Jews and heretics in Catholic Poland : a beleagured church in the post-Reformation era / Magda Teter.

Includes bibliographical references (pages 225-251) and index.

"One mystical body ... only one shepherd" : church ideal of spiritual and social hierarchy -- "Two swords ... the spiritual and the temporal" -- The threat to the sword of spiritual power : "those wretched and miserable Jews" -- All heresies are forbidden by both divine and imperial law -- The upset social order : nobles and the Jews in Poland -- Polish triangle of power : the king, the nobles and the Catholic Church -- "We were born nobles first and only then Catholics, Jews and nobles -- Their protectors, a great danger --From the outcry of the Gentiles that Jews ... have dominion over them -- Heresy and the fleeting "triumph of the counter-Reformation -- Christians on trial for "falling into the perfidious apostasy and the superstitious sect of the Jews" between "the Papists" and "the Arians" -- The Christian "dissidentes de religione" "to accept one true -- Confession," not "someone else's ... but our own Polish and Christian" -- "Bad and cruel Catholics" : Christian sins and social intimacies between Jews and Christians -- Sunday sins and Jewish inns -- "Debaucheries, adulteries and lewdness" : female servants in Jewish homes -- Feasting, drinking, and dancing : Jewish-Christian socializing -- "Neither men nor women should wear non-Jewish clothes" -- Rabbis' views on Jewish-Christian interaction -- "Even Jews and Turks observe holidays better -- The Church rebukes sinning Christians -- "A shameful offence" : the nobles and their Jews -- "Impoverished and destroyed" : church revenues and the Jews -- The Jews as their Lord squire : a wave of prohibitions to restore the church -- Ideal of social hierarchy -- The money, the pepper, the saffron and the Christian blood -- The Lords' defiance of the Church and the consequences thereof -- "Countless books against common faith" : Catholic insularity and anti-Jewish polemic -- "So, is it inappropriate for us to have books?" : control of printing and scholarship -- Jewish instruction of Christian scholars in Poland and abroad -- "The rabid and cruel synagogue" : accusations by Catholic clergy in Poland -- The host and the blood : the medievalism of Polish anti-Jewish polemic -- "Is it permissible to kill a pagan or a Jew ...?" -- "Warding off heretical depravity" : "whom does the Catholic Church reject, condemn, and curse?" -- Promoting Mary and the saints -- Challenging the Protestants by undermining the Jews -- "The heretics are truly worse" -- "Blindness", "obstinacy", and "blasphemies" : anti-Jewish sources of anti-Protestant assaults -- "They are obliged to be subordinate to the dominant -- Religion : legislative measures concerning heretics -- Conclusion: Did the counter Reformation triumph in Poland?

Print version record.

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland takes issue with historians' common contention that the Catholic Church triumphed in Counter-Reformation Poland. In fact, the Church's own sources show that the story is far more complex. From the rise of the Reformation and the rapid dissemination of these new ideas through printing, the Catholic Church was overcome with a strong sense of insecurity. The 'infidel Jews, enemies of Christianity' became symbols of the Church's weakness and, simultaneously, instruments of its defense against all of its other adversaries. This process helped form a Polish identity that led, in the case of Jews, to racial anti-Semitism and to the exclusion of Jews from the category of Poles. This book portrays Jews not only as victims of Church persecution but as active participants in Polish society who as allies of the nobles, placed in positions of power, had more influence than has been recognized.

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