Medieval Christianity split Jews into heroic biblical past and servile present

Evidence

The ideology of medieval kingship was based on the premise that the office of king had been established by God for the Jewish people, and the anointing of David provided a model for Western coronation rituals; moreover, even the most fleeting familiarity with the Old Testament was sufficient to remind Christians that kingship had throughout Jewish history been sustained by force of arms. What divided the military heroics of the Jewish past from their feebleness of today was, of course, their denial of Christ, which rendered them unworthy of God’s favour and gave rise to the destruction of their political autonomy. Medieval Christian discourses on Judaism thus distinguished between two different Jewish communities, each specific to their own historical moment in time: that before the Incarnation and contemporary Judaism, which was destined to remain weak and servile. — James Renton, Ben Gidley (eds.), Antisemitism and Islamophobia in Europe, 204

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the theme of ritual sacrifice/scapegoating in my ‘On Sacrifice’ article — Christian theology rendering Jews theologically defeated and thus politically fated.
• DEFINE: Explains the two-tiered medieval Christian conception of Judaism: pre-Incarnation vs. contemporary.