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Early Protestant assessments of Judaism, Islam, or other non-Christian religions were rarely positive. For Luther and most German-speaking Reformers the Jewish question revolved primarily around theological concerns. This was true even as they repeated centuries-old topoi sustained by medieval urban hostility to the emperor’s Jews. Reformed attitudes toward Jews were more theological still, developing in areas without substantial Jewish populations. Following Calvin, the Reformed tradition accorded the Jews a central role in sacred history, both biblical and apocalyptic, but agreed with Luther’s persistent denigration of contemporary Judaism. “Mahomedanism” received universal condemnation from Protestants of all stripes, drawing on long-standing medieval discourses. Judaism and Islam were equated with Catholicism in Protestant polemics against “Papist” religion. In time, this Protestant move to equate “popery” with a sacerdotal, superstitious Judaism or “Mahomedanism” established a conceptual framework for understanding “false” religion that would form the basis for Enlightenment perspectives on all human religious authority.

In his Eulogy of Florence (Laudatio Florentinae Urbis) Leonardo Bruni praised her constitution for giving first place to justice, “without which no city can exist or deserve the name.” Moreover, he said, “Not only citizens, but aliens as well are protected by this commonwealth. It suffers injury to be done to no man, and endeavors to see to it that everyone, citizen or alien, shall receive the justice that is owing to him.” During Brum's own tenure as chancellor of Florence, however, we hear of a Jewish banker who was ruined by the heaviest fine in the history of the city after a trial that one modern scholar has described as a monstrous miscarriage of justice.