Download PDF | (The New Middle Ages) Elisheva Baumgarten, Judah D. Galinsky (eds.) - Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France-Palgrave Macmillan US (2015).
296 Pages
CONTRIBUTORS
*Cyril Aslanov is a professor in the Department of Romance and Latin American Studies at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. His research interests are in the study of languages in contact, especially Romance and Semitic languages. His recent publications include Le frangais levantin, jadis et naguere: a la recherche d’une langue perdue (Paris, 2006); Parlons grec moderne (Paris, 2008); and Sociolingiitstica historica de las lenguas judias (Buenos Aires, 2011).
*Elisheva Baumgarten holds the Prof. Yitzchak Becker Chair for Jewish Studies and is an associate professor of medieval Jewish history in the Departments of Jewish History and of History at The Hebrew University of Jerusalem. She studies the social history of medieval Jews in northern Europe with an emphasis on gender and Jewish-Christian relations. She is the author of Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (Princeton, 2004); Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women and Everyday Religious Observance (Philadelphia, 2014); and numerous articles.
*David Berger is Ruth and I. Lewis Gordon Professor of Jewish History and Dean at the Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies at Yeshiva University. His teaching and research interests are medieval Jewish history, Jewish-Christian relations, anti-Semitism, contemporary Judaism, and the intellectual history of the Jews. In addition to his The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1979), he has published numerous studies that have recently been collected in two volumes——Persecution, Polemic, and Dialogue: Essays in Jewish-Christian Relations (Boston, 2010) and Cultures in Collision and Conversation: Essays in the Intellectual History of the Jews (Boston, 2011).
*Susan L. Einbinder is a professor of Hebrew and Judaic Studies and Comparative Literature at the University of Connecticut. Her teaching and research deal with the relationship between history and literature and have focused mainly on poetry and literature from both northern and southern France. Her first book, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton, 2002), examined northern French Hebrew poems of martyrology and her second book, No Place of Rest: Jewish Literature, Expulsion, and the Memory of Medieval France (Philadelphia, 2009), reconstructs FrenchJewish memories of expulsion in a variety of literary texts.
*Jessica M. Elliott is a visiting assistant professor in the Department of History at Grand Valley State University. Her teaching and research interests are in religious conversion and Jewish-Christian relations in medieval Europe, urban culture in high and late medieval Paris, and cross-cultural encounters in the premodern world. Her dissertation, “The Changing Status of Converted Jews in Thirteenth- and Fourteenth-Century Northern France” (University of California, Santa Barbara, 2014), reconstructed attitudes of Christian intellectuals in France toward the possibility of Jewish conversion and examined the socioeconomic integration of converts into the working world of medieval Paris. The research for the dissertation was funded by a Bourse Chateaubriand from the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs. She is currently working on a monograph that contextualizes the heightening of Christian concerns about the status of French converts in the fourteenth century within the larger world of Jewish-Christian relations in medieval England and northern France.
*Judah D. Galinsky is a senior lecturer in the Department of Talmud and Rabbinic Literature at Bar-Ilan University. His teaching and research interests are in the fields of medieval Jewish rabbinic literature, Jewish-Christian relations, book culture, and the practice of charity in the Middle Ages. He is the author of a number of studies, most recently: “The Significance of Form: R. Moses of Coucy’s reading audience and his Sefer ha-Mitzvot,” AJS Review 35 (2011), 293-321; “The Evolution of the Monetary-Tithe in Ashkenaz,” Journal of Jewish Studies 62, 2 (2011), 203-232; and “The Different Hebrew Versions of the ‘Talmud Trial’ of 1240 in Paris,” in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger, (Leiden, 2012), 109-140. He is currently working on a book project which focuses upon late thirteenth-century rabbinic culture in northern France.
*Ari Geiger teaches medieval history in the Department of General History at Bar Han-University. His teaching and research interests are intellectual and religious history of medieval Europe, Christian Hebraism, and JewishChristian polemic in the Middle Ages. He recently published “Historia Judaica: Petrus Comestor and His Jewish Sources,” in Gilbert Dahan (ed.), Pierre le Mangeur ou Pierre de Troyes, maitre du XII Siécle (Tarnhout, 2013), 125-145 and “A Student and an Opponent: Nicholas of Lyra and his Jewish Sources,” in Gilbert Dahan (ed.), Nicolas de Lyre, franciscain du XIV* siecle, exégéte et théologien (Paris, 2011), 167-203. His book on Nicholas of Lyra and Fourteenth-Century Christian Hebraism is forthcoming in 2015.
*Ephraim Kanarfogel is E. Billi Ivry University Professor of Jewish History, Literature and Law at Yeshiva University’s Bernard Revel Graduate School of Jewish Studies. Among his recent books are “Peering through the Lattices”: Mystical, Magical, and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, 2000), and The Intellectual History and Rabbinic Culture of Medieval Ashkenaz (Detroit, 2012), which has won the Goldstein-Goren Prize from the International Center of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University and the Schnitzer Prize for Best Book in Biblical and Rabbinic Studies from the Association of Jewish Studies. His current book project, Brothers from Afar: Rabbinic Approaches toward Apostates and Apostasy in Medieval Europe, focuses on the attitudes of medieval rabbinic authorities toward conversion and reversion in their historical contexts.
*Rella Kushelevsky is an associate professor in the Department of Literature of the Jewish People at Bar-[an University. Her teaching and research focuses on Hebrew stories written in medieval Germany and northern France. She recently published Penalty and Temptation, Hebrew Tales in Ashkenaz (Jerusalem, 2010) and is currently preparing a diplomatic edition of Sefer ha-ma‘asim, a Hebrew story collection from thirteenth-century northern France.
*Daniel J. Lasker is Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values in the Goldstein-Goren Department of Jewish Thought at Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, in Beer Sheva. His areas of interest are medieval Jewish philosophy (including the thought of Judah Halevi, Maimonides, and Hasdai Crescas), the Jewish-Christian debate, Karaism, and selected issues in Jewish theology and law. His first book, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages. (New York, 1977; 2nd ed Oxford/Portand, OR, 2007), details the use of philosophy in the medieval Jewish critique of Christianity, and subsequent works have included editions and translations of a number of polemical treatises. From Judah Hadassi to Elijah Bashyatchi: Studies in Late Medieval Karaite Philosophy (Leiden, 2008), describes developments in Byzantine Karaite philosophy from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, and his latest book, The Sage Simhah Isaac Lutski. An Eighteenth-Century Karaite Rabbi. Selected Writings (2015), presents annotated editions of Lutski’s treatises.
*Anne E. Lester is an associate professor of History at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Her teaching and research interests cover medieval religious women, the Cistercian order, Capetian France, hospitals and charity, and the crusades. She is the author of Creating Cistercian Nuns: The Women’s Religious Movement and Its Reform in Thirteenth-Century Champagne (Ithaca, 2011); and co-editor of Cities, Texts, and Social Networks: Experiences and Perceptions of Medieval Urban Space, 400-1500 (Farnham and Burlington, VT, 2010); and Center and Periphery: Studies on Power in the Medieval World in Honor of William Chester Jordan (Leiden, 2013). She is completing a monograph on the movement of relics from Constantinople and the Latin East into France and Flanders during the thirteenth century provisionally entitled Fragments of Devotion: Relics and Remembrance in the Aftermath of the Fourth Crusade *Sara Offenberg is a lecturer in the Department of Jewish Art at Bar-Ilan University. Her teaching and research interests are Jewish-Christian relations in medieval art and literature; the image of the Jew in art and literature; German Pietists; piyyut commentary; and Hebrew illuminated prayer books. She is the author of two books: Illuminated Piety: Pietistic Texts and Images in the North French Hebrew Miscellany (Los Angeles, 2013); and Antisemitism and the Jewish Response in the Art and Literature of Thirteenth Century France (Jerusalem, forthcoming). She is a coeditor of the journal Ars Judaica.
*Samuel N. Rosenberg is Professor Emeritus of French and Italian at Indiana University, where he taught language and linguistics—including translation—and literature of the Middle Ages. He has translated numerous medieval works into English, including trouvére poetry and Arthurian narrative. His translations, like his philological scholarship, have appeared in a wide variety of publications, both American and French.
*Yossef Schwartz is a professor of Medieval Intellectual History at the Cohn Institute for the History and Philosophy of Science and Ideas at Tel Aviv University. His research focuses on late medieval and early modern science and philosophy, with emphasis on theory and praxis of translation, Latin Hebraism, and Jewish European receptions of Latin Christian thought. Among his publications: “To Thee is silence praise”: Meister Eckhart’s reading in Maimonides’ Guide of the Perplexed (Tel Aviv 2002) [Hebrew]; Yossef Schwartz and Volkhard Krech eds., Religious Apologetics — Philosophical Argumentation (Tubingen, 2004); and Yossef Schwartz, Alexander Fidora, Harvey J. Hames (eds.), Latin-Into-Hebrew: Studies and Texts, volume 2: Texts in Contexts (Leiden 2013).
*Karl Shoemaker is an associate professor of History and Law at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. His teaching and research interests are in the history of criminal law and the historical development of legal and political institutions concerned with punishment, dispute settlement, and social control in the high and late Middle Ages. He recently published Sanctuary and Crime in the Middle Ages, 400-1500. (New York, 2011) and is currently working on a monograph that examines the legal career of the devil in the late Middle Ages.
*Lesley Smith is Professor of Medieval Intellectual History, Fellow and Tutor in Politics, and Senior Tutor at Harris Manchester College, University of Oxford. Her research interests are history of exegesis, manuscript studies, history of the book, and history of medieval schools and universities. Recent books include Masters of the Sacred Page: Theology in the Latin West to 1274 (Notre Dame, 2001); The Glossa Ordinaria: The Making of a Medieval Bible Commentary (Leiden, 2009); and The Ten Commandments: Interpreting the Bible in the Medieval World (Leiden, 2014).
*Margo Stroumsa-Uzan is a lecturer in the Department of Arts at BenGurion University of the Negev and teaches at Shenkar College. Her teaching and research interests focus on the social history of art in the Middle Ages with a special emphasis on the history of illuminated manuscripts, women’s studies, and death. She is working on publishing her first book analyzing the impact early books of hours had on the lives of secular women, based on her dissertation entitled “Women’s Prayer: Devotion and Gender in Books of Hours from Northern France ca. 1300” (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev, 2009). She is also the author of “Jonah of Aquileia: A Gesture to Constantine the Great,” published in Between Judaism and Christianity. Art History Essays in Honor of Elisheva Revel-Neher, eds. Katrin Kogman-Appel and Mati Meir (Leiden, 2009).
*John Tolan is Professor of Medieval History at the University of Nantes (France). His teaching and research interests are in the history of religious and cultural relations between the Arab and Latin worlds in the Middle Ages. He is the author of numerous articles and books in medieval history and cultural studies, including Petrus Alfonsi and his Medieval Readers (Gainesville, 1993); Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York, 2002); Sons of Ishmael: Muslims through European Eyes in the Middle Ages (Gainesville, 2008); Saint Francis and the Sultan: The Curious History of a Christian-Muslim Encounter (Oxford, 2009); and (with Gilles Veinstein and Henry Laurens) Europe and the Islamic World (Princeton, 2013). He currently is director of a major project funded by the European Research Council, “RELMIN: The legal status of religious minorities in the Euro-Mediterranean world (fifthfifteenth centuries).
INTRODUCTION:
JEWS AND CHRISTIANS IN THIRTEENTH-CENTURY FRANCE
Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. Galinsky
This collection of essays explores a variety of perspectives on Jewish and Christian life in northern France during the thirteenth century. The incentive for this volume was the changing paradigms within the field of medieval studies connected with Jewish-Christian relations and the growing understanding that has characterized the past decade and a half of scholarship, underlining not only the animosity but also the intimacy and similarities between the two faith communities.’ In light of the growing tendency to view both religious communities as more closely linked than in the past, this work aims to examine these relationships on multiple levels and in a variety of disciplines. It sets as its goal an examination of the thirteenth century specifically as it is somewhat overlooked, sandwiched between the “twelfthcentury renaissance” and the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century famine and disease that changed the face of Europe and, in the case of the Jews, the persecution and expulsions.” This book seeks to examine the thirteenth century in particular—although a long thirteenth century, broadly defined— specifically through the prism of the changes that took place within the Jewish and Christian urban communities. Our objective has been to outline the continuity alongside the changes and the similarities as well as the differences in a coherent way.
Over the years, attempts have been made to describe and characterize the uniqueness of the thirteenth century. Some have focused on the formation of classic scholasticism and the contribution of the translation movement. Others have chosen to emphasize the various political and administrative developments as well as the growth of the legal profession and that of bureaucratic institutions. Yet others devoted attention to the “machinery of persecution” against heretical movements, Jews, and others as a defining feature.* The thirteenth century has also been portrayed as the period when educational institutions such as the university developed, urban centers expanded alongside the concomitant growth of religious piety, especially lay piety, and the innovation in the arts. William Jordan nicely captured this lack of clarity in defining the thirteenth century when he wrote in his prefatory remarks to the century: “It has been called the ‘Age of the Cathedrals’, the ‘Age of St Louis’, the ‘Age of Thomas Aquinas’, even the ‘Age of Synthesis’”” What does emerge from all of the above is that, even after limiting our exploration to northern France, there is no simple way to describe the major developments of this century.
Concerning the study of the Jews of France, it is worth noting that there has been a marked tendency among scholars to group together the Jews of northern France and those of Germany under the broad category of “Ashkenaz,” arguing they share a common cultural heritage.> Others, however, have seen the need to make clear distinctions between these geographic settings.° In this volume, the authors have made an effort to question in what way French attitudes and culture differ from that of Germany (see chapters 5 and 10). In addition, by studying the Jews of France in conjunction with scholars looking at their Christian counterparts, one can better draw the lines between geographies, and not only those between religions. At the same time, we have not ignored the fact that much of what occurred in France can be viewed as a reflection of broader European trends, whether in culture, religion, law, or education. With this in mind, at times, some developments mentioned below are described as “European.”
The primary rationale behind the geographic limitation is that it allows us to explore, with a certain degree of confidence and control, the Jewish and Christian communities and the relations between them. A widening of the scope would have made such an effort far more complex as each geographic region has its own institutions, political structures, and mindsets. For example, if we consider the two major modern northern European countries—Germany and France—in the medieval period, these two areas (which were distinct in ways uncommon with their modern counterparts) were of significantly different character. During the thirteenth century, northern France had a strong monarchy and dynamic educational institutions that attracted students from all over Europe; Germany had neither. Despite these differences, scholars have more often treated both geographic regions as one rather than as separate entities, discussing the Jews of northern France and Germany together. This is true both of Jewish Studies scholars and of those studying Christian attitudes to Jews.’
A good example that has served as a model is the book edited by the late Michael Signer and John Van Engen, Jews and Christians in Tivelfth-Century Europe. This collection has served us as a point of departure in its emphasis on the intimacy and distance that existed simultaneously between Jews and Christians in northern Europe as well as the importance of singling out a century that is so often discussed as part of a larger process.® At the same time, we sought to limit our scope even more in order to address the unique characteristics of the communities in France alongside the features they shared with their northern European neighbors at large.
This book seeks to probe the limits of these similarities and differences on a number of levels. One level of difference pertains to language. French and German Jews communicated, both among themselves and with their Christian neighbors, in the vernacular, adopted from their immediate surroundings.’ Along with these, some of our authors question whether they also adopted certain traits and inclinations (see chapters 5 and 13-16). Urban life also had distinct features—most notably in Paris as opposed to other locations. The rise of the universities in Paris (and Orléans) as centers of law and learning and the development of the book trade had great impact on Christian life in the city." Many students flocked to Paris, and the city grew in unprecedented ways. As part of this same development, the Jewish community expanded as well. It is not surprising that Paris became a meeting place of sorts for a number of French Tosafists during the first half of the century.'!
Conversations that were taking place outside of Paris, with the involvement of Parisian masters and theologians, also had great import for Christians and Jews in France. The Fourth Lateran Council (1215)—one of paramount events of the century in that it codified changes that had been brewing and created new realities—was an occurrence that has been central in discussions of Jewish and Christian life. For Jews, this council contained not only the repetition of traditional guidelines related to the employment of Christians by Jews and shared commerce, but also the requirement that Jews (like Muslims) wear a distinctive sign.'? Although this canon was not quickly implemented, it has been seen by many scholars as representative of ominous changes. Scholars of Christian society have studied the canons of the Fourth Lateran Council from multiple perspectives, focusing on the definitions of heresy and the guidelines for the sacraments and for the laity that it contains.!° Yet, few studies have studied these perspectives together. The Fourth Lateran Council is central in many of the chapters in this volume, allowing a joint assessment of some of its implications.
As is evident from these words of introduction, by situating French Jews and Christians side by side, we hope to start a more inclusive conversation. Jews were a distinct minority among medieval Christians in France and there is merit in looking at Jews among their neighbors specifically within this century as their position changed quite radically from the beginning to the end of the century. This attempt to discuss Jews and Christians together does not undermine the distinction between the two faith communities. Rather, it serves to emphasize the importance of understanding how the two societies were intertwined—for better or for worse—throughout the period and how this connection developed and unraveled during the thirteenth century.
At the beginning of the century, we see Jews living among their neighbors in relative peace, despite royal demands and insecurity. A major turning point in relations between the King and his Jewish subjects and for their sense of security and self-confidence was the Talmud Trial of 1240 that took place in Paris.'* This was the first time that Christian authorities, led by Pope Gregory IX and King Louis [X of France, felt that they had the legitimate right to intervene and to judge the Jews’ most important post-biblical religious work.'* The subsequent burning of the Talmud seared this breach of trust into the consciousness of French Jews and beyond. From the perspective of Christian-Jewish relations, this event was most significant. The trial highlighted Talmudic passages that seemed to blaspheme Jesus, Mary, and others and that seemed to condone anti-Christian behavior on the part of Jews. All of this contributed to the creation of an atmosphere of suspicion and hatred between Jews and Christians in
France. !°
Yet, as some of the studies in this volume show, some changes came sooner than others. Imperial edicts against Jews or revised halakhic understandings of Christianity preceded suspicion on the ground, as part of daily life (see chapters 9 and 10). Many of these comparisons remain to be further fleshed out, beyond the studies in this book. The chapters presented here are meant to highlight the intellectual, social, and cultural changes that took place in medieval French society during the thirteenth century among both Jews and Christians and the ways these changes related (or did not relate) to each other. The areas explored, in both Jewish and Christian societies, are by no means exhaustive. Rather, we view our efforts as a modest beginning. Our hope is that this book will spark the curiosity of our fellow medievalists to continue exploring this century and its unique features.
A secondary but no less important goal of this collection is to break down the artificial boundaries that divide the various academic disciplines and those that separate “medieval studies” from “Jewish studies.” The inclusion of a wide variety of literary genres and methodologies allows for a broad perspective on cultural and social changes during the thirteenth century as well as shifts in mutual perceptions of Jews and Christians. The overarching goal of this work is to focus attention upon the unique trends that characterized European society and culture during the thirteenth century.
In order to fulfill our goal of illustrating some of the unique features of the thirteenth century as observed in the two faith communities of northern France, we have chosen to focus upon three broad areas of investigation: learning and law and their relationship to society; developments in religious polemics and aspects of persecutory policy; and cultural developments in the areas of literature and art. These include the study of the Bible, legal developments, religious polemic, gender, social history, perceptions of the “other,” language, literature, and art.
Part 1: Learning, Law, and Society
The first section of the book discusses continuity and change relating to law and learning and their impact on society—a focus of many of the major developments during the thirteenth century. Two well-educated canon lawyers, who studied theology as well, became Popes—Innocent III and Gregory [X—initiated some of the events that are seen as crucial to many of the changes that took place during this period, such as the convening of the Fourth Lateran Council under Innocent and its role in formulating religious beliefs, both concerning the Christian communities and the Jewish ones. Definitions of heresy and of the rights and obligations of minorities as well as the emphasis on educating the clergy, and through them the laity, were part of the declared goals of this council. These same Popes were also central in the growing suspicion toward Jewish customs and texts. During the thirteenth century, and specifically in northern France (as well as in Italy) the university developed as an educational institution. Franciscan and Dominican masters of theology played a central role within the confines of the faculty of theology in Paris and their attitudes—both toward the laity and toward the Jews—had an impact on daily life and beliefs. The chapters in this section all relate in different ways to these broad themes and, to some extent, it is our hope that positioning them side by side allows additional insight as well.
Lesley Smith—in her study of thirteenth-century theological commentaries to the Bible and particularly the Ten Commandments—notes that, to a large extent, the commentaries follow the lead of those produced in the twelfth century. The standardization of the university curriculum did not leave much room for innovation. However, once one turns away from the official commentaries to other genres, such as works devised for pastoral care, one finds novel interpretations. Smith points to change outside of the faculty of theology at the university and explains the innovative genres that become typical of post-thirteenth-century scholarship. Smith also demonstrates how one object, the pocket Bible, was central in developments within university studies.
Another central object in this context is the prayer book and, specifically, the Book of Hours, which evolved into an independent book during the late thirteenth century, and this development can be seen prominently in northern France. Margo Stroumsa-Uzan outlines some of these changes during the thirteenth century and looks specifically at the Books of Hours as an object used by women for their personal devotion. She suggests a contrast between the Books of Hours used by women and Psalters used by men. By examining the contents of these books and especially the illuminations chosen for them, she shows how they led to an expansion of secular women’s religious life as part of burgeoning urban culture and lay piety. As she notes, these new trends were of import for Jewish prayer and piety as well as for prayer books created for, and used by, Jews. This theme is further explored from a Jewish perspective in chapter 13 by Sara Offenberg.
Also following Smith and looking at a different aspect of biblical commentary, Ari Geiger writes about the dramatic change between the twelfth and thirteenth centuries concerning Christian Hebraism. He asks why Christian interest in Jewish commentarial traditions to the Bible decreased drastically in the thirteenth century. After offering a number of suggestions such as the turn to an interest in moral—ethical issues and the dominance of the mendicants in the faculties of theology, Geiger goes on to demonstrate that Christian interest in Jewish learning did not disappear, but rather, became focused in other areas of learning, such as Aquinas’ and other theologians’ interest in the Maimonidian synthesis between Aristotelian philosophy and the Bible and those active in religious polemics took new interest in the Talmud.
Moving to the legal realm, Karl Shoemaker writes about change in the application of the “ius commune” in France. His study addresses the law as influenced by legal developments within the universities. He argues that, although content remained much the same due to local and political necessity, with regard to procedure, things did change. According to Shoemaker, from the beginning of the century, French lawyers stood ready to implement modes of trial that they had appropriated from the classical jurists and repurposed for French courts. In these new modes of trial, judges exercised considerable control over the initiation of legal processes, the leveling of charges against suspects, the acquisition of evidence, and the examination of witnesses. These procedures also required literate judges and legions of scribes to record the copious testimonies extracted by the inquests. In short, one could argue that, in France as in much of southwestern Europe, a growing body of professional lawyers worked within a common, learned world of law that was very different from what existed in the previous century.
Whereas the first four chapters focus on broad developments in thirteenth-century Christian society, the fifth chapter in this section by Judah D. Galinsky looks at internal Jewish changes and addresses the new genres of writing among northern French Jews during the thirteenth century. His chapter suggests that northern French Jews, like their Christian counterparts, were more interested in providing accessible knowledge to the laity than their German Jewish colleagues. By comparing between halakhic literature written in northern France with that from Germany, he notes a clear tendency among French scholars to make their work accessible in an attempt to educate the laity—a trend that cannot be found in Germany until the last quarter of the century.
The final chapter in this section by Yossef Schwartz brings together the developments of learning and law to examine the Talmud Trial that took place in Paris in 1240. He points to the unique level of cooperation between the King of France, the Pope, and the university masters during the course of this event, and suggests that such early collaboration should lead to reconsideration of the changing roles the masters of theology played in external matters. According to Schwartz, the evidence from the trial demonstrates that, even before the reign of Philip the Fair, the masters of theology were called upon to assist the monarchy in the process of judgment outside of the university community. By positioning the trial against the Talmud within political developments not related solely to the Jews, Schwartz provides a more integrated understanding of the Talmud Trial within the northern French Christian context.
Part 2: Polemics, Persecutions, and Mutual Perceptions
The second part of the book leads from the more general trends related to knowledge that typified the thirteenth century to the polemic and animosity between Christians and Jews that has been central in previous research. The desire to convert the Jews of northern France has frequently been underlined as well as the general lack of success in this effort.!” So too, the expulsions of the Jews from parts of the French Monarchy—in 1182 (return in 1198), then in 1306 (returned in 1315), and, finally, in 1394—have been central in the history of the relations between northern French Jews and Christians.'* Discussions of these complex relations in our collection include both the outright polemic between Jews and Christians recorded in treatises devoted to polemics as well as comments on converts and on interreligious antagonism and competition.
The chapters in this section of the volume are devoted to providing both assessments of research to date and new perspectives. The chapters by Daniel Lasker and David Berger both look at the treatises that describe the Jewish-Christian polemic. Daniel Lasker focuses on one polemicist—Joseph Official—as a symbol of thirteenth-century French polemic. He studies his rhetoric and structure to demonstrate what typified northern European Jewish polemics. Joseph was from a family originating in Provence and the author argues he was a polemicist by profession. He contends that, unlike the debate in Iberia and southern France with which Joseph was familiar, when writing for a northern European audience, Joseph deliberately avoided philosophical ideas or rational formulations. Rather, he penned a collection of exegetical remarks and biblical interpretations through which he critiqued Christianity. Moreover, his writing is replete with vulgarities and harsh descriptions that were not part of the polemics south of the Alps. In fact, he omits the rationalistic arguments that one could have expected to find in southern polemics. The author explains Official’s writings as the result of the Talmud Trial in the midthirteenth century when northern European Jews felt a need to put to paper a fuller polemic with the Christians, yet Joseph provides a decisively northern French flavor to this polemic.
David Berger, in his wide-ranging essay on both Christian and Jewish polemicists, addresses the question of change and continuity in the JewishChristian debate from the twelfth to the thirteenth century. In the first part of this study, he takes issue with a number of the conclusions found in Amos Funkenstein’s classic article on this topic. According to Berger one cannot find true evidence for the use of ratio as a polemical tool to prove Christian truth before the fourteenth century. The language of ratio as distinct from auctoritas appears and even becomes standard in some Christian works, but it is lacking in polemical force. In the continuation of his study, in agreement with Lasker, he notes the difference in tone between thirteenth-century polemical works written in northern Europe in contrast to those composed in the South. However, according to Berger, it was not the thirteenth century that gave birth to the use of profoundly insulting rhetoric. Rather, this development was the product of Franco-German Jewish culture, as can be found in nonpolemical writing from previous centuries. In the last part of his study Berger, reexamines the two major polemical events that took place in Paris during the thirteenth—century—the famous Talmud Trial of 1240 and the much less known religious debate of 1270 conducted by Pablo Christiani of Barcelona fame. He concludes his study by noting that, in contrast to the twelfth century, there is no evidence that Christians were committed to a serious missionary effort aimed at Jews. Pablo’s missionary activities in both Spain and France reflect a very different reality.
Polemics were not just an expression of antagonism between the religions; they were also an ongoing conversation between them. Another vehicle for expressing sentiments against the other religion—as is evident already in the first part of this book—is legal writings. Admittedly, the existence of a law does not mean that it was in fact observed, but the legal discourse allows for a better understanding of the intent of the legal hierarchy if not of those following their instructions. Writings accompanying laws clarified the intents of their authors. Two chapters in this section look at specific laws and the ideas behind them that were related expressly to Jews and Christians. John Tolan discusses Innocent HI’s attitude toward the Jews at the beginning of the thirteenth century and, specifically, his concern about the polluting effect Jews could have on Christians through their contacts with them. Innocent HI, in accord with earlier church authorities, ruled against Christian presence in Jewish homes as servants and wet nurses and against Christians buying Jewish meat and wine. His reissue of these restrictions is evidence of the extent that they were not strictly observed. However, as Tolan argues, in contrast to previous authorities, Innocent’s numerous letters on the matter reveal a fear of pollution that was unprecedented. Focusing on milk and blood—a matter crucial when discussing wet nurses—Tolan outlines how the concerns raised in the early thirteenth century became more central in conversation about Jews over the next decades.
Moving from Christians to Jews, Ephraim Kanarfogel addresses aspects of the other side of the same coin, Jewish legal discussions of daily contacts with Christians. He collects and analyzes the various legal approaches taken by rabbinic authorities in France and Germany on permissible and forbidden business relations between Jews and Christians. He begins by asking: how exactly were Christians perceived? Were they classic idolaters who were to be avoided in all ways? He demonstrates that, over the course of the late twelfth and early thirteenth centuries, northern European Jews more and more readily did business with Christians and reconsidered classic prohibitions on them that assumed they were idolaters. The main body of his chapter reviews various opinions on buying Christian clerical and ritual objects or taking them as pawns. He demonstrates the complexity of opinions on the matters and a growing hesitancy of some rabbis, alongside lenience on the part of others. He connects these changing opinions with Jewish awareness of Christianity and especially with Jewish perceptions of the growing authority of clergy and their influence on the laity.
Both Tolan and Kanarfogel demonstrate the extent to which Jewish and Christian legal writings—while no longer read, as in the past, as positivistic representations of reality—are a key genre because of their relative richness and the insight they provide on the changing attitudes of members of one religion toward the other. Above all, both chapters show the nuances in the formulations used to address the other religion, alongside a growing reticence, during the thirteenth century.
The final two chapters in this section allow for reflection on the association between theory and social realities and between the prime case study in this book—the Jewish minority and other groups under the church’s scrutiny. Jessica Elliott examines what can be seen as the effects of both the polemic rhetoric and the legal restrictions. She asks how Jewish converts to Christianity were perceived by authors of Christian chronicles. Elliott compares the rhetoric of those who wrote before the Expulsion of 1306 to later authors. As part of the polemic and legal restrictions of the thirteenth century, many Jews did, in fact, convert to Christianity. She studies how these conversions were understood and argues that, while the pre-1306 writers tended to present a positive picture of the Jewish converts, those from the fourteenth century had a decidedly different rhetoric. The later stories contain tales in which Jewish children were forcibly baptized and adult Jews sought baptism, feigning devotion, so that they could desecrate the sacred objects of Christians. These anxieties and doubts provide valuable clues about the Christian understanding of Jewishness and the degree to which Judaism was believed to be inextricably linked to identity after the turn of the fourteenth century in France.
The last chapter in this section provides a unique comparison to the focus on the Jews. Anne E. Lester studies a different group that was being categorized and persecuted by the church—that of religious lay women. She explores how these women, who did not belong to formal orders and who lived in their homes, were redefined in legal documents as mulierculae or little women. Their form of religious life was typical, as she indicates, of the northern French landscape. Lester, in her study, explains how their label— that of little women or even ridiculous or silly women—served multiple purposes and was part of an attempt to marginalize them and their spirituality. She points to the connection between these women and their Jewish neighbors and even to a joint execution of one such woman—Marguerite Porete. She suggests the need to further investigate and recognize the commonalities of lay religious women and Jewish communities. In this way, her chapter provides a path to incorporate medieval Jewish history in France— not just within the narrative of other Jewish communities, but also within the dynamics of classification and categorization of various Christian groups among whom the Jews lived.
Part 3: Cultural Expressions and Appropriations: Art, Poetry, and Literature
As part of our focus not only on persecution or on the world of learned men, but also on the communities that lived side by side, Part 3 looks at art, poetry, and literature. These developed independently from more ancient traditions and also as part of the growing interest in the laity. Within the medieval urban setting, new practices and objects became central during the thirteenth century.
Sara Offenberg looks at a Hebrew prayer book created at the same time as the expanded manufacture of the Books of Hours described above. She examines the Miscellany (which was an expanded prayer book) created by a scribe named Benjamin who may have been from Metz but who used this book and completed it in Paris. This beautiful and elaborate manuscript includes both unique prayers and illustrations. Among them is a poem commemorating a martyr—Samson of Metz, who was burned at the stake in 1276 and an illustration of the biblical Samson. Offenberg seeks to connect between the poem, the biblical illustration, and the scribe of the Miscellany and points to the way Samson was portrayed in picture and prose in light of Jewish-Christian tensions. Her chapter underlines the close connections between Jewish and Christian artists and scribes.
The next two chapters in this section also focus on prayer and poems as the site of creating cultural identities among late-thirteenth-century Jews. In these cases, language—and not art—are at the center of the inquiry, focusing on Jewish prayers written in old French (in Hebrew letters, known as JudeoFrench). Cyril Aslanov examines the 1288 lament from Troyes—written after Jews from this location were burnt at the stake. He uses this lament that has been studied a number of times over the past years as an opportunity to discuss the language spoken by the Jews in northern France and its cultural implications. Aslanov argues for the dependence of the lament on other Hebrew texts but in a less restrictive manner than one would have expected had the poem been in Hebrew. He is especially interested in the factors that led to the development of Judeo-French (a parallel of sorts to Yiddish and Ladino). He argues that, by the late-thirteenth century, French Jews were isolated and distinctive to the extent that they developed their own language, which could have developed further if they had not been expelled. The decision to write in Judeo-French was crucial from his perspective as Jews may have spoken like their neighbors, but writing a prayer required a unique combination between spoken language and particular cultural models.
Addressing a different poem, Susan L. Einbinder provides an analysis of the way an anonymous Old French poet translated a classic Hebrew poem—Ansikha Malki to the chapter, translations by Einbinder and Samuel N. Rosenberg into English of both the original Hebrew and its medieval French translation are during the late thirteenth century. In the appendix provided. Einbinder’s analysis underlines a question that has not received due attention as a result of the paucity of Judeo-French sources. Seeing that the Jews in medieval France did not speak Hebrew, in what way did the French vernacular impact upon their thinking, beliefs, and practices? How would a Judeo-French repertoire (that seems to have existed) alter the way we understand medieval Jewish culture? Much like Stroumsa-Uzan, Einbinder situates the translation of classic Hebrew poetry within the thirteenth-century culture of affective piety and sees it as a symbol of a community that sought to understand Jewish symbols and holiness within the vernacular. Her chapter raises the opportunity to reflect on these aspects of daily life and practice that are only minimally evidenced in the sources that have survived.
Rella Kushelevsky continues the theme of the embeddedness of the Jewish communities in Christian culture by looking at one story from a central northern French Hebrew collection of tales—the Sefer ha-ma ‘asim. Her chapter demonstrates the dependence of the Hebrew tales on medieval French tales that were current. In this case, her examination of the story “A Slave for Seven Years” —a story not known in previous Hebrew versions—is compared to a story with similar contours—the Life of St. Alexis. At the center of the story is the abstinence of a man from his bride. Since abstinence is emblematic of a central difference between Jewish and Christian attitudes toward marriage and sexuality, it allows for an examination of the way medieval Jews adapted themes from their Christian cultural environment. The similarities between the tales, alongside their differences, allow for a better understanding of the way medieval French Jews saw themselves amid their surroundings. This chapter opens an additional cultural frontier for comparative research—that of belles lettres—that has hardly been studied to date.
All in all, we see this section of the book as an invitation for future investigations of independent developments within each culture, but especially of cross-cultural comparisons between Jewish and Christian cultural products such as poems, stories, and art. These contributions also allow expression of aspects of daily ritual and culture that are often overlooked when situating Jews within their surroundings and focusing on relations with the rulers, governing bodies, or anti-Jewish sentiments. The cultural developments point to the ways medieval Jews adapted ideas from their surroundings and expressed them.
The chapters in this volume shift in focus, at times emphasizing cohesion among Jewish communities, inside and outside of northern France, and, at times, preferring geography to religion. These shifting loyalties are not contradictory in our eyes, nor must one chose between one and the other. As the thirteenth century came to a close, but also throughout the entire medieval period, one can assume that Jewish communities would have felt a close affinity to each other, despite cultural differences. Nevertheless, this would not have invalidated a sense of belonging to specific places.
We end this brief introduction with one of the most manifest texts from medieval northern France in which a Jew expresses his “frenchness.” This text was written by an unknown Isaac sometime during the fourteenth or fifteenth century. In his poem, our poet describes his travels from France to Germany.”” Playing with the verse in Jeremiah 51:5 (“For Israel and Judah were not forsaken ki lo alman yisrael’”’), the author uses the Hebrew word alman and the French word Alleman (Germany) to suggest, tongue in cheek, that German Jews are not part of the Jewish people. This poem is both sarcastic and humorous and the impetus for its composition is unknown.
Link
Press Here
0 التعليقات :
إرسال تعليق