LernerReviewThe Feast of Saint Abraham
Transcript of LernerReviewThe Feast of Saint Abraham
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Review: [untitled]Author(s): David BurrReviewed work(s):
The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews by Robert E. LernerSource: The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 317-318Published by: Catholic University of America PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25025941Accessed: 08/09/2009 11:41
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BOOK REVIEWS 317
have made possible a much more detailed picture of the topic. Attention is
given to the geography and to the castle-building which resulted from the divi
sion of Castile and Le?n into two kingdoms between 1157 and 1230. Also con
sidered are the properties of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre which were
incorporated into the Hospital in 1498. There are studies of parish churches,
hospitals, rural hermitages, and minor chapels, and of the sumptuous palaces of
early-modern commanders. Initially donations were important in providing
many of these buildings, while the Hospital itself created others. Then, from the
fifteenth century onwards, patronage came to depend increasingly on the in
tervention of individual commanders. That was partly because the Hospital'sbenefices came under the control of a nobility whose members were in partfreed from the technical constraints of their vows of
povertyand were con
cerned to ensure themselves comfortable living conditions, to advertise their
family wealth, to secure ostentatious burial, and to display their family arms. The
author's awareness of such historical factors informs her artistic appreciations
making this a useful and attractive work.
Bath, England
Anthony Luttrell
The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews. By Robert
E. Lerner. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001. Pp. viii, 186. $35.00.)
In this intriguing study Robert Lerner describes what he sees as a Joachitetradition concerning the role of the Jews in an apocalyptic future time. He be
gins in the twelfth century with Joachim of Fiore and ends in the fifteenth withNicholas of Buldesdorf. Along the way he pays particular attention to the
thirteenth-century Franciscans (especially Peter John Olivi), John of Rupe
scissa, Frederick of Brunswick, and Francesc Eiximenis.
According to Lerner joachim went well beyond the common medieval view
that in the period after Antichrist the Jews would be converted to Christianity.Instead he anticipated a third age of history marked by "a mutually beneficial
union of Christians and Jews." The Holy Spirit would offer clarification of both
the Old and New Testaments. The new people profiting from this clarification
would be, in Lerner's words, "neither Jew nor Gentile but 'spiritual.'"
We are then shown how the various authors considered by Lerner fit into
what is in some ways a linear progression. While all anticipated a new age that
would involve Jewish-Christian reconciliation, neither Joachim nor Olivi
showed much interest in delineating a particular messianic figure who would
play a major role in its inception. Rupescissa connected the new age with such
a person; then Frederick of Brunswick wrote himself into the scenario as a Johnthe Baptist heralding that person; and finally Nicholas of Buldesdorf completedthe process by suggesting that he himself was the messianic figure.
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318 BOOK REVIEWS
Nevertheless, the central question posed by this study cannot be answered in
terms of linear development. Joachim offered a tantalizing suggestion that the
third age would involve much more than the Jews simply converting to Chris
tianity; yet Olivi thought in terms of straightforward Jewish conversion. So did
Rupescissa, but he complicated the matter by predicting that the converted
Jews would become an imperial nation, an idea he never quite reconciled with
the Joachite-Olivian notion of Jews and Gentiles merging into a single people.Frederick of Brunswick too predicted that the converted Jews would presideover an empire. Eiximenis changed his opinion frequently but returned late in
life to the Joachite notion of synthesis, predicting an age in which the saints of
the Old Testament would be honored along with those of the New. The feasts
of Adam and Abraham would take theirplace
in the calendaralongside
those of
Francis and Dominic. Nicholas of Buldesdorf echoed the idea of a Jewish world
empire but added a new element: The Jews would "live according to the law of
the God of their fathers," by which he meant "the law of Moses," which suggeststhat their religion would remain distinct even in the third age. Thus the question of what would be left of Judaism was answered in a variety of ways dis
playing not linear development but a kaleidoscopic series of changes.
Lerner sees that these writers are significant not only for what they said but
for when they said it. At a time when "the Jews were becoming pariahs," these
men "held to the view that Jews had a special dignity."
Virginia TechDavid Burr
Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait. ByWilliam J. Courtenay. [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought,
Fourth Series, 4L] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Pp. xix,284. $64.95.)
This isWilliam J. Courtenay s third book on medieval universities, students,
and masters. It is definitely his most unusual; in its mix of urban topography,
prosopography, university financial records, and a criminal law case, it is even a
path-breaking book.
The genesis of the book came about with Courtenay's recovery or re-discoveryof a document from the University of Paris, a computus (financial record) from
1329-30. Written on the last quire of the oldest surviving register of the proctorsof the English-German nation at Paris, it is a list of university faculty and students
who contributed money for a special legal fund for the defense of a student ac
cused of rape.
Part I consists of three chapters describing the computus (its text is con
tained in App. l),how such collections were made, and the precipitating event:
the rape of a woman named Symonette. The quire containing the computushad been folded incorrectly when itwas inserted into its codex; by rearranging