Jew

( The ), a comedy by R. Cumber land (1776), written to disabuse the public mind of unjust prejudices against a people who have been long “scattered and peeled.” The Jew is Sheva, who was rescued at Cadiz from an auto da fe , by Don Carlos, and from a howling London mob by the son of Don Carlos, called Charles Ratcliffe. His whole life is spent in unostentatious benevolence, but his modesty is equal to his philanthropy. He gives £10,000 as a marriage portion to Ratcliffe’s sister, who marries Frederick Bertram, and he makes Charles the heir of all his property. Jew ( The ). This is the Jew. That Shakespeare drew This couplet was written by Pope, and refers to the “Shylock” of Charles Macklin (1690-1797). Jew ( The Wandering ). 1. Of Greek tradition . Aris´teas , a poet who continued to appear and disappear alternately for above 400 years, and who visited all the mythical nations of the earth. 2. Of Jewish story . Tradition says that Cartaph´ilos , the door-keeper of the judgment hall, in the service of Pontius Pilate, struck our Lord as he led Him forth, saying, “Get on! Faster, Jesus!” Whereupon the Man of Sorrows replied “I am going; but tarry thou till I come [ again ].” This man afterwards became a Christian, and was baptized by Ananias under the name of Joseph. Every hundred years he falls into a trance, out of which he rises again at the age of 30. ⁂ The earliest account of the Wandering Jew, is in the Book of the Chronicles of the Abbey of St. Alban’s , copied and continued by Matthew Paris (1228). In 1242 Philip Mouskes, afterwards bishop of Tournay, wrote the “rhymed chronicles.” Another legend is that Jesus, pre ed down by the weight of His cro , stopped to rest at the door of a cobbler, named Ahasue´rus , who pushed him away, saying, “Get off! Away with you! away!” Our Lord replied, “Truly, I go away, and that quickly; but tarry thou till I come.” ⁂ This is the legend given by Paul von Eitzen, bishop of Schleswig, in 1547. *—Greve, Memoirs of Paul von Eitzen (1744). A third legend says that it was the cobbler Ahasue´rus who haled Jesus to the judgment seat; and that, as the Man of Sorrows stayed to rest awhile on a stone, he pushed Him, saying, “Get on, Jesus! Here you shall not stay!” Jesus replied, “I truly go away, and go to rest; but thou shalt go away, and never rest till I come.” 3. In German legend , the Wandering Jew is a ociated with John Buttadæus , seen at Antwerp in the thirteenth century, again in the fifteenth, and again in the sixteenth centuries. His last appearance was in 1774, at Bru els. ⁂ Leonard Doldius, of Nürnberg, in his Praxis Alchymiæ (1604), says that the Jew, Ahasue´rus, is sometimes called “Buttadæus.” Signor Gualdi , who had been dead 130 years, appeared in the latter half of the eighteenth century, and had his likene taken by Titian. One day he disappeared as mysteriously as he had come.— Turkish Spy , ii. (1682). 4. The French legend . The French call the Wandering Jew Isaac Lake´dion or Laquedem.—Mitternacht, Di ertatio in Johan. , xxx i. 19. 5. Of Dr. Croly’s novel . The name given to the Wandering Jew by Dr. Croly is Salathiel ben Sadi , who appeared and disappeared towards the close of the sixteenth century, at Venice, in so sudden a manner as to attract the attention of all Europe. ⁂ Dr. Croly, in his novel called Salathiel (1827), traces the course of the Wandering Jew; so does Eugène Sue, in Le Juif Errant (1845); but in these novels the Jew makes no figure of importance. G Doré, in 1861, illustrated the legend of the Wandering Jew in folio wood engravings. 6. It is said in legend that Gypsies are doomed to be everlasting wanderers, because they refused the Virgin and Child hospitality in their flight into Egypt.—Advent in us, Annalium Boiorum, libri septem vii. (1554). The legend of the Wild Huntsman, called by Shakespeare “Herne, the Hunter,” and by Father Matthieu “St Hubert,” is said to be a Jew who would not suffer Jesus to drink from a horse-trough, but pointed out to Him some water in a hoof-print, and bade Him go there and drink.—Kuhn von Schwarz, Nordd. Sagen , 499.