Curious Myths of the Middle AgesBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History
Curious Myths of the Middle Ages
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Folklore; Legends -- History and criticism; Tales, Medieval
The statement that the Wandering Jew appeared in Lubeck in 1601, does
not tally with the more precise chronicle of Henricus Bangert, which
gives: "Die 14 Januarii Anno MDCIII., adnotatum reliquit Lubecæ fuisse
Judæum illum immortalem, qui se Christi crucifixioni interfuisse
affirmavit."[8]
In 1604 he seems to have appeared in Paris. Rudolph Botoreus says,
under this date, "I fear lest I be accused of giving ear to old wives'
fables, if I insert in these pages what is reported all over Europe of
the Jew, coeval with the Savior Christ; however, nothing is more
common, and our popular histories have not scrupled to assert it.
Following the lead of those who wrote our annals, I may say that he
who appeared not in one century only, in Spain, Italy, and Germany,
was also in this year seen and recognized as the same individual who
had appeared in Hamburg, anno MDLXVI. The common people, bold in
spreading reports, relate many things of him; and this I allude to,
lest anything should be left unsaid."[9]
J. C. Bulenger puts the date of the Hamburg visit earlier. "It was
reported at this time that a Jew of the time of Christ was wandering
without food and drink, having for a thousand and odd years been a
vagabond and outcast, condemned by God to rove, because he, of that
generation of vipers, was the first to cry out for the crucifixion of
Christ and the release of Barabbas; and also because soon after, when
Christ, panting under the burden of the rood, sought to rest before
his workshop (he was a cobbler), the fellow ordered Him off with
acerbity. Thereupon Christ replied, 'Because thou grudgest Me such a
moment of rest, I shall enter into My rest, but thou shalt wander
restless.' At once, frantic and agitated, he fled through the whole
earth, and on the same account to this day he journeys through the
world. It was this person who was seen in Hamburg in MDLXIV. Credat
Judæus Apella! _I_ did not see him, or hear anything authentic
concerning him, at that time when I was in Paris."[10]
A curious little book,[11] written against the quackery of Paracelsus,
by Leonard Doldius, a Nürnberg physician, and translated into Latin
and augmented, by Andreas Libavius, doctor and physician of Rotenburg,
alludes to the same story, and gives the Jew a new name nowhere else
met with. After having referred to a report that Paracelsus was not
dead, but was seated alive, asleep or napping, in his sepulchre at
Strasburg, preserved from death by some of his specifics, Libavius
declares that he would sooner believe in the old man, the Jew,
Ahasverus, wandering over the world, called by some Buttadæus, and
otherwise, again, by others.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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