that Martin Luther was a product of the Hussite Revolution? His home base Wittenberg is merely 60 miles155 north of the locations of the border raids by the followers of Jan Hus. The four articles appear as a prototype for Luther’s ideas, almost as though he had used the text for his draft for the 95 Theses. Luther successfully continued what others had long begun. But we must be aware of the kind of freedom that the Hussites had in mind. They have nothing in common with what modern Westerners take for granted. Instead, their plan was to go back to a more pious time, without economic ambitions, and under the full control of the Hussite Church and the watchful eyes of the Christian community. They wished to remain in the larger body of the Catholic Church, without unnecessary innovations other than going back to the roots of paucity. Indeed, after the land was ravaged by the Catholic Church, Bohemia suffered for generations under extreme systemic poverty. They got what they asked for. And they were among the first to join the Protestant Reformation. Even though there were some ‘democratic’ underpinnings in the causes for the Hussite Wars, life in piety and abject poverty was their choice. The four articles clarify that they were a direct consequence of the teachings of the Gospels, which glorify poverty. Written under the rule of the Roman Empire, the New Testament stokes its followers into passive aggression by refusing to partake in economic or social life – even family life is rejected – other than what is necessary for barebones subsistence. This differentiates itself only little from today’s doctrinal impoverishment of the Muslim world, which, given democratic opportunities, votes itself right back into theocracies. Where the pious rule, freedom means piety in the image of their only Truth. Freedom may bear sharply diverse ideas when uttered from fundamentalist lips. 155 100 kilometers. 60 Holy Enemies of Freedom In short: organized religion is an enemy of freedom for the individual and of freedom for all. That does not mean that religious freedom is not sacrosanct. It is. Everyone is free to believe in ghosts or in rocks turning into meat. But the business of organized religion is not to be free any more than other businesses are ‘free’. According to the council under Pope Leo, the power of the infidels – a word that we are accustomed to from Muslim hate sermons – had grown remarkably.156 The council’s mission was to bring Bohemia back home to the caring lap of the Holy Father in the Vatican. There were grand words and gestures of peace, but they were conditional either to voluntary submit to Rome or to be converted by the force of arms. To this end, inquisitors were sent to ‘negotiate’ a deal – with thumbscrews in their luggage. Their behavior was anti-Renaissance, anti-social, anti-humanitarian, antiprogress, and against the freedom of individuals. This was then a criminal organization, thoroughly dedicated to oppressing or eliminating anyone who stood in the way of its power. Point in case: the Catholic Church was attempting thought control at a time of great intellectual awakening. At the same time, Europe was exhausted by war. ‘Italy has been almost wiped out by internecine slaughter, cities and territories have been disfigured, partly overturned and partly levelled.’157 Instead of Muslims killing Muslims, in Italy, Catholics slaughtered Catholic Christians. Yet, their recipe to fix the disaster was to call for higher Catholic unity in order to fight the enemies of the faith as one force.158 With this goal in mind, Pope Leo X issued an ill-fated Papal Bull to the Hungarians to organize a crusade against the Muslim Ottoman-Turks. This external enemy was on the march north up the Balkan toward Hungary, Austria, and Bohemia. While the papal call led to the quick gathering of 40,000 peasant solders, the leading cardinal failed in leadership and supplies. This Catholic Cardinal had joined the ranks of the super-rich and had tried to bribe himself onto the throne at the Vatican. The Crusade turned into a yearlong civil war of peasant crusaders against Hungarian nobility. They had enough of being brutally exploited by their feudal overlords in the service of the church. 156 157 158 Fifth Lateran Council, Session 8, December 19, 1513. Fifth Lateran Council, Session 9, May 5, 1514. Ibid. 61 A.J. Deus Many Hungarians were indifferent over whether they would be under the yoke of the Catholic Church or Ottoman Muslims. Moreover, Western Europeans did not think much of Hungarians. The latter’s leadership was deeply divided by bitter factional strife. Their German-influenced court party was hated by the people.159 National superiority-complexes and aspirations to imperial leadership stood in the way of focused joint operations. The conflict weakened the kingdom to the point of offering an open door for Ottoman-Turks to march into Europe. Their fights with the Safavids in Persia and the Mamluks in Syria and Egypt prevented them from simply walking through Hungary to Austria. Despite all this, the pope was opposed to a truce because he viewed a proposed peace as a mere Ottoman prelude to the next opportunity to overrun the weakened kingdom. He was fantasizing of his own offensive to wipe out the Muslim infidels.160 Moreover, when the King of Hungary and Bohemia died,161 his ten-year-old son came to the throne.162 In his stead, Pope Leo put a cardinal163 in charge of ruling Hungary for the next five, critical years of the nation’s disintegration.164 Hungary was soon thereafter annexed by Ottoman-Turks. This same cardinal had failed in the earlier crusade against the Ottomans. At least, he succeeded in amassing a fortune – he was a clerical billionaire of the time. The Catholic Church was in control of the royal dynasties. Holy Enemies of Freedom can be ordered through bookstores and online. Make sure to select the SECOND edition. 159 160 161 162 163 164 Setton, 1984, 235. Ibid., 163. Vladislaus II was king of Hungary and Bohemia 1471 – 1516. Louis II of Hungary was king of Hungary and Bohemia 1516 – 1526. At the age of two, he had been crowned King of Hungary in 1508 and of Bohemia in 1509. As a nine year old, he was adopted by Emperor Maximilian I and married to his granddaughter, Mary of Austria, in 1515. Cardinal Tamás Bakócz, 1442 – 1521. Setton, 1984, 158. 62