Amulo°

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AMULO°

AMULO ° (d. 852), archbishop of Lyons from 841 in succession to *Agobard whose anti-Jewish prejudices he shared. The Church Council of Meaux and Paris held in 845–46 passed, probably at Amulo's suggestion, a number of regulations excluding Jews from public office, forbidding them to appear in public during Easter, and prohibiting Christians from having contact with them. Amulo subsequently addressed a lengthy epistle (Liber contra Judaeos) to Charles the Bald in 846, trying to persuade him that such segregation was justified. This had a wide circulation and asserted that the Jews blasphemed Jesus and the Christians, and by a play on words referred to the apostles as "apostates," and to the Gospels (Evangelion) as aven gilyon, i.e., "a sheet of iniquity." Amulo quotes at length from the Hebrew *Toledot Yeshu already circulating among the Jews. He also states that the Jews employed Christian servants and forced them to observe the Jewish laws while transgressing Christian precepts. A further charge was that Jewish tax collectors persuaded ignorant Christians to renounce Christianity with promises to reduce their taxes. Amulo's efforts were unsuccessful, however, as Charles refused to ratify the anti-Jewish canons passed by the council.

bibliography:

B. Blumenkranz, in: Revue historique de droit français et étranger, 33 (1955), 229 ff., 560 ff.; idem, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental… (1960), passim; Roth, Dark Ages, index.

[Bernhard Blumenkranz]

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