Violence and Persecution: Medieval Jewish-Christian Relations (original) (raw)
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Feeling persecuted: Christians, Jews and images of violence in the middle ages
2010
Ever since R. I. Moore published his The Formation of a Persecuting Society in 1987, we have increasingly come to understand medieval society in terms of its treatment of its 'others': Jews, lepers, heretics and so forth.(1) New bureaucratic structures starting in the 11th century established themselves by persecuting these minorities. David Nirenberg added importantly to this analysis by showing the role of violence, especially symbolic violence, in enacting and policing these boundaries.(2) And Israel Jacob Yuval opened up another dimension of the historiography by showing how Jews and Christians shared a common language of violence and traded motifs back and forth over the religious barricades: Jews killed their families and themselves in the Crusades in imitation of Christian ideas of martyrdom.(3) Yuval also demonstrated how the ritual murder accusation against Jews played a key role in the production of Christian saints. For the victim-typically a child-to die at the hands of the Jews was to imitate Christ's passion. Violence by Jews was a necessary component in the Christian economy of redemption. Anthony Bale has productively built on these and other works in his brilliant study of the medieval iconography of violence. Drawing primarily-but not exclusively-on English materials, he significantly revises Moore by showing that images of violence were significant methods of inculcating Christian virtues of meekness and clemency. In a paradoxical way, to persecute the Jews was a way of enacting the Christian message of love, since the Jews had rejected that message with violence. Or, as Christopher Ocker has put it, a theology of love was just as responsible for the ritual murder accusation as a theology of hate.(4) Despite appearances to the contrary, Jews were powerful, while Christians were weak, as befit those who imitated Christ. Images of violent Jews reinforced Christians' identities as victims and thus justified their own violent attitudes toward the Jews. And in some cases, this emotional economy operated without actual Jews, such as in England after the Jews had been expelled in 1291. Bale places emphasis on feeling, for he believes that 'if we wish to uncover how medieval people thought, we must take seriously how they felt' (p. 11). As opposed to the Enlightenment hierarchy of reason over the emotions, the Middle Ages sought to inculcate feeling in its iconography, the primary means of communication when literacy was restricted to tiny elites. Love and hate were inextricably intertwined so that images aroused both of these emotions simultaneously and dialectically. In addition, the feelings aroused by images of Jews tormenting Jesus were designed to make those viewing these images feel that the
The linkage between theology -or the ideology of any regnant establishment or intellectual elite, for that matter -and the infliction of physical violence may often appear indirect and questionable, perhaps even tenuous and misleading. In the late ancient and medieval history of Christian-Jewish relations, counter-examples abound. On the one hand, in numerous instances of harshly anti-Jewish preaching -as in John Chrysostom's late fourth-century Antioch, Isidore of Seville and Julian of Toledo's seventh-century Visigothic Spain, and Lyons of the ninthcentury Bishops Agobard and Amulo -little concrete evidence attests to increased physical attacks on Jews or an overall decline in Jewish wellbeing. On the other hand, notwithstanding the vociferous protestations of popes and emperors, late medieval Jewish communities frequently suffered serious losses of life and property as a result of libels of ritual murder, ritual cannibalism (blood libel) and host desecration. Moreover, as we learn from recent studies like David Nirenberg's Communities of Violence, the place of violent behaviour -sporadic, widespread or ritualised -in a given socio-cultural context is often multivalent, serving not only to harm and destroy its targets but perhaps even to stabilize and protect them. And yet, while one ought not blindly to postulate a direct cause-andeffect relationship between Christian theology and anti-Jewish violence in the Middle Ages, one cannot deny that Christian anti-Judaism took its toll in the history of the medieval Jewish experience, and I shall seek here to illustrate some aspects of the complicated process whereby it did. By way of example, I shall consider two manifestations of Christian violence during the high Middle Ages: that inflicted upon the persons
Jews in Medieval Christendom: Slay Them Not
2013
In Jews in Medieval Christendom: Slay Them Not, an international group of scholars from numerous disciplines examines the manifold ways that medieval Christians coped with the presence of Jews in their midst. The collection's touchstone comes from St. Augustine's interpretation of Psalm 59:11: "Slay them not, lest my people forget: scatter them by thy power; and bring them down," as it applied to Jews in Christendom, an interpretation that deeply affected medieval Christian strategies for dealing with Jews in Europe. This collection analyzes how medieval writers and artists, often explicitly invoking Augustine, employed his teachings on these strangers within Christian Europe. Contributors include: Nancy Bishop, Kate McGrath, Irven Resnick, Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, K.M. Kletter, Robert Stacey, Jennifer Hart Weed, Jay Ruud, Kristine T. Utterback, Merrall LLewelyn Price, Eveline Brugger, Birgit Wiedl, Carlee A. Bradbury, Judy Schaaf, Barbara Stevenson, Miriamne Ara Kr...
Iwould like to start my reflections with aquotefrom Isaac Asimov.Inthe first of his Foundation novels, this Russian-born American biochemist and science fiction writer has one of his characters remark that "violence is the lastr efugeo f the incompetent."¹ It is ak een observation-one that,Ibelieve, can be of use when studying the anti-Jewish sentiments that surface frequentlyine arlyC hristian literature of first few centuries of the Common Era.² Now,ofcourse, it goes without saying that it would be wrong genericallyto qualify the emergence of the advanced literary culturethat accompanies the rise of Christianityand that,infact,isone of its defining characteristics,asasign of incompetence. Even so, there is no denying that there is something deeplyunsettling about this literature all the same, specificallyinthe wayitdealswith others in general, and with Jews and Judaism in particular. EarlyC hristian discussions in this area raise fundamental questions. Such questions do not just concern the rationale for the invectivesthatemerge over the course of earlyChristian discussions that deal with Jews and Judaism. They also prompt us to reflect on the larger mechanisms that underlie these debates,aswell as on the social ramifications of the rhetoric strategies that characterize earlyC hristian thinking on the Jews. Before trying to highlight what Ib elievet ob et he crucial features in all of this, let me begin by stating that in this paper my thinkingo nt hese matters