i am posting a note that someone sent me personally, since there seems to
be wider interest in the issue.
At 07:57 AM 12/20/00 -0700, you wrote:
>Hi.
>
>I have no inspiration on your question, but find it fascinating. Could you
>perhaps refer me to any studies on early eleventh-century north-European
>Jewry?
Irving Agus, Heroic Age of Franco-German Jewry and Urban Civilization in
Pre-Crusade Europe: A Study of Organized Town-Life in Northwestern Europe
During the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries based on the Responsa Literature
(Leiden: Brill, 1965), 2 vols.
(tends to be tendentiously apologetic -- jews invented urban life, but the
2 vol. work has an extensive translation of rabbinic responsa from the 11th
cn -- almost nothing before 1000)
Ben-Sasson, H.H., "The "Northern" European Jewish Community and Its
Ideals," Cahiers de Civilisation Mondiale, 11 (1968), 208-19
Grabois, Aryeh, "Les juifs et leurs seigneurs dans la France septentironale
aux XIe et XIIe siecles," in Les juifs dans l'histoire de France, ed.
Myriam Yardeni, (Institut d'histoire et de civilisations francaises de
l'universite de Haifa, Leiden, Brill, 1980), pp.11-23
Grabois, Aryeh, "Remarques sur l'influence mutuelle de l'organisation de la
communaute juive et de la paroisse urbaine dans les villes entre le Rhin et
la Loire a la veille des Croisades," Le istituzioni ecclesiastiche della
"societas christiania" dei secoli XI-XII: Diocesi, pievi e parrochie,
Miscellanea del Centro di Studi Medioevali, 7 (1977), pp.546-58.
(two studies suggesting a mutual influencing of urban structures)
i'm not up on the most recent literature and wd appreciate remarks from
anyone else on the list.
>I would particularly like to know more about Gershom of Mainz.
he's famous, among other things, for introducing: monogamy and a
prohibition on reading someone else's mail. no monograph as yet.
>Could this cultural flowering perhaps be in part a response to the
>development of more popular antisemitism?
how wd hostility from the surrounding culture foster a cultural
renaissance? my sense is that the popular antisemitism is a response to a
countervailing philo-judaism -- just as nazi antisemtism, and more broadly
most anti-modern antisemitism of the Protocols of the Elders of Zion
variety are a reaction to the extensive incorporation of jews into a larger
and more diverse culture.
>Most historians
>argue that popular antisemitism didn't really start until the first
>crusade, but I've recently run across some eucharistic treatises from the
>late tenth century that suggest that scholars tend to
>ignore all the amazing developments of the turn of the millennium.
i have a piece on the earliest anti-jewish pogroms in 1010, in which i
argue that apoc disappointment (1000 and the "failure" of the peace movt)
played a key role in a more aggressive and violent expression of apoc
expectations (1009 and the destruction of the holy sepulcher).
"The Massacres of 1010: On the Origins of Popular Anti-Jewish Violence in
Western Europe," in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in
Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen (Wolfenbüttel: Wolfenbüttler
Mittelalterlichen-Studien, 1996), pp.79-112.
there's lots of evidence for the start of antijewish sentiments in the
liturgy around 1000, much of it laid out in a much-ignored book by Leah
Dasberg, Untersuchungen uber die Entwertung des Judenstatus im 11.
Jahrhundert EPHE VIe (Etudes Juives, 11; Paris, 1965), and in an upcoming
piece by Regula Evitt Meyer in our volume on 1000. i trace some of this my
book on ademar -- an energetic calumniator of the jews; and Michael Hynes
at Columbia has found a good deal of canonical material from the same
period. of course R.I.Moore's reflections on the primacy of the
(imagined?) jewish threat in the Formation of a Persecuting Society wd be
relevant here, esp since he remarks that paradoxically, persecution and
economic devt seem to be linked.
one of the the key issues in anti-judaism is, at what point does the elite
variety (eg theological from people like agobard) jump the gap and become
popular. (i argue that apoc fears serve as the occasion). gavin's
reflections on the broader shift of xnty in this period are very valuable
in pointing the direction, but he seemed to me to be unwilling to even
think of apocalyptic or millennial thinking as playing a role.
richard
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