Aquinas and the Jews

As a theologian of major influence in western Christendom, Saint Thomas Aquinas has served for seven hundred years as the major conduit of traditional Christian teachings about Jews. Scattered throughout his Summa Theologiae, De Regimine Iudaeorum, and commentaries on Romans, Matthew, and John, Aquinas's teachings on Jews are fundamentally conservative. Nevertheless, John Hood concludes in the first full-length study of this subject, Aquinas comes closer than any other writer to revealing the latent contradictions in the medieval Church's teachings on Jews.
For medieval theologians, Jews were the chosen people of God, but the Jews of the Christian era had rejected Jesus. New Testament passages revealed that Jews who called for Jesus' execution did not know that he was the Messiah - yet patristic theology made Jews guilty of his murder. Medieval Christians believed that the Jews would eventually accept Christ and be saved - yet they saw Jews as dangerous infidels rejected and punished by God.
Hood contends that Aquinas's writings remain resistant to or skeptical of anti-Jewish trends in thirteenth-century theology. Aquinas sets out simply to clarify and systematize received theological and canonistic teachings on the Jews. When he encounters contradictions in the received views, he attempts to explain how it is possible for Jews to be both chosen and rejected, ignorant and malicious Christ-killers, damned and destined for salvation.