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

Abstract

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