Austria
19.01.2011, 18:23
Catholic, Orthodox and Protestant Churches taught their flock to fear and hate them and ensured their social segregation. The case was similar in Islam.
How the Church responded to the Gypsy presence
Martin Luther gave Europe one of the first compilations of the Gypsy language in his Liber Vagatorium (Book of Vagabonds, 1528). In the preface to this work he called them
"fake friars, wandering Jews and rogues." ("Slang" 1974:852).
Gypsies who wanted to become Christians upon entering Europe were rejected by the Church. The Archbishop Petri of Sweden decreed in 1560:
"The priest shall not concern himself with the Gypsies. He shall neither bury their corpses nor christen their children."
Priests in Magdeburg were ordered not to baptize Gypsy children without obtaining higher authorization. (Kenrick 1972:22).
Gypsies were rejected by the Church for two major reasons. The first, which may have been accurate, was that the main motive for their conversion was an expedient to greater acceptance by the European peoples. The second, ...the Church ...felt threatened by the palmists who were now competing with the priests for the superstitious minds of the peasant (as well as the upper class) population during this period of the Middle Ages.
During the 19th century the Orthodox clergy in Bulgaria declared it a greater sin than theft to give alms to the Gypsies. (Kenrick 1972:21). In France during the 16th century those who had had their palms read by Gypsies were excommunicated or forced to do penance. (Kenrick 1972:22).
Both Moslem and Christian religious preachers placed Gypsies outside normal society by treating them as outcasts and not letting them participate in church and religious functions even when they professed to be converted to the religion of that country. Those Gypsies who were sincere in their beliefs were forced to listen outside an open window of the church or mosque.
During this time, there were some people who showed sympathy for the Gypsies. The Catholic clergy used its great power to heighten the persecution of the Gypsies by decreeing that such sympathizers were themselves subject to punishment and even death.
In Rumania Gypsies were forced into slavery. They were owned by local landowners and officials in government. The Church bought Gypsy slaves, too for its own purposes. The Church, without compassion, overworked, abused and shamefully took advantage of the Gypsies the same as did the other slaveowners. (Greenfeld, 1977:22).
From: Gypsies: a persecuted race, by William A. Duna
Some Roma managed to move to the U.S. in the 19th century, escaping
five and a half centuries of slavery in Romania [Link]
For centuries, Sinti and Roma were scorned and persecuted in Europe. Zigeuner, the German word for Gypsy, derives from a Greek root meaning "untouchable." In the Balkan principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Gypsies were slaves bought and sold by monasteries and large estate holders (boyars) until 1864, when the newly formed nation of Romania emancipated them.
Link
Then Nazism arose and Romania's Nazi Arrow Cross brigade was formed, which tried to annihilate Roma as before.
Anti-Semitism had a Biblical basis and a long history of Church teachings, but the Church also taught anti-Gypsyism, instilling it over centuries.
Historical parallels with antisemitism
Roma have much in common with Jews in their experience of persecution within Christian Europe. (There are, incidentally, Jewish Gypsies in Belarus and Sofia.) For both Roma and Jews, their suffering and annihilation in the twentieth century are the culmination of centuries of oppression, partly motivated by religious intolerance and racism. Some Rom leaders have noted the parallel. Nicolae Gheorghe recently commented: 'Gypsies are now the scapegoats as the Jews were before.'(31) Kurt Holl of Cologne stated in 1993:
'The East European Roma have today the same role as the Ostjuden early in this century.'(32)
There are many historical parallels. Hostility towards Roma and Jews has similar roots—fear of the unknown, of religious difference; envy (of the Romanies' apparent freedom); hatred of 'the outsider'; mistrust of possible 'spies'; simple chauvinism and racism. Roma, like Jews, were attacked in sermons, books, drama and popular art, and thus demonized in the popular mind. (Stereotypes of the Gypsy woman or the Jewess as a dangerous seductress and of the male Gypsy or Jew as a dark sinister threat featured widely in literature.) The spread of the Black Death in the fourteenth century was attributed by at least one nineteenth-century writer to both Gypsies and Jews.(33) Roma had their own 'blood libel', the myth that Gypsies abduct non-Gypsy children.
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A6.htm
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Die Kirchen und der Islam haben die Roma als Aussenseiter behandelt und Hass gegen sie geschürt. Es galt als verboten Roma zu taufen oder ihnen Hilfe zu gewährleisten auf dem Balkan waren sie Sklaven von Klöstern. Wenn Roma beten wollten mussten sie es ausserhalb der Kirche tun und durften nur durch ein kleines Fenster zuhören. Ähnlich war es im Islam.
Ps: Im Osmanischen Reich wurden nur die Roma als Ethnie gezählt alle anderen nach ihrer Religion.
How the Church responded to the Gypsy presence
Martin Luther gave Europe one of the first compilations of the Gypsy language in his Liber Vagatorium (Book of Vagabonds, 1528). In the preface to this work he called them
"fake friars, wandering Jews and rogues." ("Slang" 1974:852).
Gypsies who wanted to become Christians upon entering Europe were rejected by the Church. The Archbishop Petri of Sweden decreed in 1560:
"The priest shall not concern himself with the Gypsies. He shall neither bury their corpses nor christen their children."
Priests in Magdeburg were ordered not to baptize Gypsy children without obtaining higher authorization. (Kenrick 1972:22).
Gypsies were rejected by the Church for two major reasons. The first, which may have been accurate, was that the main motive for their conversion was an expedient to greater acceptance by the European peoples. The second, ...the Church ...felt threatened by the palmists who were now competing with the priests for the superstitious minds of the peasant (as well as the upper class) population during this period of the Middle Ages.
During the 19th century the Orthodox clergy in Bulgaria declared it a greater sin than theft to give alms to the Gypsies. (Kenrick 1972:21). In France during the 16th century those who had had their palms read by Gypsies were excommunicated or forced to do penance. (Kenrick 1972:22).
Both Moslem and Christian religious preachers placed Gypsies outside normal society by treating them as outcasts and not letting them participate in church and religious functions even when they professed to be converted to the religion of that country. Those Gypsies who were sincere in their beliefs were forced to listen outside an open window of the church or mosque.
During this time, there were some people who showed sympathy for the Gypsies. The Catholic clergy used its great power to heighten the persecution of the Gypsies by decreeing that such sympathizers were themselves subject to punishment and even death.
In Rumania Gypsies were forced into slavery. They were owned by local landowners and officials in government. The Church bought Gypsy slaves, too for its own purposes. The Church, without compassion, overworked, abused and shamefully took advantage of the Gypsies the same as did the other slaveowners. (Greenfeld, 1977:22).
From: Gypsies: a persecuted race, by William A. Duna
Some Roma managed to move to the U.S. in the 19th century, escaping
five and a half centuries of slavery in Romania [Link]
For centuries, Sinti and Roma were scorned and persecuted in Europe. Zigeuner, the German word for Gypsy, derives from a Greek root meaning "untouchable." In the Balkan principalities of Moldavia and Wallachia, Gypsies were slaves bought and sold by monasteries and large estate holders (boyars) until 1864, when the newly formed nation of Romania emancipated them.
Link
Then Nazism arose and Romania's Nazi Arrow Cross brigade was formed, which tried to annihilate Roma as before.
Anti-Semitism had a Biblical basis and a long history of Church teachings, but the Church also taught anti-Gypsyism, instilling it over centuries.
Historical parallels with antisemitism
Roma have much in common with Jews in their experience of persecution within Christian Europe. (There are, incidentally, Jewish Gypsies in Belarus and Sofia.) For both Roma and Jews, their suffering and annihilation in the twentieth century are the culmination of centuries of oppression, partly motivated by religious intolerance and racism. Some Rom leaders have noted the parallel. Nicolae Gheorghe recently commented: 'Gypsies are now the scapegoats as the Jews were before.'(31) Kurt Holl of Cologne stated in 1993:
'The East European Roma have today the same role as the Ostjuden early in this century.'(32)
There are many historical parallels. Hostility towards Roma and Jews has similar roots—fear of the unknown, of religious difference; envy (of the Romanies' apparent freedom); hatred of 'the outsider'; mistrust of possible 'spies'; simple chauvinism and racism. Roma, like Jews, were attacked in sermons, books, drama and popular art, and thus demonized in the popular mind. (Stereotypes of the Gypsy woman or the Jewess as a dangerous seductress and of the male Gypsy or Jew as a dark sinister threat featured widely in literature.) The spread of the Black Death in the fourteenth century was attributed by at least one nineteenth-century writer to both Gypsies and Jews.(33) Roma had their own 'blood libel', the myth that Gypsies abduct non-Gypsy children.
http://freetruth.50webs.org/A6.htm
----
Die Kirchen und der Islam haben die Roma als Aussenseiter behandelt und Hass gegen sie geschürt. Es galt als verboten Roma zu taufen oder ihnen Hilfe zu gewährleisten auf dem Balkan waren sie Sklaven von Klöstern. Wenn Roma beten wollten mussten sie es ausserhalb der Kirche tun und durften nur durch ein kleines Fenster zuhören. Ähnlich war es im Islam.
Ps: Im Osmanischen Reich wurden nur die Roma als Ethnie gezählt alle anderen nach ihrer Religion.