Tweren't I that used the term. I don't think that I referred to Chaucer's
attitude towards Jews at all.
None of the below is exactly news to me. Worth noting that to Jews the idea
that he whose name cannot be spoken had a child is at best risible, and was
taken a lot more seriously at the time it was introduced.
As of the 14th Century all Jews were Rabbinic Jews (ok, there were a few
scattered sects of no great number who still practiced animal sacrifice).
Beginning with the First Crusade there were a series of pogroms,
ghettoizations and expulsions in Europe, including the expulsion from
England in 1250 (did I get the date right?). Few of my ancestors cared much
whether they were being slaughtered for reasons of blood or belief. In
practical terms there wasn't a whole lot of difference. But I do understand
your interest in the origin of European racism.
At 07:30 PM 9/20/2000 +0100, you wrote:
>(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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