English Christians must repent for their “painful and shameful” history of persecuting Jews, a bishop said at a service of “penitence” at a Church of England cathedral.

Many of the “lethal” antisemitic myths and stereotypes used over centuries to justify the abuse, oppression, expulsion and murder of Jewish people across Europe can be traced back to Christian teaching, and specifically to anti-Jewish laws enacted at the Synod of Oxford in 1222, church leaders said.

Christian and Jewish leaders gathered at the weekend for a historic service in Oxford to mark the 800th anniversary of those rulings, which forced Jews to wear badges centuries before the Nazis did the same, the congregation was told.

The laws banned friendship between Christians and Jews and barred Jewish people from public office. The rulings created a “hostile environment”and would ultimately lead to the expulsion of Jews by the end of the 13th century, making England the first country to expel Jewish people en masse.

Rabbi Dr Jonathan Romain of Maidenhead Synagogue, who gave a reading in Hebrew in the cathedral at Christ Church college, said that the English Jews who faced persecution, massacres and forced exile in the 12th and 13th centuries “would have been astonished and pleased to hear words in Hebrew ring out in this cathedral”.

In the 13th century, the church in England was still Catholic. The Right Rev William Kenney, a Catholic bishop, said: “God of Israel, we acknowledge with shame and penitence the antisemitic decrees of the Synod of Oxford . . . For times when we have witnessed the ill-treatment of Jews and people of other faiths and have not gone to their aid, Lord, we ask your forgiveness.”

The Chief Rabbi, Ephraim Mirvis, did not attend the cathedral itself for reasons of tradition, but said outside afterwards that it had been a “glorious, special, amazing and historic occasion”.

The service was “deeply appreciated by our Jewish community”, he said, and he hoped it would lead to a “strengthening” of the friendship between Christians and Jews.

The Bishop of Oxford, the Right Rev Steven Croft, said it had been “deeply moving” to hear Jewish music played and Jewish songs sung by a choir in the cathedral.

The Synod of Oxford, held at Osney Abbey in 1222 during the reign of Henry III, has chiefly been remembered as the gathering at which St George’s Day was declared a national holiday. However, it also implemented decrees from Rome forcing Jews to wear badges, in the form of two pieces of cloth in the shape of Moses’s tablets.

Mirvis said this had foreshadowed the yellow stars of David that Jews were forced to wear by the Nazis. He added that 1222 had been a “notorious turning point” for Jews in England and Europe and that he hoped 2022 would be a turning point in a positive direction.