JF Ptak Science Books LLC Post 722 Blog Bookstore
When Johannes Pfefferkorn (1469-1523) was released from prison he rushed himself into a conversion to Christianity (having come from a Jewish family in Nuremberg) and published a notorious diatribe against his former people. Speculum Adhhortationis Iudaice ad Christum, which was published in 1507, savaged the Jews, calling for immediate
conversion to the recognition of Christ as savior, giving up all banking concerns, and throwing out the Talmud. It packed a lot of sneering speculation into a mere twenty pages, and was one a of a number of anti-Jewish pamphlets (also including his en ihr Ostern halten (1508); Judenbeicht (1508); and Judenfeind (1509)) in which Pfefferkorn unleashed horrible prescriptions. He came to believe that the best way to deal with the Jews was to kill them, convert them, expel them, or enslave them; that was about it. He waged a successful campaign against the Jewish intellectual life by convincing the Emperor to allow the confiscation of all Jewish books (except for the Old Testament), embarking on an extended tour of Germany to do so. At the bottom of it all, he thought that the best way to deal with theological issues that opposed his own was to crush the believers and steal their books.
Of interest to me here though is the remarkable woodcut on the title page. On a very wide crucifix we see the blood of the bleeding wounded Christ pouring itself into a baptism font, with eight (or so) praying people waiting to avail themselves of it, including the onlooking attention of the Virgin Mary and a Pope (Peter?). In the foreground is a dismal portrayal of a group of Jews, showing them small, gnarled, without benefit of vision and legs. At the extreme bottom left is the circumcision, he only time I can remember seeing such a thing on a title page. It was an awful visual propagandistic juxtaposition, a fitting illustration for an awful pamphlet.
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