(Apologies for yet another post in strife with the comma....)
Can't say exactly what you mean by what such a distinction meant in the 14th
c. - only that the rhetoric, say, of Chaucer's time was neither anti-Semitic
( cf. below in this point) given the later development of the ideas which
underlay such a notion; not Anti-Jewish, seeing as, historically, 'Judaism'
bifurcated around 70 C.E. due, ultimately, to the doings of Titus and
Vespasian, but, particularly, to the Councils held at Javneh ( or Jamnia)
from c. 70-73 on, which laid the groundwork for Rabbinic Judaism ( marking
the ascendancy of the Rabbis and ( successors of the 'Sages' such as Hillel
etc. cf. Urbach's 'The Sages' ( trans. 2nd ed. 1975 ) over the Priesthood
and, what's more, over both the Sadducees and Pharisees, for Post-Temple
Religious authority - instanced in a Patriarch [NaSi] - ( though one could
argue that Rabbinism derived from a sub-section of the Pharisaic party) in
the organisation of a novel, post-temple, dispensation.) Of a part with this
was the rejection of the Christian party by this new 'Rabbinic' Judaism (
cf. Jacob Neusner on this topic), but that was rejection from what was
previously only an element in Temple 'Judaism' ( alongside the Essenes,
Pharisees, Sadducees etc.) - indeed, as much of an element as Xianity itself
( though both broadly belonged to the Pharisaic wing, rejecting the
Aristocratic Sadducees.) Not to say that there wasn't Anti-Judaism in
Xianity - this can best be seen in persons such as Marcion etc. ( i.e. the
Gnostics) who argued that the God of the Tanach ( O.T.) was either a lower
god ( demiourgos) or even the god of darkness presented in Manichean or
Zoroastrian cosmologies - the God of Xst being the 'god of light' and what
have you; but such ( let me say it!) Heretics were dealt with ( cf.
Patristics passim!)
Note also the actions of the Church against elements of Rabbinic learning,
such as the Talmud - and the r e a s o n s for such actions - in the
Middle Ages ( and later)
Vis-a-vis Anti-Semitism, the only trace, and it only comes to that, is in
the rhetoric of 'blood' and the 'purity of blood' that certain Spaniards
utilised in the late 15th cent. following the repulsion of Islam. Netanyahu
( The Origins of the Spanish Inquisition - which has a new issuing in the
offing) traces such talk and the resistance to it from the monarchy,
Ferdinand and Isabella, and also from the successive Popes who received
submissions on the topic from Spain. What, and this is a point by the by,
Netanyahu omits is any solid historical examination of the concept of race,
indeed, I read one review which gave an appraisal of the work as giving some
ahistorical conspiracy theory of Europe against the Jews. Though I think
it's more exacting than that ( and, apart from Kamen's work on the topic,
about the only historically worthwhile) , Netanyahu does indeed omit to
study the origins and ideas behind such a notion of 'blood' etc. and their
continuity or, as I'd argue, complete discontinuity with the nineteenth
century's attempted definitions of biological/physiological 'race' (
leading, as they did, to the National Socialist science on the topic.)
Ergo: to talk of Chaucer as 'anti-Semitic, as y'did, is to be anachronistic
and, what's more, to be not conscious enough of the rather insane
complexities involved. As I say, pedantic, but pertinent...
ColinGHughes
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