THE JEWS IN EUROPE. 209 



ties were members, and from which they did not wish to be separated. 

 The most learned and original of the older fathers, Origen, declared : 

 " They are and remain our brothers ; but they will only unite with us 

 when we, by our faith and our life, have stirred them to emulate our 

 example." Even Augustine frequently said : " In the hearts of Chris- 

 tians the confidence lives, and is expressed by them continually, that 

 the children of the present Jewish generation will some day melt into 

 one faith with the Christians." This view of the earliest Church dis- 

 appeared, however, when Christianity became the state religion, and 

 Roman heathenism en masse, with its hate and contempt for the Jews, 

 became converted, in part freely and in part through direct or indirect 

 compulsion, to Christianity. Soon the synods forbade eating with a 

 Jew ; and Ambrose, who, while still unbaptized, was elevated to the 

 bishopric of Milan, styled the burning of a synagogue in Rome by the 

 populace an act pleasing to God, and called the Emperor Maximus, 

 who desired its rebuilding, derisively a -Jew. There comes to be, 

 with infrequent exceptions, a more hostile strain in the writings of 

 Christians, and the name of brother vanishes ; their remaining without 

 the Church is explained no longer by ignorance, but by an ill-meant 

 obduracy on their part. The hope of a future reconciliation is, in- 

 deed, held ; but the reconciliation is placed as it were in the most 

 distant corner of the future, in the last days before the final catas- 

 trophe and the judgment of the world. It seemed as if the prospect 

 of living in community with Israel (when, moreover, according to the 

 Biblical doctrine, Israel would retake the ancestral primacy) was so 

 little to the taste of the Christians that they were anxious to restrict 

 so unwelcome and vexatious a condition to a few days or months. 



The Christian emperors had changed nothing of importance in 

 their laws respecting the rights and liberties of the Jews until the 

 year 439, when Theodosius II excluded them from all public, even 

 municipal, offices. This law passed over into Justinian's Codex, and 

 regulated their status in Europe as well as in the Eastern Empire. 



In the West we encounter at the end of the sixth century the first 

 forced conversions in the Frankish Empire ; Avitus, in Clermont, and 

 the kings Chilperic and Dagobert set the precedent. It was followed 

 in the kingdom of the Spanish Visigoths on a large scale. There, 

 where the bishops ruled the state, King Sisibut in the year 612 allowed 

 the Jews only the choice of emigrating or being baptized. Many 

 chose the latter, but turned back after a time to Judaism ; and, as the 

 result,, there began a series of violent measures to keep them in the 

 Church against their will, and to avenge their lapsing. This was 'in 

 accordance with a decree of the national synod of Toledo a fatal de- 

 cree, which has cost more blood and tears than any law of heathen 

 antiquity, since it served as a norm for innumerable deeds in subse- 

 quent time. 



In the Frankisb Empire the ordinances of the Episcopal councils, 

 vol. xxi. 14 



