““In most Christian imagery of the Middle Ages and Renaissance, the suffering, damned Jews were portrayed as unsympathetic caricatures. This was an extremely important part of Church teaching for centuries, that the Jews, for having rejected the word of salvation from Jesus, were summarily rejected by God. The proof for this was the destruction of the Holy Temple, Jerusalem, and the entire Jewish kingdom. This is the root of the legend of the eternally wandering Jews, whose only reason for still existing was to serve as a warning, a negative example to Christians to illustrate the cursed fate that awaits those who reject the true Messiah. Yet here, Michelangelo’s Jews are anything but caricatures of a cursed people.””
![“If we could believe that he [Jesus] really countenanced the follies, the falsehoods, and the charlatanism which his biographers [Gospels] father on him, and admit the misconstructions, interpolations, and theorizations of the fathers of the early, and the fanatics of the latter ages, the…” quote by Thomas Jefferson](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/9b6/thomas-jefferson-43_christianity_if-we-could-believe-that-he-jesus-really_3065658.jpg)
![“driven, passionate, mercurial, irascible" [the character of Michelangelo]” quote by Miles J. Unger](https://sms4smile.com/quotes/img-quotes/21c/miles-j-unger-109392_michelangelo_driven-passionate-mercurial-irascible-th_1741951.jpg)
