We say that a sentence is factually significant to any given person, if, and only if, he knows how to verify the proposition which it purports to express. A J Ayer, Language, Truth and Logic, 1936.

The English language is a lumber-room of odd artefacts from the past. Indo-Germanic, Anglo-Saxon, the Romance languages; all these are jumbled together to produce the language of Shakespeare, Johnson and Orwell. And this of course means the presence of Latin. We still use Latin phrases whole. We defend or attack the status quo, speak of ongoing court cases as sub judice, negotiate with quid pro quo, shorten a list with et caetera. Now, however, we should dust off a lesser-known Latin term; ex cathedra.

The phrase originated with 19th-century Pope Pius IX, after he codified the supremacy of the Pontiff by ecumenical council to end a debate that had raged for centuries in the Catholic Church, and relates to Papal pronouncements. It looks as though it means ‘from the cathedral’, but the word ‘cathedral’ itself comes from cathedra, meaning ‘chair’ and referring to the Pope’s throne. The defining quality of ex cathedra statements was that they were indemnified by Papal infallibility, which meant that they could not be doubted. They were true in and of themselves because of their divine provenance and had no need to be debated or examined intellectually. In fact, to do so would be dangerous to the enquirer. If the Pope decreed the number of angels that could dance on the head of a pin, then that was the number, no more and no less. If the Pontiff announced that Christ did not own his own clothes, then that became, as we say now, ‘gospel truth’.

This infallibility sets a very dangerous precedent. Post-Enlightenment, Western thought has reason as its core processor, as it were; the arrival at a feasible conclusion by inductive means from the available evidence or argument. Nothing is true until and unless proven to be so. A statement should be analyzed as to its relationship with truth. Pronouncements made ex cathedra from propositions formed ex nihilo  — or, “from nothing” — were quite dangerous for those who questioned them; indeed, they were in danger of being burnt at the stake. But the ex cathedra pronouncement is making a return, and the infallibility may not be Papal, and heretics may not face the flames — at least, not yet — but they do face excommunication.

It has been noted many times that ‘woke’ culture, incorporating as its central gospels Critical Race Theory (CRT), transgenderism, the promotion of homosexuality, miscegenation and other deviations from nature, has analogues in religion. ‘Woke’, and CRT in particular, has its high priests, its heretics, its Inquisition, its scriptures, its own version of High Latin, or a privileged, elitist, non-vulgate language, and so on. It also has its ex cathedra pronouncements, every bit as binding as those uttered by any Pope. Let’s take a famous example:

Only white people can be racist because only they have power.

Non-white people, by this premise, cannot be racist because they lack power (this is, in itself, a de facto absurdity). What has happened is the co-opting of the original meaning of ‘racialism’ to be the definition of ‘racism’, which used to be a straightforward recognition that racial difference exists. This is the equivalent of giving the answer to a mathematics question without giving the workings and without being marked down if the answer is wrong. It has no substantial premise, no historical validity, and is nothing but its own utterance. It is, in effect, ex cathedra. The new Papacy hath spoken.

The Left’s newly imposed lexicon works in exactly the same way as the traditional magic spell of the magician or occultist. Words of power are uttered. What the words are or mean literally is not important; what matters is their power. ‘Systemic racism’, ‘white privilege’, ‘climate change denier’, ‘inclusivity’, ‘unconscious bias’, ‘black lives matter’; these jingles and others like them are now divested of meaning but invested with the power to bind. None of the phrases above has any referent in the real world. Epistemologically, they are not tethered to anything that exists. They are invented abstractions trying to be real things. But Leftist epistemology is such that language does not have to conform to familiar, tried-and-trusted rules, but to politicized regulations structured according to the need for power. And language is the delivery system for power.

There is great power in empty language. It is worth quoting Plato, from the Theaetetus, at length. He is talking of the Sophists, the travelling teachers of rhetorical argument often hired by richer Athenians. We recognize today the profile Plato draws:

If you ask any of them a question, he will produce, as from a quiver, sayings brief and dark, and shoot them at you; and if you inquire the reason of what he has said, you will be hit by some other new-fangled word, and will make no way with any of them, nor they with one another; their great care is not to allow of any settled principle either in their arguments or in their minds, conceiving, as I imagine, that any such principle would be stationary; for they are at war with the stationary, and do what they can to drive it out everywhere.

They are at war with the stationary. Plato has predicted cultural relativism almost two-and-a-half millennia before Lyotard and Foucault began unravelling truth and meaning. Once true meaning ceases to be a fixed point and becomes just a shifting relativity maintained by an engineered and meaningless vocabulary then, epistemologically speaking, all bets are off. Is truth fixed and objective or is it relative and subjective? We must listen again to Pontius Pilate’s question; What is truth?

Truth is the guiding, if not always attainable, principle of all intellectual endeavor. The problem is that it can be mistaken for one standard calibration rather than an operative concept with quite separate functions. When those disparate functions are conflated into a yardstick, like the meter-long lines you can still see on walls in Paris, and against which sellers of linen would measure their wares, there is a problem. As an example of this epistemological multi-tasking, here are four truths concerning the number four:

1. 2 + 2 = 4.
2. Japan is composed of four islands.
3. There are four horsemen of the Apocalypse.
4. The Chinese word for ‘four’ sounds almost exactly the same as the Chinese word for ‘death’, and is therefore considered unlucky.

All of these statements are true, but I am sure you can see that they are not true in the same way. (Incidentally, Chinese apartment blocks are unlikely to have a number 4, just as there is rarely a number 13 in Western blocks).

The difference between statement 1 and the other three is that 1 is necessarily true, the others contingently true. Put simplistically, you don’t have to check statement 1, but you might feel the need to check the other three if you were a ruthless empiricist. Two and two made four when Plato was alive, and will still be true if or when the earth finally spirals into the sun. Two and two make four whether you are in Manhattan or Iceland. Of course, two plus two having the sum of four doesn’t get you very far, it’s just an unpacking of the simple concept of whole numbers. This is what worried Russell and Whitehead in Principia Mathematica, as well as Poincaré, the French mathematician—that mathematics might just be some endless and pointless extrapolation of the simple function of the copula. The mathematical formula is true prima facie, but the utter integrity of its truth function cannot be replicated in the real world outside of mathematics and logic. Spinoza tried and failed, magnificently, in Ethics.

I am not a mathematician, and my point is not a mathematical one. Rather, there is a dangerous attempt by the ‘woke’ hegemony and their sponsors to impose the order of mathematical truth not just on things the truth of which ought to be debatable, but on things which are patently absurd and untrue. If the enemy takes your castle, you can-retake it. But if the enemy takes not just your truth, but truth itself by way of your language, then the fight will be a good deal harder. And it is your truth we need to consider next.

If you are familiar with the history of Western philosophy, and were asked to pick a key moment in the analysis of truth, you might choose Aristotle’s Metaphysics, Descartes’ famous cogito ergo sum argument, Wittgenstein’s Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus, and each would be justified. But there has recently been such a moment from a rather different cultural source, and it may be far more incendiary than the texts mentioned.

In 2021, Oprah Winfrey interviewed the British royal Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex, and his wife, Meghan Markle. A half-caste, Markle’s charge is that Buckingham Palace has been a hotbed of racism since she joined the Royal Family. A famous English chat-show host, Piers Morgan, called her a liar and lost his job over the remarks. Winfrey is noted for her encouragement of interviewees to ‘speak your truth’, with the emphasis on ‘your’, and this is precisely what she urged Markle to do, with an immediate and compliant response. Markle told her truth, that the British Royal Family was inherently racist, and that became the truth, and this due to the requirements of the media rather than those of epistemology. Due to the fascination with the Royal couple, ratings were huge and the Right-of-center media caught hold of Winfrey’s bombshell.

Speak your truth and that will stand as true. This is epistemological anarchy, the equivalent of talking to people who are on hallucinogenics. Rather than transact with the reality of what is or what happened, we stake our belief in what your perception of the truth is. So, instead of having a world on which most of us can agree most of the time, we have millions of morally defective monads in Brownian motion, each with their own truth. Given that each generation in the West is successively less well-educated — largely due to the ‘woke’ distaste for classical education — then the prospect of letting truth off the leash just at the moment doesn’t inspire confidence in civilization’s staggering on much farther.

Truth cannot be expressed without meaning and meaning must be communal. They are two sides of the same coin and you cannot have a one-sided coin. Wittgenstein’s famous language game cannot be solitaire.  Truth can’t be solipsistic or the serial killer is on the same moral plane as the charity worker because they are both speaking their truth. Meaning and truth have an analogous relationship with currency — that is, what economists call M1, or basically notes and coin — and the financial reserve. The former is the practical, transactive category of the latter, while the latter is a guarantor of validity, of tender, for the former. This makes the re-definition of meaning, the genetic modification of semantics and etymology, the epistemological equivalent of printing money.

If this seems like semantic hair-splitting then, firstly, welcome to philosophy. Secondly, don’t be so sure of its triviality. The re-engineering of the relationship between language and truth is central to possibly the most over-referenced — although not over-rated — book of the last decade, Orwell’s 1984, which has taken on a Koranic role for the dissident Right, as it should. When O’Brien holds up four fingers and asks Winston how many he sees, he does not wish for a compliant reply, a self-serving acquiescent falsehood. He doesn’t want Winston to lie and say he sees five fingers to save his own skin. He wants Winston actually to see five fingers. This is the most important observation Orwell made; truth itself is being modified not just within language, in some removed, Derridean way, but in the real world.

If you lose your liberty, you can fight to take it back. But if you lose the ability to assess what is true and what is not — aka meaning — not through insanity but because of what is effectively state-engineered intervention — because ‘woke’ is not an organic phenomenon — then the best of luck.  The most dangerous thing happening to the indigenous white West is not that history is being re-written, it is that dictionaries are.

It is remarkable that complaints about Jewish behavior have been so consistent through the centuries, in very different cultural and social eras.

Twelve centuries ago, between 823 and 828, the actual date is not precisely known,  Saint Agobard (769 – 840), bishop of Lyon (France), who contributed to making his episcopal city one of the centers of the Carolingian Renaissance, addressed to Louis the Pious (successor of Charlemagne) a letter in Latin (English translation here) with a startling title:

AD EUMDEM IMPERATOREM, DE INSOLENTIA JUDAEORUM

or

ON THE INSOLENCE OF THE JEWS TO LOUIS  THE PIOUS

See also Andrew Joyce’s article “Agobard and the Origins of the Hostile Elite” on the eventual futility of the letter:

Unfortunately for Agobard, he was summoned to the Court at the instigation of the Jews. Bernard Bachrach comments that “The Jews…were forcefully represented by a powerful advocate. They also had influential friends at court. … The court not only found against Agobard, but the emperor added the personal humiliation of dismissing him from the palace in a preemptory manner. Louis provided the Jews with a diploma bearing the imperial seal that bore witness to their victory.”^[15] Persisting in his conviction that the emperor couldn’t possibly side with the Jews over his own people, Agobard continued to deliver sermons against Jews and to write to Louis explaining himself (as seen in the above extracts from one such letter). He insisted that Louis had been misinformed or that the edicts bearing his seal were forgeries.^[16] Bachrach writes that Agobard believed Louis and other elites at court “were either pawns of Jewish interests or acting from a misunderstanding of the situation.”^[17] What he failed to consider was the possibility these figures were willing accomplices of the Jews, together comprising a hostile elite.

The patience of the hostile eventually wore thin. As the missi dominici [envoy of the ruler] set off for Lyon “with a plethora of pro-Jewish documents and a plentitude of power to enforce government policy, Agobard fled.”^[18] Agobard noted from his exile “the Jews were made joyful beyond measure.” He added that many of his associates “fled or hid or were detained.” Priests loyal to him were threatened by Jews and royal agents, and, as a consequence, “did not dare to show their faces.” Subsequent efforts to confront Jewish influence in the Frankish lands were forced into more abstract and indirect forms rather than “opposing imperial policy overtly or by attacking the Jews directly.”^[19] Jeffrey Cohen remarks that, in the end, Agobard utterly failed to alter Carolingian Jewish policy, or prevent its further evolution.^[20] Despite this failing, Agobard entered the Jewish consciousness as an emblematic hate figure, with the nineteenth-century Jewish activist and historian Heinrich Graetz comparing him to the “villainous Haman” of the Book of Esther.^[21] He was only dislodged from the bitter expanse of Jewish memory when the twentieth century provided Jews with a new “Haman,” and a new chapter in their lachrymose self-authored history.

The story outlined here is important in the history of the Jewish Question for a number of reasons. The first is that it is a very early Western European example of non-religious clashes of interest, by which I mean that although we see two religious communities in confrontation the basis for that confrontation is not rooted in the spiritual. As Jeffrey Cohen concedes, Agobard’s “well-known complaints regarding the Jews hardly amounted to a systematic theological exposition.” Rather than theology, his complaints “address an array of specific, practical issues.”^[22] These “specific, practical issues” concerned Jewish hostility towards Europeans, the abuse of Europeans by Jews, and the extent of Jewish wealth, privilege, protections, and political influence in European societies.  These issues, more than the putative “prejudices,” “neuroses,” or “religious pathologies” posited by Jewish intellectuals, have been the perennial elements underpinning the Jewish Question for more than a thousand years. They provoked an entirely rational response — European efforts to fight back, or, as it would eventually come to be known, “anti-Semitism.”

Perhaps the most important aspect of Agobard’s tale is that it exposes the origins of one of the most uncomfortable aspects of Jewish influence — its reliance on cooperation with our own elites. Only by engaging in a symbiotic relationship with our own corrupt rulers can Jews gain full access to power and an impunity when wielding it. As such, we should grow in the understanding that answering the Jewish Question will by necessity involve a reckoning with the issue of how we govern ourselves and by what qualifications we select our elites. If Whites possess a weak sense of ethnocentrism and high sense of individualism (certainly when compared with Jews and other non-Whites), then this should provoke a discussion on how to tie the fate of our rulers or governments to our people. In ancient times, both Celtic and Nordic societies took this idea to an extreme, sacrificing their kings in times of famine or hardship (see for example, the Ynglinga Saga). The fate of the king was quite literally tied to the people — if the people suffered, the king would suffer more than anyone. As time progressed, kings became ensconced in their hierarchy, their palaces ever larger and ever more distant. Then came the parliaments and the politicians, they too ever more distant from the needs of the masses and the direction of their interests. Accountability in all instances was reduced to nothing.

This letter is considered by the scholars to be “The first testimony relating to the abduction of children by Jewish merchants active in the trade flowing into Arab Spain,” as it was phrased by Ariel Toaff , professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar-Ilan University in Israel, who states in his book, Blood Passover (p. 189) that:

The first testimony relating to the abduction of children by Jewish merchants active in the trade flowing into Arab Spain, comes down to us in a letter from Agobard, archbishop of Lyon in the years 816–840. The French prelate describes the appearance at Lyons of a Christian slave, having escaped from Cordoba, who had been abducted from a Leonese Jewish merchant twenty four years before, when he was a child, to be sold to the Moslems of Spain. His companion in flight was another Christian slave having suffered a similar fate after being abducted six years before by Jewish merchants at Arles. The inhabitants of Lyons confirmed these claims, adding that yet another Christian boy had been abducted by Jews to be sold into slavery that same year. Agobard concludes his report with a comment of a general nature; that these were not considered isolated cases, because, in everyday practice, the Jews continued to procure Christian slaves for themselves and furthermore subjecting them to “infamies such that it would be vile in itself to describe them”.

Precisely what kind of abominable “infamies” Agobard is referring to is not clear; but it is possible that he was referring to castration more than to circumcision. Liutprando, bishop of Cremona, in his Antapodosis, said to have been written in approximately 958–962, referred to the city of Verdun as the principal market in which Jews castrated young slaves intended for sale to the Moslems of Spain. During this same period, two Arab sources, Ibn Haukal and Ibrahim al Qarawi, also stressed that the majority of their eunuchs originated from France and were sold to the Iberian peninsula by Jewish merchants. Other Arabic writers mentioned Lucerna, a city with a Jewish majority, halfway between Cordoba and Malaga in southern Spain, as another major market, in which the castration of Christian children after reducing them to slavery was practiced on a large scale by the very same people.

During this period, Jewish merchants from the cities in the valley of the Rhône, Verdun, Lione, Arles and Narbonne, in addition to Aquisgrana, the capital of the empire in the times of Louis the Pious [Louis I]; and, in Germany, from the centers of the valley of the Rhine, from Worms, Magonza and Magdeburg; in Bavaria and Bohemia, from Regensburg and Prague — were active in the principal markets in which slaves (women, men, eunuchs) were offered for sale, by Jews, sometimes after abducting them from their houses. From Christian Europe the human merchandise was exported to the Islamic lands of Spain, in which there was a lively market. The castration of these slaves, particularly children, raised their prices, and was no doubt a lucrative and profitable practice

Ariel Toaff argues that these abductions are at the origin of the rise of the ritual murder stereotype (and, maybe, of our modern adrenochrome urban legends.)

That Christian Europe of the Middle Ages feared the Jews is an established fact. Perhaps the widespread fear that Jews were scheming to abduct children, subjecting them to cruel rituals, even antedates the appearance of stereotypical ritual murder which seems to have originated in the 12th century. As for myself, I believe that serious consideration should be given to the possibility that this fear was largely related to the slave trade, particularly in the 9th and 10th centuries, when the Jewish role in the slave trade appears to have been preponderant.

Be that as it may, Toaff dare not mention the title of the letter and so we could easily miss the rest of it. It is worth quoting in full, its seething tone not faltering for a moment.

For example, all those who think that “Democracy was always nothing more than the screen for the Jewish dictatorship (Louis-Ferdinand Céline, Bagatelles pour un massacre [1937], éd. Denoël, 1937, p. 51) will have to think twice: the proximity and the connivance of the Jews with power are already denounced as such in Agobard’s letter — at a time that was not particularly democratic.

In a short article on Jeune Nation, 1917: le Rond-point Poincaré, it can be seen, by quoting a few extracts from his memoirs, how easily Raymond Poincaré (President of French Republic, 1913–1920) could contact Rothschild and the members of the consistory while the secularism of the Republic prohibited him from meeting bishops. So, there is nothing new under the sun since Agobard. The sole difference, strictly speaking, is the fact that in the past, every now and then, the kings and the emperors would take steps that would be considered by today’s democratic standards as antisemitic — a burning at the stake during the Inquisition for example.

And last but not least surprise, Kosher slaughter was already a touchy issue at the time of Agobard, the meat considered to be unclean by the Jews being sold to the Christians: the same occurs today, obliging the Gentile to eat meat from a ritual slaughter that they consider does not to meet the standards of Jewish religious law.

So below the letter in its full extent, both in English and in Latin. (The letter can be found in Latin and  French here: Abogard : LETTRE A LOUIS LE PIEUX SUR L’INSOLENCE DES JUIFS (remacle.org) 

In English: Internet History Sourcebooks Project (fordham.edu)

Louis le Pieux 778 – 840 painting by Jean-Joseph Dassy 1791–1865

On the Insolence of the Jews To Louis the Pious

To his most Christian, truly pious, and always august emperor Louis, the most fortunate triumphal victor in Christ, Agobard, the most downcast of all your servants.

When omnipotent God — Who knew before time itself and foreordained that you would be a pious rector in these truly demanding times — raised your prudence and zealous religion over the other mortals of your time, there is no doubt but that you were prepared as a remedy for the dangerous times about which the Apostle speaks: In the last days the dangerous times shall begin, and there shall be men who love themselves, greedy, puffed up, etc.[II Timothy 3:1-2] and who, although they have the appearance of piety, nullify its strength.[II Timothy 3:5] From times such as these nothing more should be expected than what is already seen, except for the release of Satan and the public trampling of the holy City for the forty-two months, which shall occur through the head of all the iniquitous, Antichrist.[cf. Apocalypse 11:2]

Therefore since this is the way things are, I beseech your most tranquil long-sufferingness that you lend your most patient ear to the words with which I, the least of your servants, consider it most necessary to admonish your most holy solicitude concerning such a vital matter, a matter which is either uniquely or especially one to which your governance more than all others should bring aid.

If I could pursue my account of the matter while passing over in silence the names of the responsible parties, I would gladly do so. But because it cannot be done, I commit myself to your goodness and patience as I surrender myself to the dangers and inform you of what is ruinous to pass over in silence. There came Gerric and Frederick who were preceded by Evrard,[1] your agents (missi) in fact yet not doing your will completely but rather acting on behalf of another. They showed themselves to be terrible to the Christians and mild to the Jews, especially in Lyon, where they set up a persecuting faction (pars persecutionis) against the Church and they goaded the church to many groans, sighs, and tears.

Because this persecution was directly principally against me, I should not recount the whole, unless perchance your most clement concern should wish to know. But if your kindness allows, I shall begin to intimate it briefly, insofar as it was injurious to the Church of Christ.

When the Jews first arrived, they gave me a message in your name and another one to the man who rules the district of Lyon in place of the count; [this message] ordered him to offer aid to the Jews against me. We absolutely did not believe that such messages as these issued from your judgment, although they were read out in your sacred name and sealed with your ring. The Jews began to rage with a certain odious insolence, threatening that we would be afflicted with every sort of injury by the agents whom they had obtained to take vengeance upon Christians. After them, Evrard arrived and repeated the same thing and said that your majesty was truly angry with me because of the Jews. Then the aforementioned agents arrived, holding in their hands a tax code(?) (stipendialis tractoria) and a capitulary of sanctions which we do not believe exists by your command.

For these reasons, the Jews were made joyful beyond measure and the Christians saddened — and not only those who fled or hid or were detained, but the rest as well who saw or heard. In particular, it was because the Jews’ opinion received such confirmation that they irreverently began to preach to the Christians what they ought to believe and hold, openly blaspheming the Lord God and our Savior Jesus Christ. This perversity was strengthened by the words of your agents who whispered in the ears of certain people that the Jews are not abominable, as many think, but are held dear in your eyes and because some of their people were saying that they are considered better than Christians.

I, your unworthy servant, was not in fact in Lyon [at the time] but was far away on the case of the monks of Nantuadensium, who were fighting among themselves because of a certain rivalry. Nonetheless I sent our agents with a short letter to those men [saying] that they should command whatever they wanted and we would obey what they had enjoined. But we received no indulgence from them. Consequently, certain of our priests whom they threatened by name, did not dare to show their faces.

We suffered these things from the Jews’ supporters and for no other reason but that we preached to Christians that they should not sell Christian slaves to them; that they should not allow these Jews to sell Christians to Spain nor to possess them as paid domestics lest Christian women celebrate the Sabbath with them, work on Sundays, eat with them during Lent, and their paid servants eat meat on these days; and that no Christian should buy meats sacrificed and butchered by Jews and sell them to other Christians; and that they should not drink their wine or other things like this. [my emphasis]

For it is the practice of the Jews that when they slaughter an animal to eat and kill it using three cuts so that it is not strangled, if the liver appears to be damaged when the entrails are opened, or if a lung clings to the side or breath inflates it, or bile is not found, and other things like this, the meat is considered to be unclean by the Jews and sold to the Christians and these meats are called by the insulting expression “Christian beasts” (christiana pecora). With regard to the blood which the Jews both consider to be unclean and do not use except to sell it to Christians, if it should happen to flow into the earth anywhere, even into a filthy place, they swiftly draw it out of the ground and put it in a vessel to preserve. And as for how they do other things worthy of reproach concerning the blood, there are not only many Christian witnesses but also many Jews.

That the Jews daily curse Jesus Christ and the Christians in all their prayers under the name “Nazarenes” not only the blessed Jerome attests, who writes that he knew them intimately and was inside their skin,[2] but many of the Jews also bear witness to this. On this matter, for the sake of example, I spoke to the Christians in this way: If there is a man who is faithful and a lover of his elder and lord and he senses that someone is his lord’s enemy, detractor, reviler, and a threat to him, he does not wish to be this man’s friend, table companion, or sharer in his food. But if he should be [this man’s friend, etc.] and his elder and lord learns this, [the lord] would judge that the man was not faithful to him. And therefore, since we know that the Jews are blasphemers and men who curse, so to speak, the Lord God Christ and his Christians, we should not be joined to them through the sharing of food or drink in accordance with the rule (modus) that was given long ago and commanded by the holy fathers in their words and examples. For the rest, because they live among us and we should not be wicked to them nor act contrary to their life, health, or wealth, let us observe the rule (modus) that has been ordained by the Church. The way in which we should be cautious or human towards them, is not at all obscure but has been clearly expounded. [my emphasis)

Most pious lord, I have mentioned only a few out of the many things concerning the faithlessness of the Jews, our admonition, and the wounding of Christianity that is occurring through the supporters of the Jews, since I do not know whether [this news] can even come to your attention. Nonetheless, it is absolutely necessary that your pious solicitude know how the Christian faith is being harmed by the Jews in certain ways. For when they lie to simple Christians and boast that they are dear to you because of the patriarchs; that they enter and leave your sight with honor; that most excellent people desire their prayers and blessings and confess that they wished they had the same author of the law as the Jews; when they say that your counselors are aroused against us for their sake, because we forbid Christians from drinking their wine; when, in trying to claim this, they boast that they have received from Christians many, many pounds of silver from the sale of wine and cannot find out, after running through the canons, why Christians should abstain from their food and drink; when they produce commands signed with golden seals in your name and containing words which, in our opinion, are not true; when they show people women’s clothes as if they were sent to their wives by your kinsmen or matrons of the palaces; when they expound upon the glory of their forefathers; when they are permitted, contrary to the law, to build new synagogues — [when all this occurs] it even reaches the point when naïve Christians say that the Jews preach to them better than our priests. And this was particularly true when the aforementioned agents ordered that the markets that usually occur on Saturdays should be moved lest [the Jews’] Sabbatism be impeded, and they let [the Jews] choose on which days they had to go to market from then on, claiming that this suited the utility of the Christians because of the Sunday vacation. In the end, it proved to be more useless to the Jews since those who are near, because they buy the necessary food on Saturday, spend Sunday more freely at the celebration of the Mass and at preaching, and those who come from a distance on the occasion of the market, attend the evening and morning offices after the celebration of the Mass has been performed and return home with edification.

Now then, if it should please your most benign kindness to listen, let us say what the Churches of the Gauls and their rectors, kings as well as bishops, should hold to regarding the separation of the two religions, namely that of the Church and that of the Jews, and what they should pass down in writing and leave to posterity to be maintained, and how it is consonant with authority, that is the Acts of the Apostles and takes its origin from the Old Testament. From these it is shown how detestable enemies of the truth should be considered and how they are worse than all unbelievers, as divine Scripture teaches, and what unworthy things they think about God and heavenly matters. We have discussed all of these things with our brethren and have sent [these writings] to be presented to your most expansive excellence.

After the preceding note had been dictated, a certain man from Cordoba arrived, fleeing from Spain. He said that he had been stolen as a little boy by a certain Jew of Lyon 24 years before and sold, and that he had fled this year with another boy from Arles who had been likewise stolen by a Jew six years earlier. When we sought out those known to the man who was from Lyon and found them, some said that others had been stolen by this same Jew, others bought and sold, and that this year another boy was stolen and sold by a Jew. At that moment it was discovered that many Christians are sold by Christians and bought by Jews and that many unspeakable things are perpetrated by them which are too foul to write. [my emphsia]

AGOBARDUS: AD EUMDEM IMPERATOREM, DE INSOLENTIA JUDAEORUM.

Christianissimo, et vere piissimo, et in Christo victori ac triumphatori Ludovico imperatori felicissimo, semper Augusto Agobardus abjectissimus omnium servorum vestrorum.

Cum Deus omnipotens, qui vos ante tempora praescivit et praeordinavit rectorem pium futurum temporibus valde necessariis, sublimaverit prudentiam vestram et studium religionis supra caeteros vestri temporis mortales; dubium non est praeparatum vos ad remedium temporibus periculosis, de quibus apostolus loquitur : In novissimis diebus instabunt tempora periculosa, et erunt homines se ipsos amantes, cupidi, elati, et caetera , et habentes quidem speciem pietatis, virtutem autem ejus abnegantes; de quibus nihil est exspectandum quod jam non videatur, nisi solutio Satanae, et publica calcatio sanctae civitatis mensibus quadraginta duobus, quae futura est per caput omnium iniquorum Antichristum. Cum haec igitur ita se habeant, obsecro tranquillissimam longanimitatem vestram, ut praebeatis patientissimam aurem vestram verbis quibus ego infimus servorum vestrorum nimis necessarium puto admonendam sanctissimam sollicitudinem vestram de re tam necessaria, quae aut sola, aut praecipua est, cui prae caeteris succurrere debeat gubernatio vestra; cujus narrationem si prosequi potuissem tacitis nominibus auctorum, vellem omnino. Sed quia fieri non potest, committo me bonitati et patientiae vestrae, dando me periculis, et innotescens vobis quae tacere perniciosum est.

Venerunt Gerricus et Fredericus, quos praecurrit Evrardus missi quidem vestri non tamen per omnia vestra agentes, sed ex parte alterius; et ostenderunt se Christianis terribiles et Judaeis mites, maxime Lugduni, ubi partem persecutionis adversus Ecclesiam depinxerunt, quam multis gemitibus, suspiriis et lacrymis stimulaverunt. Quae persecutio, quia praecipue adversum me acta est, tota a me prodenda non est, nisi forte clementissima sollicitudo vestra scire voluerit. Tamen in quantum Ecclesiae Christi noxia est, si vestra patitur mansuetudo, breviter intimare exordiar.

Venientes itaque primum Judaei, dederunt mihi indiculum ex nomine vestro, et alterum ei qui pagum Lugdunensem vice comitis regit, praecipientem illi ut auxilium ferret Judaeis adversum me.

Quos indiculos, licet ex sacro nomine vestro recitarentur, et vestro annulo essent signati, nullatenus tamen credimus ex judicio vestro tales prodisse. Coeperunt autem efferri quadam odibili insolentia Judaei, comminantes omnibus injuriis nos afficiendos per missos quos adepti fuerant ad exsolvendam vindictam de Christianis.

Post eos venit Evrardus, eadem iterans, et dicens majestatem vestram commotam esse valde adversum me propter Judaeos.

Deinde venerunt et praedicti missi, habentes in manibus tractoriam stipendialem, et capitularia sanctionum, quae non putamus vestra jussione existere talia.

His causis laetificati sunt Judaei ultra modum, et contristati Christiani, non solum illi qui fugerunt, aut qui absconditi sunt, vel qui districti, sed et caeteri qui viderunt, vel audierunt; maxime ideo, quia sententia Judaeorum ita confirmata est, ut auderent irreverenter praedicare Christianis quid potius credendum esset ac tenendum; blasphemantes coram eis Dominum Deum ac Salvatorem nostrum Jesum Christum.

III. Roboratur quoque haec perversitas ex verbis missorum, quibus susurrabant quorumdam auribus, dicentes quod Judaei non abominabiles, ut plerique putant, sed chari essent in oculis vestris, et hominibus eorum dicentibus ex parte meliores eos habitos quam Christianos.

Et ego quidem indignus servus vester non eram Lugduni; sed aberam longe, causa Nantuadensium monachorum, qui quadam dissimultate inter se laborabant. Tamen direxi missos nostros et litterulas ad illos, ut praeciperent quidquid vellent, aut eis injunctum esset, et nos obediremus. Sed nihil veniae adepti sumus; ita ut etiam aliqui ex sacerdotibus nostris, quibus nominatim minabantur, non auderent praesentiam suam eis exhibere. Haec passi sumus a fautoribus Judaeorum, non ob aliud nisi quia praedicavimus Christianis, ut mancipia eis Christiana non venderent, ut ipsos Judaeos Christianos vendere ad Hispanias non permitterent, nec mercenarios domesticos habere, ne feminae Christianae cum eis sabbatizarent, et ne diebus Dominicis operarentur, ne diebus Quadragesimae cum eis pranderent, et mercenarii eorum iisdem diebus carnes manducarent, ne quilibet Christianus carnes a Judaeis immolatas et deglubatas emeret, et aliis Christianis venderet, ne vinum illorum biberent, et alia hujusmodi. Est enim Judaeorum usus, ut quando quolibet pecus ad esum mactant, ut subactum idem pecus tribus incisionibus non fuerit jugulatum; si apertis interaneis jecur laesum apparuerit, si pulmo lateri adhaeserit, vel eum insufflatio penetraverit, si fel inventum non fuerit, et alia hujusmodi; haec tanquam immunda a Judaeis repudiata, Christianis venduntur, et insultario vocabulo Christiana pecora appellantur.

De vino vero, quod et ipsi immundum fatentur, et non eo utuntur nisi ad vendendum Christianis, si contigerit ut in terram defluat quolibet loco licet sordido, festinantes hauriunt iterum de terra, et ad conservandum in vasa remittunt. Qualiter vero et alia improbanda circa illud agant, non solum de Christianis, sed et de Judaeis multi sunt testes. Quod autem Dominum nostrum Jesum Christum et Christianos in omnibus orationibus suis sub Nazarenorum nomine quotidie maledicant, non solum beatus Hieronymus, qui se scribit novisse illos intrinsecus et in cute, testis est, sed et de ipsis Judaeis plerique testantur. In hac re sumens exempli gratiam, dixi Christianis hoc modo: Si aliquis homo seniori suo vel domino fidelis et amator existat, et quempiam hominum senserit illi esse inimicum, detractorem, conviciatorem, et comminatorem, non vult ei esse amicus, nec socius mensae, nec particeps ciborum. Quod si fuerit, et hoc senior ipsius vel dominus deprehenderit, nec fidelem sibi eum esse existimat. Et ideo cum procul dubio noverimus blasphematores et, ut ita dicam, maledictores esse Judaeos Domini Dei Christi et fidelium ejus Christianorum, non debemus eis conjungi participatione ciborum et potuum, juxta modum duntaxat a sanctis Patribus et exemplis datum et verbis praeceptum. Caeterum, quia inter nos vivunt, et maligni eis esse non debemus, nec vitae aut sanitati vel divitiis eorum contrarii; observemus modum ab Ecclesia ordinatum, non utique obscurum, sed manifeste expositum, qualiter erga eos cauti vel humani esse debeamus.

Haec, piissime domine, de multis pauca dixi de perfidia Judaeorum, de admonitione nostra, de laesione Christianitatis, quae fit per fautores Judaeorum, nesciens utrum pervenire possit ad vestram notitiam. Tamen summopere necesse est ut sciat piissima sollicitudo vestra, quomodo nocetur fides Christiana a Judaeis in aliquibus. Dum enim gloriantur, mentientes simplicibus Christianis, quod chari sint vobis propter patriarchas; quod honorabiliter ingrediantur in conspectu vestro, et egrediantur; quod excellentissimae personae cupiant eorum orationes et benedictiones, et fateantur talem se legis auctorem habere velle, qualem ipsi habent; dum dicunt consiliatores vestros commotos adversum nos eorum causa, eo quod prohibeamus Christianos vinum eorum bibere; dum hoc affirmare nitentes, plurimas argenti libras ob emptionem vini se ab eis accepisse jactant; et decursis canonibus non inveniri quare Christiani debeant abstinere a cibis eorum et potibus; dum ostendunt praecepta ex nomine vestro, aureis sigillis signata, et continentia verba, ut putamus, non vera; dum ostendunt vestes muliebres, quasi a consanguineis vestris vel matronis palatinorum uxoribus eorum directas; dum exponunt gloriam parentum suorum; dum eis contra legem permittitur novas synagogas exstruere; ad hoc pervenitur, ut dicant imperiti Christiani melius eis praedicare Judaeos quam presbyteros nostros; maxime cum et supradicti missi, ne sabbatismus eorum impediretur, mercata, quae in sabbatis solebant fieri, transmutari praeceperint, et quibus diebus deinceps frequentari debeant, in illorum opinione posuerint, dicentes hoc Christianorum utilitati propter diei Dominici vacationem congruere; cum Judaeis magis probetur inutile: quia et hi qui prope sunt, sabbato ementes victus necessaria, liberius die Dominico missarum solemnitatibus et praedicationibus vacant; et si qui de longe veniunt, ex occasione mercati tam vespertinis quam matutinis occurrentes officiis, missarum solemnitate peracta, cum aedificatione revertuntur ad propria. Nunc igitur, si placet benignissimae mansuetudini vestrae audire, dicamus quid Ecclesiae Galliarum, et rectores earum, tam reges quam episcopi de discretione utriusque religionis, ecclesiasticae videlicet et Judaicae, tenuerint, tenendumque tradiderint, et scriptum posteris reliquerint, et quomodo consonum sit auctoritati vel actibus apostolicis, et a Veteri Testamento originem trahens. Ex quibus demonstratur quam detestabiles habendi sint inimici veritatis, et quomodo pejores sint omnibus incredulis, Scripturis divinis hoc docentibus, et quam indigniora omnibus infidelibus de Deo sentiant, et rebus coelestibus. Quae omnia cum confratribus contulimus, et amplissimae Eccellentiae vestrae praesentanda direximus.

Et cum praecedens schedula dictata fuisset, supervenit quidam homo fugiens ab Hispaniis de Cordoba, qui se dicebat furatum fuisse a quodam Judaeo Lugduno ante annos viginti quatuor, parvum adhuc puerum, et venditum, fugisse autem anno praesenti cum alio qui similiter furatus fuerat Arelate ab alio Judaeo ante annos sex. Cumque hujus, qui Lugdunensis fuerat, notos quaereremus, et inveniremus, dictum est a quibusdam et alios ab eodem Judaeo furatos, alios vero emptos ac venditos; ab alio quoque Judaeo anno praesenti alium puerum furatum et venditum: qua hora inventum est plures Christianos a Christianis vendi et comparari a Judaeis, perpetrarique ab eis multa infanda quae turpia sunt ad scribendum.