Jews and Judaism in the Hartlib Circle

Abstract

This remark, apparently dating from early 1634, is one of the few comments about Jewish matters written by Samuel Hartlib in his Ephemerides during the 1630s. It is doubtful whether Hartlib had encountered real Jews by that time either in East Prussia, where the presence of Jews was negligible until the mid-seventeenth century, or in England, where Jews had been forbidden to live since they were driven out in 1290. However, he had no diffi culty in accepting statements of the kind made by Sir Thomas Roe. The repertory of images belonging to Hartlib and his circle regarding the Jews was nourished by stereotypes that had been deeply rooted in European consciousness since the Middle Ages and had become commonly accepted.2 Rumours about the bad odour of the Jews found their way into Christian European culture from the epigrams of Martial and the writings of Marcellinus, and as early as the sixth century Venantius Honorius Clementianus Fortunatus was able to tell about fi ve hundred Jews whose foul odour was removed by baptism: ‘Ablitur judaeus odor baptismate divo, Aspersusque sacro fi t gregis alter odor.’3 The information received by Hartlib in a letter sent to him from Rotterdam on 4 May 1645 regarding the ‘Experiment of making stinking water sweete,’ most likely referred in some way, perhaps indirectly, to this matter: