Minorities in the Middle Ages

Attitudes toward Jews: the Christian tradition

Teaching of St Paul Augustine Theodosian Code (438 CE)

Jewish settlement

Settlements along the Mediterranean since late antiquity

Ashkenazic migration to the Rhinelands c. 850.

Jewish legal compendium: Mishnah (assembled c. 200 CE)

Collaboration between scholars

Stephen Harding (founder of Cistercian order) and Hugh of St Victor collaborate with Jewish scholars

Rashi (Rabbi Solomon ben Isaac): Jewish scholar who studied and worked in Worms, Mainz and Troyes.

Maimonides.

The role of the Church, from c. 1000

Anti-Semitic theories of Anselm of Laon in the 1090s

Guibert of Nogent Peter the Venerable The Trial of the Talmud in Paris (1236) Nicholas Donin writes to Gregory IX

Myth of the blood libel

Stories act as trigger for anti-Semitic violence. Count of Blois hangs 31 Jews on pretext of ritual murder in 1171.

Paolo Uccello. ‘The Profanation of the Host’.

Usury

Rabbi Isaac of Dampierre (12th c.)

Crusades and anti-Semitic violence

Spring of 1096, roving bands commit violence against the Jews.

Count Emicho of Leiningen destroys Jewish communities in Mainz, Worms and Cologne.

Forced baptisms in Regensburg. 1190 Massacre of Jews in York. William of

Newburgh

In Holy Roman Empire, Jews are slaughtered in Rindfleisch massacres of 1298, the Armleder massacres of 1336-38 and in 47 episodes in the first two years of the Black Death.

Does persecution come from above or below?

Reasons for persecution

R.I. Moore thesis Insecurities (Kenneth Stow)

Expulsion

From England in 1290s In France 1306. Spain and Spanish-ruled Sicily in 1492.

Mudejar Muslims in Iberia

Muslims who have made peace with Christians, agreed to be subject to them.

In exchange for labour and taxes, Muslims receive certain securities.

Violence in 1320-1 Theories of Leon Poliakov, Yitzhak Baer, Norman

Cohn, R.I. Moore (see roots of modern intolerance in Middle Ages). Response of Nirenberg.

Tolerance and intolerance

Theories of Leon Poliakov, Yitzhak Baer, Norman Cohn, R.I. Moore (see roots of modern intolerance and anti-Semitism in Middle Ages).

Response of Nirenberg. Can violence help to reinforce coexistence?