ves, Metz, Cologne, Mentz, Worms,
Spires, Strassburg, and other cities were deluged with the blood of the
'unbelievers.' The word _Hep_ (said to be the initials of _Hierosolyma
est perdita_, Jerusalem is taken) throughout all the cities of the
empire became the signal for massacres, and if an insensate monk sounded
it along the streets, it threw the rabble into paroxysms of murderous
rage. The choice of death or conversion was given to the Jews; but few
were found willing to purchase their life by that form of perjury.
Rather than subject their offspring to conversion and such Christian
training, fathers presented their breast to the sword after putting
their children to death, and wives and virgins sought refuge from the
brutality of the soldiers by throwing themselves into the river with
stones fastened to their bodies." (_McClintock and Strong Cyclop_., 4,
908 f.)

All this happened under the most Christian rule of the Popes. The
characteristic temper of the Jew in the Middle Ages, his fierce hatred
of Christianity, his sullen mood, his blasphemous treatment of matters
and objects sacred to Christians, are the result of the treatment he
received even from the members and high officials of the Church. Now
here comes Rome in our day asserting the kindness and generosity shown
the Jews by their Popes, because these afforded them shelter in the
Ghetto of the Holy City! How differently, they say, was this from the
treatment accorded the Jews by Luther. Why, these Catholic writers do
not tell the hundredth part of the truth about the attitude of their
Church to the Jews in the Middle Ages.

Let this be remembered when Luther's remarks about the Jews are taken up
for study. He is very outspoken against them; his utterances, however,
relate for the most part to the false teaching and religious practises,
to their perversion of the text and the meaning of the Scriptures, and
to the blasphemies which they utter against God, Jesus Christ, and His
Church, and to the lies which they assiduously spread about the
Christian religion. In all that Luther says against the Jews under this
head he is simply discharging the functions of a teacher of
Christianity; for Scripture says that it was given also "for reproof"
(2 Tim. 3, 16). No one can be a true theologian without being polemical
on occasion. In another class of his references to the Jews Luther
refers to their character: their arrogance and pride, their
stiffneckedness and con