FROM THE CHRIST-KILLER TO THE LUCIFERIAN: THE MYTHOLOGIZED JEW AND FREEMASON IN LATE NINETEENTH- AND EARLY TWENTIETH-CENTURY ENGLISH CATHOLIC DISCOURSE

Conventional wisdom in studies of English antisemitism has tended to suggest that by the nineteenth century religious prejudice had largely been secularised or replaced by modern socio- political and racial forms of hostility. This may have been the case in the general English discourse, but in the English Catholic discourse at the turn of the twentieth century, traditional pre-modern myths, with their cast of Jewish and Masonic diabolists, were still a pervasive feature. This article examines a range of sources, including the published works of prominent and obscure authors, the pastoral letters and sermons of cardinals, bishops and priests, articles and editorials in newspapers and periodicals, letters, and a small number of oral testimonies, in order to bring to light an English Catholic discourse which, with the exception of the published works of Hilaire Belloc and G. K. Chesterton, has largely gone unexamined. Prominent mythological villains in the English Catholic discourse during the late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century included "the Pharisee," "the Christ-Killer," "the Ritual Murderer," "the Sorcerer," "the Antichrist" and "the Luciferian." This article examines the continued presence of narratives in which Jews and Freemasons were assigned one or more of these villainous roles. This article presents some of the results of an investigation into the representations of "the Jew" which existed in English Catholic discourse during the final years of the nineteenth century and the early decades of the twentieth century (circa 1896 to 1929). Three main types of representation were considered during the investigation: the roles assigned to the Jew in traditional Christian myths, contemporary stereotypes of the Jew and composite constructions which combine themes drawn from myths and stereotypes. 1 For the purpose of the investigation, stereotypes were broadly speaking defined as crude, powerful, resilient but protean representations, which take so-called human vices and virtues, often distorted and magnified, and project them onto all individuals within the stereotyped group. In the English Catholic discourse, the stereotyped Jew was greedy, cowardly, unpatriotic and secretive. 2 He was also depicted as smart, but his intelligence was not considered a virtue. 3 Myths were in essence defined in the investigation as important and persistent stories

were in demand all over the country. 21 Also like Knox, he explained that all varieties of Jews were responsible for the murder of Christ. In an address delivered at the Church of the Immaculate Conception in 1907, he stated that "Priests and Levites, Pharisees and Scribes, Sadducees and Herodians, servants and soldiers, young men and women, and children Invoking the moment for his audience, he asked them to "picture for one moment the wild garments of every shade." He observed that "they are, most of them at any rate, discussing the situation, and congratulating one another on the verdict which rids their nation of another arch imposter." 22 Sermons by other priests also referred to the rejection of Christ. For example, Father Bede Jarrett, the head of the English Dominicans and the founder and president of the Catholic Guild of Israel, combined the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer in a sermon delivered in 1915. According to a report of this sermon in the Catholic Times, Jarrett pointed out that Christ was "done to death" as a result of a "political accusation." According to Jarrett, the noteworthy thing was that Christ was "accused by the Pharisees because He adopted their political ideas." His teachings were too pure and sincere for the Pharisees and so, in their "sheer hypocrisy," they denied their own politics in order to denounce Him. 23 A sermon in 1915 by the auxiliary Bishop of Salford, John Stephen Vaughan (another brother of the Cardinal Archbishop), stated that when the world goes astray and "is in danger of forgetting Him, God does not abandon it, but He rises up and visits it with the most unmistakable signs of His displeasure." As an example he cited the fate of the Jews: God summoned up "the Romans with their armies," and used them to wrought destruction upon Jerusalem, "in 24 In addition to these sermons, the follies of Jewish "legalism" and the rejection of Christ also featured in the carefully constructed pastoral letters of the bishops and archbishops of the English hierarchy. 25 largest and most important Roman Catholic divisions in England, referred to the Jews in a number of his pastoral letters. 26 In his mid-Lent pastoral for 1916, he stated that the Jewish 21 Edward Cruise, "Development of the Religious Orders," in George Andrew Beck, ed., (London, Burns Oates, 1950), 455-456. 22 Bernard Vaughan, (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner, 1908), 183-184. 23 "Christ or Caesar: Sermon by Father Bede Jarrett, O.P.," Catholic Times (London edition only), 29 October 1915, 7. The sermon was delivered at St James' Roman Catholic Church, Spanish Place, London. Bede Jarrett  was the head of the English Dominicans from 1916 onwards. He founded the Catholic Guild of Israel in 1917 in order to improve efforts to convert the Jews in England. 24 John Stephen Vaughan, "The Scourge of War," The Catholic Pulpit, Universe, 13 August 1915, 6. This sermon was delivered at Salford Cathedral on 5 August 1915. John Stephen Vaughan (1853Vaughan ( -1925 was the youngest brother of Cardinal Archbishop Vaughan. He was the auxiliary Bishop of Salford. 25 For a nuanced discussion of "legalism," see Bernard Jackson, "Legalism," Journal of Jewish Studies, XXX, no.1, Spring 1979, 1-22. Jackson observes that the notion of "legalism" is a Christian concept and one that ideally neither Jews nor lawyers would have to deal with. 26 Edward Ilsley (1838 was Bishop (1888Bishop ( -1911 and Archbishop of Birmingham (1911-1921. After the reintroduction of the Catholic hierarchy in 1850, England consisted of one ecclesiastical province (the Archdiocese of Westminster and several suffragan dioceses). Due to rapid growth, the Catholic Church in England was reorganised in 1911 into three ecclesiastical provinces (Westminster, Birmingham and Liverpool). Francis Bourne, the Archbishop of Westminster, was made a Cardinal at the same time. Ironically, Bourne had less power as Cardinal-Archbishop than he did previously. The Archbishop of Westminster continued to enjoy certain privileges, from a tainted source," he stated, and "possessed no worth which could make them pleasing 27 In a pastoral for Quinquagesima Sunday in 1916, Ilsley stated that God repeatedly visited "the national ruin and rejection." This was because they "repeatedly rejected Him." 28 Ilsley referred back to this pastoral letter in the following year, pointing out again that "the history of the human race, and especially of the Jewish nation, brings home to us the truth that Almighty God punishes sin not only in the next life, but also in this." "Time after time the 29 In another pastoral letter, Ilsley declared that "the revealed truth of the Divinity of Christ was refused to believe it." 30 Archbishop John McIntyre, Ilsley's friend and assistant for many years and his successor at Birmingham, similarly stated that, "God turned to the Gentiles and called them to inherit His ancient promises which the Jews had fallen away from by 31 Pastorals by many other bishops referred or alluded to the murder of Christ and the emptiness of Jewish legalism. William Gordon, the Bishop of Leeds, did not explicitly link the "awful death of Calvary" to the Jews, but he did state that on the night before his death, he closed "the Jewish dispensation" and instituted "the New Covenant with His Christian people." 32 George Ambrose Burton, the Bishop of Clifton, alluding to a passage in Luke 18:32, stated that: "He shall be delivered to the Gentiles, and shall be mocked, and scourged, and spit upon; and after they have scourged Him, they will put him to death." Burton went praetorium." 33 William Cotter, the Bishop of Portsmouth, stated in 1916, that "it would be a obligations to Almighty God." "The Jews," Cotter continued, "fasted even according to the letter of the precept; but God answered them with a reproach." The important point is not, England and Wales," in order to solidify his position. Archbishop Ilsley, one of two new archbishops, was one of the leading voices of objection. Bourne was not granted the title of Primate and over the following years a heated rivalry developed between Bourne and Ilsley over the boundaries of the dioceses.  Gordon, pastoral letter, Advent 1901, p.4, Acta Ecclesiae Loïdensis, vol. XI, Leeds Diocesan Archives. Gordon (1831-1911 was born in Thirsk, North Yorkshire, ordained a priest in 1856 and was appointed Bishop of Leeds in 1890. 33 George Ambrose Burton, pastoral letter, Lent 1905, p.9, Acta Episcoporum Angliae, Salford Diocesan Archives. George Ambrose Burton  was ordained a priest in 1890 and appointed Bishop of Clifton in 1902. See 197. spirit of the law with humility and "deep sorrow for our sins." 34 In 1924, Cotter informed his special horror." According to Cotter, "when the Jews were offered by Pontius Pilate the choice between Jesus and Barabbas," they shouted out, "take away Jesus: let him be sermon provides an example of the representation of the Jew as Christ-Killer being used to instruct Christians about the dangers of sin. Cotter suggested that Christians should not be complacent, as they too are guilty of rejecting God and turning away from Jesus every time they place their "sinful whims" over the love of God. This was, Cotter suggested, even worse than the crime of "the Jews," since they at least "knew not what they were doing." 35 These sermons and pastoral letters, for the most part repeated key aspects of traditional myths about the Jews, mainly taken or adapted from the New Testament. The main function of the mythological villains in these addresses, would seem to have been to provide a foil against which Christian virtues could be favourably contrasted. It seems unlikely that these sermons and pastoral letters were intended by their authors as templates for the deliberate stereotyping of contemporary Jews, but it is likely that these and countless sermons and of the Jew as a diabolic villain. In this respect they were similar in function, if milder in tone, than corresponding sermons from the early centuries of the Christian era and the Middle Ages. They helped to ensure that myths about the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer survived into the next generation. These sermons and pastoral letters may have been ostensibly innocent, at least by intention, but the myth of the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer was sometimes formulated in such a way that the contemporary Jew became a part of the narrative. For example, Ronald Knox suggested that the character of the Jewish "race" has been shaped by their rejection of Jesus. According to a sermon by Knox, "with each fresh rejection of God's messengers the habit of rebellion has grown deeper into the Jewish heart." "Their character," he stated, has been moulded by "act after act of apostasy." 36 Another example is provided by a sermon preached at a meeting of the Catholic Guild of Israel by the Rev. Dr. Arendzen, a respected scholar, author and member of the Catholic Missionary Society. 37 Arendzen argued that school," had "a contempt and disdain for all the world." They would not accept the teachings by "the gentiles," who "became the good school of God." Bringing the story forward to the present day, Arendzen argued that Israel "have gone their own way for these two thousand 34 William Timothy Cotter, pastoral letter, Quinquagesima Sunday 1916, pp.7-8, Acta Episcoporum Angliae, Salford Diocesan Archives. Cotter (1866-1940  years. They still have their old school books, the old testament, and the Jews know their old testament very well in the old Hebrew language. The Jews are a proud people and they despise all others." 38 The Guild minutes described his address as "a beautiful sermon on behalf of the people of Israel." 39 Arendzen's sermon was clearly focused not only on the mythologized Jews from the traditional foundation myth, but also on contemporary Jews, who, he alleged, continue to despise all non-Jews. These sermons no longer merely replicated myths. They incorporated mythological roles (i.e. the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer) and stereotypes (i.e. prideful, disdainful, spiteful, powerful, rebellious Jews), into contemporary constructions of the Jew.
Whereas sermons and pastoral letters tended to replicate and preserve the myth of the diabolic Jewish villain, and in some exceptional cases were formulated in such a way as to generalise the villainy to contemporary Jews, the Catholic Herald conversely had a much more overt role in combining the myths with modern stereotypes in order to create a complex construction. 40 Charles Diamond, the owner-editor of the Catholic Herald and a political Catholicism, Christian civilisation and Irish nationalism. 41 It seems that he disliked Jews and Freemasons, not as a consequence of theological concerns, but because he saw them as a foreign and threatening presence within Christian civilisation. He felt that the European nations should have the right to expel the Jews. "His civilisation is not Christian," the newspaper warned, and "his ethics, his morality, are not Christian. He has a deadly hatred of Christianity." 42 Whilst he was not concerned with theology per se, Diamond was happy to draw upon aspects of the Christian foundation myth in order to make his constructions of the Jew more powerful. The main function of the foundation myth for Diamond seems to 38 John Arendzen, sermon, 28 November 1921, Catholic Guild of Israel Archives, Sion Centre for Dialogue and Encounter, London. 39 Guild Minute Book, entry for 28 November 1921, taped into minute book at page 50, Catholic Guild of Israel Archives. 40 The Catholic Herald was founded in 1893 by Charles Diamond. He owned and edited it until his death in 1934. The Catholic Herald was the most vehemently anti-Jewish of the English Catholic organs in the early twentieth century. For more about the Catholic Herald, see Owen Dudley Edwards and Patricia J. Storey, "The Irish Press in Victorian Britain," in Roger Swift and Sheridan Gilley, eds., (London: Croom Helm, 1985), 172-176. 41 Charles Diamond (1858-1934 was born in Ireland in 1858. He was M.P. for North Monaghan from 1892-1895. He also contested districts of London for the Labour Party in 1918, 1922and 1924. Diamond was a maverick who frequently got into trouble with the ecclesiastical authorities. He was repeatedly criticised by the English bishops, not for his hostile articles about Jews, but because he tended to disrespect and undermine their ecclesiastical authority. A resolution was passed by the bishops in 1910, expressing their distaste with the Catholic Herald, which tended to "lessen the respect due from all Catholics to ecclesiastical authority." Acta of the Bishops' Low Week and with the British authorities when one of his articles suggested that a failed attempt to assassinate Lord French, the since "English government in Ireland is not government. It is simply usurpation, brutality, and oppression." As a result he spent several months in Pentonville Prison ( January-August 1920). For the article that got him into trouble, see " Killing no Murder," Notes and Comments, Catholic Herald, 27 December 1919, 6-7. For an article that described his experiences in prison, see "Mr Diamond's Release: Story of His Experiences in Pentonville," Catholic Herald, 14 August 1920, 3. Diamond articulated a mixture of left-wing politics, energetic Catholicism and Irish nationalism in the Catholic Herald, which attracted a large working class Catholic readership despite his fragile relationship with the bishops. For more on Charles Diamond, see Kester Aspden, Fortress Church (Leominster, Hertfordshire: Gracewing, 2002), 33-34, 88, 96. 42 "The Jewish Question," Catholic Herald, 13 September 1919 have been to give the newspaper's construction of the villainous Jew the added weight of scriptural authority. If the original function of the Christ-Killer myth was to justify the usurpation of the Jewish claim to be the true Israel, it was now used to justify the continued suppression of the Jews living in Christian society. An editorial in 1914 provides a useful example. This editorial was written in response to a report that a rabbi-chaplain had been passing. The editorial stated that this story was improbable. It went on to suggest that there is "ample evidence" to show that most Jews are more than willing to "trample upon the plunder. The editorial made its construction of the Jew more diabolic by drawing upon the foundation myth. The newspaper thus combined myths about the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer with stereotypes about Jewish greed. It stated that "the First Christian of all and the Founder of Christianity [was] put to death, the supreme tragedy of history, by the Jewish people." The editorial concluded with the following question: "If our Jewish brethren still live under the Old Law, the old dispensation, which permitted 'an eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth' and which made it lawful to 'spoil the Egyptians' and all others who were not willing to act on these principles, are we to take it that the mere mention of the fact is evidence of a bigoted and persecuting spirit?" 43 The paper's implicit answer was no. Charles Diamond reinforced his construction of the Jew with scriptural myth in several other issues of the Catholic Herald. In "The Jew and the World Ferment" (1919) and "Jewry" (1920), in addition to depicting the Jews as gamblers, usurers, parasites, tyrannical bullies, pathetic sycophants and vulgar materialists, Diamond also stated that multitude, sought only power, and glory and pre-eminence for their nation, and led by their rulers, the high priests and the body of the priesthood, they committed the paramount crime of all time.
The "paramount crime of all time" was, of course, the murder of Christ. Diamond suggested that whilst it is "beyond our province even to speculate" as to "how much of what Christians and non-Christians despise in them and denounce is due to what they have endured during the two thousand years of expiation of their unparalleled crime," it was apparent that "their sufferings have not improved them." 44 Other articles and editorials in the Catholic Herald also combined references to "pharisaically dishonest action," "haters of the Christian name" and "a denial of the Divinity of Christ," with stereotypes of Jewish greed, cowardice, cunning, secrecy, treachery and the myth of a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. 45 The paper later complained The King of Kings 43 "A Jewish Episode," Notes and Comments, Catholic Herald, 14 November 1914, 2. 44 "The Jew and the World Ferment," 14 June 1919, 6 and "Jewry," 26 June 1920, 11. The paper later argued that even if their "worst characteristics" can be traced back to their sufferings, "it may be said that they were not persecuted without reason." "An Israelite without Guile," Catholic Herald, 17 August 1929, 4. Even the bars of a prison cell did not prevent Charles Diamond making such claims. "Jewry," signed "C.D.", was published whilst Diamond was serving time in Pentonville. 45 See for example "The Jewish Question," Catholic Herald, 13 September 1919, 6; "The Jew Danger," Notes and Comments, Catholic Herald, 11 August 1917, 8;"The Jewish Question," Notes and Comments, Catholic Herald, 25 May 1918, 2. the High Priest, rather than "the Jewish race as a whole." This was, the Catholic Herald 46 The Tablet also contained articles which referred to the Pharisees and Christ-Killers, though less frequently and with a measure of ambivalence which was absent from the Catholic Herald. For example, an article in 1920 about pogroms in Poland deplored the violence that had been perpetrated against the Jews, but suggested that the problem was partly the result of a "Jewish population which has not assimilated with the Polish people, but perpetuates in itself an archaic polity, curious customs, and as meticulous an observance of its religious ordinances as that of the Pharisees 2,000 years ago. It is a foreign body in the very heart of the State, an Oriental civilization hitherto racially insoluble." 47 A review in the Tablet of Herford's What the World Owes to the Pharisees (1919), deprecated the Pharisees in traditional terms -their rejection of Christ and "unworthy conception of God" -suggesting that the "fundamental lie of Pharisaism" was that the "oral tradition" had "Divine authority." This lie, the reviewer continued, separated the Pharisees from the "earlier Old Testament religion." The reviewer concluded by linking the Pharisees with Zionism. He stated that "at the present time, when Zionism is so much in the air, one cannot but feel anxious as to what this Pharisaism, still so dominant among the Jews, is likely to produce, should they acquire political ascendancy in Palestine." 48 Articles in other English Catholic periodicals linked critiques of Zionism to the rejection and murder of Christ. For example, according to an article in The Month, the periodical of the British Jesuit society, it would be intolerable for the Jews to be "encouraged to overrun" the Holy Land. Donald Attwater, an English Catholic author and journalist, listed a number of reasons, but foremost was the religious. He stated that the Jews were once "the Chosen people," but as a result of their role in Christ's "shameful death," they have become "the accursed people." It is, he suggested, one thing to forgive the Jews (though he pointed out that "neither the Jews as a people, nor their religious leaders, have ever made manifestation of any repentance for their crime"), but forgiveness does not entail a remission of their sentence. The "punishment of this race," Attwater concluded, was "exile from the Promised Land." 49 chosen people to a wandering witness people. Attwater's narrative about the rejection of Christ was far from atypical of English Catholic constructions of the Zionist Menace. For example, Cardinal Archbishop Bourne, the head of the English Catholic hierarchy from 1903 to 1935, provides another example. He stated in a speech to the Catholic Truth Society in September 1921 that it would be "a gross outrage to the whole sense of Christianity were these sacred lands and the Holy Places which have been wrested from the hands of the rejected the name of Christ." 50 Shortly after Bourne's speech, the Catholic Herald explained that declared itself responsible for itself and for its children, before God, and before man, constitutes an enormous prescription of right before history, and before civilisation (which be it remembered, is Christian)." 51 There is only scant evidence upon which to speculate about the effect that these myths about the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer, repeated in sermons and pastoral letters, and incorporated into constructions of the Jew in English Catholic newspapers, had on the socalled "ordinary" lay Catholic. 52 Though anecdotal, oral testimony has been found that reinforces the suggestion that these myths did have at least some impact on "ordinary" Catholics during the 1910s and 1920s. For example, Mary Brady, a Catholic from Salford, admitted in her recollections that she used to shove and shout at Jews. She stated that "we always thought they killed our Lord you know. Who killed Christ we used to shout." 53 David Freedman, a correspondent for the Jewish Chronicle whose parents immigrated from Lithuania and Poland, remembered encountering "antisemitism" as a boy. He recalled that this was often from boys his own age, "mostly from Catholic schools," such as St. Chad's. They would shout taunts such as: "dirty Jew, who killed Christ? You killed Christ." 54 Harold Jenner, an English Catholic from Manchester and former pupil of St. Chad's, stated that he remembered Jewish lads blaspheming Christ and taking His name in vain. According to Jenner, in those days, the feeling between the Christians and Jews were still present underneath, religious feelings, because if we had an argument, they'd start blaspheming at Christ. Some of them would. And we resented this, the Christian lads.
Jenner also expressed a profound fear of being set upon and killed when entering a Jew's house. He stated that he was "frightened actually, as a child, was always frightened to go in the Jew's house, because I used to hear these tales about Christian children being, you know, 50 Papers: Palestine 1919-1925, Westminster Diocesan Archives, London. A transcript of the speech can be found in "The Zionist Peril," Universe, 7 October 1921, 12. 51 "A Catholic View of Zionism: Why the Jews have no claim to the Holy Land," Catholic Herald, 15 October 1921, 3. Other English Catholic constructions of the Zionist Menace are examined in Mayers, "From 'the Pharisee' to 'the Zionist Menace,' " ch.5. 52 The use of the term "ordinary" in this study does not indicate the antonym of eccentric, peculiar or special.
individuals whose views have rarely been recorded for posterity. They are the often forgotten actors within myth and history. Paul Thompson, (1975;repr., Chicago: Academy Chicago Publishers, 1985) ac.uk (registration may be required). Mary Brady's recollections relate to hanging around streets with "lads" and causing mischief as a teenager, probably during the First World War (but possibly shortly before or after). 54 David Freeman, birth date: 1901, audio tape (recorded 1977), MJM: J85, Manchester Jewish Museum. As his recollection was of taunts from schoolboys of his own age (probably aged 9-14), the likely date range for these memories was the years leading up to the First World War and possibly into the early years of the war (circa 1910-1915). you've heard about them, about them being garrotted." 55 The continued presence in English Catholic discourse of the myths about Jews murdering innocent Christian child is examined in the following section.
The ritual murder accusation was a medieval development of the Christ-Killer myth. Usually the accusation involved the murder of a Christian child, an innocent martyr and symbolic stand in for Jesus. 56 In some cases it was even suggested that the child was nailed to a cross in mockery or reenactment of the original crime. The ritual murder myth did not disappear with the conclusion of the Middle Ages. In 1899, as the primary events of the Dreyfus Affair were drawing to a close, another drama was just beginning. In April 1899, in a section of the town inhabited by poor Jews. A destitute Jew, Leopold Hilsner, was accused bled" and "the traces of blood found under the body did not correspond to the amount of 57 to obtain as much of her blood as possible. Scientists and so-called experts in Jewish ritual murder were called in to examine the evidence and express their opinion on whether the murder was committed for religious ritual purposes. The trial of Hilsner became a concern for Jewry as a whole as it was not just Hilsner but Jews in general who were once again accused de facto of practising ritual murder. 58 views about the likely development of the ritual murder accusation in two works. 59 He published an article on ritual murder in the Month and discussed the accusation in a book he edited on Saint Hugh, the Bishop of Lincoln. 60 The article and book were written a year before the Hilsner Affair. According to Thurston, the article was prompted by the publication of two works which accused the Jews of ritual murder: 55 Harold Jenner, birth date: circa 1910, audio tape (recorded 1976), MJM: J131, Manchester Jewish Museum. It their alleged blaspheming of Christ, they probably relate to an interval stretching from circa 1916 to the mid-1920s. 56 The victim was not always a child. In the case of the Hilsner Affair, the victim was a young woman (aged 19  61 Thurston refuted, at length, the charge that the Jews were required by rituals in their religion to murder Christian children and to use their blood for religious purposes. However, he suggested that Jews had, on occasion, murdered innocent Christian children in " " and that it would have been "a matter of comparatively little moment" if Father Constant had "regarded these alleged murders as isolated and unauthorised outbreaks of fanaticism, reprobated with horror by the higher and better feeling of educated Israelites." 62 In his appendix to Thurston referred to an account in the Hebrew chronicles of Rabbi Joseph Ben Joshua Ben Meir, as evidence that "in some cases murders were undoubtedly committed by Jews." 63 The account in the chronicles does refer to the murder of a Christian child by an insane Jew. According to the account, on the 7th day of Adar in the year 4957 (1197 CE), "a Hebrew, a foolish man, met a Gentile girl and slaughtered her and cast her into the midst of a well, before the face of the sun, for he raved with madness." 64 This was presumably intended by Thurston as evidence that Jews could murder in , but the chronicles seem only to depict a spontaneous and motiveless murder by a crazed individual who happened to be Jewish. There is no indication that the girl had been murdered because she was Christian let alone as a consequence of . But for a turn of fate the victim may well have been Jewish. Murder in was not the only explanation Thurston provided for the murder of Christian children. The other possible explanation was that the blood was required for Jewish sorcery. In his notes to Thurston stated that he was "inclined . . . to adopt a suggestion," made in a review in the Academy, that "the use of human blood taken from some innocent victim, really did enter into the magic spells of the professors of the black art." 65 He found this explanation to be compatible with what St. John Chrysostom had said about "magicians who are said to decoy children to their houses and cut their throats." 66 "Sorcery," Thurston continued, "was practiced amongst the Jews as it was practiced among Christians, and if Christian writers can be trusted, a great deal more so. It is quite possible that some individual Jewish sorcerers may at all periods have combined 61 Thurston, "Anti-Semitism and the Charge of Ritual Murder," 562-563. For an examination of Richard Burton and the controversies surrounding , see Holmes, Anti-Semitism in British Society, 49-62 and Geoffrey Alderman and Colin Holmes, "The Burton Book," , Series 3, 18, no.1 (2008), 1-13. Burton was an explorer, soldier and author. His wife, Isabel Arundell, was a Catholic from an aristocratic family. Arundell claimed that Burton converted to Catholicism and See Dane Kennedy, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 2005), 84, 251-259. 62 Thurston, "Anti-Semitism and the Charge of Ritual Murder," 567, 569. 63 Thurston, , 609. Thurston went on to observe that "a very vindictive spirit against the Christian breathes in the pages of some of the mediaeval Jewish Chronicles. The tone is quite the tone of Shylock, and we can well conceive that a Jew who thought he could avenge himself with impunity upon some solitary Christian, whether child or adult, might perhaps have felt little scruple in doing so" (610). 64 , vol. I, trans. C.H.F. Bialloblotzky (London: Richard Bentley, 1835), 219. 65 Thurston, , 286-287; a review in the Academy did suggest that the blood of a murdered innocent was sometimes used in sorcery and that "the charge of ritual murder" may have sprung from the reputation that Jews had for "magic arts" rather than from a hatred of Judaism. "St. William of Norwich," review of , by A. Jessopp and M. R. James, eds., 27 February 1897, 251. 66 Thurston,,287n1. this very evil magic with their religious beliefs." According to Thurston, "Judaism as a system [emphasis mine] can certainly not be held responsible for these outrages. None the less, it is declaring them all to be the fabrication of popular prejudice." 67 Each issue of the Tablet contained a section, Topics of the Day, which consisted of an article on a subject of topical interest. On 25 November 1899, the topic of interest was the "ritual murder" charge. The article, written in response to the Hilsner affair, did denounce "the sort of blind and fanatical hatred which demands the persecution of the Jew as though that were part of the duty of a Christian." Nevertheless, whilst ostensibly defending Jews from the ritual murder accusation, the same piece had no problem with what it called "a country Jewish attempts to squeeze Christians out of a particular industry are met by organized resistance, or if strenuous opposition is offered to an attempt in whatever country, to obtain exclusive control of the Press or the money market. If in parts of France or Austria or Russia the Jews so conduct themselves as to invite economic or political reprisals they have only themselves to blame." The Tablet thus seemed to reject a particularly unsavoury form of medieval hostility, the ritual murder accusation, whilst endorsing social-economic stereotypes about Jewish greed. More importantly, the article's ostensible rejection of the ritual murder accusation was far from unequivocal. Closely following Herbert Thurston's narrative, the article stated that "an entire disbelief in the ritual-murder calumny is quite consistent with the admission that in a few individual cases Christian children may have been murdered by Jews, and even murdered because they were Christians." The Tablet reasoned that it was likely that some Jews had murdered innocent Christian children as a result of being "stung to madness" by the "tyrannous oppression under which they laboured." The Tablet cited as an example the same account from the chronicles of Rabbi Joseph Ben Joshua Ben Meir that Thurston had cited the previous year. The Tablet stated that "there are certain forms of homicidal mania in which the very knowledge that Jews were suspected of such deeds would supply just the determining cause for an act of blood if the lunatic chanced to quite believe that this same knowledge might produce the enactment of the very horrorsmaniac's brain." The fact that the chronicles by Rabbi Joseph did not specify or imply that the girl was killed because she was a Christian, only that she was a Christian, and nothing have been dismissed as irrelevant detail. The paper concluded that "in any case it is quite easy to conceive how innocent children may sometimes have suffered outrage from the Jews precisely on account of their Christianity, and in such instances they may have been honoured locally as martyrs." 68 67 Ibid, 286-287. There is a tradition of Jewish magic, but it contains none of the diabolic sorcery described in these myths. See Joshua Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition (1939;repr Another ritual murder accusation began in 1911. Mendel Beilis, a Ukrainian Jew, was accused of murdering a thirteen year old Christian child for ritual purposes in a cave just September 1913. Though Eastern Orthodox Christianity was generally hostile to Roman Catholicism, the accusation received the backing of a Roman Catholic priest, Father Pranaitis, and much of the European Catholic press. A number of articles in the Catholic press informed readers in gruesome detail of numerous supposed ritual murders of Christian children by Jews.
, a Catholic periodical constitutionally connected to the Vatican, published two articles which set out to present "medical opinion" to the effect that "death was brought about in three stages: the boy was stabbed in such a manner that all his evidence was held to indicate "ritual murder, which only Jews could perpetrate, since it required long experience." 69 As a supposed "expert on Judaism," Father Pranaitis was present during the trial to support the accusation that the Jews murdered Christians in order to obtain their blood for rituals commanded by Jewish law. 70 The Tablet published an article in its Topics of the Day in response to the Beilis trial. The article vehemently denounced the ritual murder accusation. This time, unlike during the Hilsner Affair, the Tablet did not blame Jews for provoking the incident through attempts to dominate the press or money markets. It did however once again suggest that in the past some Jews had been responsible for the murder of innocent Christian children, not for religious ritual reasons, but as a result of . According to the article, even if "little Simon of Trent, Andrew of Rinn, Hugh of Lincoln, and other such child martyrs were canonized, this approval of solemn cultus does not in the least touch the question of ritual to death by Jews , and therefore truly martyred, without in any way pronouncing that such a practice had its foundation in the ritual of the Jewish religion." A distinction was thus again maintained between ritual murder sanctioned by Judaism and murder by Jews in . The article then went on to clarify that in any case none of these child martyrs had received "any proper canonization," though it acknowledged that two of them had 71 A similar point was made back in 1898 by Herbert Thurston. According to Thurston, in at least two cases -Simon of Trent and William of "the infallible authority of the Church." 72 The theological distinction between "equipollent" that the distinction would have been widely understood or appreciated by many "ordinary" 69   Herbert Thurston also wrote an article about ritual murder in response to the Beilis trial. 73 Thurston and the Tablet were once again largely in agreement in terms of the distinction made between religious ritual murder and murder in Whilst Thurston stated that "the immolation of Christian children is in no way sanctioned by the Jewish religion as a system [emphasis mine]," he nevertheless reasoned that "considering the incredible and brutal oppression to which the Jews were commonly subjected from the tenth century onwards, it seems extremely likely that in a few isolated instances some half-crazy Israelite may have welcomed the opportunity of venting his spite upon a defenceless Christian child or girl." In other words, murder in rather than murder for religious purposes. Thurston again referred to the Hebrew chronicles of Rabbi Joseph Ben Joshua Ben Meir as evidence that at least one such case "did actually happen." As he had in 1898, Thurston also argued that another possible explanation for the emergence of the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children was Jewish Sorcery. He pointed out that during Pesach: Hebrews was the preparation of the Mazzoth or cakes of unleavened bread. These were often preserved with veneration and used medically and, it is probable, magically. Further, we know that magic was much employed among the Jews, and on the other hand the use of blood was so infection. 74 Thurston concluded, "not that the Jews really made use of Christian blood for liturgical lead to the belief that in these cakes, which the Jews were known to treat with superstitious reverence, there must be some latent magical power, such as blood might be supposed to impart." Thurston implied that this was how the ritual murder accusation established itself. In an ostensibly balanced but fallacious argument -of the kind that suggests that in any mazzoth, was established and propagated abroad, it would be impossible to eradicate it from the popular mind. Nay, it seems even probable that such beliefs exercised a sort of hypnotic effect upon the victims themselves, in such sort that they also came to think and possibly even to do, in a few isolated cases, the very things of which they were suspected. 75 In other words, because they were suspected of using Christian blood in sorcery, some of "the victims" of the accusation -i.e. the Jews -started to do so. Referring to the Spanish inquisition trial for the murder of Thurston concluded that the accusation against Judaism), but "with the procuring of blood for Jewish magical purposes by taking the life of a Christian child" (i.e. an accusation against "superstitious Jews" who "the confessions elicited from the accused were worthless" because of the "diabolical 73 Herbert Thurston, "The Ritual Murder Trial at Kieff," Month, CXXII (November 1913). 74 Ibid, 511-513. 75 Ibid,512. ingenuity of their torturers." Thurston however concluded that this was not the case. He stated that "after a careful study of the records, we have come round to the opinion of Mr. Rafael Sabatini in his recently-published volume on Torquemada. We believe that in this particular trial the admissions made in the examinations before the Inquisition were faithfully reported, and in substance, accurate as to the facts." 76 A similar equivocation can be detected in a speech by Father Joseph Bampton, a Jesuit colleague and friend of Herbert Thurston, at a meeting about the ritual murder accusation organised by the English Zionist Federation in October 1913. 77 Bampton's speech was quoted in the Jewish Chronicle and the Tablet. Bampton stated that before coming to the meeting he had consulted with "an expert in these matters, my friend Father Thurston," and accusation that Jews murder Christians in compliance with their religious rites. Whilst Bampton acknowledged that "no such rite exists," he nevertheless stated that "there can be no question that at different times and in different places throughout the Christian era Christian children have been put to death by members of the Jewish race out of hatred for Christianity, and that such children are venerated as child martyrs, and that veneration is approved by the Catholic Church." Bampton implied that these children were murdered not by orthodox Jews, but by "a parcel of fanatics" that happened to be Jewish. This should not, he suggested, be taken as "evidence of any precept of the Jewish law or any accordance with any Jewish rite." He stated, presumably in mitigation, that "I suppose Jews have murdered Christians and Christians have murdered Jews at different times, but because Christians have murdered Jews, we have never heard of any charges of ritual murder brought against Christians." 78 According to the account in the Tablet we must remember that the accusation we are concerned with and the one we are here to protest against is a charge of ritual murder, i.e., of murder of Christians by Jews, committed in compliance with some precept or ritual observance of the Jewish law [emphasis mine]. We are not here to declare that no Christians, whether children or adults, have ever been murdered by Jews out of hatred to the Christian faith, any more than we are here to declare that no Jews have ever been murdered by Christians out of hatred to the Jewish faith. 79 Bampton's equivocal defence, as reported in both newspapers, sounds balanced on the surface. 80 However, it is problematic for at least three reasons. Firstly, he suggested that Jews 76 Ibid, 512-513. Rafael Sabatini (1875-1950 argued that the child was murdered, not as "an instance of Jewish unnecessary to the enchantment, but was nevertheless done, Sabatini suggested, merely "in derision and vituperation of the Passion of Jesus Christ." Sabatini therefore argued that the child was murdered both in and for magical purposes. Rafael Sabatini, had murdered Christian children and Christians had murdered Jews, but he never suggested that Jewish children had been murdered, let alone in the diabolic manner traditionally associated with accusations of murder in Secondly, the Christian children, allegedly murdered out of "hatred for Christianity," became the subject of veneration as Bampton acknowledged, and thus acquired theological conventional sense. The medieval narratives which arose about these "murders" helped to reinforce the resilient image of the diabolic Jew in traditional Christian myths. Thirdly, Bampton made the relationship between Jews and Christians sound very bilateral, with Jews oppressing Christians as much as Christians oppressed Jews, but this does not correspond to the power dynamic that existed in Christian Europe. Whereas the Rome based Catholic newspaper, , produced unequivocal articles cataloguing cases of ritual murder, arguing that the Jews not only killed innocent Christian children out of but also because they needed to consume their blood to satisfy religious commandments, 81 it seems plausible that the equivocation of Thurston and of ritual murder. No doubt they felt they had to develop a defence which on the one hand demonstrated religious tolerance and on the other hand did not challenge already existing child-martyr cults. It is possible that they would have been less equivocal if the cults and shrines of the child martyr saints had not existed. On the other hand, Thurston felt little compunction about using the ritual murder accusation to balance out certain Protestant anti-Catholic myths in a way that suggests he did believe the accusation had supporting evidence. He stated in an article published in 1894 (and republished in 1902), that "the evidence for the Jewish murder of Christian children is simply overwhelming beside any evidence which ever has been adduced or is ever likely to be adduced for the walling-up of nuns. In the former case we have at least full details of names, place, and time, we have judicial inquiries, we have the record of contemporary documents, we have the testimony of witnesses on oath." 82 Jewish Chronicle expressed its appreciation for many of these equivocal refutations of the ritual murder charge. The Jewish Chronicle lavished praise on Father Thurston's June 1898 article for its "enlightened effort to nail the abominable falsehoods that pass current amongst anti-Jews to the counter." It neglected to mention that Thurston had suggested that some Jews had murdered innocent Christian children in 83 The Jewish Chronicle also applauded -and very selectively quoted from -the article which   86 He also recommended Thurston's "scholarly article" in a letter to the 87 Israel Abrahams seems to have been the only English Jew who noticed that Thurston only "half-heartedly" defended Jews from the charge of ritual murder. 88 Despite the thanks that the equivocal defences by Thurston, Bampton and the Tablet elicited from the Jewish Chronicle and the Chief Rabbi, only a thin line separated them from the more overtly polemical uses of the ritual murder myth by other English Catholics, such as Montague Summers and the Chesterton brothers.
Cecil Chesterton, like his close friend Hilaire Belloc and his brother G. K. Chesterton, frequently discussed the Jew in his newspaper articles. 89 Cecil drew upon the myth of the ritual murder as part of his wider construction of Jewish villainy and foreignness. In 1914, in the New Witness, in response to the Beilis Affair, he characterised Russian pogroms as something horrible, but also something to be understood as part of an ongoing "bitter historic quarrel between [Israel Zangwill's] own people and the people of Russia." The evidence, he argued, points to a "savage religious and racial quarrel." He suggested that it was sometimes the "naturally kindly" Russians who were "led to perpetrate the atrocities," and sometimes it was the "equally embittered" Jews, who, "when they got a chance of retaliating, would be equally savage." Referring to the Beilis affair, he stated that: An impartial observer, unconnected with either nation, may reasonably inquire why, if we are asked to believe Russians do abominable things to Jewish children, we should at the same time be 84 "The English Catholic Press and the Blood Accusation," 1 December 1899, 12 and "English Catholics and the Blood Accusation," 1 December 1899, 16-17. 85 According to the correspondent for the Jewish Chronicle, Father Bampton "held the audience spell-bound while he explained the consistent attitude of denunciation of his church of the foul and monstrous charge which had from time to time been brought against the Jewish people" (26). The correspondent did not mention the equivocation in Bampton's speech. However, whilst Bampton's speech implied that Jewish "fanatics" had murdered Christian Rabbi, Joseph Hertz, both denied the charge that "obscure sects" of uncivilised Jews engaged in such murders (28, charge was "bound to fail" when levelled against "the Jews generally," it may sound believable when levelled against an "obscure sect" (28). "Beilis: Great Protest Meeting in London," Jewish Chronicle, 31 October 1913, 26, 28, 30. 86 Hermann Adler to Herbert Thurston, 10 June 1898, in Crehan, Father Thurston,102. 87 Hermann Adler, Letters to the Editor, 24 February 1900, 295. 88 Israel Abrahams, "Saint Hugh of Lincoln," Jewish Chronicle, 12 August 1898, 17. 89 Cecil Chesterton, G. K. Chesterton and Hilaire Belloc were all involved in the New Witness newspaper and shared similar social and political views. Cecil Chesterton (1879Chesterton ( -1918 converted to Roman Catholicism in 1912, ten years prior to G. K. Chesterton. Cecil Chesterton was one of the main agitators during the Marconi Affair. social criticism. He also wrote books exploring philosophical and theological ideas. Caricatures and stereotypes of Anglo-Catholic (a form of Anglicanism which accepted aspects of Roman Catholic liturgy, theology and practice, without embracing the authority of the Pope). Chesterton may not have been a de jure Roman Catholic before his formal conversion in 1922, but his worldview had long been Roman Catholic. Hilaire Belloc (1870Belloc ( -1953 was born in France but most of his childhood was spent in West Sussex. Belloc's father was French and his mother was English. After completing his education at John Henry Newman's Oratory School in Birmingham, Belloc served in the French army before returning to England to study at Balliol College. He naturalised as a British citizen in 1902. Belloc was MP for Salford from 1906 to 1910. He wrote a number of critiques about the English political system, the decline of European civilisation following the Reformation, the Jews, the Freemasons and Bolshevism. He also wrote a number of novels in which these themes were often explored. asked to regard it as incredible . . . that Jews do abominable things to Russian children -at Kieff, for instance. Cecil Chesterton also revived the host desecration myth. He stated that "the Jews may or may not have insulted the Host, as was alleged. I do not know." "But," he continued, "I do know that they wanted to; because I know what a religion means, and therefore what a religious quarrel means." 90 This insight into what he considered expected conduct in a "religious quarrel" -and his belief that Jews would care about the destruction of host wafers, his polemical mind-set. Israel Zangwill, a prominent Anglo-Jewish author and playwright, countered Cecil Chesterton's accusation by stating that following his logic we should have to accept that if hooligans throttle Quakers then Quakers must also be throttling hooligans. Furthermore, he argued, it is incredible that Jews would murder a Christian child for ritual purposes when no such rite has ever been found in Jewish texts. 91 In response Cecil Chesterton stated that "as to 'ritual murder', Mr. Zangwill, of course, knows that no sane man has ever suggested that [ritual murder] was a 'rite' of the Jewish Church any more than pogroms are rites of the Greek Orthodox Church." He then proceeded to clarify that what he and others had suggested, is that "there may be ferocious secret societies among the Russian Jews," and that "such societies may sanctify very horrible revenges with a religious ritual." 92 Cecil's brother, G. K. Chesterton, also incorporated the ritual murder myth into his construction of the Jew. He argued that members of the "Hebrew race" had engaged in the murder of children. In the Everlasting Man (1925), he stated that: The Hebrew prophets were perpetually protesting against the Hebrew race relapsing into idolatry that involved such a war upon children; and it is probable enough that this abominable apostasy from the God of Israel has occasionally appeared in Israel since, in the form of what is called ritual murder; not of course of any representative of the religion of Judaism, but by individual and irresponsible diabolists who did happen to be Jews. 93 Herbert Thurston was not alone in suggesting that one explanation for the ritual murder accusation was Jewish sorcery. Montague Summers, an idiosyncratic Catholic clergyman Whilst this seems to have been the only occasion that Chesterton claimed that "diabolist" Jews engaged in ritual murder, constructions Hyde. Hirsch sets up a second Dreyfus affair, playing simultaneously the role of the accused villain and the accusing the story, he is seen by Father Brown's assistant, half way through his metamorphosis from Colonel Dubosc to Dr. Hirsch. His face with its "framework of rank red hair" looked like "Judas laughing horribly and surrounded by The Complete Father Brown Stories (1914;repr., London: Wordsworth Classics, 2006), 224. This short story is examined in Cheyette, a "devil-worshipper" that Chesterton claimed he once knew, with "long, ironical face . . . and red hair," and when Daily News, 9 November 1907, 6. and once a popular author with interests in witchcraft and demonology, provides another example, though unlike Herbert Thurston, Summers made no pretence of even equivocally defending Jews. 94 He claimed in The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (1926) that the Jews were persecuted during the Middle Ages not because of their religion, but as a result of their "practice of the dark and hideous traditions of Hebrew magic." According to Summers, "closely connected with these ancient sorceries" were a whole series of "ritual murders" committed by "certain rabbis." "In many cases," he concluded, "the evidence is quite conclusive that the body, and especially the blood of the victim, was used for magical purposes." 95 Cohn stated in 1975 that some of the basic contentions in The History of Witchcraft "continue to be taken seriously by some historians down to the present day." 96 One might hope that the assertions in The History of Witchcraft are no longer taken too seriously, been republished many times since 1926 and was recently reissued by Routledge in November 2009. 97

The Jewish Antichrist
The Christian foundation myth, being protean, evolved over time, as did the role of the Jews within it. Paul's second epistle to the community at Thessalonica warned that the second coming of Christ will be preceded by the appearance of "the man of sin" who will work false miracles and exalt himself over God, setting himself up in God's Temple, all in accordance with the plans of Satan (2 Thess 2:1-17). The "man of sin" was subsequently also been interpreted as relating to the Antichrist. These allusions to a diabolic character Christian myths, and the Antichrist, would coalesce into a new mythological role, "the Jewish Church Fathers increasingly linked the prophesied Antichrist with the Jews. 98 The Antichrist, 94 Montague Summers (1880Summers ( -1948 was an ordained deacon in the Church of England who converted to Catholicism in July 1909. He was granted the clerical tonsure in December 1910. He deliberately cultivated a reputation as an eccentric and he was a familiar sight in London and Oxford, wearing a soutane, buckled shoes and shovel hat. He had a particular interest in the occult and witchcraft. Robertson Davies, "Montague Summers," in Matthew and Harrison, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, vol. 53, 320-321. Summers is mentioned as a factor in the resurgence of the ritual murder accusation by Julius, Trials of the Diaspora, 439; Colin Holmes, "The Ritual Murder Accusation in Britain," , 4, no. 3 ( July 1981), 275;Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews, 155;and Norman Cohn, (1975;repr., London, Pimlico, 2005), 160. Cohn observed that Summers was "a Roman Catholic of a kind now almost extinct -obsessed by thoughts of the Devil, perpetually ferreting out Satan's servants whether in past epochs or in the contemporary world." (160). 95 Montague Summers, The History of Witchcraft and Demonology (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trubner, 1926), 194-196. 96 Cohn,,160. 97 98 The earliest explicit reference to a Jewish Antichrist in the texts of the Church Fathers seems to have been by St. Irenaeus in the 2nd century. In Adversus Haereses (Against Heresies), Irenaeus concluded that the Antichrist will one day come and he will be from the tribe of Dan. See Irenaeus, Heresies, trans. John Keble (Oxford: James Parker, 1872), bk. V, chap. XXX, 519-522. they declared, would be a Jew and would be worshipped by the Jews as their messiah. 99 According to Norman Cohn, these constructions of the Jew were "revived and integrated into a whole new demonology" during the Middle Ages. Cohn stated that "from the time of Satan for the express purpose of combating Christianity." 100 During the Middle Ages, Satan and a host of demons were pivotal to explanations of important world events. The Antichrist was regarded as an authentic manifestation of evil, who would lead Satan's forces in a war against the followers of Christ shortly before the Second Coming. The Antichrist was thus intertwined with millenarian expectations of the establishment of the Kingdom of God on Earth. As Trachtenberg observes, in the modern era the Antichrist myth may be "easily dismissed as pure fantasy, merely another of the upon the thought and action of the common people." However, as Trachtenberg rightly concludes, the Antichrist was considered "a terrifying reality." 101 The arrival of the Antichrist, future but a prophecy which was infallible and which at almost any given moment was felt to 102 Momentous events, such as "the Turks" advancing into the heart of Europe, the Crusades and the Black Death, were interpreted as signs that the Antichrist or Lawless One was in the world.
For some English Catholics in the late nineteenth-and early twentieth-century, Satan and the Antichrist were more than just narrative artefacts from the Middle Ages. Satan and a host of malign spirits were often described as very real agents responsible for a number of 103 The Antichrist was invoked by English Catholic newspapers to explain modern developments, such as the collapse of the Papal States, the massacre of Catholics in Mexico and the rise of Bolshevism. The Antichrist was a resilient theme which was by no means dependent on the presence of the Jew. For example, a popular English Catholic newspaper, the Universe, contained two articles in 1914, one in June and the other in November, which revolved around the Antichrist. According to the June article, the arrival of the Lawless One was part of "the history of the everlasting unseen war of spiritual forces, repeating itself with cyclic fury." The paper suggested that "the forces of evil have ranged themselves in most furious onslaught on humanity." Every degenerate anti-Christian and anti-Church impulse of modern society, such as the vulgarisation of speech and deterioration of manners, "unbridled sensuous indulgence" and "resurgent women, who renounce the sacredness of home" and the eruption of hatred and the anti-Christian revolution, can be traced, the article suggested, to the spirit of "lawlessness" and the "dethronement of Christ in the hearts of men, and the 99 See Norman Cohn, Warrant for Genocide (1967;repr., London: Serif, 1996), 48. 100 Ibid,26. For a good introduction to the Jewish Antichrist myth, see Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews, 32-43. For an introduction to millenarian expectations of a battle between the forces of Christ and the Antichrist, see Norman Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium (1957;repr., London: Pimlico, 1993). 101 Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews, 37-38. 102 Cohn, The Pursuit of the Millennium,35. 103 The following are just some examples of articles relating to Satan and Devil worship in English Catholic newspapers: "Black Magic: Horrors of Devil-Worship," Catholic Herald, 17 January 1914, 7;"Satanic Spiritism," Universe, 27 April 1917, 3;Hugh Pope, "The European War andSpiritualism," Universe, 5 April 1917-27 April 1917; "What of Spiritualism -Is it Satanism?," Catholic Times, 18 January 1929, 11. erection of the throne of Satan." The article reasoned that the "cultus of evil spirits" and an increasing interest in "fortune-telling," "crystal-gazing," "necromancy," "astrology" and "overt devil-worship" were "portents of evil," "symptoms of minds diseased" and evidence that the "Lawless One is abroad." 104 Referring to anti-Catholic atrocities occurring in Mexico, the destruction of Catholic property, the desecration of alters and sacred vestments and the massacring of the sick and wounded, the November article argued that the "spirit of Antichrist is, indeed, ranging the earth." According to the article, the malice in Mexico and elsewhere reveals a hatred of God "beyond the power and limits of mere human malice." The article stated that "those who believe in the presence of unseen forces that surround us and enter the currents of human action, are compelled to see in all these revelations the manifestation of the 'the mystery of iniquity.' " "The 'Man of Sin' openly proclaims himself," the article reasoned, and "the spirit of Antichrist in its hideous malignity unmasks itself in Mexico, as it did in Portugal and in France." 105 This piece prompted a number of letters to the Universe which debated the nature of the Antichrist. 106 The Tablet was also not immune to this millenarian vocabulary. An editorial in the paper observed that whilst "Modernists will smile at us as hopelessly old-fashioned, we do not hesitate to say that the prevailing evils are not wholly to be explained as by-products of the Great War. There is something Satanic about it all." The paper concluded that the "present struggle between Christ and Anti-Christ" had been accurately prophesised by Cardinal Newman and that Catholics should pray that the "Prince of the Heavenly Host will be with us in this day of battle." 107 Whilst English Catholic narratives about the Antichrist did not necessitate the presence of the Jew which drew upon stereotypes of Jewish usury, capitalism, Bolshevism and secrecy and myths about a Judeo-Masonic conspiracy. 108 Barry also incorporated the myth of the Jewish Antichrist into this construction as a core component. The Jewish Antichrist myth treating Jews as a menace to Christian civilisation that needed to be kept under control. Barry's incorporation of the Jewish Antichrist into his construction of the Jew was Antichrist even though it was constructed a little early to be considered the late nineteenth 104 "The Lawless One," Universe, 19 June 1914, 8. 105 "Antichrist in Mexico," Universe, 20 November 1914, 6. 106 "Antichrist," Letters to the Editor, Universe: 4 December 1914, 4;11 December 1914, 4;18 December 1914, 4;24 December 1914, 4. 107 News andNotes, Tablet, 28 September 1929, 397. 108 Barry wrote numerous articles for the Catholic Times and was described by the paper as "a soldier of Christ." He was the recipient of the "Holy Father's congratulations and blessings on his efforts as a priest and public writer" and honoured as a Protonary Apostolic of the Roman Court. See (London: Burns Oates & Washbourne, 1928), 21-22 and "Mgr. Canon Barry's Retirement," Catholic Times, 3 August 1928, 2. According to Ehret, he was respected by senior ecclesiastics including Cardinal Bourne and Archbishop McIntyre, both of whom encouraged his work. Ehret, "Catholics and Antisemitism," 154. For more on William Barry, see Sheridan Gilley, "Father William Barry: Priest and Novelist," , 24, no.4 (October 1999). century. Manning discussed the arrival of the Antichrist in a series of lectures delivered in 1861. These were published in 1862, a time when most of the Papal States had been seized by the . 109 The collapse of the Papal States was often blamed on Jews and Freemasons. At this time Father Manning, who had converted to Catholicism in 1850 and was advancing rapidly within the Church, was it seems quite willing to accept the Jew as a scapegoat for this catastrophe. Whilst he later adopted more positive stereotypes of the Jews, he nevertheless republished these lectures verbatim with a new preface in 1880. By this time Catholic hierarchy. 110 Manning explained in these lectures that whilst it may "run counter to the popular spirit of these times," for someone who believes in revelation, it is inconsistent to try to explain contemporary history without taking prophecy and the Divine will into consideration. 111 "The theory, that politics and religion have different spheres," Manning argued, "is an illusion and a snare." 112 Manning stated that it is a "master-stroke of deceit" to attempt to allay fears by dismissing the Antichrist as a mere "spirit or system" of the times rather than "a person." The "prophecies of Revelation," he explained, describe the Antichrist with "the attributes of a person" and "to deny the personality of Antichrist, is therefore to deny the plain testimony of Holy Scripture." 113 Manning informed his audience that the "[Church] Fathers believed that Antichrist will be of the Jewish race." He stated that such was the belief of "St. Irenaeus," "St. Jerome," "St. Hippolytus," "St. Ambrose" and "many others." He concluded that they were probably correct considering that "the Antichrist will come to deceive the Jews, according to the prophecy of our Lord." 114 Manning only do this "in dissimulation." Afterwards he will "reject the law of Moses, and will deny the true God who gave it." The Antichrist will be received by the Jews because they are still awaiting the coming of their messiah and "they have prepared themselves for delusion by true and divine idea of the Messias may accept a false," Manning stated, and that "being dazzled by the greatness of political and military successes," they will pay that honour to the Antichrist that "Christians pay to the true Messias." The Antichrist, Manning argued, will be "a temporal deliverer, the restorer of their temporal power; or, in other words, a political and military prince." 115 Manning explained that the only thing that will hinder the arrival of the Antichrist is "Christendom and its head," as "the lawless one" has no "antagonist on earth more direct than the Vicar of Jesus Christ." 116 109 Henry Manning, , 2nd ed. (London: Burns & Lambert, 1862). 110 Anglican, believing that the Church of England was a branch of the Catholic Church. He later decided that this was not the case and converted to Roman Catholicism in 1851. He rose rapidly through the ranks and was elected Archbishop in 1865 and Cardinal in 1875. Manning was a fervent advocate of Ultramontanism and one of the strongest supporters of papal infallibility during the First Vatican Council. 111 Manning, The Temporal Power, 81. 112 Ibid, 102-103. 113 Ibid, 103-104. 114 Ibid, 105-106. 115 Ibid, 107-108, 112-113. 116 Ibid,[127][128] Cardinal Manning later expressed admiration for the communal solidarity and organisation of the Jews and raised his voice in defence of Jews on a number of occasions. In an address delivered at a meeting organised by the Lord Mayor of London in 1882, Manning condemned the persecution of Jews in Russia and praised the virtues of Jews in generosity, for charity, for all the graces and virtues that adorn humanity where will be found examples brighter or more true of human excellence than in this Hebrew race"? 117 Manning lamented the ritual murder accusations, on which subject he corresponded with Chief Rabbi Herman Adler. He was presented with an illuminated address of thanks by the Chief Rabbi and frequently praised by the Jewish Chronicle. Considering the support that Manning provided the Jewish community in the late nineteenth century, it seems strange that he embraced the Jewish Antichrist myth. In this, Manning followed a not uncommon precedent of excoriating the Jew theologically whilst defending Jews socially. After addressing the question of papal infallibility at the First Vatican Council (1868-1870), Manning became less concerned with theological problems and more focused on the social needs of English Catholics. 118 This change in focus may explain why his acceptance of the Jewish Antichrist myth was subsequently accompanied by an admiration for Jewish communal organisation. For example, he argued that Jews were doing more for their working girls in the East End of London than Catholics were doing for their own struggling poor. 119 He also stated, in a letter written to Sir John Simon in 1890, that the Jews are: a race with a sacred history of nearly four thousand years; at present without a parallel, dispersed without home or fatherland; visibly reserved for a future of signal mercy. . . . any man who does not believe in their future must be a careless reader, not only of the old Jewish Scriptures, but even of our own. 120 Though this portrayal was not overtly negative like constructions of the Jewish Antichrist, it was still an essentialistic and patronising image of a "changeless" mythologized people.
In a four part article published in the Catholic Times in 1920, 121 William Barry, like Manning before him, expressed his fears that "the end of an age is upon us, and we are not ready." 122 Like Manning, Barry had a "highly coloured vision of history as the unfolding of the will of God." 123 Barry argued that the "long-drawn anti-Christian movement, centuries old," was poised to defeat Christendom having been "quickened by victory after victory." Barry cited Manning at length and blended his own impressions of the arrival of the Jewish Antichrist with those found in Manning's lectures. Closely following Manning's lectures, Barry also asserted that the Antichrist would be Jewish, an arch-medium, a protector of the Jews who would be worshipped by them as their messiah. Barry  doctrine" and what "St. John and the Fathers have left us concerning the Antichrist," that the question of the Jew's role in the fate of Europe will be, as Manning argued, the "most vital and most decisive of all." 124 Manning was concerned that it might "appear strange to attach much importance to any event the sphere of which seems to be the Jewish race." 125 The state of affairs in the present day, Barry suggested, should overcome any such temptation to dismiss Manning's prophetic warning. The years, he argued, are "bringing Antichrist nearer," and many voices other than Manning's now announce his approach "to the City of elsewhere." 126 According to Barry and Manning, there are only two agencies in the history of the modern world that are independent of and more powerful than any of the nations, and these are mutually antagonistic: "the Jewish people" and "the universal Church." 127 Drawing upon the stereotype of the Smart Jew, Barry stated that "the Catholic spirit and the Hebrew The oppression of Paul and his fellow Christians was just the beginning. "Israel," he so yet again, Barry concluded, but this time it is paving the way not for Christ but for the Antichrist. Following Manning, he suggested that only the "remnant of the Christian society" can hold back the "antichristian power." Barry did not however hold much hope for the coming battle, for he believed that the Christian remnant had been torn apart by the 128 Manning's so-called prophetic warning was not the only one that Barry listened to. He also detected "prophecies" and "forecasts" about the Jews in the works of Benjamin Disraeli, 129 Édouard Drumont, Peter Kropotkin and Friedrich Nietzsche. 130 According to Nietzsche, one of Barry's supposed prophets, "that the Jews could, if they wanted . . . quite literally rule over Europe, is certain; that they are not planning and working towards that is equally certain." 131 Alluding to this seized the supremacy over Europe. They did not want it then, he believed. They surely want it now." 132 Barry returned to the Antichrist a few years later. Again referring to scriptural teaching about "the 'Man of Sin' " and Manning's interpretation of prophecy, he concluded that the events in Russia, the triumph of atheism over Christianity, demonstrate that the Antichrist is "now in the world." Barry observed that the Church Fathers predicted "the persistence of Israel though scattered among all peoples" and "their enmity to the Church, their certain rise to power in Christendom, and their strange alliance with the 'Man of Sin,' who will, however, be himself a Jew, though most likely a renegade from his faith and tribe." According to Barry, this was an amazing "stroke of divination," which has been "accomplished in Russia to the letter." Karl Marx, Barry suggested, was "the false prophet of the Apocalypse," and Lenin, "a monster of blood and impiety." "Lenin," Barry suggested, "is an unspeakable murderer, a usurper of all public rights, God's enemy, man's oppressor." In other words, Lenin was the Antichrist and Marx was his evangelist. According to Barry, Cardinal Manning regarded "the Revolution," "the evil elements in emancipated Judaism" and "the assailants of Papal Rome," to be "associated in a common Unholy Alliance." Barry concluded that upon our Christian inheritance." 133 The Jewish Antichrist was a less prominent theme in the English Catholic discourse than the Pharisee and the Christ-Killer. References to the Antichrist, the Lawless One, the Man of Sin, princes of darkness, Satan, servants of the Devil and other malign spirits, were quite common in English Catholic newspapers, but in most cases these were discussed without mentioning Jews. Manning and Barry's formulation of the Jewish Antichrist myth was however endorsed and adopted by the Month. An editorial in the Month approved of Barry's "notable article." According to the Month, "in Soviet Russia Manning's prophecy has actually been realised." The editorial stated that "Antichrist, in the person of those apostate Jews, is already in power" and "Marx, another apostate Jew, is his evangelist, and Christianity, especially the Catholicism of Rome, is the object of his bitterest hatred." 134 The Jewish Antichrist was also a theme in English Catholic constructions of the Luciferian Freemason.
The Diana Vaughan hoax was a long-running anti-Masonic episode which came to its dramatic conclusion in 1897. In 1885, Léo Taxil (formerly Marie Joseph Gabriel Antoine Jogand-Pagès), a French writer, lapsed Catholic and expelled Freemason, started to invent elaborate stories about devil worship and sinister rituals in certain Masonic lodges. Taxil wrote a series of fanciful anti-Masonic works such as (the Antichrist and the origins of Freemasonry). Taxil pretended to be a repentant Catholic. Among the admirers of his writings were the Bishops of Grenoble, Montpellier, Coutances and Port-Louis and the editors of , , and . 135 There were also reports that Taxil had a personal meeting with Leo XIII in 1887. 136 133 William Barry, "Against God and his Christ," Catholic Times, 28 April 1923, 9. 134  These works contained elaborate tales about a circle of Satanic Freemasonry, the so-called Palladian lodges, which had supposedly been set up by Albert Pike. 139 The tales included bizarre accounts of host desecration, magical rites which employed "the skulls" of "martyred missionaries" and the literal manifestations of Lucifer, Asmodeus and a number of other demons. 140 In August 1895, the Tablet stated that "much attention has recently been called to the doings of the various sects of Freemasons abroad by the sudden conversion of one of their high priestesses, Miss Diana Vaughan, ex-Grand Mistress of the Luciferians or Palladians." Taking the at face value, the Tablet reported that prior to converting to Catholicism, Diana had tried, unsuccessfully, to set up a reformed sect of Palladium Freemasonry, because despite "the strange perversion of mind" which had led her to "the worship of Lucifer," she was not blind to the "degrading character of the rites practised by her fellow-worshippers." 141 In 1896, Arthur Waite published a study, Devil , which refuted the myth of the existence of "Palladian" Freemasonry. 142 The Tablet responded in October with an equivocal endorsement of his Tablet concluded that Devil Worship in France is a "clever but not convincing book of an honourable opponent." According to the book review, Waite succeeded in casting some doubt upon the lady herself, Miss Diana Vaughan, but not the evidence of Satanism in Masonic lodges. The paper Case," Times, 21 April 1897, 6. A transcript of Taxil's speech, along with interjections from the audience, was recorded in 25 April 1897. The speech outlined the efforts Taxil adopted to integrate himself into the Church (including false confessions), his audience with the pope, details of the letters of encouragement he received from Catholic newspapers and bishops, the pseudonyms he adopted and the volunteers who assisted him in his hoax. An English translation is provided in Alain Bernheim, A. William Samii and Eric Serejski, "The Confession of Léo Taxil," , 5 (1996), 137-168. See also Wilson, Experience, 578n380. 137 On 20 April 1884, Leo XIII promulgated an encyclical, "Humanum Genus," which condemned Freemasonry. This can be accessed via the Vatican website, www.vatican.va. In 1902, Leo sent out an apostolic letter, "Annum Ingressi." The apostolic letter declared that the very purpose of Freemasonry is to "urge war against God and against His Church." The letter stated that Freemasonry embraces in its "vast net almost all the nations, and allying members by means of the advantages which it secures to them, binding governments to its purposes, now by promises, now by threats, this sect has succeeded in permeating all classes of society." It stated that Freemasonry is designs." Leo XIII, "Annum Ingressi," 18 March 1902. A copy of this apostolic letter can be found in the Leeds diocesan archives: Apostolic Letter of His Holiness Pope Leo XIII, 1902, Acta Ecclesiae Loïdensis, vol remained "profoundly convinced of the strict justice of the Church's attitude towards Masonry, strongly persuaded that there is an inner Masonry whose workings are unknown to the general run of Masons," and "that Satanism is practised under circumstances at least pointing to Masonic association." "The net result," the review concluded, "is that we should until we have exacted evidence as irrefragable as the nature of the case admits." 143 A week later, the Tablet reported that the Anti-Masonic Congress 144 had set up a "special committee" to deal with the "burning questions" relating to Diana Vaughan. On the one hand the report acknowledged that the "fantastic and legendary accretions" in the "writings published under the pseudonym of 'Diana Vaughan'" may have "unduly discredited" some of the more the report went on to state: That there is in France a sect devoted to the worship of Lucifer, as the champion of rebellious humanity, is, we believe, a well-attested fact, and the propagation of this diabolical creed has been ascribed by M. Taxil and M. Ricoux to an inner ring of the Masonic body called Palladic Masonry.
The report then referred back to the review of Devil Worship in France which appeared in the previous issue of the Tablet, stating that "we reviewed in these columns last week the work in which Mr. Waite, on behalf of Masonry, traverses and impugns these statements, but without any conclusive refutation of their general drift." Referring to Waite's volume, the Tablet concluded that in attempting to refute the evidence of a connection between Satanic sects and Freemasonry, "the Scotch verdict of 'Not proven' is . . . the most favourable that can be registered on his review of the situation." 145 The editor of the Tablet was, it seems, reluctant to dismiss the core accusations of Satanic Freemasonry found in and e at the Anti-Masonic Congress. The role played by the Jews in the Masonic movement was also discussed at the Congress. One speaker claimed that the "leading spirits of the craft were Hebrews" and that as Freemasonry is entirely in the hands of the Jews, "Anti-Semitism reason," the speaker continued, "all true Catholics should support the Anti-Jewish crusade." 146 143 "Devil Worship in France," review of , by Arthur Edward Waite, Tablet, 3 October 1896, 529-530. Citing passages from this review in the Tablet, R. A. Gilbert concluded that Waite's book was "well received, even by the Catholic press." R. A. Gilbert, "Introduction," in Arthur Edward Waite, Devil (Boston: Weiser Books, 2003), xxi (see also pages 301-302). 144 The Anti-Masonic Congress was an annual gathering inaugurated in 1895 to enable Catholics from different countries to meet and rally their forces against the threat of Freemasonry. "The Anti-Masonic Congress," Tablet, 17 August 1895, 250-251. The Anti-Masonic Congress was still debating the existence of a conspiracy to destroy all nations and found a universal Masonic republic in their place in 1912. It was suggested that Freemasons planned to break down national identities by replacing all other languages with Esperanto. " Esperanto and Freemasonry," Catholic Herald, 13 April 1912, 7. 145 Report of the Anti-Masonic Congress," Tablet, 10 October 1896, 565-566. Arthur Waite discussed the Anti-Masonic Congress and its consideration of Diana Vaughan's memoirs in "Diana Vaughan and the Question of Modern Palladism," n.d., Item A699 (PAL) WAI fol., pp.52-60, Library and Museum of Freemasonry, London. This manuscript was a supplement to Waite's (1896). 146 "The Anti-Masonic Congress," Jewish Chronicle, 9 October 1896, 17.
As the Tablet was sympathetic to the myth of Palladian Freemasonry, it unsurprising became the main forum in England for individuals to share their views about the Diana Vaughan Affair. 147 Diana Vaughan had some fervent admirers. One reader, Herbert Jones, a member of the Canons Regular of the Lateran, 148 expressed his admiration for the "nobleminded lady who has left the Satanic Society." 149 According to Jones, those who doubt the existence of Miss Vaughan and "talk of deception in the matter are themselves the real dupes of Jew Masons." He cited a letter from the Bishop of Grenoble which stated that Nathan, Freidel and other prominent Freemasons have been "sent about to cast discredit on Miss Vaughan's damaging attack on masonry." According to Jones, Nathan is an English Jew and the "present Grand Master of French and Italian Freemasonry," 150 whilst "Freidel, the other Masonic deceiver, . . . has been very busy spreading the report that Diana Vaughan is a nonentity." Jones also stated that "it is well known in Holland that ... a certain M. Rosen, in reality a spy of the Italian Archmason Lemmi, has been visiting many Dutch ecclesiastics and repeating to them that Diana Vaughan is a myth." Jones claimed that Rosen "pretends to be a convert from Masonry," but in reality he is a "Jewish Rabbi and a leading mason." Jones lamented that there are "credulous Catholic journalists" who are being convinced by these Freemasons that Diana Vaughan does not exist. "It is," he concluded, "a Masonic plot to cast discredit on the damaging revelations of Masonic devilry revealed by Diana Vaughan." 151 Another reader of the Tablet, Francis Merrick Wyndham, a convert from Anglicanism who went on to become Canon of Westminster Cathedral, sent many letters to the Tablet contributing "evidence" of Diana Vaughan's existence. 152 He also published a booklet in the same year containing extracts from Masonic texts to demonstrate that a person from any religion, including "a Jew or a Mohammedan," can be admitted to Freemasonry just as long as they believe in the Great Architect of the Universe. He stated that it logically follows that "a Luciferian or a Satanist" can be admitted to Freemasonry, just as long as he accepts that "Lucifer or Satan is the Great Architect of the Universe." 153 In response to an announcement that Diana Vaughan would soon make a public appearance, another Catholic advocate of the lady expressed hope that when she appears, sceptical journalists will not continue to "attack a defenceless woman" but rather "give her a fair hearing." 154 Tablet.
Baroness Mary Elizabeth Herbert, a close friend and associate of Cardinal Archbishop Vaughan, wrote a review article in the about two books by Domenico Margiotta on the subject of Freemasonry and the worship of Lucifer. 155 Margiotta was one of Léo Taxil's "auxiliary" assistants. 156 Herbert announced that "in spite of the superhuman efforts to conceal their proceedings made by the freemasons throughout the world," the "true nature" of Freemasonry is becoming known through the revelations of former members "of the sect." She accepted Margiotta's claims that Adriano Lemmi, a prominent Italian Freemason, was a convicted thief, a secret Jew convert and a Satanist schismatic (Margiotta claimed that a rift existed in Freemasonry between the Palladian "Luciferians" and the Satanic schismatics). She also accepted at face value his lengthy discussion of Diana Vaughan's "noble and generous character" and her consistent refusal to "profane a consecrated Host," even though this was, according to Margiotta, insisted upon by "the order." 157 On 19 158-162, 174-176, passim. 156 Taxil described Margiotta as an "unexpected auxiliary" rather than an "accomplice," because in the beginning he was "one of the hoaxed." According to Taxil, when Margiotta realised his mistake, he decided to play along and "declare himself an accomplice," rather than be ridiculed as "a blind volunteer." Bernheim, Samii and Serejski, "The Confession of Léo Taxil Vaughan's memoirs carefully, as the references to the Antichrist in her memoirs were not her views but those of "the Palladists." For the two letters, see Letters to the Editor, Tablet, 10 April 1897, 577. The reviewer explained that he had focused on the Antichrist myth because being a familiar Christian narrative it was easy to discuss succinctly. He went on to summarise and dismiss some of the more absurd narratives about so-called Palladian Freemasonry, such as "the birth story of Sophia Walder, begotten and suckled by a devil," "the embracing of the chaste Diana by the beautiful demon Asmodeus," "the profanation of hosts" and "the blasphemous parodies of Masses and devotions." Reviewer, Letters to the Editor, Tablet, 17 April 1897, 617-618. The Tablet later acknowledged "the sagacity" which led to the Month seeing through the hoax. Notes, Tablet, 24 April 1897, 648. essentialistic quality to these representations and it seems likely that in many cases little consideration was given to any such distinction. In some cases the sermons were framed in such a way as to generalise Jewish villainy to the "Jewish race", past and present. Furthermore, certain authors, such as the Chesterton brothers, William Barry and Charles Diamond, were happy to combine the Jewish diabolist from traditional Christian myths with modern stereotypes of Jewish villains in order to create their own distinctive constructions of the Jew. 175 The Pharisee and the Christ-Killer were not the only representations of the mythologized Jew in English Catholic discourse. The Antichrist, Man of Sin or Lawless One, was described as a very real and very frightening individual rather than merely a symbol or spirit of the times and he was called upon to explain a number of contemporary evils. The Antichrist was often invoked independently of representations of the Jew. Whilst the Jewish Antichrist was a relatively rare representation of the Jew, it was found in the narratives of some prominent individuals, including Father Henry Manning (subsequently Cardinal Archbishop of the English hierarchy) and Canon William Barry. Barry wrote numerous articles about the Jews and the Jewish problem. Citing Manning's lectures as if they were prophetic forecasts, Barry combined the myth of the Jewish Antichrist with contemporary stereotypes of Jewish greed, secrecy, disloyalty, Bolshevism and anti-Christian hostility, to produce a construction of the Jew that was second only to constructions by the Catholic Herald for the multiplicity of its themes. The Month supported Barry's construction of the Jewish Antichrist, suggesting that he was already in power in Russia and that Marx had been his evangelist.
Freemasons, like the Jews, were also associated with the prophecy of the Antichrist. They were also accused of devil worship and Satanic practices. The Tablet equivocated about the inner circle of highly secretive Satanic Freemasonry existed. However, whilst these accusations of literal diabolism were found in letters and articles appearing in The Tablet and during the Diana Vaughan Affair, they were relatively rare after it was revealed to be a hoax. The embarrassment of the Diana Vaughan episode may explain why The Protocols of the Elders of Zion, when it appeared in England, was almost totally ignored by the accusations in the early twentieth century became provoking social unrest, inciting revolution, supporting Bolshevism, anti-clericalism, anti-Christianity, secrecy and plundering the Church in France, rather than Satanism (though accusations of Satanism by no means entirely disappeared). Many of these accusations and stereotypes were shared with the Jews. Constructions of the Jews and the Freemasons were often linked in a Jewish-Freemason camarilla, alliance or conspiracy. In some cases the Jews and the Freemasons were accused of waging a campaign to exonerate Alfred Dreyfus irrespective of his guilt or innocence, and exploiting the Dreyfus Affair to destroy the army and the Church. 176 One of the more troublesome myths that survived into the twentieth century, albeit often with some adaptation, was the ritual murder accusation. This accusation resulted in trials, convictions and massacres. Some prominent Catholic periodicals in Italy and France, most notably , 177 but also , 178 , 179 180 and Osservatore Cattolico, 181 embraced the myth of the Jewish ritual murder. As far as the editors of were concerned, the Jews murdered innocent Christian children to satisfy religious commandments. Conversely, English Catholic reformulations of the accusation were usually divorced from criticisms of Judaism as a religion. Though sometimes presented using polemical language and sometimes ostensibly as a defence of Jews, it was common in either case to argue that the Jews had murdered innocent Christian children, with all the Judaism nor necessitated by Jewish rituals. It was usually argued that such murders were the result of the of fanatical Jews or that they had been committed by superstitious myth of Jewish ritual murder did not cease to exist, but it survived by adapting itself (thus demonstrating the resilient but protean nature of the myth). The Ritual Murderer thus underwent a partial metamorphosis into alternative representations, such as the Fanatical Murderer and the Jewish Sorcerer. Despite a willingness to exonerate Judaism "as a system" from the charge of sanctioning the murder of Christians, it was, it seems, impossible to abandon the myth that the Jews had murdered innocent Christian children in various diabolic ways, in some cases in reenactment or mockery of the Passion. It seems clear that representations of the Jew in the late nineteenth-and early twentiethcentury were not always modern in character. In the case of the English Catholic discourse, they were often pre-modern or anti-modern. Many existing studies of English antisemitism argue that by the late nineteenth century, constructions of the Jew based on traditional Christian myths had largely, though not entirely, been replaced by modern socio-political and racial forms of antisemitism. This study however demonstrates that traditional religious myths about the Jews continued to thrive and function in the English Catholic discourse. era. The Jew was thus mythologized as the Pharisee, Christ-Killer, fanatical murderer, sorcerer and Antichrist. The Jew (and the Jewish Antichrist) was portrayed in conjunction with the Freemason, who was diabolized as a servant of Lucifer or Satan. In some cases the language used to describe the Jew and the Freemason drew upon a vocabulary which suggested an apocalyptic war between the forces of good and evil. Trachtenberg, Joshua. Antisemitism. 1943;Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1983. ---, 1939repr