Les Juifs vus par un prêtre français en exil: l’antijudaïsme dans les Mémoires de l’abbé Pochard (1796-1830)

Abstract

The article is an attempt to show the leading elements of the attitude towards Jews, the attitude of Father Claude-Antoine Pochard (1766-1833), tutor in the family of a Gniezno governor Joseph Skórzewski. Numerous trips across Polish territories and neighboring countries enabled him to come into direct contact with Jewish issues in Central and Eastern Europe, and his up till now unpublished memoirs shed light on some interesting aspects of the history of European Jews.The article consists of three parts. The first part presents direct or indirect contacts of Father Pochard with Jews during his trip to Bavaria, Saxony, Prussia, Wielkopolska, the land annexed by Russia and Lithuania. The second part shows Fr. Pochard’s reactions to the presence of Jews – dislike and avoiding closer contacts. There is also an attempt to show the difference in the positions of both the Catholic side, represented by Fr. Pochard, and the Jewish side, the climate of hostility and mutual prejudices. The third and last part shows cases where Fr. Pochard revises his views in contact with professionalism and honesty encountered in traveling Jewish innkeepers and merchants, and also other specific moments when there was escalation of tension in his relations with the Jews. The whole article is an interesting panorama of Christian-Jewish relations in the first half of the nineteenth century, when there were economic contacts but no cultural exchange.