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11 - Crusades, Blood Libels, and Popular Violence

from Part II - Medieval Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

By
Emily M. Rose
Edited by
Steven Katz
Steven Katz
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

This chapter examines antagonism toward Jews and Judaism as expressed by leading Church Fathers in the West. Particular attention is paid to the novel and influential perspective of Augustine.

Keywords

Crusadesblood libelritual murderhost desecration
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism , pp. 194 - 212
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Abulafia, A. S., Christian Jewish Relations 1000–1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom (New York, 2011). In this clear survey Abulafia draws together much of her decades of focused scholarship to emphasize theology and pragmatism in considering how the crusades and anti-Jewish libels affected those relations.Google Scholar
Bronstein, J., “The Crusades and the Jews: Some Reflections on the 1096 Massacre,” History Compass 5.4 (2007), 1268–1279. Offers an overview of historiography on the First Crusade.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Chazan, R., Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA, 1997). The author makes an early argument for continuities rather than a sharp break between medieval and modern Jew-hatred.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Franke, D. P., “The Crusades and Medieval Anti-Judaism: Cause or Consequence?,” in Seven Myths of the Crusades, ed. Andrea, Alfred and Holt, Andrew (Cambridge, MA, 2015), 48–69. This essay succinctly lays out questions for classroom discussion, while offering evidence that the Crusades were not a decisive event in Christian–Jewish relations and finding no link between Crusade ideology and Nazi Germany.Google Scholar
Kaplan, L. Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity (New York, 2019). This work skillfully addresses notions of hereditary inferiority and the Christian doctrine of Jewish perpetual servitude.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Lasker, D. J., “The Impact of the Crusades on the Jewish-Christian Debate,” Jewish History 13.2 (1999), 23–36. This study explicitly addresses the issue of whether the crusades were a sharp break or part of an incremental transformation in relations between Christians and Jews.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Malkiel, D., “Destruction or Conversion: Intention and Reaction, Crusaders and Jews, in 1096,” Jewish History 15.3 (2001), 257–280. Based on a close reading of the sources, this article questions whether Jews were actually offered the choice of baptism during the mayhem of the crusades.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Resnick, I. M., Marks of Distinction: Christian Perceptions of Jews in the High Middle Ages (Washington, DC, 2012). This book examines accusations of physical deformities, leprosy and food, sexual and planetary influences that helped define Jewish otherness. It draws on a wide range of sources including medical texts, encyclopedias, chronicles, exempla collections, sermons, polemical treatises and Bible commentaries.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rose, E. M., The Murder of William of Norwich: The Origins of Blood Libel in Medieval Europe (New York, 2015). This suspenseful unraveling of a medieval trial reexamines the first accusations of the blood libel beginning in 1150. It then looks at “copycat” allegations (Gloucester 1168, Blois 1171, Bury 1180 and Paris 1180) to explain how the blood libel managed to take hold.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, M., Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT, 1999). This offers a thorough and readable examination of the host desecration accusation, the rhetoric that was used and the violence it frequently produced.Google Scholar

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