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Despite its nineteenth-century context and its often inappropriate racial implications, the term anti-Semitism has become so deeply entrenched that resistance to its use is probably futile. The impropriety of the term, however, makes it all the more important to clarify as fully as possible the range of meanings that can legitimately be assigned to it. Essentially, anti-Semitism means either of the following: (1) hostility toward Jews as a group which results from no legitimate cause or greatly exceeds any reasonable, ethical response to genuine provocation; or (2) a pejorative perception of Jewish physical or moral traits which is either utterly groundless or a result of irrational generalization and exaggeration.

These definitions can place an atypical and sometimes unwelcome burden on historians, who must consequently make ethical judgments a central part of historical analysis. When is a cause legitimate or a provocation genuine? At what point does a generalization become irrational or a response exceedingly unethical? Most anti-Semites have unfortunately made such evaluations very simple, but these questions become particularly acute when one deals with anti-Semitism in antiquity.

The earliest references to Jews in the Hellenistic world are positive ones, and the attraction of Judaism for many pagans continued well into the Christian era. When anti-Jewish sentiment arises, it can usually be explained by causative factors of a straightforward sort: Jewish refusal to worship local gods, missionizing, revolutionary activity, dietary separatism, and marital exclusivity. Some of these, at least, can be perceived as "legitimate" grievances, although a number of the pagan reactions so violate the requirements of proportionality that they cross the threshold into anti-Semitism. In any event, we have no reason to believe that we are dealing in this case with a phenomenon that resists ordinary historical explanation. If one were to insist on defining anti-Semitism as a pathology, then its existence in the ancient world has yet to be demonstrated.

As pagan antiquity gives way to the Christian Middle Ages, we confront the first crucial transition in the history of anti-Semitism. Much has been written about the question of continuity and disjunction at this point: Did Christianity, for all its original contributions to the theory of Jew-hatred, essentially continue a pre-existing strand in classical thought and society, or did it create virtually de novo a virulent strain that bears but a superficial resemblance to the anti-Semitism of old? Despite the sharpness of the formulation, the alternatives posed in this question are not, in fact, mutually exclusive. It would violate common sense to deny that classical anti-Semitism provided fertile soil for the growth of the medieval variety, and despite the demise of the ancient gods and the waning of Jewish missionizing and rebelliousness, some of the older grievances retained their force.

Nevertheless, if ancient paganism had been replaced by a religion or ideology without an internal anti-Jewish dynamic, it is likely that the anti-Semitism of the classical world would have gradually faded. Instead, it was reinforced. The old, pedestrian causes of anti-Jewish animus were replaced by a new, powerful myth of extraordinary force and vitality.

Medieval Christian theology expresses a profound love-hate relationship with Judaism. Of all religions in the world, only Judaism may be tolerated under the cross, for Jews serve as unwilling, unwitting witnesses of Christian truth. This testimony arises from Jewish authentication of the Hebrew Scriptures, which in turn authenticate Christianity, but it also arises from Jewish suffering, whose severity and duration can be explained only as divine retribution for the sin of the crucifixion. Hence, the same theology that accorded Jews a unique toleration required them to undergo unique persecution.

In the early Middle Ages, it was the tolerant element in this position that predominated. With the great exception of seventh century Visigothic Spain, persecution of Jews in pre-Crusade Europe was sporadic and desultory; the regions north and west of Italy had no indigenous anti-Semitic tradition, and Christianity had not yet struck deep enough roots in mass psychology to generate the emotional force necessary for the wreaking of vengeance on the agents of the crucifixion. Early medieval Europeans worshipped Jesus, but it is not clear that they loved him enough.

This is not to say that the course of medieval anti-Semitism is to be charted by reference to religious developments alone, although religion is almost surely the crucial guide. The deterioration of Jewish security in the high Middle Ages and beyond corresponds to transformations in economic, political, and intellectual history as well; indeed, the fact that a variety of changes that may well have affected anti-Semitism unfolded in rough synchronism makes it difficult to untangle the causal skeins but at the same time provides a richer and more satisfying explanatory network.

Christian piety widened and deepened, and the spectacular outbreaks of Jew-hatred during the Crusades were surely nourished by pietistic excess. As mercantile and administrative experience spread through an increasingly literate and urbanized Christian bourgeoisie, the economic need for Jews declined precipitously; it is no accident that in the later Middle Ages Jews were welcome primarily in less-developed regions like thirteenth-century Spain and, even later, Bohemia, Austria, and Poland. To make matters worse, the remaining economic activity in which Jews came to be concentrated was a natural spawning ground for intense hostility: Money lending may be a necessity, but it does not generate affection. In the political sphere, the high Middle Ages saw the beginnings of a sense of national unity at least in France and England; although this fell short of genuine nationalism in the modern sense, it sharpened the perception of the Jew as the quintessential alien. Finally, despite the centrifugal effects of individual nationalisms, the concept of a monochromatic European Christendom also grew, and with it came heightened intolerance toward any form of deviation. . .

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