Wandering Jew

Origin of the legend

The legend first appeared in a pamphlet of four leaves entitled "Kurtze Beschreibung und Erzählung von einem Juden mit Namen Ahasverus." This professes to have been printed at Leyden in 1602 by Christoff Crutzer, but no printer of that name has been discovered, and the real place and printer can not be ascertained.

The legend spread quickly throughout Germany, no less than eight different editions appearing in 1602; altogether forty appeared in Germany before the end of the eighteenth century. Eight editions in Dutch and Flemish are known; and the story soon passed to France, the first French edition appearing in Bordeaux, 1609, and to England, where it appeared in the form of a parody in 1625 (Jacobs and Wolf, "Bibliotheca Anglo-Judaica," p. 44, No. 221). The pamphlet was translated also into Danish and Swedish; and the expression "eternal Jew" is current in Czech.

According to L. Neubaur, the legend is founded on the words given in Matt. xvi. 28, which are indeed quoted in the earliest German pamphlet of 1602. So, too, from John xxi. 20 et seq. a legend arose in the Church that St. John would not die before the second coming of Jesus; while another legend declares that the attendant Malchus, whose ear St. Peter cut off in the garden of Gethsemane (John xviii. 10), was condemned to wander till the second coming.

His action is associated in some way with the scoffing at Jesus, and is so represented in a broadsheet which appeared in 1584. An actual predecessor of the Wandering Jew is recorded in the "Flores Historiarum" by Roger of Wendover in the year 1228. An Armenian archbishop, then visiting England, was asked by the monks of St. Albans about the celebrated Joseph of Arimathea, who had spoken to Jesus, and was still alive. The archbishop answered that he had himself seen him in Armenia, and that his name was Cartaphilus; on passing Jesus carrying the cross he had said: "Go on quicker," Jesus thereupon answering: "I go; but thou shalt wait till I come."

Matthew Paris included this passage from Roger of Wendover in his own history; and other Armenians appeared in 1252 at the Abbey of St. Albans, repeating the same story, which was regarded there as a great proof of the Christian religion (Matthew Paris," Chron. Majora," ed. Luard, London, 1880, v. 340-341). The same archbishop is said to have appeared at Tournai in 1243, telling the same story, which is given in the "Chronicles of Phillip Mouskes," ii. 491, Brussels, 1839.

The Wandering Jew in film

• The Wandering Jew made in 1933 starring Conrad Veidt.
• Der Vanderner Yid (The Wandering Jew) a Yiddish language film made in 1933 depicting the plight of the Jews in Nazi Germany.
• L' Ebreo errante (The Wandering Jew) a 1947 Italian film based on the Eugene Sue novel.

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