Christian Jewish Relations 1000-1300

Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom

Anna Sapir Abulafia

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781317867708
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Historia
• Subtopic: Historia del mundo

The history of relations between Jews and Christians has been a long, complex and often unsettled one; yet histories of medieval Christendom have traditionally paid only passing attention to the role played by Jews in a predominantly Christian society. This book provides an original survey of medieval Christian-Jewish relations encompassing England, Spain, France and Germany, and sheds light in the process on the major developments in medieval history between 1000 and 1300.

Anna Sapir Abulafia's balanced yet humane account offers a new perspective on Christian-Jewish relations by analysing the theological, socio-economic and political services Jews were required to render to medieval Christendom. The nature of Jewish service varied greatly as Christian rulers struggled to reconcile the desire to profit from the presence of Jewish men and women in their lands with conflicting theological notions about Judaism. Jews meanwhile had to deal with the many competing authorities and interests in the localities in which they lived; their continued presence hinged on a fine balance between theology and pragmatism.

The book examines the impact of the Crusades on Christian-Jewish relations and analyses how anti-Jewish libels were used to define relations. Making adept use of both Latin and Hebrew sources, Abulafia draws on liturgical and exegetical material, and narrative, polemical and legal sources, to give a vivid and accurate sense of how Christians interacted with Jews and Jews with Christians.

part 1

The antecedents of Jewish service

‘Hear in what the Jews serve us, and not without cause.’

(Augustine, Enarrationes in Psalmos 40.14,
ed. Eligius Dekkers and Iohannes Fraipont, CCSL 38, 459)

chapter 1

Augustine and Roman law

Our story starts in the tumultuous events of the first century of the Common Era in the land of Israel which was ruled by the Romans as the province of Judaea. Among the many preachers of the period Jesus gathered a loyal following, which continued to grow after his death around 29 CE. This was the birth of Christianity. In the meantime, Jewish disaffection with Roman rule led to war in 66 CE. Roman victory was coupled with the destruction of the Jewish Temple in 70 CE. The absence of the Temple after that meant that gradually Jews had to adapt their day-to-day religious practices to make up for the fact that they, at least for the time being, could not look to Temple rituals to fulfil their religious obligations. To be sure, many Jews were not working from scratch in this respect. Even while the Temple existed, there were large Jewish communities in places such as Babylon and Alexandria, which had developed religious customs alongside the cultic practices taking place in Jerusalem. Be that as it may, it is fair to say that in the early centuries of the Common Era Jews, as well as Christians, were coming to terms with what one might, very loosely, call biblical Judaism according to their very different perceptions of the meaning of the Hebrew Bible and their new circumstances. Following Israel Yuval, it might well be apposite to describe Jews and Christians engaged in these endeavours at that time as two jealous siblings trying to steal each other’s limelight. The oft-cited biblical imagery of the rivalry between Jacob and Esau would support this. For Jews, Esau represented enemy domination, which from the fourth century included Christian Roman rule; they and only they were Jacob. For Christians, Jews had ceased to be Jacob when they refused to recognise Jesus Christ. They were now Esau, serving his younger brother Jacob, i.e. Christians. Yuval has argued that from this very early period rabbinic thought developed within the framework of a continuous engagement with developing Christianity. For in these early centuries of the Common Era neither Jews nor early Christians lived in hermetically closed communities. They mingled with their Gentile neighbours; many might not have been sure whether they were Jews, Jewish Christians, Christian Jews or Christians. People of different ethnic backgrounds married and it was not always clear to which group their offspring belonged. Rabbinic material of this period might have produced only a few direct and overt polemical references to Christianity, but careful examination of many late antique Jewish customs and legends would seem to indicate a lively response to Christian ideas.¹ But for all of this sibling-type rivalry, Christian theologians used biblical Judaism, rather than nascent rabbinic Judaism, as their point of reference. It was from the Hebrew Bible that they consistently drew proof texts to prove the validity of Christian teachings. In this sense Judaism played more the role of a mother than a sister. Indeed, a major aspect of Christian–Jewish relations in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries was the complicated response of Christians when they realised just how much post-biblical Jewish material had been produced and how important it was to contemporary Jewish life and thought. For centuries Christian theologians had been so intent on proving that Christianity had superseded Judaism that they had assumed Judaism had ceased to develop after 70 CE. They were strengthened in this view by the Augustinian concept of Jewish witness. And this takes us to the leading theologian to provide Christianity with definitive concepts concerning the relationship between Christianity and Judaism.

Augustine

Augustine (354–430) was, of course, preoccupied with much more than just Christian–Jewish relations. The vicissitudes of Rome sustaining attacks by the Visigoths made it necessary for him to think hard about the raison d’être of a Christian Roman empire. To make matters worse, the Visigoths were Arian heretics, who did not accept the teachings of the Church about the relationship between the three persons of the Trinity. Did the lack of safety of Christian Rome cast doubt on the truth of Christianity and the power of its God, as its pagan detractors claimed? Should Christians like himself be involved in the trappings of temporal society? What did Christian participation in politics entail, what was its purpose and how could Christian integrity be preserved? The responses that Augustine gave to these questions in The City of God, which he wrote between 413 and 426, centred on his conception that the whole of mankind was divided into two peoples, the City of God and the earthly City. These cities existed metaphorically in the sense that human beings were destined for one or the other city as they co-existed with each other in the polities where they lived while they were alive. Those who performed all their civic, domestic and religious functions infused with love for God over and above anything else at all times and in all circumstance were pilgrims on their way to the City of God. Those who put anything at all before their love of God were doomed to the earthly City which set what was terrestrial above what was heavenly. Because, according to Augustine, all mankind had been mired in sin ever since the introduction of Original Sin through the fall of Adam, most humans did not truly love God and were members of the earthly City. The main function of polities on earth was to control the wickedness of the majority, who were members of the earthly City, and to institute at least a semblance of order, which would be of benefit to those few who did love God and were en route to the heavenly City. As part of the exercise of curbing evil, polities should help the Church in its fight against heresy. The changing fortunes of political structures mattered little; what mattered was love for God by the elect. But even the elect needed to be tested and purified as they lived their lives surrounded by misery and depravity. They were few in number; within the organisation of the Church, too, many Christians did not really love God and were thus destined for damnation in the earthly City. It was within the context of ideas like these that Augustine thought about the meaning of the Hebrew Bible and the fact that Jews continued to exist as Jews. What could God’s plan be?²

Augustine referred to Jews and Judaism repeatedly throughout his vast oeuvre which included a Treatise against the Jews, which he composed in the final year of his life. His singular contribution to Christian–Jewish relations was the way he assigned to Jews the role of Testimonium veritatis, i.e. of being the witnesses to the truth of Christianity. Augustine worked out most of the elements of his witness theory during the period that he was Bishop of Hippo, in north Africa (396–430). Augustine explained the continuing existence of Jews in terms of the service Jews performed to Christians by carrying the books of the Hebrew Bible which, in his view, contained the prophecies concerning Jesus Christ. In so doing, they counteracted pagan claims that Christians had forged the Old Testament in order to establish the validity of their religion. Jews carried their law as the mark of Cain; as Cain they should not be killed. As Augustine said in his commentary on Psalm 40(1):

‘The elder will serve the younger’ has now been fulfilled, brothers, the Jews serve us now, they are, as it were, our book carriers, they carry the books for us as we study. Hear in what the Jews serve us, and not without cause. Cain, that elder brother, who killed the younger brother, received a sign so that he would not be killed, in the same way that people should survive. They have the prophets and the law in which law and in which prophets Christ has been prophesied. When we argue with the pagans and we show that what before was predicted about the name of Christ, the head and body of Christ is now fulfilled in the Church of Christ, we bring out the books of the Jews so that they do not think that we made up those prophecies and wrote up the things which happened as if they were in the future. To be sure, the Jews are our enemies, [and so] by the writings of the enemy the adversary is beaten.³

Augustine continued this theme in his exegesis of verse 12 of Psalm 58(9), which in the Vulgate reads as ‘God shall let me see over my enemies: slay them not, lest at any time my people forget. Scatter them by thy power; and bring them down, O Lord, my protector.’ The version of the Bible Augustine was using seems to have rendered the passage as ‘… slay them not, lest at any time they forget your law …’.⁴ He wrote:

What of the Jews ‘slay them not, lest they forget your law’? Do not kill those enemies of mine, who killed me. Let the Jewish people survive: certainly they were defeated by the Romans, certainly their city was destroyed and they were not admitted to their city, and yet there are Jews. For all those provinces were subjected to the Romans. Who knows the peoples who have made up the Roman Empire, when all were made Romans and are called Romans? But the Jews survive with a sign and they have not been conquered in such a way that they were absorbed by the conquerors. It is not without cause that they are like Cain, in whom God placed a sign when he had killed his brother, so that no one would kill him. This is the sign which the Jews have: everywhere they take with them the remnants of their law; they are circumcised, they observe the Sabbath, keep Passover, and eat unleavened bread. Therefore there are Jews, they have not been killed, they are necessary for the peoples who believe. Why?… He shows his mercy by way of the engrafted olive tree from which branches have been pruned through pride. Behold, the place where those who were proud lie rejected, behold the place where you, who lay rejected, have been engrafted; and do not be proud so that you do not merit to be cut off yourself (cf. Romans 11: 17ff).… ‘Scatter them by your power’. This has already happened: the Jews are dispersed among all the peoples, as witnesses of their iniquity and of our truth. For they have the writings in which Christ was prophesied and we have Christ.⁵

In The City of God, Augustine explained that Psalm 58(9) says ‘disperse’ them because the Church needs the Jews to witness to its truth everywhere and not just in Judaea. The dispersion of the Jews and their subjugation to others was the consequence of their repudiation of Christ and his Crucifixion. In his earlier treatise against the Manichean dualist heretic Faustus he had posited that Jewish survival showed believers the just punishment of those who killed Christ.⁶

Augustine’s idea of Jewish witness was premised on his view that the Hebrew Bible or Old Testament prefigured the New. Even Jewish blindness to the truth of Christ’s teachings accorded with what was prophesied in the Hebrew Bible. His views on Jews were thus, apart from anything else, an integral part of his continuing fight against Manicheans like Faustus who rejected the validity of the Old Testament. The importance of revisiting the prophecies concerning Christ in the Old Testament is demonstrated by Augustine’s feeling that Christians should continue to engage in polemics against Jews, even if their words fell on deaf ears. Their conversion at the end of time as prophesied by St Paul remained a given.⁷ To sum up, Augustine’s witness theory postulated that there was space, even a need for Jews in Christian society. But that need was predicated on the concept of Jewish service which transformed Jews into a Christian mnemonic device and unwitting witnesses for Christianity. In this way of thinking even Jewish lack of belief served to corroborate Christianity. Jews did not exist in their own right as active agents of their own Jewish destiny. They existed in a kind of limbo, frozen in their role as passive book carriers, reminding Christians of what had gone by, while at the same time held on hold in the expectation of their eventual conversion in the future. Or to use Augustine’s own words: the Jews ‘have been turned into milestones for them: they have shown something to travellers on their way but they themselves have remained senseless and unmoving’.⁸

The idea that Jews, however wrong-minded Christians thought them to be, should be safeguarded was, of course, embedded in Paul’s prophecy that at the end of time the remnant of the Jews would convert to Christ. It goes without saying that this conversion, which would marshal in the end, could not happen if there were no ‘professing’ Jews left. Paul’s conviction that eventually Jews would become Christians was based on his idea that although Jews were wrong not to have recognised Christ as their Messiah, they had not altogether lost God’s love. They had been justly cast aside for the moment, but Paul admonished Gentile followers of Christ not to gloat over the misfortune of the Jews. Jewish disbelief was part of God’s plan because it served to bring in the non-Jews to Christ. Using the image of a mature cultivated olive tree in his Letter to the Romans, which he wrote around the middle of the first century, Paul described how the non-believing Jewish branches of the tree had been pruned and the pagan believing branches had been grafted in their place. But the root of the tree retained its Jewish nature and the hope was nurtured for an eventual return of the pruned branches to the root that bore them (Romans 11). We have seen an example of how Augustine used Pauline imagery in his ideas of Jewish survival and his assessment of the necessary nature of Jewish service to Christianity.

Rome and the destruction of the Temple

But Augustine was also a Roman in touch with Roman ideas about Jews and experiencing Roman laws concerning the Jews. For all its misgivings about Jewish customs such as observing the Sabbath and refraining from the consumption of pork and for all its revulsion at the practice of circumcision, pagan Rome had recognised Judaism as a licit religion. This entailed Jews being allowed to live their lives according to their own traditions. Crucially this meant that, as far as their role in Roman society was concerned, Jews were exempt from activities which would offend their monotheistic principles. So, although they were required to pray for the safety of the emperor, they were not required to partake in the imperial cult. A well-established Jewish community existed in Rome by t...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Table of Contents
• Series editor’s preface
• Preface
• Publisher’s acknowledgements
• Abbreviations
• Maps
• part 1 The antecedents of Jewish service
• part 2 The political and socio-economic realities of Jewish service
• part 3 The religious and cultural ambiguities of Jewish service
• Further Reading
• Index