Ioudaios in the context of "European Jews"

The history of the Jews in Europe spans a period of over two thousand years. Jews, a Semitic people descending from the Judeans of Judea in the Southern Levant, began migrating to Europe just before the rise of the Roman Empire (27 BCE), although Alexandrian Jews had already migrated to Rome, and some Gentiles had undergone Judaization on a few occasions. A notable early event in the history of the Jews in the Roman Empire was the 63 BCE siege of Jerusalem, where Pompey had interfered in the Hasmonean civil war.

Jews have had a significant presence in European cities and countries since the fall of the Roman Empire, including Italy, Spain, Portugal, France, the Netherlands, Germany, Poland, and Russia. In Spain and Portugal in the late fifteenth century, the monarchies forced Jews to either convert to Christianity or leave and they established offices of the Inquisition to enforce Catholic orthodoxy of converted Jews. These actions shattered Jewish life in Iberia and saw mass migration of Sephardic Jews to escape religious persecution. Many resettled in the Netherlands and re-judaized, starting in the late sixteenth and early seventeenth centuries. In the religiously tolerant, Protestant Dutch Republic Amsterdam prospered economically and as a center of Jewish cultural life, the "Dutch Jerusalem". Ashkenazi Jews lived in communities under continuous rabbinic authority. In Europe Jewish communities were largely self-governing autonomous under Christian rulers, usually with restrictions on residence and economic activities. In Poland, from 1264 (from 1569 also in Lithuania as part of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth), under the Statute of Kalisz until the partitions of the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in 1795, Jews were guaranteed legal rights and privileges. The law in Poland after 1264 (in the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth in consequence) toward Jews was one of the most inclusive in Europe. The French Revolution removed legal restrictions on Jews, making them full citizens. Napoleon implemented Jewish emancipation as his armies conquered much of Europe. Emancipation often brought more opportunities for Jews and many integrated into larger European society and became more secular rather than remaining in cohesive Jewish communities.

Adversus Judaeos (Ancient Greek: Κατὰ Ἰουδαίων Kata Ioudaiōn, "against the Jews") are a series of fourth century homilies by Saint John Chrysostom directed to members of the church of Antioch of his time, who continued to observe Jewish feasts and fasts. Critical of this, he cast Judaism and the synagogues in his city in a critical and negative light.

There are modern scholars who claim that an abuse of his preaching, which became well known to the West in the seventeenth century, fed Christian antisemitism, and some, such as Stephen Katz, go even further, saying it was an inspiration for pagan Nazi antisemitism. Indeed, during World War II, the Nazi Party in Germany abused his homilies, quoting and reprinting them frequently in an attempt to legitimize the Holocaust in the eyes of German and Austrian Christians. Anglican priest James Parkes called the writing on Jews "the most horrible and violent denunciations of Judaism to be found in the writings of a Christian theologian". According to historian William I. Brustein, his sermons against Jews gave further momentum to the idea that the Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus.

The English term Jew is originally derived from the Hebrew term Yehudi (lit. 'of Judah'), which passed into Greek as Ioudaios and into Latin as Iudaeus, in turn evolving into the Old French term giu after the letter "d" was dropped. A variety of related forms are found in early English from about the year 1000, including Iudea, Gyu, Giu, Iuu, Iuw, and Iew, which eventually developed into the modern English word for the Jewish people.