Christian theologian
Augustine of Hippo
Life
354–430 CE
He argued that Jews should be tolerated as testimony to Christian truth; his view is probably one reason Jews survived under Christian rule.
What the sources say
Each block is a sourced statement. Click the number to see the cited page.
5 statements
Augustine of Hippo (354 to 430) disagreed sharply with the Jews: he held that they misread the Bible and that their dispersion and suffering were punishment for rejecting Christ. Even so, unlike other Christian thinkers, he did not preach violence: Jews were to go on existing, even in humiliation, to serve as living proof of Christian faith. This view probably weighed heavily in allowing Jews to survive under Christian governments through the Middle Ages.
Some Christian leaders were bent on converting the Jews, at times by force, threatening them with expulsion or death. Overall, though, Augustine's line won out, and Jewish communities went on existing, if in weakened form.
Augustine (354 to 430), regarded as the founder of Western Christianity, set the attitude that became dominant. Citing Psalm 59:12 ('Kill them not, lest my people forget'), he argued that Jews had an important role within Christian society and should be tolerated as 'witnesses' to Christianity's truth: they vouched for the antiquity of biblical prophecy, which Christians read as foretelling Jesus.
For Augustine, the Jews' life as a scattered and discriminated-against minority proved they had been punished for rejecting Jesus and showed what existence without grace looks like. He set 'carnal' Judaism, bound to the law, against 'spiritual' Christianity, freed by grace: Jewish fate was living proof of Christendom's truth.
This theological framework was adopted by later church leaders and, in medieval law, became a basic toleration of Jews, though not 'tolerance' in the modern sense. Pope Gregory I (590 to 604) declared that Jews were not to be unjustly restrained or wronged; the aim was a balance between imposing restrictions and an inferior rank and avoiding arbitrary treatment.