Constantine's Sword

Our Review

Of the many memorable events that highlighted our millennial year, the one certain to enter history books was Pope John Paul II's pilgrimage to Jerusalem. A symbolic act of contrition, the Pope's visit was, as James Carroll writes in Constantine's Sword, a profound step toward recognizing the Catholic Church's role in Jewish suffering. In his erudite and evocative history of the Church's attitudes toward Judaism, novelist and former priest Carroll bravely explores the roots of that division. And by refracting this tale through his own religious crisis, Carroll offers a seminal study of the

Church that, like the Confessions of St. Augustine, is also a moving personal quest for faith.

Constantine's Sword beginsin 1997 at Auschwitz, where, on assignment for a magazine, Carroll was shocked by the cross that hangs over thousands of unmarked graves. "If Auschwitz has become a sacred center of Jewish identity," he writes, "what does the cross there imply about the relations between Jews and Christians, and between Judaism and Christianity?" More

provocatively, he asks, "If Auschwitz must stand for Jews as the abyss in which meaning itself died, what happens when Auschwitz becomes the sanctuary of someone else's recovered pity?" As he plumbs the myths of the biblical

era, Carroll returns to this cross as a metaphor for the anguished breach between Jews and Christians.

Drawing on diverse influences, from Josephus to Hannah Arendt and Sigmund Freud, Carroll crafts a social and political history of the Church that places virulent anti-Judaism at its foundation. Following the death of

Jesus, he argues, Christians came to identify themselves as followers of the correct religion, a notion the cross at Auschwitz eerily affirms. Working lithely with complicated swathes of history, he shows how Christian hostility to Judaism evolved, with decisive turns found in the 11th century during the East-West schism, and in the 16th century with the Protestant Reformation.

Although sifting through vast tracks of Western history, Carroll frequently shifts to the present, invoking his -- and by implication, our -- involvement in this narrative. He remembers the Anglicized images of Christ he revered

in Catholic grade school and recalls the treasures his parents bought cheaply in war-ravaged Germany while serving in the military. Because the book culminates in the Holocaust, Carroll labors to understand the

relationship between German Protestantism and lethal anti-Semitism. In his mind, the tragedy of this story is that it did not have to unfold as it did. By using his own spiritual crisis to navigate history's darkest moments, he reveals that there is hope for true reconciliation. In order to seize that promise, he convincingly argues, we need to understand the tortured history of Judaism and Christianity's intermingling. Like a compass, Constantine's Sword will guide us there.

John Freeman is a freelance writer living in New York City.