FIRST JESUITS – SOCIETY OF JESUS 1534 – 1572 – AND JEWS. HISTORY AND DEMISE OF TABOO IN LIGHT OF CHANGES BY SECOND VATICAN COUNCIL

Nostra Aetate, the Second Vatican Council´s declaration, together with other Catholic Church documents from the 1970s and 80s and the innovative attitudes of Pope John Paul II during his pontificate radically altered the catholic Church´s approach to the Jews and Judaism. This reform helped to bring to light certain taboos, concealed for centuries in the Vatican vaults from the view of both the non-Catholic world and the church congregations. One of the prohibited themes was associated with the profound, almost revolutionary reform, inspired by Ignatius of Loyola, the founder of the Jesuit Order, which occurred in the 16th century in reaction to the social and religious discrimination of Roman Catholics of Jewish descent in the Kingdom of Spain and thereby the whole Christian world of the day. The paper aims to discuss these events in relation to the works in the field of social history which attempt to critically interpret the historical facts and therefor to contribute to the development of the Christian-Jewish relationships.