Anthonius Margaritha and the Jewish Faith: Jewish Life and Conversion in Sixteenth-Century Germany

4 Anthonius Margaritha—Christian

69 4 Anthonius Margaritha—Christian “May the heretic have no hope!” Prayer Book Margaritha’s conversion was by all measures sincere. He retreated from impure rabbinism to the faith of the Messiah who had come. He acknowledged his Jewish birth, but rejoiced in his new birth. Whether his fiancée/ wife shared his conviction cannot be known; she is, for us, a silent player in his drama. Before his conversion, Margaritha had traveled to and studied in Prague, Crakow, and Italy. His father, uncles, and brothers held honored positions in Poland, Bohemia, and Italy. When he converted, all possibility of life and livelihood as a Jewish scholar ended. He continued to view himself as a learned person, although he had neither Latin nor university training. Apparently , with little aptitude for or ability in the language, he never became even minimally skillful in Latin, and his German continued to be far from perfect. Even had he considered a nonintellectual career, he had no entrée to guild or to trade. Had he been single, he might, like many converts, have entered a religious order, but as a married man, he was limited to what seemed a natural profession for him, the teaching of Hebrew and Jewish topics. For that line of work his qualifications, sufficient for ordinary if not outstanding work in the Jewish communities, were barely adequate and turned out to hold little hope for providing more than a subsistence living. At best he could aspire to lectureships as a Hebrew teacher, not as a professor. 70 Chapter 4 I It is difficult to trace Margaritha’s the activities in his early years as a Christian .1 His works and public records reveal stays in Altenzelle (c. 1522), Tübingen (unknown date), Augsburg (1530), Meissen (1530–31), Leipzig (1531–33), and Vienna (1533–42).2 During the years 1522 to about 1525, Margaritha taught Hebrew to Bernhard Ziegler (1496–1556). Ziegler had studied at the University of Leipzig beginning in 1512. He became a Cistercian monk (brothers of St. Bernard) in the monastery at Altenzelle about 1521. In the mid-1520s he embraced Lutheranism.3 By 1525/26, he was identified as a Hebraist in a plan to establish a Lutheran academy in Liegnitz for the purpose of opposing the more radical protestant Schwenckfelders .4 Since Margaritha converted to Catholicism about the same time as Ziegler entered the monastery, and Ziegler was a recognized Lutheran Hebrew scholar in 1525/26, he probably studied with Margaritha during his time in the monastery and, perhaps, immediately thereafter. Although the Cistercians had a “collegium Bernhardium” at the University of Leipzig, where Ziegler studied and taught, it is reasonable to assume that Margaritha taught Hebrew to Ziegler and the other monks during the period of 1522 to 1525 at their house in Altenzelle. He may also have worked with them in Leipzig, where he later held a teaching position. Margaritha, as a new Christian with Hebrew skills, would have been welcome among the monks as both a teacher and as a student of Christian doctrine. He must have taught the Cistercians for some time and with attention to his duties, for Ziegler became a competent Hebraist. In July 1529, Luther referred to Ziegler as “a true Hebraist” and teacher in Ansbach .5 The connection between Ziegler and Luther may in part explain the great reformer’s interest in Der gantz Jüdisch glaub. Although Margaritha seems to have been comfortable in the society of Cistercians, his wife would have had no place there.6 The pair may have occupied quarters separate from the clerics or perhaps she lived without him elsewhere in Altenzelle or even in Leipzig. Margaritha complained in his Isaiah Commentary that people in the Jewish communities in the cities where they lived treated his family and him poorly. He complained that they denied his family financial support.7 His grievance indicates that he and his wife lived near Jewish neighborhoods and maintained some contact with Jews. As Jews by birth, they may have felt a right to Jewish charity, especially if his wife had not converted. By the early 1520s, only a few German towns officially allowed Jews to reside within them. Although Leipzig’s Jews had declined in numbers subsequent to persecutions in 1442, they were probably not totally expelled until the general expulsion from Saxony in Anthonius Margaritha—Christian 71 1540.8 Even after the expulsion, some...