My use of the word "communitarianism" is an attempt to express the idea of
the communism propounded in the Acts of the Apostles, ie. "from each
according to means and to each according to need." Unfortunately the term
has become too polemical nowadays to be used, hence that miserable term
"communitarianism". I see little of that spirit in Jewish communities
during the late twelfth and thirteenth centuries, though it would be a
miracle if some did not express it.
As to equality, the small, really tiny, Jewish communities certainly did
not have a formally demarcated nobility nor, except in Muslim or ex-Muslim
areas, any slaves (or "serfs"). But there were also many egalitarian
groups among the Christian majority, like artisan and shopkeeping gilds
and - most significant of all - monastic communities. As with the Jews,
insofar as I have read, and as with ourselves today, their lack of
formally demarcated orders did not mean that either economically or
educationally all were equal within the community. And women do seem to
me to be a key exemplification of egalitarianism, rare though it was at
the time - save in literature and the life "spiritual".
Lastly, in the periods with which I deal, most of the polemical attempts
to denigrate the "heretics" did it by assimilating them to long since
condemned late classical divergencies, calling them Manichaeans and
Arians, for example. There were, of course, especially in Italy and
Sicily (and perhaps Iberia, though I've not read about it there, being
weak on that peninsula's history), fears and polemics about Judaizing
rather like those in early modern Russia. I don't assert this point - the
lack of anti-Jewish commonplaces - with pertinacity, however, because, as
is often the case, the secondary sources guiding one to the primary texts
may have failed to direct attention to anti-Jewish themes. John Mundy
%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%
|