CAS RN 470/770
* HI 407/707 * STH TX871
Topics in Medieval Religious Cultures
Fall 2006: Religious
Cultures in Contact and Conflict: Jewish-Christian Encounter
| Professor: Deeana Klepper Office Hours: Monday 1:00 - 2:00 Tuesday 11:30 - 12:30 and by appointment 147 Bay State Road, Room 408 617 358-0186 dklepper@bu.edu |
Course Description |
Course Description
The relationship between Jews and Christians in medieval Europe was extremely complex and marked by many contradictions. Though they comprised distinct communities with distinct cultures, to a great extent Jews and Christians lived side by side in relative harmony until the twelfth century. After that point, conditions for Jews deteriorated: restrictions on Jewish economic activity and social interaction, ritual murder charges, the trial and burning of the Talmud, and forced sermons and disputations culminated in the expulsion of Jews from much of Western Europe in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries. But even during that precarious time, the two communities continued to influence each other. This seminar will explore positive as well as negative encounters between Jews and Christians in Medieval Europe and wrestle with the difficult question of toleration and its limits in medieval context. Subjects will include social relations, economic ties, intellectual and cultural exchanges and influences, the Crusades, conversion, the attack on the Talmud, changing images of the Other, Christian missionizing and the expulsion of Jews from western lands.Course Requirements:
Students are expected to attend and participate in every class. All reading is to be completed before the class for which it is assigned. Graded work for the seminar will include class participation (15%) 3 four-page papers (20% each) and a final research paper (25%). Students will also be expected to initiate discussion on at least one week's reading. The class participation grade will be based on attendance, the level of your preparedness to discuss the material, your leadership of discussion on your assigned week, and your general involvement in the seminar. Please note that students must complete all written work in order to receive a passing grade for the class.
Plagiarism Policy:
Click here to read my plagiarism policy. I will adhere strictly to this policy; students caught plagiarizing will receive an F for the course as well as for the assignment in question. Since ignorance is no excuse, please take the time to read my policy and the linked CAS academic conduct pages carefully and ask questions if you are ever uncertain about using and citing sources appropriately.Required Books:
Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family
Life in Medieval Europe
Marc Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross.
The Jews in the Middle Ages
Gilbert Dahan, The Christian
Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages
Jonathan Elukin, Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian
Relations in the Middle Ages
Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and
Tolerance
R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society
David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the
Middle Ages
Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews
Also: a collection of articles available in pdf format on the courseinfo site and a number of internet documents linked directly to the course syllabus. Copies of required books will be held on 24 hour reserve in Mugar Library.
Assignments:
Students will be asked to write three four-page papers over the course of the semester. There will be six different paper topics linked to specific weeks on the syllabus, and students may choose whichever three they wish. Undergraduate students will write a research paper (15 pages) on a topic of their own choosing. Graduate students should prepare the final paper in the form of a bibliographic (or historiographic) essay.
Schedule:
September 11 Introduction to Medieval Jewish-Christian Relations
Reading: The Letter of Paul to the Galatians, chapters 1-4, and The Letter of Paul to the Romans, chapters 9-11 (any version of the New Testament will do; these online links are just here for your convenience); excerpts from Augustine; Gavin Langmuir, "Majority History and Post-biblical Jews," Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, 21-41 [courseinfo]; Anna Sapir Abulafia, "From Northern Europe to Southern Europe and from the General to the Particular: Recent Research on Jewish-Christian Coexistence in Medieval Europe," Journal of Medieval History 23 (1997), 179-190 [courseinfo].
September 18 The Jewish Presence in Europe: Sepharad and Ashkenaz
Readings: Mark Cohen, Under Crescent and Cross: The Jews in the Middle Ages; Trade routes of the Radanites; Settlement charter in Speyer
September 25 Economic Ties
Readings: Joseph Shatzmiller, Shylock Reconsidered, 84-126 [courseinfo]; Robert Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 197-217 [courseinfo]; Jewish Christian partnership in Barcelona 1242.
Paper Topic 1 (due at the start of class)
October 2 Intellectual Exchange (Class meeting to be rescheduled)
Readings: Aryeh Graboïs, "The Hebraica Veritas and Jewish-Christian Intellectual Relations in the Twelfth Century" Speculum 50 (1975), 613-634 (access on line via JSTOR); Joseph Shatzmiller, Jews, Medicine and Medieval Society [courseinfo].
Paper Topic 2 (due in my mailbox by 2 PM Thursday, October 5)
Tuesday October 10 (Rescheduled Columbus Day Class) Tolerance and Intolerance I
Readings: Cary Nederman, "Discourses and Contexts of Tolerance in Medieval Europe," Beyond the Persecuting Society. Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, J. Laursen and C. Nederman, eds., 13-24 [courseinfo]; Jacob Katz, Exclusiveness and Tolerance, Chapters 1, 3, 4, 6, 8; Gary Remer, "Ha-Me'iri's Theory of Religious Toleration," Beyond the Persecuting Society. Religious Toleration before the Enlightenment, 71-91 [courseinfo].
October 16 Tolerance and Intolerance II
Readings: R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society; J. Cohen, "Scholarship and Intolerance," American Historical Review 91 (1986), 592-613 [available on JSTOR]; Selections from the Fourth Lateran Council: A-general; B-heresy; C-Jews; Innocent III on the Jews.
Paper Topic 2a (due at the start of class)
October 23 Acculturation
Readings: Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe.
Paper Topic 3 (due at the start of class)
October 30 Crusades and Crusading Mentalities
Readings: German Pilgrimage; Fulcher of Chartres on Urban II's sermon on Crusade; Bernard of Clairvaux, In Praise of the New Knighthood; Hebrew account of the Mainz massacre, 1096; Two Latin accounts of the massacre; Map of Europe at the time of the First Crusade; Map of Crusader States ca. 1100; Susan Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France [courseinfo]; Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade [courseinfo].
Paper Topic 4 (due at the start of class)
November 6 Polemic and Disputation
Readings: G. Dahan, The Christian Polemic against the Jews in the Middle Ages; Daniel Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the Middle Ages, 1-24; 153-168 [courseinfo]; Gilbert Crispin; Toledot Yeshu
November 13 The Blood Libel and Host Desecration Accusations
Readings: M. Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews; R. Chazan, Church, State, and Jew in the Middle Ages, 123-128 [courseinfo]. OPTIONAL: G. Langmuir, "The Knight's Tale of Young Hugh of Lincoln," Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, 237-262 [courseinfo].
Paper Topic 5 (due at the start of class)
November 20 Imaging the Other
Readings: Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible Moralisée [courseinfo] ; Marc Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature [courseinfo].
November 27 Conversion
Readings: R. Stacey, "The conversion of Jews to Christianity in thirteenth-century England," Speculum 67 (1992), 263-283 [available on JSTOR]; Gerald of Wales on two monks converting to Judaism; Jonathan Elukin, “From Jew to Christian? Conversion and Immutability in Medieval Europe,” Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (1997), 171-189 [courseinfo]; B. Kedar, "Multidirectional conversion in the Frankish Levant," Varieties of Conversion, 191-199 [courseinfo].
December 4 Expulsion
Readings: W. C. Jordan, "Princely Identity and the Jews in Medieval France," Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 11 (Wiesbaden, 1996), 257-273 [courseinfo]; D. Klepper, Jewish Expulsion and Jewish Exile in Scholastic Thought; Edict of Expulsion of the Jews from Spain (1492); An Italian Hebrew account of the Spanish Expulsion.
Paper Topic 6 (due at the start of class)
December 11 New Approaches to Understanding Christian-Jewish Violence
Readings: D. Nirenberg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages.