Constantine’s Sword

In Constantine’s Sword: The Church and the Jews, James Carroll details the Catholic Church’s two-thousand-year battle against Judaism.  Carroll argues that this dark history is the central tragedy of Western civilization.

The Church’s failure to protest the Holocaust — the infamous “silence” of Pius XII — is the culmination of an entrenched tradition of anti-Judaism. From Gospel accounts of the crucifixion of Jesus to Constantine’s transformation of the cross into a sword, to the rise of blood libels, scapegoating, and modern anti-Semitism, Carroll reconstructs the dramatic story of the Church’s conflict with Judaism.