"It might pass if the matter stopped with idle gossip; but that on account of this execrable falsehood Jews have been tormented, punished, and executed by thousands, should have moved even stones to compassion, and made them cry out."
Is it credible that in the face of this judgment, spoken with firm conviction by Wülfer and Wagenseil, who not only had associated with Jews for years, but were accurately acquainted with Jewish literature, and had penetrated into its innermost recesses as none before them, their contemporaries should seriously revive the horrible falsehood, and justify it with ostentatious learning? A Protestant, John Andrew Eisenmenger, professor of Oriental languages, repeated the accusation, a thousand times branded as false, and furnished posterity with abundant material for charges against the Jews. Eisenmenger belonged to the class of insects which sucks poison even out of flowers. In confidential converse with Jews, pretending that he desired to be converted to Judaism, and in the profound study of their literature, which he learned from them, he sought only the dark side of both.
He compiled a venomous book in two volumes, the title of which in itself was an invitation to Christians to massacre the Jews, and was synonymous with a repetition of earlier scenes of horror for the Jews.
"Judaism Unmasked; or a Thorough and True Account of the Way in which the Stubborn Jews frightfully blaspheme and dishonor the Holy Trinity, revile the Holy Mother of Christ, mockingly criticise the New Testament, the Evangelists, the Apostles, and the Christian Religion, and despise and curse to the Uttermost Extreme the whole of Christianity. Much else besides, either not at all or very little known, and Gross Errors of the Jewish Religion and Theology, as well as Ridiculous and Amusing Stories, herein appear. All proved from their own Books. Written for the Honest Information of all Christians."
Eisenmenger intended to hurl Wagenseil's "fiery darts of Satan" with deadly aim at the Jews. If he had merely quoted detached sentences from the Talmudical and later Rabbinical literature and anti-Christian writings, translated them, and drawn conclusions from them hostile to the Jews, he would only have proved his mental weakness. But Eisenmenger represented most horrible falsehoods, as Wagenseil had called them, as indisputable facts. He adduced a whole chapter of proofs showing that it was not lawful for Jews to save a Christian from danger to life, that the Rabbinical laws command the slaughter of Christians, and that no confidence should be placed in Jewish physicians, nor ought their medicines to be taken. He repeated all the false stories of murders committed by Jews against Christians, of the poisoning of wells by Jews at the time of the Black Death, of the poisoning of the elector of Brandenburg, Joachim II, by his Jewish mint-master, of Raphael Levi's child-murder at Metz--in short, all ever invented by saintly simplicity, priestly fraud, or excited fanaticism, and imputed to Jews. That the martyrdom of little Simon of Trent was a fabrication had been clearly proved by the doge and senate of Venice on authentic documents. Not only the Jewish writers Isaac Viva and Isaac Cardoso, but also Christians, like Wülfer and Wagenseil, recognized these documents as genuine, and represented the charge against the Jews of Trent as a crying injustice. Eisenmenger was not influenced by that, declared the documents to be forged, and maintained the bloodthirstiness of Jews with fiery zeal and energy. One would be justified in ascribing his proceedings against Jews to brutality or avarice. Although very learned in Hebrew, he was otherwise uncultured. He was willing to be bribed by solid coin into silence with regard to the Jews. But for the honor of humanity one would rather impute his course to blindness; he had lived a long time at Frankfort-on-the-Main, formerly the center of hatred to Jews in Germany, and he may there have imbibed his bitter animosity, and have wished, at first from conscientious motives, to blacken the character of the Jews.