On Wed, 10 Jan 2001, siemiatk wrote:
> Date: Wed, 10 Jan 2001 17:29:06 -0500
> From: siemiatk <[log in to unmask]>
> Reply-To: Scholarly discussions of medieval religion and culture
> <[log in to unmask]>
> To: [log in to unmask]
> Subject: Re: children and the drama of persecution.
>
> >
> >
> Gavin Langmuir gives a helpful overview of the Josephus and Socrates passages
> in
> his "Thomas of Monmouth: Detector of Ritual Murder" Speculum 59/4 (1984):
> 820-846. He concludes that those two accounts had little circulation in the
Well, in view of the fact that the origins of the blood libel in high
medieval Europe are now less certain, there may be some cause to
reinvestigate the works of Josephus as one source. When Langmuir
discussed the possible influences of the works of Josephus on the blood
libel in his investigations into Thomas of Monmouth, he was thinking only
of English Josephus manuscripts. It is true that no extant English
manuscript of Josephus' works contain the Contra Apionem. However, I
think that there are early Continental copies of the Antiquities that
include a few books of the Contra Apionem--does anyone know what the state
of research of the Latin Contra Apionem is? I am writing a dissertation
about the use and influence of Josephan historical works in 12th and 13th
century England, so the Historia Tripartita is not my specialty, but my
impression is that it was not a particularly obscure work, in England or
on the continent. I have only a dim memory of the manuscript listing in
the German edition and some notes I took on copies listed in Medieval
English catalogues, I admit. As someone writing about the uses and
influence of ancient and early histories in the High Middle Ages, I can at
least testify to the paucity of research on the circulation of these works
throughout the Middle Ages generally.
Karen Kletter
Department of History
University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
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