Alienated Minority

Alienated Minority PDF Author: Kenneth Stow
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674044050
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

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Book Description
This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era. Alienated Minority shows us what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in the Middle Ages. The story begins in the fifth century, when autonomous Jewish rule in Palestine came to a close, and when the papacy, led by Gregory the Great, established enduring principles regarding Christian policy toward Jews. Kenneth Stow examines the structures of self-government in the European Jewish community and the centrality of emerging concepts of representation. He studies economic enterprise, especially banking; constructs a clear image of the medieval Jewish family; and portrays in detail the very rich Jewish intellectual life. Analyzing policies of Church and State in the Middle Ages, Stow argues that a firmly defined legal and constitutional position of the Jewish minority in the earlier period gave way to a legal status created expressly for Jews, who in the later period were seen as inimical to the common good. It was this special status that paved the way for the royal expulsions of Jews that began at the end of the thirteenth century.

Alienated Minority

Alienated Minority PDF Author: Kenneth Stow
Publisher: Harvard University Press
ISBN: 9780674044050
Category : Social Science
Languages : en
Pages : 364

Get Book Here

Book Description
This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era. Alienated Minority shows us what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in the Middle Ages. The story begins in the fifth century, when autonomous Jewish rule in Palestine came to a close, and when the papacy, led by Gregory the Great, established enduring principles regarding Christian policy toward Jews. Kenneth Stow examines the structures of self-government in the European Jewish community and the centrality of emerging concepts of representation. He studies economic enterprise, especially banking; constructs a clear image of the medieval Jewish family; and portrays in detail the very rich Jewish intellectual life. Analyzing policies of Church and State in the Middle Ages, Stow argues that a firmly defined legal and constitutional position of the Jewish minority in the earlier period gave way to a legal status created expressly for Jews, who in the later period were seen as inimical to the common good. It was this special status that paved the way for the royal expulsions of Jews that began at the end of the thirteenth century.

A Civil Society with no Hierarchy

A Civil Society with no Hierarchy PDF Author: Ilie Badescu
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 166690371X
Category : Law
Languages : en
Pages : 349

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Book Description
Ilie Bădescu and Joseph Livni follow the footsteps of two giants who pioneered the field: H. H. Stahl of Romania, who studied the sociology of communal societies, and D. J. Elazar of the United States, who studied the political science of covenantal societies. This collection sheds light on obscure corners of the field, gathering up thoughts and concepts of many other sources of past and contemporary research in the field. In this volume, the reader will find answers to difficult questions like: How did acephalous societies penetrate civilization? How did they manage to preserve their egalitarian ethos? Why did powerful hierarchies work in partnership with them? And, most importantly, how did covenantal societies work around the constraints of a civilized reality? The history of civilization consists of various degrees of stratified configurations ranging from oligarchic city states to powerful pyramidal empires.

Popes and Jews, 1095-1291

Popes and Jews, 1095-1291 PDF Author: Rebecca Rist
Publisher: Oxford University Press
ISBN: 0198717989
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 352

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Book Description
In Popes and Jews, 1095-1291, Rebecca Rist explores the nature and scope of the relationship of the medieval papacy to the Jewish communities of western Europe. Rist analyses papal pronouncements in the context of the substantial and on-going social, political, and economic changes of the eleventh, twelfth, and thirteenth centuries, as well the characters and preoccupations of individual pontiffs and the development of Christian theology. She breaks new ground in exploring the other side of the story - Jewish perceptions of both individual popes and the papacy as an institution - through analysis of a wide range of contemporary Hebrew and Latin documents. The author engages with the works of recent scholars in the field of Christian-Jewish relations to examine the social and legal status of Jewish communities in light of the papacy's authorisation of crusading, prohibitions against money lending, and condemnation of the Talmud, as well as increasing charges of ritual murder and host desecration, the growth of both Christian and Jewish polemical literature, and the advent of the Mendicant Orders. Popes and Jews, 1095-1291 is an important addition to recent work on medieval Christian-Jewish relations. Furthermore, its subject matter - religious and cultural exchange between Jews and Christians during a period crucial for our understanding of the growth of the Western world, the rise of nation states, and the development of relations between East and West - makes it extremely relevant to today's multi-cultural and multi-faith society.

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland

Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland PDF Author: Magda Teter
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
ISBN: 1139448811
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 310

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Book Description
Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland takes issue with historians' common contention that the Catholic Church triumphed in Counter-reformation Poland. In fact, the Church's own sources show that the story is far more complex. From the rise of the Reformation and the rapid dissemination of these new ideas through printing, the Catholic Church was overcome with a strong sense of insecurity. The 'infidel Jews, enemies of Christianity' became symbols of the Church's weakness and, simultaneously, instruments of its defence against all of its other adversaries. This process helped form a Polish identity that led, in the case of Jews, to racial anti-Semitism and to the exclusion of Jews from the category of Poles. This book portrays Jews not only as victims of Church persecution but as active participants in Polish society who as allies of the nobles, placed in positions of power, had more influence than has been recognised.

Jews and Converts in Late Medieval Castile

Jews and Converts in Late Medieval Castile PDF Author: Cecil Reid
Publisher: Routledge
ISBN: 1000374653
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 283

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Book Description
Jews and Converts in Late Medieval Castile examines the ways in which Jewish-Christian relations evolved in Castile, taking account of social, cultural, and religious factors that affected the two communities throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The territorial expansion of the Christian kingdoms in Iberia that followed the reconquests of the mid-thirteenth century presented new military and economic challenges. At the same time the fragile balance between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Peninsula was also profoundly affected. Economic and financial pressures were of over-riding importance. Most significant were the large tax revenues that the Iberian Jewish community provided to royal coffers, new evidence for which is provided here. Some in the Jewish community also achieved prominence at court, achieving dizzying success that often ended in dismal failure or death. A particular feature of this study is its reliance upon both Castilian and Hebrew sources of the period to show how mutual perceptions evolved through the long fourteenth century. The study encompasses the remarkable and widespread phenomenon of Jewish conversion, elaborates on its causes, and describes the profound social changes that would culminate in the anti-converso riots of the mid-fifteenth century. This book is valuable reading for academics and students of medieval and of Jewish history. As a study of a unique crucible of social change it also has a wider relevance to multi-cultural societies of any age, including our own.

Pulp fictions of medieval England

Pulp fictions of medieval England PDF Author: Nicola McDonald
Publisher: Manchester University Press
ISBN: 1847795579
Category : Literary Criticism
Languages : en
Pages : 260

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Book Description
This electronic version has been made available under a Creative Commons (BY-NC-ND) open access license. Pulp Fictions of Medieval England demonstrates that popular romance not only merits and rewards serious critical attention, but that we ignore it to the detriment of our understanding of the complex and conflicted world of medieval England.

Abraham Bar Hiyya on Time, History, Exile and Redemption

Abraham Bar Hiyya on Time, History, Exile and Redemption PDF Author: Hannu Töyrylä
Publisher: BRILL
ISBN: 9004276890
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 550

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Book Description
An analysis of Megillat ha-Megalleh by Abraham Bar Hiyya (12th c.) as a complete text in its historical and cultural context, showing that the work - written at a time when Jews increasingly came under Christian influence and dominance – presents a coherent argument for the continuing validity of the Jewish hope for redemption. In his argument, Bar Hiyya presents a view of history, the course of which was planted by God in creation, which runs inevitably towards the future redemption of the Jews. Bar Hiyya uses philosophical, scientific, biblical and astrological material to support his argument, and several times makes use of originally Christian ideas, which he inverts to suit his argument.

Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete

Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete PDF Author: Rena N. Lauer
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press
ISBN: 0812295919
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 305

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Book Description
When Venice conquered Crete in the early thirteenth century, a significant population of Jews lived in the capital and main port city of Candia. This community grew, diversified, and flourished both culturally and economically throughout the period of Venetian rule, and although it adhered to traditional Jewish ways of life, the community also readily engaged with the broader population and the island's Venetian colonial government. In Colonial Justice and the Jews of Venetian Crete, Rena N. Lauer tells the story of this unusual and little-known community through the lens of its flexible use of the legal systems at its disposal. Grounding the book in richly detailed studies of individuals and judicial cases—concerning matters as prosaic as taxation and as dramatic as bigamy and murder—Lauer brings the Jews of Candia vibrantly to life. Despite general rabbinic disapproval of such behavior elsewhere in medieval Europe, Crete's Jews regularly turned not only to their own religious courts but also to the secular Venetian judicial system. There they aired disputes between family members, business partners, spouses, and even the leaders of their community. And with their use of secular justice as both symptom and cause, Lauer contends, Crete's Jews grew more open and flexible, confident in their identity and experiencing little of the anti-Judaism increasingly suffered by their coreligionists in Western Europe.

Shylock's Children

Shylock's Children PDF Author: Derek Penslar
Publisher: Univ of California Press
ISBN: 0520225902
Category : Art
Languages : en
Pages : 389

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Book Description
Shylock's children tells the story of Jewish perceptions of this economic difference and of its effects on modern Jewish identity in Europe.

Intimate Strangers

Intimate Strangers PDF Author: Fredric Brandfon
Publisher: U of Nebraska Press
ISBN: 0827615574
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 382

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Book Description
Illuminating the history of Jews and Jewish-Catholic relations in Rome, Intimate Strangers investigates the unusual and uninterrupted relationship between Jews and Catholics as it has developed from the first century CE to the present.