VI. — THE CONDUCT OF THE CHURCH TOWARDS THE JEWS
The October 1893 number of La Revue catholique des Institutions et du Droit, published, under the signature of Mr. Auzias Turenne, a long and learned study on ecclesiastical law relatively to the Jews. It emerges very clearly from the careful examination of all the documents reported by Mr. Auzias Turenne, of all the prohibitions made and the circumstances in which they occurred, that the Church has never changed on the Jewish question. She always wanted the Jews to be respected in their persons and their cult tolerated, but she always wanted them to be kept in a state of submission and isolation which deprived them of the means of harming the Christian people.
The first Council where the Jews appear to have been concerned is that of Elvire in Spain, held before the end of the tenth persecution. One canon forbade Christians from giving their daughters in marriage to Jews, another from eating with them. This defense was renewed by the council of Laodicea (4th century), by those of Vannes (465), Agde (506), Epaone (517) and the three councils of Orléans (530, 533 and 541). The Council of Mâcon (581) prohibited Jews from exercising functions which allowed them to impose sentences against Christians (1).
The four councils held successively in Toledo in the 6th and 7th centuries, and the one held in Paris in 614, insisted on the prohibition of entrusting to the Jews
1. What a difference with what we see today. A newspaper one day cited the fact of the court of Aix where four Jews sat. It is the court of Aix that all French consular courts report to.
public offices, civil or military. This inability is even extended to the sons of converted Jews. Other councils forbid Christians from having recourse to the services of Jews as doctors, as servants, as nannies.
According to the moralists of the 18th century, violating one of these prescriptions can, depending on the circumstances, constitute a mortal fault. “Without claiming,” said Mr. Auzias Turenne, “that it is exactly the same today, we cannot maintain that these provisions have entirely fallen into disuse or have been repealed.” One of the wisest canons is undoubtedly that of the 4th Council of Avignon (1409) which forbids Christians from dealing with any money matters with Jews. They are condemned to return what they have extorted through usury.
The Fourth Lateran Council comes back to the above defense means and prohibits Jews from demanding exaggerated interests, on pain of “being deprived of all relations with Christians”. They should not be entrusted with any public employment; if this is done, the offender will be punished and the Jew, after having been dismissed, will also have to hand over to the bishop, to distribute to the poor, all the money received by him on the occasion of this employment. It was then that the injunction appeared for Jews to distinguish themselves by clothing or at least by a clearly visible mark. The most commonly prescribed mark was a circular piece of yellow cloth called "rouelle” that men and women had to wear equally, or a yellow cap. We know that the Jews had to occupy a special district in the cities called the Ghetto (1).
1. The Church has been criticized for these Ghettos. Here is the testimony of a converted Israelite, Father Ratisbonne, in his book: The Jewish Question: “The Church energetically condemned, through the organ of the Pontiffs, the fury of these cruel enmities, even though they were reprisals. She covered the trembling Jews with her aegis; she did not limit herself to tearing them away from popular passions; she opened inviolable asylums for them, where they found security. It was Rome which gave the example of this protective charity; it granted the Jews a separate district, and several other cities imitated the initiative of the Roman Pontiffs. Thanks to the places of refuge, the Jews lived together around their synagogue, in accordance with their laws, under the authority of their spiritual leaders, and they had the full enjoyment of their worship. Hence the Ghetto, whose origin is linked to a hospitable thought, too much, forgotten, too slandered these days...".
On the other hand, the Church never ceased to condemn the violence to which the Jews were sometimes subjected by the peoples pressured by them and pushed to the limit. Constantly, says Mr. Auzias Turenne, the Church has been inspired by the guiding principle that the Council of Latian stated in these terms: Judeos subjacere christianis oportet et àb eis pro sola humanitate foveri. May the Jews be treated with humanity; but let them always be kept dependent and have as little contact with them as possible.
Unfortunately, not listening to the Church and believing oneself to be wiser than her is not a new thing either. Frequently the prescriptions of Synods or Councils were forgotten or openly trampled; The result was that the Jews were quick to enrich themselves, to monopolize the commerce and all the money; so much so that far from being dependent, it was they who imposed the yoke on Christians. When this yoke had become intolerable, if the princes did not intervene, sometimes the multitudes resorted to the most deplorable violence. The Church then became the only protectress of the Jews and we saw the Popes, like John XII and Clement VI, intervening in their favor and, at the same time, reminding the Christian people that their evils came mainly from the forgetting of the very prudent prescriptions of the Church (1).
Some Popes, Pius IV in particular and Sixtus V wanted to try indulgence and, in the hope of converting the Jews, made concessions to them, but the result was quite different and after a few years Pius V and Clement VIII were forced to reestablish the canons in all their rigor. “All,” said Clement VIII, “suffer from their weariness, from their monpoles, from their frauds; they reduced a crowd of unfortunate people to begging, mainly peasants, the simple and the poor.”
Mr. Auzias Turenne ends with these conclusions: “The Church, from the beginning and before all politicians, understood that the Jews were a danger and that they had to be kept away. As the Depositary of evangelical gentleness, she defended the lives of the Jews
1. It is curious to know the considerations on which the sovereign pontiffs base their determinations. The Jews, it is said - and this thought is found in the preambles of a large number of pontifical acts - bear witness to the truth of the Orthodox faith, both because they preserve the Scriptures full of the prophecies which announce the Christ, that because their dispersion among the peoples recalls the deicide they committed. Secondly, the hour must come for their return to the true faith; their remnant will be saved. Then their fathers were the friends of God. They themselves bear the likeness of the Savior, and God is their creator as well as that of Christians. Furthermore, the Holy See gives itself to all, to the wise and the foolish. Christians must have for the Jews the same benignity with which they desire that their brothers, who live in pagan regions, should be the object of the pagans. Is it not necessary for the Christian to hate iniquity, love peace, and work for right things?
as the Mother of Christian nations, she wants to preserve them from the Hebrew invasion which would be their spiritual and temporal death. If she had been obeyed, Christians would not have had to suffer all that they suffered from the Jews, and, consequently, the terrible reactions with all the crimes that accompanied them, would not have ha. place. Christians and Jews would therefore have benefited from this observation of the rules of the Church.
Instead of keeping the Jews aside, the Christian nations, after having completely left aside the prescriptions of the Church, ended up admitting them into society and granting them all the rights of citizens. And today it turns out that these new citizens, after having monopolized the greatest part of the national wealth, tend to seize the government and to oppress those whom they have not ceased to regard as impure beings, gentiles, of the uncircumcised Philistines. All the measures proposed, apart from those of the Church, will be in vain, and those of the Church, to be effective, must be applied in concert by the State and by each of us personally for as long. As the Jews will be Jews, that is to say until after the antichrist, the only policy to follow towards them will be to keep them apart, by not mistreating them; but also by mixing as little as possible with them and by preventing them from doing harm.”
An Austrian bishop of Jewish origin, Mgr Kohn, a former professor of Canon Law, summarized the prescriptions of Canon Law regarding the Jews. According to the learned bishop, they have not been repealed:
1° Jews cannot have Christian slaves, nor employ Christians for the service of their house or family. Christians are prohibited from accepting permanent, paid employment with Jews.
2° It is specially forbidden for Christian women to work as wet nurses for Jews.
3° Christians cannot resort, in the event of illness, to the services of Jewish doctors, nor accept medicines prepared by Jewish hands.
4° It is forbidden in all cases for Christians, under penalty of excommunication, to live in the same house or in the same family as Jews.
5° We must ensure that Jews do not occupy positions in public life that give them a certain authority over Christians.
6° Christians are forbidden to attend Jewish weddings and take part in their “feasts.” 7° Christians cannot invite Jews to dinner, nor accept invitations made to them by Jews.
These canonical rules inspired a large number of royal ordinances, thanks to which, for so many centuries, France was preserved from the Semitic invasion so threatening today. On the other hand, we find in the book of Father Joseph Lémann. I. A table of the express defenses by which the Church protects and enforces the freedom of conscience of Jews and the exercise of their worship. These tables give the actual text of the ordinances of the Popes, we will only reproduce the titles here:
1. Prohibition of forcing them to embrace the Christian religion.
2. Prohibition of taking away their synagogues.
3. Prohibition of disturbing their Sabbaths and their festivals.
4. Prohibition to upset or desecrate their cemeteries.
5. Prohibition of changing their customs.
II. Table of measures full of leniency legitimately employed by the Church to illuminate the darkness of the Jews and enlighten their souls.
1° The Good Friday prayer.
2° Preaching.
3° Public controversies.
4° The study of Hebrew encouraged by the Popes in the Christian Academies, as a means of better evangelizing the Jews.
5° The establishment of a catechumenate.
6° Respect for their Mosaic books, but the condemnation and destruction of copies of the Talmud.
Don't these two tables, taken together, eloquently prove that the Catholic Church is both the highest school of respect for freedom of conscience, and the most anxious for the salvation of souls?
It must be added that alongside procedures inspired by gentleness and charity, the Church decreed restrictions and used precautions against the Jews to circumscribe their freedom to reach and thus safeguard Christian society. The great rule of prudence adopted towards them was this: “Any responsibility which relates to the very constitution of Christian society cannot be entrusted to them”. The observance of this rule was under the joint custody of Church and State; both had an interest in preventing nations from being invaded by the Jewish element and thus losing the leadership of society. Which unfortunately happened as soon as this rule was repealed by the Civil Powers. For what concerns the Church, the spirit of wisdom makes her abandon nothing of what the Sovereign Pontiffs or the holy councils have decreed to prevent the danger of invasion.
No more in the 18th century than in the 10th, she did not admit that a Jew could enter into possession or participation in what is an essential function in Christian society; that a Jew, for example, could run a school for Christians, sit on a magistrate's seat, contribute to the making of the laws of a Christian state.
On October 30, 1806, Napoleon assembled the Grand Sanhedrin in Paris. Rabbi Isaac-Samuel Avigdor, deputy for the Alpes-Maritimes, delivered the following speech, in which he professed to recognize and urged the Grand Sanhedrin to recognize with him the constant benignity of the Church towards the Jews: Famous Christian moralists defended in persecution, professed tolerance, and preached fraternal charity. “Saint Athanasius, book I, says: “It is an execrable heresy to want to remove by force, by blows, by imprisonment, those whom one has not been able to convince by reason. “Nothing is more contrary to Religion,” says Saint Justin, martyr, book V, “than constraint. “Shall we persecute,” says Saint Augustine, “those whom God tolerates?” Lactantius, book III, says on this subject: “Forced Religion is no longer Religion; we must persuade and not coerce; Religion cannot be commanded.” Saint Bernard says: “Advise and do not force.”
Thus, since Christian morality everywhere teaches love of neighbor and brotherhood, ignorance and habitual prejudice alone could have given rise to the vexations and persecutions of which you have often been the victims. This is so true that these sublime virtues of humanity and justice have frequently been put into practice by truly educated Christians, and especially by the worthy ministers of this pure morality which calms the passions and insinuates the virtues.
It is as a result of these sacred principles of morality that, at different times, the Roman Pontiffs have protected and welcomed into their States the Jews persecuted and expelled from various parts of Europe, and that the ecclesiastics of all countries have often been defended in several states in this part of the world.
Towards the middle of the 7th century, Saint Gregory defended the Jews and protected them throughout the Christian world. In the 10th century, the bishops of Spain opposed the people who wanted to massacre them with the greatest energy. Pontiff Alexander II wrote; to these bishops a letter full of congratulations, for the wise conduct they had taken on this subject. In the 11th century, the Jews, in very large numbers in the dioceses of Uzès and Clermont, were powerfully protected by the Bishops. Saint Bernard defended them, in the 12th century from the fury of the Crusaders. Innocent II and Alexander III also protected them. In the 13th century, Gregory IX preserved them, as much in England as in France and in Spain, from the great misfortunes with which they were threatened; he forbade, under penalty of excommunication, to constrain their conscience and disturb their celebrations. Clement V did more than protect them; he further facilitated the means of instruction for them. Clement VI granted them asylum in Avignon, while they were persecuted throughout the rest of Europe. Towards the middle of the same century, the bishop of Speyer prevented the release which the debtors of the Jews were demanding by force, under the pretext of usury so often renewed. In the following centuries, Nicholas I wrote to the Inquisition to prevent it from forcing Jews to embrace Christianity. Clement XIII calmed the concerns of alarmed fathers about the fate of their children, who were often torn from the womb of their own mothers. It would be easy to cite an infinity of other charitable actions of which the Israelites were, at various times, the object of ecclesiastics instructed in the duties of men and those of their religion.
Only the lively feeling of humanity could have given, in all the past centuries of ignorance and barbarity, the courage needed to defend unfortunate men, barbarously abandoned to the mercy of horrible hypocrisy and ferocious superstition. These virtuous men could, however, at most, only hope from their philanthropic courage for this sweet interior satisfaction that works of fraternal charity make pure hearts experience. The people of Israel, always unhappy and almost always oppressed, never had the means or the opportunity, to demonstrate its gratitude for so many benefits; a recognition all the sweeter to show, as he owes it to disinterested and doubly respectable men. For eighteen centuries, the circumstance where we have we find is the only one that has presented itself to make known the feelings with which our hearts are penetrated. glorious, to express to the philanthropists of all countries, and in particular to the ecclesiastics, our entire gratitude to them and to their predecessors. Let us therefore hasten, gentlemen, to take advantage of this memorable time, and let us pay them this just tribute of gratitude that we owe them; let us resound in this chamber the expression of all our gratitude; let us solemnly testify our sincere thanks for the successive benefits with which they have showered the generations who preceded us.”
The assembly applauded this speech. It voted for its printing and insertion following the minutes of February 5, 1807; then it adopted the decree which we reproduce (1): “The deputies of the Empire of France and the Kingdom of Italy at the Hebrew synod, decreed on March 30, filled with gratitude for the successive benefits of the Christian Clergy, in past centuries, in favor of the Israelites of the various States of Europe;
"Full of gratitude" for the welcome that
1. Minutes of the meetings of French deputies professing the Jewish religion, p. 169.
various pontiffs (Popes) and several other ecclesiastics gave at different times to the Israelites of various countries, while barbarity, prejudice and ignorance combined persecuted and expelled the Jews from the bosom of societies. The decree that the expression of these feelings will be; recorded in the minutes of this day, so that it may remain forever as an authentic testimony of the gratitude of the Israelites of this assembly for the benefits that the generations which preceded them received from the ecclesiastics of various countries of Europe.
Decree, furthermore, that a copy of these sentiments will be sent to His Excellency the Minister of Religious Affairs.”
What was the value of these declarations? If we compare them to the conduct of the Jews towards Pius IX in 1870, and that which they hold today with regard to the Catholics of France, we can only remember the words of Louis Veuillot: “The Jews are servile people, when trampled; ungrateful, when raised; insolent, as soon as they see himself strong.”
Despite the experience made by Popes Pius IV and Sixtus V, Pius IX believed he could show himself good and trusting towards the Jews; he went even further than any of his predecessors: he brought down the walls of the Ghetto, put an end to the humiliations to which they were still subjected, and gave their poor the right to assistance in which they had not previously participated. How did the Jews show their gratitude? To say this, we will have recourse to a letter written by the Lémann brothers, to the Israelite diaspora, on the conduct of their co-religionists during the captivity of Pius IX in the Vatican:
“When on September 20, 1870, the subalpine government forced blows of cannon the gates of Rome, the breach was not yet completed, a troop of Jews had already passed through to congratulate General Cadorna. And the entire Ghetto was adorned with Piedmontese colors... When the Zouave defenders of Pius IX, received the order to no longer continue their heroic defense, the Jews waited for them on the Sant'Angelo Bridge to overwhelm them with insults and even tear off their clothes. During the days of the installation of the usurping government, we saw them running, like jackals, from one barracks to another to pillage them... Several times, they gathered at the doors of the churches to boo and beat the Christians who went there to pray... All the times, add the Abbe Lémann, that we asked for information on the ignoble scenes which happened on the Corso, in front of the Quirinal and elsewhere, where the sacred things were turned into ridiculous, the priests insulted, the Madonnas defiled, the holy images torn; we were always told; The luzzuri and the Jews...”
The three ministerial newspapers were the l’Opinione, Liberta, Nuova Roma; all three had Jews as directors.
“Well! say these Fathers Lémann, they have not stopped for a single day, since they have been masters of Rome, from pouring out slander, insult and mud on the Catholic religion, its worship, its communities, its priests, on everything that there is more respectable and even on the august person of the Pope. His Holiness himself told us: “They are directing the entire revolutionary press against me and against the Church.”
Addressing the men of their race, the Lemann brothers said again: “It is not King Victor-Emmanuel who seems to us to be the supreme danger of Rome, nor even the men of the Revolution; they will pass. The supreme danger of Rome is you, gentlemen (the Jews), who do not pass! Armed with the right of property, with your skill, your tenacity, and your power, the century will not be at its end when you will be the masters of Rome. Therein lies the danger, we point it out to all Catholics.”
When the Lémann brothers went to bring to the feet of Pius IX the expression of their pain after the investigation they had just made into the conduct of their blood brothers, the Pope contented himself with saying: “Let us pray for them, so that they may share in the triumph of the Church.” And then he began to recite the prayer that the Church raises to heaven for them on the day of Good Friday.
Mr. Joseph Lémann made this observation: “On Golgotha, the expiring Christ had also prayed for his executioners : My Father, forgive them. David, his royal ancestor and prophet, enlightened on the sufferings of Christ and figuring them in his own misfortunes, had asked this destiny for the guilty: “Do not exterminate them, Lord, but scatter them by Thy power, and bring them low, Thou who are my protector. (Ps. LVIII, 12).
This mysterious prayer, in which there was in advance an echo of Golgotha, united with justice, was fulfilled to the letter. The Jews were preserved even though they could have been exterminated a thousand times and disappeared; but at the same time, they were dispersed and degraded, to the point of being regarded as the reproach and dregs of the human race. »Now, to whom do they owe the fact that they were not exterminated? To the Catholic Church. The nations wanted to exterminate them, but the Church ensured that they were only degraded.”
VII. — EMANCIPATION OF THE JEWS
In the second half of the 18th century, a number of books were published announcing for the Jews a state other than that in which they found themselves since the dispersion of Jerusalem.
1753. Note on the return of the Jews by Father d'Houbigand.
1760. The future recall of the Jews, by Deschamps, priest of Danzu, in Normandy. 1769. Attempt to explain the period assigned to the conversion of the Jews, by Abbot Belet, of Montauban.
1775. Dissertation on the return of the Jews to the Church and on what should give rise to this. Published in Italian.
1778. Dissertation on the recall of the Jews, by Rondet.
1779. Letter in which he proves that the return of the Jews is near. Without author name.
1779. Dissertation on the time of the recall of the Jews and on the happy revolution that it must bring about in the Church. His author name, etc., etc.
“All these works,” says Fr. Joseph Lémann, “see as a sign and also as a cause of the recall of the Jews the blasphemy uttered against God and against his Christ in the midst of the nations. The Gentiles or the Nations were called because of the ingratitude of the Jews. The Jews are called again because of the apostasy and ingratitude encouraged among the Nations. And all these works said: We are approaching it, we are there!... (1). In fact, a few years after the predictions made in these books were formulated, France was seen to free the Jews and soon other nations imitated its example. England had undertaken, first, to emancipate them and had not succeeded. “In 1753, during the reign of George II, an attempt at Jewish emancipation took place in England; Minister Pelham passed a Bill which allowed Parliament to naturalize Jews who had been established in the country for three years; but the jealous opposition of the trade of London and the clamors of the populace led to the repeal of this law the following year. If it had been entrusted to a nation other than France, the cause of Jewish emancipation would not have been successful. In the opinion of Fr. Joseph Lémann, it is also a great chance of success; and he gives his reasons, negative for other peoples, affirmative for our country, both based on the temperament, vocation and history of the various peoples. The difficulties were considerable. Difficulties because of the danger that such an enterprise could pose to society and which is all too obvious today; difficulties from the point of view of prejudices: there were some about the Jews among the Christians;
1. In 1657, the author of the Ancient Novelty of Sacred Scripture gave as the last harbinger sign of the conversion of the Jewish people the civil death of the Church. This is what the law of separation of Church and State has just done in France.
there were attacks on Christians among the Jews; finally difficulties in the mode of emancipation. They did not prevent its realization.
VIII. — THE ASSIMILATION OF THE JEWS
In ancient France, Jews were not considered French citizens. Moreover, in no country in the world they were considered nationals any more among pagans than among Christians. Frequently expelled from the kingdom by royal orders often emanating from princes who have rendered the most service to France, they were never anything other than tolerated, and always remained under an exceptional regime and fairly close surveillance. In the first centuries, with Childebert, 540, Clotaire II, Dagobert I, etc., the edicts which concerned the Jews mainly took the form of theocratic ostracism: confessional aversion mingled more intimately with economic defense. Charlemagne, it is said, had the first attentions towards them, but, in 1096, Philip I expelled them from the kingdom. Saint Louis enjoined them to wear a particular mark on their clothes. Until 1789, it was only a series of edicts regulating usury, forcing the Jews to surrender or driving them out of the kingdom. As morals become more policed and the political economy becomes more regularized, generous attempts are made to give the Jews some common freedoms and rights, but the rapid abuse of the race always leads to new repressions. In the 18th century, it was in Alsace and Lorraine that the breed regained all its activity. Despite the precautionary measures taken in Metz, in 1567, by Marshal de la VieuxviJle in 1721, by Duke Leopold and by Louis XIV in Alsace, the country was rendered insolvent by the usury of the Jews.
Louis XVI, whose goodness has remained proverbial, improved their lot by greatly softening the legislation under which they had lived until then. But the idea never occurred to him to stop protecting his subjects against Jewish usury which especially ruined the inhabitants of the countryside, even less to give these foreigners the title of French. By his edict of 1784, Louis XVI abolished the personal toll. The letters patent of the same year, although very cautiously restrictive, established capital improvements for the condition of the Jews: henceforth they were invested with the right to own houses and gardens; — they can, as tenants, cultivate the land; — they are established or confirmed in all trades and professions which do not give them the heart of Christian society. This is not yet the regime of common law; it is a germ which finally finds its full development in the project of definitive emancipation which the king put to study in 1788. It is this project, matured under the monarchy, which the Constituent Assembly accepted to our damage, declares Fr. Lémann, because it distorted, by appropriating it, the royal work. It must be said, however, that the Constituent Assembly itself did not willingly do what it did. The Jews, to overcome its resistance, resorted to the revolutionary intervention of the Commune. Their main agents were the Jacobin Godard and Adrien Duport, whom Louis Blanc accuses of having been the organizer of the massacres committed in Paris and the panics spread in the provinces. The commissioners appointed by the Commune presented an urgent, almost imperative, address to the National Assembly on February 24, 1790. The Jews had prepared this illegal intervention of the Commune by soliciting in the forty-eight sections of Paris, opinions favorable to their complete emancipation. As the Jacobin element prevailed in the organization of these sections, all welcomed the Jews, with the exception of the Halles section, the second-hand clothes section which energetically repelled these terrible competitors. The success of the Jews with the sections is easily explained: the Jacobins obeyed leaders who themselves received the impetus from the secret societies dominated by the Jews. The leaders who directed the sections were recruited from the lower reaches of society. As for industrialists and traders, they were reduced to fading away, so as not to be pursued as aristocrats. Their opinion on the Jews remained that which they had expressed in writing, thirty years previously in a document preserved in the National Archives under this title: Request of the six corps of merchants and traders of Paris against the admission of the Jews, The admission of this type of men, it is said in this request, can only be very dangerous; we can compare them to wasps which only enter hives to kill the bees, open their bellies and extract the honey which is in their entrails; such are the Jews, from whom it is impossible to suppose the qualities of citizens. The French merchant does his business alone, each trading house is in some way isolated; while the Jews are particles of quicksilver, which at the slightest slope come together into a block. This is what all the members of the corps of merchants of Paris unanimously signed in 1760, and what remained true in 1789. It is because they knew the national feeling on this subject that the members of the Constituent Assembly remained unshakeable, even in the face of the threatening demonstrations of the Commune.
The merchants of Paris added that the Jews, of whom "none have been raised in the principles of legitimate authority", even consider as a usurpation any authority exercised over them, claim a universal empire, and regard themselves as true masters of all goods, of which other humans are the ravishers.”
In the session of December 23, 1789, Maury made this observation: "The word Jewish is not the name of a sect, but of a nation which has laws, which has always followed them, and which still wants to follow them. To call the Jews citizens would be like saying that, without ceasing to be English and Danes, English and Danes can become French citizens. The Jews have survived seventeen centuries without mixing with other peoples. They must not be persecuted, they are men, they are our brothers. Let them therefore be protected as individuals and not as French people, because they cannot be citizens” (2).
It was the cry for common sense. Only baptism can incorporate the Jew into a nationality other than his original nationality. When he falls at the knees of Jesus Christ, like the twelve apostles, like Paul, then, without ceasing to love his brothers by blood, he sincerely and cordially loves the country which gave him a home. To cite only one or two examples, the Ratisbonne brothers and both Fathers Lémann are certainly as good French people as any. But, apart from this divine purification, everywhere and always the Jew remains Jewish. We can grant him letters of naturalization, he will accept them because they will bring him a profit; but, deep in his heart and among his own people, he will despise them and remain Jewish. Fourteen times, the Constituent Assembly had rejected the admission of Jews as active citizens. When, on September 29, 1791, after all these unsuccessful attempts, the Freemasons returned for the fifteenth time to the charge before the Constituent Assembly so that the decree granting Jews all the rights of active citizens was passed, Rewbell, the Alsatian , a stubborn enemy of the Israelites, once again wanted to combat the proposition. Regnault de Saint-Jean-d'Angély, cutting him off, exclaimed: “I ask that all those who speak against this proposition be called to order, because it is the constitution itself that they are fighting.”
Indeed, the entire Revolution had been engineered to achieve this result. On the eve of the closing, Duport demanded that it be decreed that Jews in France would enjoy the rights of active citizens. Tired of war, the Constituent Assembly, which was going to dissolve the following day, allowed Duport's motion to pass: the Jews, armed with the rights of active citizens, could legally begin to invade everything. There were then only five hundred in Paris; but in France, as throughout Europe, they had at their service a numerous and brilliant year of conspirators, organized in secret societies: the twenty-four orators who pleaded their cause in the Constituent Assembly were all freemasons.
M. de Bonald, judging the act by which the Constituent Assembly thus gave the rights of citizens to the Jews, wrote: "The Assembly declares them active citizens: a title which, with the declaration of the rights of man, newly decreed , was then regarded as the highest degree of honor and beatitude to which a human creature could claim!... But the Jews were repelled by our morals much more than they were oppressed by our laws. The Assembly made the enormous and deliberate mistake of placing its laws in contradiction with morals. The Jews were soon, as active citizens, to be called to participate in the power itself... We must be careful that the emancipation of the Jews does not turn into the oppression of the Christians! . . . Christians may be deceived by Jews, but they must not be ruled by them. This dependence offends their dignity even more than the greed of the Jews harms their interests.”
Is it not truly prophetic, these words: Let us be careful that the emancipation of the Jews does not turn into the oppression of the Christians! (1).
1. The Jew Bernard Lazare said in a conference given on March 6, 1897, on the occasion of Israeli and Russian students in Paris: “How do we translate this fact for a certain number of individuals of having the same past, the same traditions and common ideas? It is translated by saying that they belong to the same group, that they have the same nationality. This is the justification for the bond that unites Jews from the five parts of the world: “There is a Jewish nation.” The founders of the Universal Jewish Alliance agreed, when they wrote forty years ago: “The alliance that we are founding is neither French, nor German, nor English, but universal; we have no compatriots only know co-religionists... The day is not far away when the riches of the earth will belong to the Jews!” This truth appears today all the more obvious to those who reflect because it is both proclaimed by the facts and, we see, by the Jews themselves.
Father Joseph Lémann & also makes this reflection on human rights and the advantage that the Jews were able to draw from them: “Abstract man” was invented by a superb Society to get rid of Jesus Christ; from this same “abstract man” came the Jews; and it happened that, when Christ is no longer counted in the government of this Society, the deceivers find the road open to becoming governors.. . . You never go so far as when you don't know where you're going. Cromwell said this. This is the story of the Assembly of 1789. In proclaiming the famous human rights as the basis of the Society, the Assembly had no thought of the Jews. When she saw them and wanted to stop them, it was too late. With the head of the serpent, this first ring had passed and many others were to follow!”
If the Constituent Assembly had not been able to see the Jews through the Declaration of the Rights of Man, it is more than probable that they had long been hidden behind this Declaration, as they were behind Freemasonry which, created by them, carried out the Revolution not for the good of France, but on their own behalf. The Constituent Assembly opened the doors of French society to the Jews; Napoleon, on March 17, 1808, took them through. Unhappy to see Jews persevering in their usurious practices and avoiding military service through unworthy subterfuges, he resolved to overcome those of whom he said: “The evil that the Jews do does not come from individuals, but of the very constitution of this people: they are caterpillars, locusts which are ravaging France.” But for this he adopted a policy diametrically opposed to that which had been followed before the Revolution. The Kings of France had kept the Jews away from French Society. Napoleon wanted to settle them there permanently: “I wish to take all means... to make them find Jerusalem in France.”
For this purpose, by the decree of May 30, 1806, he convened in Paris an assembly of Jewish Notables chosen by the prefects in all the departments of the Empire and the Kingdom of Italy. Three commissioners, Molé, Portalis and Pasquier, were appointed by the Emperor to direct the work of the Assembly. A number of questions were asked of them by the imperial commissioners. Let's name a few:. “In the eyes of the Jews, are the French their brothers, or are they foreigners?” “Do Jews born in France and treated, by law, as French citizens, regard France as their homeland? do they have an obligation to defend it? are they finally obliged to obey the laws and follow the provisions of the Civil Code?” While the three commissioners asked the questions to the Israelites, Mr. de Champagny secretly dictated to those interested the answers that Napoleon wanted. But the authority of the Assembly of Notables was not enough: “It is necessary,” says Molé, “that its responses, converted into decisions by another Assembly, of an even more important and more religious form, can be placed alongside of the Talmud and thus acquire, in the eyes of the Jews of all countries and all centuries, the greatest possible authority... It is the great Sanhedrin that His Majesty intends to convene today. This body, which fell with the Temple, will reappear to enlighten throughout the world the people it governed..."
Fr. Joseph Lémann drew up a picture of this assembly: The Sanhedrites number 71, as in the time of the sessions in Jerusalem. They wear a severe and dark costume, the one worn by the members of the great Sanhedrin of old. Where the faithful copy of the old times excites interest to the highest degree, it is the denomination of the members, as well as the arrangement of the meeting room: the president is called Nasi, head or prince of the Sanhedrin. He has two assessors: the first assessor, seated to his right, is called Ab-beth-din, father of the tribunal; the second assessor, seated on the left, bears the name of Hàlam, the sage. The meeting room is arranged, according to the practice practiced in antiquity, in a semi-circle. From the first session, enthusiasm possessed all minds and the leader expressed it in a speech in which he glorified Napoleon:
“Doctors of the law and Notables of Israel, glorify the Lord! The Holy Ark, battered by centuries of storms, finally ceases to be agitated. The chosen one of the Lord has warded off the storm, the Ark is in the port. O. Israel, dry your tears, your God has looked upon you. Touched by your misery, he comes to renew his alliance. Thanks be given to the hero, forever famous, who chains human passions, just as he confounds the pride of nations! He elevates the humble, he humiliates the proud, sensitive image of the Divinity, who delights to shame the vanity of men. Minister of eternal justice, all men are equal before him; their rights are immutable. Doctors and Notables of Israel, it is to this principle, sacred to this great man, that you owe the happiness of being gathered in an assembly to discuss the interests of Israel. By fixing my gaze on this supreme council, my imagination spans thousands of centuries. I transport myself to the time of its institution, and my heart cannot defend itself from a certain emotion that you will share with me... “
On March 9, the great Sanhedrin, after having recognized, like the assembly of Notables, that in the law of Moses there existed political provisions which governed the people of Israel in Palestine, when they had their laws, their pontiffs and their magistrates, declared that these provisions were no longer applicable to them since they no longer formed a body of nation. Thus the Sanhedrin agreed with the secret wishes of the emperor and agreed to split the Bible. The rest will be granted almost without resistance. The Sanhedrin recognized that polygamy was forbidden to the Israelites, that the civil act of marriage must precede the religious act, that divorce could only take place according to civil laws, that marriages between Israelites and Christians were valid, that the law of Moses obliged us to regard as brothers all those who believed in a creator God, that the Jews were held towards other men to duties of justice and charity; that they had to obey the laws of the homeland, preferably practice mechanical and liberal professions, and scrupulously abstain from usury.
By a sort of contradiction, or rather to take back with one hand what it gave with the other, the Sanhedrin considered the Talmud almost equal to the law of Moses. Foreign Jews did not approve of the Sanhedrin's decisions; but it didn't matter to the Jews of France, they knew what benefit they could get from their recognition as French citizens.
Napoleon, by two decrees dated March 17, 1808, gave legal authority to the decisions of the Sanhedrin, and Jewish worship became an official religion. The great Sanhedrin approved and sanctioned everything that had already been done, according to the will of the Emperor. The Jews exhausted all forms of adulation to mark their satisfaction. On the anniversary of the emperor's birth, the Paris synagogue was transformed into a "pagan temple", this is the very expression used by Israelite historians. The new god is the Emperor, whose portrait, surrounded by flowers, appears in the temple, and speeches are given. Rabbi Segré, draws inspiration from Daniel, to praise Napoleon:
“…He truly appeared on earth a supernatural genius, surrounded by infinite grandeur and glory. And behold, with the clouds of heaven came the Son of Man, and the Ancient of Days gave him power and honor and the kingdom.”
Rabbi Sinzheim borrowed his hyperboles from Isaiah: “Here is my servant whose defense I will take; here is my chosen one, in whom my soul has placed all its affection. I will pour out my spirit on him, and he will bring justice to the nations; he will not be sad, nor hastened when he exercises his judgment on the earth, and the islands will wait for his law. I am the Lord who has preserved you, who has established you to be the reconciler of the people and the light of the nations.”
All forms of language and all idioms were to be used to praise Napoleon. Rabbi Segré gave a speech in Italian; Rabbi Sinzheim reads a sermon in German; Rabbi Cologne, deputy of Mantua, recited an ode in the Hebrew language. A year had passed since the separation of the Assembly of Notables, when Napoleon issued the decrees of March 17, 1808. These decrees have considerable historical importance. It is on this occasion that it would be fair to repeat what was said at the beginning of the deliberations of the Assembly: “The Mosaic cult emerges for the first time... from the sort of incognito where it has been for two thousand years.”
These decrees made the Israelite cult, which the day before was still almost non-existent, and, in any case, completely devoid of organization, an official and legal cult. These are, summarized as briefly as possible, the different stages traveled by the Jews (1) until the day when a new era began for them:
1. Cf. The Condition of the Jews in France since 1789, by Henry-Lucien Brown. Paris, New National Library. We can say that in this book the Jews painted themselves. It is the documents and the facts that speak there as in Taine's books on the Revolution.
“The name of Napoleon must be inscribed at the head of the new era which has opened for the Jews.”
He went further with regard to the deicidal people than the Constituent Assembly. This had declared the Jews citizens, although they remained foreign to everything that interested our homeland, and although they had often been a real scourge for it; but it stopped there. Napoleon did more; he settled the Jews in France, and made the organization of their religion an administrative mechanism placed under the guarantee of the law and under the protection of the public authorities. The synagogue was now a state institution. The Jewish cult became, by the will of Napoleon, the equal of the Catholic cult. A sort of Jewish France was thus established by the will of the master, alongside the old Catholic France.
The great Sanhedrin had not survived the deicide. Napoleon had the audacity to want to reestablish it, without understanding that the Jewish people are a people apart, that their existence, despite their dispersion throughout the earth, is a permanent miracle, and that a curse weighs on them, a curse that nothing in the world, not even the power of the greatest genius, can erase. He believed that his will would be strong enough to ensure that the Jews were French like the others. He failed, and a hundred years later we see that instead of being our equals, they have become our masters.
The Jew Cahen very well said in the Israelite Archives (t. VIII, p. 801, 1847): “The Messiah came for us, on February 28, 1790, with the Rights of Man.” The Messiah, that is to say what allows us to conquer the world. Human Rights first gave economic freedom which allowed the Jews to amass their war chest; then the philosophical freedom which serves them to distort French morality and spirit; finally the democratic and inorganic universal suffrage that the other Napoleon brought us and which took them from equality to the domination under which we groan.
What they did in France, they do among other nations, thanks to the same principles that Napoleon spread at the point of the sword throughout Europe. “How already everything has changed for us,” exclaimed the Jew Crémieux, at one of the first assemblies of the Universal Israelite Alliance, and in such a short time!”
IX.— RABBINS, CONSISTORIES AND SYNAGOGUES
By decree of December 11, 1808 , dated from Madrid, Napoleon was not content with organizing the Jewish race within France, he gave official consecration to its cult. He installed thirteen consistories, with a central consistory in Paris; he hierarchized the rabbis, raised by him to a sort of priestly dignity and gave them a costume. The Jewish priesthood belongs only to the sons of Aaron, who no longer exist in a distinct way; it was abolished, along with figurative sacrifices during the destruction of the Temple in Jerusalem.
So when the imperial commissioners asked this question: — Who appoints the rabbis? What jurisdiction do they have? The assembly replied: “The qualification of rabbi is not found in the law of Moses... The attributions of rabbis, where there are any, are limited to preaching morality, to blessing the marriages and pronouncing divorces.” Where no one had the qualification of rabbis, these functions were filled by elders, and even where rabbis were found, they could be filled by other Jews. This name “rabbi” does not mean “priest”, but “master” or “preceptor”; it is given to those who have the reputation of knowing the law well. It is only since the decrees of Napoleon that they have been considered ministers of religion and have been given a fictitious character in contradiction with the law of the Old Testament. Rabbis are what the “Scribes” once were, who in no way belonged to the tribe of Levi. They are doctors of religious science. But there is nothing of the priest in their person. This is the feeling of the Jews themselves.
To support this assertion, it will suffice to produce the very text of one of the notable members of the consistory of the city of Paris: “The rabbis are not, like the priests and pastors of Christian communions, the necessary ministers of our worship. The office of prayers within our temples is not carried out through their organ. They are not the confidants of our consciences. Their power means nothing to the salvation of our souls... The rabbinate diploma is compatible with all professions and we count among us rabbis at the bar, rabbis in shops and rabbis selling fairgrounds” (1).
However, we now pretend to designate them by these sacred terms: priests, pontiffs, the priesthood of the nation. “In Paris,” says the Israelite Universe, “we find ourselves in the presence of a fait accompli; we hope that “our new sovereign pontiff” will not forget that he is now the spiritual guide.
1. Des Consisroires en France, par M. Singer, member du consistoire, 32-33, Paris, 1820.
of French Judaism as a whole, and no longer just the community of Paris” (1). “These pontiffs,” says M. Gougenot des Mousseaux, “are nothing like pontiffs; these priests are priests only for form, only to create an illusion for the Christian people who pay them. If they did not create and spread among us this audacious fiction, this deceptive phantom of the priesthood, they would lose in the eyes of the people the prestige of having a religion, this good, this inestimable treasure which, for so many centuries has perished in their hands; They would also lose before the budget the right to have to present themselves to earn the fees and expenses of worship which, without a religion and a truly priestly ministry, could only be a ridiculous and lying parody.”
It was Napoleon who constituted the very modern hierarchy of ministers of the Jewish religion. He imposed his laws on him in the assembly of the Israelites on May 30, 1806 (2).
1. Univers Israelite, December 1866, p. 147. 2. “These ministers are the chief rabbi of the central consistory and the rabbis of the departmental consistories and of the particular synagogues whose establishment has been authorized.” Councils responsible for directing the affairs of the Jews were called consistories. The consistory is made up of two rabbis and three other members chosen by an assembly of notables presented by the central consistory and appointed by the Minister of the Interior, on the presentation of the prefects. Napoleon decreed that a synagogue and an Israelite consistory would be established in all the departments containing 2,000 individuals professing the Jewish religion and in Paris a central consistory. A decree of December of the same year fixed the number of consistorial synagogues at 13. There were 77,162 Israelites in France. It should be noted that the French empire was then much larger than current France.”
Louis-Philippe completed the work. “The royal ordinance of 1831, says the Fr. Ratisbonne, sanctioned this singular anomaly of an impossible priesthood. In fact, the rabbis transformed into priests by civil law remained without authority among the Jews and they found themselves the target of the sarcasm of their friends and their enemies” (1).
Since 1885, the Jewish cult has included nine departmental consistories and as many consistorial synagogues (Paris, Nancy, Bordeaux, Marseille, Bayonne, Lyon, Vesoul, Lille and Besançon), and, in addition, a certain, ever-increasing number of communal synagogues, a type of Jewish parish, headed by rabbis and officiating ministers. Dominating this entire organization, a central Consistory was installed in Paris. Jewish worship has not only become equal to Christian worship, it is favored.
The law of November 14, 1881 prohibits each religion from having a particular burial place; the Israelites nevertheless continue to have, in each major city, a special cemetery. Also, an author entirely devoted to the Jewish cause, M.G. Baugey, doctor of law, was able, in 1899, to complete a study on the situation of the Jewish cult with the following conclusion: “If we add that in fact the administration does not apply those legal provisions which could constitute the Israelite religion in a state of inferiority vis-à-vis the Catholic religion, while it appears quite generally rigorous with regard to the latter and its ministers, we will easily understand that the situation of the Israelites in France,
1. La Question Juive, p. 20.
from the point of view of worship, is not unequal: and inferior to that of other French people... Nothing in the acts of the government allows us to say that the Israelite cult is persecuted.” (Conditions of Israelite Worship, p. 285).
X. — CIVIL STATUS OF THE JEWS.
The decree of December 11, 1808, obliged the Jews to take new names. The Jews did not have patronymic names, says Abbé Lémann; to their personal name: Jacob, or Nathan, or Moses, or Solomon, they added according to ancient usage the expression, son of such and such: Jacob son of Baruch, who, in turn, is son of Samuel, who, in turn, is son of Jonah. The result of these names, always the same, despite the addition of the 'city' (Samuel of Frankfurt, Nathan of Lisbon, etc.) was confusion in business and an ease of changing names, an ease which the Jews used every time. whenever they found it advantageous. The decree ordered the taking of a patronymic family name and a fixed first name. It was from there that Jews truly entered society and were assimilated into citizens. They then forged names, which have become famous today, and, as they were not, according to the decree, to draw on Scripture, they tortured the Bible: MOSES gave Mosches, Moche, Manche; LÉVI gave Loevy, Levisthal, Halêvy; ABRAHAM gave Brahm; EPHRAIM gave Ephrussi; ISRAEL Disraeli. But it was above all botany, geography and zoology which served as a source for the nomenclature of the new dictionary. There was the astronomical Jew: Stern star, Goldstern, gold star and all the names with “stern”; the botanical Jew: Rosen rose, Rosenthal, valley of roses; Blum flower; Kornbluth, cornflower, etc. But the geographical Jew gave above all and the decree gave birth to Crêmieux de l'Isère, Carcassonne, a city where there were a good number of them, Worms, Lisbon, Lyon, Allemand, Charleville, etc., etc. The zoological Jew did not miss: Wolf, wolf; Katz, cat; Beer, bear, with its derivatives Meyerbeer, Cerfbeer; Hirsch, deer.
By inviting them, says Father Lémann, to adorn themselves with new names, Napoleon was going to make it easier for them to attack and invade dignities, high functions, and power. If they had continued to call themselves simply Jacob, Tobit, Israel, Baruch, Moses, they would have been more timid in introducing themselves, in crossing the ranks of the society which welcomed them, to climb towards the summits. They would have limited themselves to sitting near the last place instead of aiming for the first. An Israel would never have been prime minister in England: a Disraeli will become one. Baruch or Tobie would never have dared, in France, to seek the portfolio of justice: Crêmieux will take it.
XI. — WHAT THE JEWS ARE NOW WITH US.
The codes of Theodosius and Justinian, canon law, the laws of the Visagoths and the ordinances of the Middle Ages, the ukases of the Tsars, etc., had created a special situation for the Jewish populations, a nomadic tribe encamped in the State, a consortium of formidable financiers for the true producers of wealth, and a sect essentially hostile to the Christian religion.
The Constituent Assembly and Napoleon I changed this state of affairs, they gave the Jews the rights of French citizens. Did they do well? Should we congratulate ourselves on this innovation? If we consider that Judaism means not only a separate cult, but an immutable race, that the Jew, before his apparent and physical peerage, is a common ideal homeland and it is hard to believe he will ever renounce it; that thus, a secret nation within each nation which adopts them, citizens at the same time and foreigners, the Jews possess for the material conquest of the world special weapons, and which eliminate for their benefit all equality in the conditions of the struggle: we clearly see what error modern States have made in treating them on the same footing as the rest of the citizens.
Since the imperial organization of the Jewish cult, the nationalized French Jews have twice become citizens in the very land of our fathers where we are only single ones! Here they have become French citizens as much as a Montmorency can be but, at the same time, and more than ever, here they are recognized as Jewish citizens or members of a nation which; is not ours, which ramifies and takes root throughout the entire world, which asserts itself by its Tajmudic law, a mortal enemy of ours, and which suffers willingly or unwillingly, under the yoke of its religious orthodoxy, the need to remain a foreigner in any nation whose government welcomes and fulfills it. Ceasing to live the life of the dispersed, the sons of Jacob, by the very law which strives to unite them, are made a distinct people and recognized as a body of Jewish nation. They enjoy in peace the benefits of an assimilation which their belief, which their heart, in its Talmudic recesses, declares can only be provisional and fictitious for them; and we see them at the moment when the law seems to mingle their blood with ours in the veins of the social body, coming closer, uniting, holding together in a bond more solid than ever, prepared and disciplined by the fact of this new organization , in view of the policy which is specific to them and whose advice will be dictated by events from day to day. We should therefore no longer be surprised if these faithful of Judaism prepare themselves, in the active patience of their waiting for the supreme act in which for centuries, the imperishable hopes of the Pharisaic Jew, guided by the rabbis of the Talmud, have been summed up.
Mr. Gougenot des Mousseaux is not exaggerating when, after piling up documents after documents in support of his thesis, he summarizes it as follows: “Helped in all the kingdoms of the earth by the mutual aid that is lent to each other with ardor of the members of their community; helped by the assistance they draw from mixed and licensed associations; helped by the aid and protection owed to them and given to them by secret societies, where their position is the supreme post and whose power equals or dominates all power today; citizens of their own nation and citizens of the nation which adopts them, that is to say twice citizens and twice splendidly protected in the homeland where each Christian is only once, the Jews, whose cunning, whose audacity and know-how have always been a proverbial thing, have over all indigenous of the Christian States the most incontestable of advantages and take advantage of them with singular skill to increase an influence already so great. A simple observer of the fact of which he did not seem to be able to unravel the cause, a man of intelligence of the Jewish race wrote, some time ago, with truth: "The Jews fill, proportionately and thanks to their insistence, more than jobs than other “Catholic and Protestant” communions. Their disastrous influence is felt especially in matters which weigh most heavily on the fortune of the country; there is no business in which the Jews do not have a large share, no public loan which they do not monopolize, no disaster which they have not prepared and for which they do not benefit: they are therefore ill-advised to complain, as they always do, they who have all the favors and who make all the profits” (Cerfbeer of Medelsheim. The Jews, p. 9).
"In a word, strong against each of us in the forces that the laws of the States give them, strong in that which gives them, in the midst of the mass of peoples, the natural organization of the Jewish community, strong in those which they borrow from occult societies and from the alliances created according to the needs of the times and places by these societies, the Jews, as Kluber observes, form within the Christian kingdoms a State within a State. “From this it follows, if it happens that Christian society remains true to its name and faithful to the defense of its rights, that a permanent antagonism between the State and Judaism becomes inevitable (1) and that the triumph of the Jew (that is to say the upheaval of the Christians) or of Christian civilization is the inevitable consequence of this struggle.“
1. Kluber: Coup d’oeil des deliberations diplomatiques du Congres de Vienne.
All this had been planned. A book published in Alsace at the end of 1790, under this title: Should Jews be admitted as active citizens, had raised this cry of alarm: “Let the Jew be a citizen in all respects in which he does not will not be a harmful citizen, very good; that all the rights in which our laws could supervise his conscience, be acquired to him without distinction, very good; that he can finally exercise his religion as long as he does not disturb the order. All this is possible, even charitable, and must be widely recommended to new citizens. But in no case should the Jew be eligible for political, administrative or judicial bodies, that is to say, he should not be entrusted with any of the important and delicate functions over which the principles of Christian morality should always preside.
The unlimited enjoyment of all the rights of citizenship would place the advantages of the Jew's condition above that of any other Frenchman, because, on the one hand, he would harvest gold in abundance; and, on the other hand, this gold would put in its chains a large number of slaves, whose votes it would direct in the assemblies, would serve as instruments to rise to the chair of the president of the nation or even to place on the fleur-de-lis.”
These thoughts had inspired Louis XVI when he began to reform the legislation with regard to the Jews; but soon we lost sight of the limits within which the reform could be carried out and we see what happened. Should we be surprised by the complaints that arise from everywhere? A Marseillais, militant socialist, wrote a year or two ago, what can be written in most of our cities: “The Jews are the masters of our city. There are more than four hundred thousand souls in Marseille. There are barely a thousand of them. This does not prevent them from being the holders of all our wealth. They own one of the big shipping companies. They have the Stock Exchange. They have commercial courts. They have the stockbrokers' floor. They have almost the entire judiciary sitting and standing. The high bank and the bar are populated by Levy, Cahen, Mossé and Bédarride. For the administration, it is their stronghold, as in the rest of France. They also have high trade. Our local residents will tell you that in the entire city there is only one large clothing store that escapes the hands of Israel: and yet this single Christian store has only been in existence for a year. The same Jews who hid themselves, a hundred years ago, in sad stalls at the bottom of dark alleys, now occupy the most beautiful installations, Rue Saint-Ferréol, Rue de Rome, half of the Cannebière, the rue Noailles and cours Belsunce, belong to the Jews. And there is only a thousand of them... It's not natural!
The great strength of our Jews comes from their solidarity. They are gifted with a wonderful family spirit and an admirable national spirit. On all occasions, they know how to form a square battalion against their Christian competitors. They stick together and, on successful days, enter our ranks together. The setbacks they suffer, they bear together or, more practically, arrange to make the Christians bear them. A Jewish failure never reaches the Jews; and Jewish creditors are for them better than privileged creditors: they are sacred creditors. They continue to live like this, outside of all common law. They are the first to go beyond the law when they have some advantage. We would like them to also have to bear the disadvantages of this outlaw profession. The Jews formed a state within a state. Let the law take note of the birth of this new State and let the nation be on guard against it.”
The advice with which the Marseillais ends his complaint is beginning to be listened to almost everywhere. Nations warn against Jews. If there is a country where we should not be afraid of Jews, it is England. The example of the Jew Disraeli, the greatest English conservative minister of the last century, seemed decisive and reassuring. And yet, England takes precautions. Some influential publicists, struck by the excessive proportion of Jews among multi-millionaires and especially among parliamentarians and newspaper directors, began the anti-Semitic campaign.
In Germany and Russia, Jews are legally excluded from the ranks of officers. In Austria, Spain, and Italy itself, tradition, in the absence of law, most often opposes the admission, among officers, of members of the Jewish race. We know what it cost France for not having taken this wisdom of nations into account. Christian nations will escape Jewish domination to the extent that they move out of cosmopolitan politics and into national politics.
Now, who does not see it? seriously national politics relegates Jews to second place. The sons of Israel form, like the Freemasons their allies or their serving squires, a secret coterie in the great national society. Therefore, they cannot be the organs of life of this national society. Public functions must be entrusted in England to Englishmen, in Germany to Germans, in France to Frenchmen. It is not enough that public officials legally belong to the nation by a fictitious artifice; they must belong to the soul of the nation through ancestors, through services rendered, through proven patriotism. Because it is not only private interests that are in danger by the privileged situation given to Jews today, national interests are no less so. Disraeli, whom we have just named in his book Coningsby, (p. 183-184; French translation, p. 148 et seq.) exposed, in 1844, with indescribable complacency the growing superiority which the Jewish race takes in Europe and how she is preparing her universal reign.
“Following struggles repeated a thousand times..., the weight of fifteen hundred years of supernatural servitude fell on our heads. But, far from being broken under this burden of oppression and ignominies, we are being played with by the efforts of human invention, which exhausted itself in vain in ruining us... The Jews! the Jews! Will you ever see a movement of any importance take shape in Europe, without the Jews being a large part of it? . . . This Russian diplomacy, so full of mysteries, and in front of which the whole of Western Europe pales, who organizes and directs it? Jews! The powerful revolution which is being prepared and brewing in Germany, where, in fact, it will soon be a second reform, more considerable than the first, so what auspices does it take for the fullness of its development? Under the auspices of the Jew. To whom in Germany has fallen the almost complete monopoly of all professorial chairs? Neander, the founder of spiritual Catholicism, and Regius, the professor of theology at the University of Berlin, are they not two Jews? Bénary, this illustration of the same University, he is definitely a Jew, isn't he? And Wehl, the Heidelberg professor, is still a Jew... In a word, what are the names of the German professors of the Jewish race? This name is legion! On my arrival in Saint Petersburg, I had an interview with the Minister of Finance of Russia, Count Cancrim; he was the son of a Jew from Lithuania. In Spain, I had obtained an audience with Minister Mendizahal, Mendizabal is what I myself am, the son of a Jew, of a convert from the province of Aragon. In Paris, I wanted to take the advice of the president of the council, and I had before my eyes a hero, a marshal of the Empire, (the one who one day almost sat on the throne of Portugal), in a word the son of a French Jew, Soult. What! Soult, a Jew? Yes, undoubtedly, as well as several other marshals of the empire, headed by Masséna, who among us is called Manasseh... I left Paris for Berlin, and the minister whom I had to visit was only a Prussian Jew..- This world is governed by completely different characters than those who do not see what is happening behind the scenes..."
So, in 1844, the ministries of the largest countries of Europe were ruled not by their sovereigns, but by Jews. It is a Prime Minister of England who tells us this and demonstrates it.
Since that date, the power of the Jew has only grown. “They hold together, at present, as in a network, the whole of Christian society,” wrote Father Ratisbonne, Jewish by birth, in 1868. Another Englishman, Mr. Houston-Steward Chamberlain, based in Vienna, Austria, recently published a book: The Assizes of Civilization, which achieved tremendous success in Germany. William II, after devouring it, read it aloud to his family and distributed several dozen copies here and there. Mr. Chamberlain has no more religion than he has a country. He only cares about one thing, his status as a European. He is anti-Semitic, without being fanatical about the idea of race, because the intelligence, the ways of thinking of the Jew seemed to him to be enemies of his own, and because the political organization of the Jews dangerously supports their attacks against Western culture and civilization. It is study, reflection, observation that have led Mr. Chamberlain to this point of view. “A day came,” he said, “after many years of independent and disinterested study, when I realized that a force, in the contemporary world, is working against me, is working to destroy everything that harms me. is precious, everything that constitutes my person, everything that my predecessors bequeathed to me and what I want to bequeath to mine. That day, a great fear fell on me.”
XII. - COLLECTIVISM AND THE HEGEMONY OF ISRAEL.
The Jewish writer Bernard Lazare wrote the following when speaking of his co-religionists: “As for their action and their influence in contemporary socialism, it was and is, as we know, very great.” It was Marx (1) who gave the impetus to the International through the manifesto of 1847, written by him and Engels; not that we can say that he “founded” the International, as those who still consider the International to be a secret society of which the Jews were the leaders have asserted, because many causes led to the constitution of the International. International, but Marx was the instigator of the workers' meeting held in London in 1864, and from which the Association emerged. There were many Jews there, and in the General Council only we find Karl Marx, secretary for Germany and Russia, and James Cohen, secretary for Denmark. Besides Marx and Cohen, we can cite Neumayer, secretary of the Austrian correspondence office, Fribourg, who was one of the directors of the Paris Federation
1. Bernard Lazare says elsewhere: “This descendant (Karl Marx) of a line of rabbis and doctors inherited all the logical force of his ancestors; he was A LUCID AND CLEAR TALMUDIST, who was not embarrassed by the silly minutiae of practice, a Talmudist who studied sociology and applied his native qualities as an exegete to the criticism of political economy” (V. L’Antisemitisme, p. 342).
of the International, which also included Loeb, Haltmayer, Lazare and Armand Lêvi. Léon Frankel, who led the German Section in Paris; Cohen, who was a delegate of the London Cigar Makers' Association to the Congress of the International held in Brussels in 1868; Ph. Coenen, who was, at the same Congress, the delegate of the Antwerp Section of the International, later played a role during the Commune, where they found other co-religionists.
“As for the organization of the socialist party, the Jews contributed powerfully to it. Marx and Lassalle in Germany; Aaron Libermann and Adler in Austria; Dobrojanu Ghéréa in Romania; Gompers, Kahn and Lion in the United States of America were or still are its directors or initiators. Russian Jews must occupy a special place in this brief summary. The young students that barely left the ghetto, took part in the nihilistic agitation; some - among them women - sacrificed their lives to the emancipatory cause, and, alongside these Israeli doctors and lawyers, we must place the considerable mass of refugee artisans who founded in London and New York important worker agglomerations, centers of socialist and even anarchist communist propaganda.”
It was therefore Jews who, according to one Jew, founded the first socialist associations. It was the high barons of Jewish Finance who then allowed collectivism to expand and prosper by subsidizing it and founding the newspapers through which it propagated its doctrine to the masses. The collectivist press is in the hands of Jews in all countries of the world, and we know that in our country l’Humanité, the organ of citizen Jaurès, was founded with capital provided by twelve Jews — “one from each tribe “, said Urbain Gohier in Terreur Juive.
Collectivism is the term to which the Jews tend, the collectivism which, under the guise of handing over everything to the State, will place everything in their hands who will find themselves hidden behind the anonymous personality of the State. The State, which carried out centralization from a political point of view, is now working to centralize all economic forces in its hands. It already had a number of monopolies. It began to monopolize the railways; it reveals his intentions to monopolize insurance, alcohol, etc.; it also talks about taking new steps every day towards controlling inheritances by expanding statutes. Collectivism will thus be established little by little without violence, without revolution by the successive taking possession of all economic, industrial or commercial manifestations of French activity.
An eminent sociologist, Mr. Louis Durand, the founder in France of the Rural and Workers' Funds, brings us closer to the art and tenacity with which the goal of the God-State is slowly, slyly, but surely pursued. Here is a summary of his arguments: The public opinion - he tells us - is sometimes worried by the noisy and violent demonstrations of socialism, strikes, riots, factory fires, etc. She is right to be concerned. And yet these facts, however regrettable they may be, are only local incidents, which have almost no importance in comparison with the otherwise serious and general measures which bring socialism into our laws and our morals under beneficent and peaceful appearances, and too often, with the approval of good, overconfident people.
Integral socialism tends to the socialization of the means of production and exchange. The State must seize capital to regulate production and consumption as it wishes. The realization of this program would give the State unlimited power over individuals whose well-being, and even their lives, would be at the mercy of public authorities. We shudder at the thought of the power that the socialist state would enjoy if it ever succeeded in carrying out its program. To dominate commerce, industry, agriculture, all national production, it would be enough for the State to seize three or four branches of economic activity which control and condition all the others. The State will be master of everything when it exclusively owns credit, transport, insurance and, if necessary, mines (raw materials). To be a master in one of these branches, there is no need to seize such a branch. All the State has to do is operate the industry at a loss, filling the deficits with tax resources. It is obvious that private industry could not sustain such disproportionate competition. However, this is precisely what the State has tended to do for several years.
See already its work for credit: it began by organizing regional agricultural funds subsidized by it (more than a hundred million are allocated to this service). These funds depend entirely on the State, because it reserves the right to withdraw, at its discretion, renewable subsidies in the short term. Naturally the farmers did not protest against this first attempt. Can we call a measure from which we benefit socialism? Second step: credit to agricultural industries. — Clever measure of propitiation, since it is the agricultural classes who are the most opposed to socialism. Third step: it will open credits for the construction of cheap housing. Then it was given the mission of giving credit to the sailors. Then, through bills relating to flood relief, it was authorized to lend to small merchants. It's a transitional measure... no doubt; but will this state credit cease to function when the floods are only a memory? ? ? . . . That would be very poor knowledge what the State os. The newspapers are already telling us that a delegation was received by the minister, asking that the State organize credit for small industrialists and small traders “as it did for farmers.”
Let it be noted: all these measures are beneficial in themselves. Created by private initiative (such as they exist and flourish in other countries), they would be excellent. But they become eminently dangerous when the State replaces private initiative - which always does better more cheaply - because State action kills the latter, and the final result can only be: State everything; the citizen nothing. When it comes to insurance, the State has moved a little slower. So far it has limited itself to granting subsidies to mutual insurance companies, which allows it to inspect them. But the Minister of Agriculture announced a bill tending to found a state reinsurance fund.
As always, we start with agriculture... so that it does not raise any opposition. Then the sailors, the industrialists, the traders will come and say to him: “Why are you insuring, at the expense of the State and with exemption from taxes, the farmers and not us?” It will be too short, and the State will become the only insurer. How, in fact, could private companies, burdened with enormous taxes, compete with state insurance companies, which do not pay taxes and which can, in the event of a deficit, appeal to taxpayers? On all sides, we see the State tending with perseverance to intervene with its capital, that is to say with taxpayers' funds, in the domain of production and exchange. And to further multiply its means of action, the law on workers' pensions, as it was passed by the Senate, allows the government to use part of the capital produced by the capitalization of payments to various works or institutions.
As for the transport industry, there is no need to insist: the West has been bought, Orléans will cede part of its network - we have also talked about the takeover of the South. But when the State has completed its methodical penetration, in the economic field, what freedom will be left to citizens, whose entire economic activity will then be at the mercy of the public authorities and who will not be able to obtain credit if they displease the public prefecture, nor have their claims settled by reinsurance if they are poorly rated?
These observations of Mr. Louis Durand are certainly worthy of attention. We have said that, for two thousand years, the Jews have aspired to conquer the entire world. To dominate nations, it is necessary to destroy the institutions that constitute the social order, particularly the Christian social order.
Hence the principles of 89, hence Human Rights, hence Liberalism, including Freemasonry, insinuates the virus into all societies. With these poisons, we disintegrate all institutions, we kill them: Religion, Family, Homeland, Property, Army, nothing resists them. As, on the other hand, the Jews preserve themselves as a nation, as a body of families, as a community of religion, in short as a homeland, we understand without difficulty that this organization, exclusive of all others, manages to establish its universal domination over the people reduced to dust. This is the supreme goal of the Jews, this is the great objective of the Jewish nation.
The destruction of private property, the institution of state collectivism will go a long way. Collectivism is the State replacing individuals in the possession of all wealth. But what is the State? All citizens united as a community, respond the Jews and their disciples. Let us see what is already today. It is the State, but it is not France which is waging war on the Church. It is the State, but it is not France which has the four or five billion that the budget provides. It will be the State, but it will not be France which will become the sole owner; and the State is man, it is men who hold the power; it is, it will be the Jews.
A learned economist, Mr. Du Mesnil Marigny, in his History of the political economy of ancient peoples, published in Paris, by Plon, in 1878, believed he could, by relying only on economic facts and statistics, formulate these predictions:
“The political elevation of Israel to the heights of greatness therefore seems certain, since at this moment nothing seems to be able to stave it off. Thus, unless there is a great modification in the order and movement of societies, we will soon see it, however extraordinary such a stroke of fate may seem, governing nations, after having applied all their wealth and consequently, multiplying without measure, by driving out from before them (Exodus, XXIII, 30) the inhabitants of all the earth, as they did to the Canaanites and to the natives named Gessen. Certainly we will reproach against this presentiment of the substitution of the Israelites for the current races of the various parts of the globe, and we cannot disagree that this prediction is very daring. But history is there to teach us that in each country the indigenous populations are gradually replaced by the people who, camped on their territory, are incontestably superior to them in wealth, in industry, in productive faculties of all kinds... ..."
However, if, according to our predictions, the sons of Jacob, taking advantage of their superiority in everything that provides prosperity and longevity in this world, manage to survive any other race, as we know the attachment, the spirit of fraternity which unites them, no one will dispute that it is through them that we will see this era of humanity come true, this wish of all philosophers, this aspiration of all great hearts, we mean universal brotherhood... From today, by the facts that we have exposed, one would have to be blind to question the superb future which is reserved for the Israelites (1).”
XIII. - THE JEWISH POPULATION
The total number of Jews existing in the world is very difficult to estimate. Scattered among all peoples, they hide their nationality and religion in several places; and when, as in France, the census no longer mentions the religion, there are no longer officially any Jews, since the Jews are naturalized French. Jewish documents that can be consulted should only be accepted with reservation. Depending on whether the interest of the day requires it, they increase or decrease their figures. A serious work on this question was published in 1900. The author, whose name we do not have, precedes his statistics with this note: "I had great difficulty in bringing together the scattered documents which I have must have served me. I will indicate as sources accessible to all: 1° Gotha Almanac, years 1898, 1899, 1900; 2° Geographisch Statistsche Tabellen by Hubner; 3° Universal Geography, by Elisée Reclus; 4° The Dictionary of Geography, by Vivien-Saint-Martin.
“I have also consulted the official census reports published by the various governments. Finally, I also had recourse to the Jewish Almanacs and the Reviews published in Paris and Leipzig
1. Op. cit., t. II, p. 283 and 285.
Here is the result of this comparison of the documents: Note. — We compare the figures given by this author with those published on April 21, 1910, by the Israelite Archives, according to the Jewish Statistical Bureau. We will see that if the figures are correct on one side or the other, there must have been large displacements in these ten years, particularly in Asia. Europe / Africa / Asia / America / Oceania - year 1900 - 7,800,000 500,000 1,400,000 1,300,00 20,000; year 1910 - 8,853,599 325,778 484,165 1,889,624 27,106; Total 1900 / 1910 - 11,020,000 11,580,272.
The total number given by Hubner (year 1893), continues our author, is a little lower: 10,860,000. We have, in studying the statistics, had to slightly reinforce the figures he gives for Europe, Africa and America, and reduce a little those for Asia, then says how the 7,800,000 allocated to Europe are distributed: “Here now, according to the Gotha Almanac (year 1900), Hubner (year 1898) and the official documents published by the governments, the figure of the Jewish population. in the various states of Europe (1900 / 1910): Germany 630,000 / 607,862, England 80,000 / 247,760, Austria-Hungary 3,030,000 / 2,076,978, Belgium 3,000 / 15,000, Bulgaria 27,500 / 37,653, Denmark 4,000 / 3,176, Spain 400 / 2,500, France 70,000 / 100,000, Greece 10,000 / 8,350, Holland 110,000 / 103,988, Italy 40,000 / 35,617, Norway 200 / 642, Portugal 1,100 / 1,200, Romania 243,000 / 266,652, Russia 4,250,000 / 5,215,805, Serbia 5,048 / 5,729, Sweden 3,402 / 3,012, Switzerland 8,069 / 12,264, European Turkey 140,000 / 106,977. Total: 8,655,719 / 8,851,165.
New York currently contains 800,000 Jews.
The Jews of France are officially divided into twelve districts headed by as many consistories, which come under a central consistory. L'Univers Israelite published this statistic: Years 1892, 1894, 1896. — Besançon 2,200; Bordeaux 3,500; Lille 3,200; Lyon 2,200; Marseille 4,800; Nancy 4,400; Vesoul 4,100. The population of the consistory of Bayonne is not indicated. Years 1901, 1902. — Bayonne 2,200; Besançon 2,250; Bordeaux 3,000; Epinal-Vesoul 3,900; Lille 3,800; Marseille 5,500; Nancy 4,500. As for the Jewish population of Paris, the author of the article, Mr. Mathieu Wolff, lacks, he says, precise data which would allow him to fix the figure. “I believe, besides Mr. Wolff, that we remain closest to the truth in estimating the Jewish population of France at 85,000 souls. Let's add, if you like, the 48,000 Jews of Algeria.” The number of Jewish prefects, sub-prefects, judges and civil servants is four times, ten times higher than it should be, taking into account the number of Jews in the French population. Their number in the senior ranks of the army is constantly increasing. In twenty years, France will have at least a hundred Jewish colonels or generals or similar; the defense of the homeland will be in the hands of a staff of homeless people.
The Jewish Statistical Bureau in 1910 also gives these figures. Crete 1,150; — Luxembourg 1,201; — Gibraltar 1,300; — Bosnia and Herzegovina 8,213. The Jewish Yearbook also gives the percentage of the Jewish population in the principal cities of the world: Berdychev 87.72; Jerusalem 55; Odessa 33.75: Warsaw 33.36; New York 26.30; Budapest 23.05; Amsterdam, 11.30; Vienna 8.75; Frankfurt 8.15; Montreal 6.94; Constantinople 5.77; San Francisco 6.94; Berlin 4.85; Chicago 3.58; Hamburg 2.34; London, 2.28; Paris 2.07; Rome, 1.51; Brussels 1.16; St. Petersburg 0.83.
It may be interesting to compare the population figures currently reached by Jews with those of the past. When they entered the Promised Land, there were 601,730 men. Counting four individuals for each adult male, we obtain a total population of two and a half million. At the time of Solomon, the population of Jewish origin numbered 1,300,000 fighters, which represents a total of 5,000,000 souls, and a population double that of the conquest. According to Josephus, Galilee comprised 3,000,000 at the time of Titus' expedition, which would put the population of Palestine at 8,000,000. But the figures given by Josephus are obviously exaggerated. Galilee was no more than 930 square miles. There would therefore have been 30,000 inhabitants per square mile, which is absolutely impossible. Regardless, we see that the breed is now more numerous than it has ever been. This increase does not go back a long way.
“A phenomenon born yesterday,” says M. Gougenot des Mousseaux, “has just caused a strange surprise to the investigators of statistical reports, and the suddenness of its production seems to designate it as one of those warnings that Providence pleases to give to the world and which history records under the title of sign of time. This sign is an abnormal multiplication of the species, it is an inexpressible increase in population which, suddenly and everywhere at the same time, takes place and is evident in the home of Israel, in the heart of Israel. diverse peoples with which it mixes... Is it that after having maintained, for centuries, on the surface of the globe, the level of the population that Judea nourished, at the time of the death of Christ, an intelligent force, who never, tired of walking in agreement with the meaning of the Judeo-Christian prophecies, would like, in a few years, alongside the intellectual and metallic power of Israel, to suddenly reach the summit of all the social positions, double, triple its numerical value? Would she like to create for her, ready to move at the trumpet blast of the man she will call her Messiah, an army master in all places of gold and iron, these two metals which, on the ruin of the principles of Christian civilization, have become the two levers of our social changes. the two dominant reasons for all modern power?”
XIV. — THE UNIVERSAL LANGUAGE
To maintain all of humanity under its domination after having conquered it, it is not enough to have lowered, abolished the barriers which separated men into distinct nationalities and various confessions and to have endowed it of a humanitarian religion and a universal republic. It will be good to have made it adopt a common language. Just as we have seen the approach work which tends to make patriotic feelings disappear from hearts and revealed dogmas from minds, we are witnessing a powerful effort to create an international language. And just as the anti-Christian sect has obtained that a number of Catholics become propagators of the modern Principles which, according to the Jews, are the surest guarantees of the present and the future of Judaism and the most energetically vital conditions of its expansion and its highest development;
Likewise, the inventors of Esperanto won over a number of Catholics, among them several very influential ones, who devoted themselves to having this artificial language adopted. The first attempts at a universal language date from the 17th century. Almost simultaneously Dalgarno and the Anglican bishop Wilkins wrote the one Ars signorum (1664), the other the Mercury (1668). The goal of the authors was to create a single language intended to replace all the idioms of the earth with another mode of expression of human thoughts: each of the signs in each word had to represent a concept. Since then, the following have been published: Universal Language, by Letellier (1852); la Lingua universal, by Sotos Ochando (1854); the Solrésol, by Sudre (1866) — the Chabé (1886), by the engineer Maldant; the Spokil (1900), by Doctor Nicolas. As early as 1839, Schipfer, in his “Communicationsprache”, had indicated the similarity of numerous words in various European languages and common morphological forms. L. de Rudelle published in Bordeaux in 1859 a grammar with some examples under the name Pantos dimou-glossa; and in 1881, Pastor Schleyer, of Constance, gave the Volapuk: (universal language Vol for world; a, hyphen; puk, abbreviation of speak). Immediately newspapers were founded, established courses, congresses gathered; but soon we realize that easy by correspondence, the imperfect instrument is no longer sufficient orally. Most of the discouraged followers believed in the impossibility of the solution of the problem. his Catholic Language project demonstrated that the international language existed in a latent state and that it was enough to extract it from the national dictionaries Volk and Fuchs, in 1883, and Eichhorn, in 1886: each published Weltsprache, Steiner sa Pasilingua; (1885) and the Jew Zamenhof his Esperanto, others made other attempts. All these systems start from the same principles: excessive simplification of the grammar, which is successively reduced to around twenty rules, and the development of a dictionary a posteriori, that is to say found in national languages by seeking the maximum internationality of each word. Zamenhof, in Esperanto, by a system of disarticulation of vocables and by the attribution of precise meanings to affixes, provided the method of handling a very copious vocabulary with a minimum of roots. This progress contributes to the ease of mnemonic acquisition. In October 1907, a Committee met at the Collège de France, studied all the projects, listened to the authors of the various systems and examined the situation. Only Esperanto had taken on a fairly large extension, thanks to the support of the French Society of Propagation, chaired by Mr. de Beaufront, author of a project: Adjuvanto, similar to work of Zamenhof, of which he made the sacrifice.
Esperanto had a copious literature (a thousand translations of various works, a few originals); its supporters numbered from 100 to 200 thousand; in three Congresses (Boulogne, Geneva, Cambridge), they had demonstrated that many individuals of different nationalities had understood each other by speaking an artificial language; through hundreds of courses in all countries, through around twenty newspapers and magazines, the vitality of Esperanto was undeniable. A first International Congress of Catholic Esperantists was held in Paris from April 30 to April 3, 1910, at the Catholic Institute of Paris. Eighteen delegates from various nations of Europe and America were present as well as a large and enthusiastic audience. This congress did not deal with Esperanto as a language, but Esperanto was the only language used during the sessions. The main question dealt with there was the reunion of all Christians in one fold under the one Pastor, successor of Saint Peter, vicar of Jesus Christ. We also dealt with Catholic Works and ways to strengthen them by making them more international by means of the common language. The congress participants only had in mind to put at the service of faith, this new instrument for the unification of humankind. May they succeed! Good minds fear the opposite. One of them, Mr. Charles Vincent, wrote: “In the midst of modern Babel, men dream of founding a single and universal language, connecting like a people through peoples. A Jew, Zamenhof, is the instigator. “He who hopes creates Esperanto”. Could he be a precursor? — When you declare yourself a supporter of this new method of communication, it is recommended to register, give your signature, and commit to wearing the insignia. Could this be the prelude to the future “brand”? Members use paper, envelopes and special stamps. They express the wish to translate all the classic and other books, so, they say, that it is no longer necessary to resort to the original text. —Won't that facilitate further falsifications? Thus the Pharisees acted in the past, with regard to the Holy Scriptures, upon their return from captivity. — Finally, they have the flaming star of Freemasonry (1), and their motto is: “A people without a country.”
Another opponent: “It would be the language of humanitarianism without tradition, which fits well into Israel's plan. Something worthy of attention. There was talk of instituting the Esperanto course in our high schools - initially optional so as not to shock anyone. The secondary education teachers who were supporters of this “happy progress” were known as belonging to Jewry or to Masonry, or
1. The invitation card to the congress of Esperantist Catholics in Paris represented a circle supported by two wings, quite similar to the Egyptian winged disc. Enclosed in this circle was a small map of the world, limited to Africa, Australia and a portion of the Bay of Bengal. At the place which represents the central Asian plateau there was a large five-pointed star. The stamp was dominated by a cross. The central star, despite the cross, seemed very closely related to that of the Grand Orient and the wings which support it took on a disturbing cabalistic appearance in the eyes of many.
suspected of being of one or the other congregation.”
A third: “There is little doubt that Esperanto is a Judeo-Masonic attempt falling within the means used by the sect to prepare the leveling of minds and nations. Among many other signs which suggest it, is not the Masonic five-pointed star the favorite badge of Esperantists?” Mr. Charles Vincent concluded the article above as follows: “I feel some embarrassment in speaking out. On the one hand I cannot doubt the good faith of the Catholic Esperantists; and the name and authority of Mgr Baudrillard prevent me from formulating a definitive opinion." But unfortunately! For forty years since I fought in the Catholic ranks, I know the incredible ease they have in opening up to interested defectors from the enemy, their naivety in listening to those they take for the guides of “modern” progress. And it is impossible for me to blame the distrust of those who see in this “international” movement one of the aspects of this method of destruction that Mr. Maurice Talmeyr so accurately calls “Underground Art”.