The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry
The Golden Age of Aragonese Jewry

Author: Yom Tov Assis

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 1997-07-01

Total Pages: 405

ISBN-13: 1909821209

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The medieval Crown of Aragon reached the peak of its power and influence in the thirteenth century, and Jews took an active part in this expansion. In this detailed and meticulously researched study Yom Tov Assis deals with many important aspects of this period, which was truly a 'Golden Age' in the history of Aragonese and Catalan Jewry, both in terms of their relationship with the Crown and of their own cultural achievements. Professor Assis provides the most extensive treatment yet of Jewish self-government in the Hispanic kingdoms and the mutual interdependence of the Jewish and Christian communities. He describes institutions in very great detail, and examines the acute social problems that arose in the Jewish community and the dissent, polemics, and controversies that divided it. He shows how the proximity of the country to France and Provence on the one hand, and to Castile and Andalusia on the other, made Catalan Jewry a point of contact between Ashkenazi and Sephardi Jewry, demonstrating the effect this had on religious and cultural life, and in particular the consequences of the growing influence in Spain of Franco-German Jewry. The book is based on a very wide variety of primary sources-Jewish and non-Jewish, archival and halakhic material, notarial and royal records-in Latin, Catalan, Aragonese, and Hebrew. By drawing on these extensive sources, the author has been able to create a comprehensive description of the social, religious, and administrative aspects of Jewish life that throws much light on the wider society and economy of that period under the Crown of Aragon. The abundant detailed source notes make this an indispensable work of reference for all scholars of medieval Spanish history.

Jewish Economy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, 1213-1327
Jewish Economy in the Medieval Crown of Aragon, 1213-1327

Author: Yom Tov Assis

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2023-08-07

Total Pages: 283

ISBN-13: 9004679200

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This is a seminal study of the economic history of the Jewish community of Aragon, covering a period of about 125 years from the beginning of the thirteenth century until 1327. Among other topics, the book deals with the policy of the Crown towards moneylending and commerce in the Jewish community; the community's control over its members' economic activities; the Jews' loans to the king, and their taxes and subsidies to the Crown. The book offers information on the Jews' contribution to economic history, that has been very little studied so far. It will be of interest to economic historians, historians of Jewish Middle Ages, hispanists, and medievalists in general.

Between Christian and Jew
Between Christian and Jew

Author: Paola Tartakoff

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-07-24

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 0812206754

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In 1341 in Aragon, a Jewish convert to Christianity was sentenced to death, only to be pulled from the burning stake and into a formal religious interrogation. His confession was as astonishing to his inquisitors as his brush with mortality is to us: the condemned man described a Jewish conspiracy to persuade recent converts to denounce their newfound Christian faith. His claims were corroborated by witnesses and became the catalyst for a series of trials that unfolded over the course of the next twenty months. Between Christian and Jew closely analyzes these events, which Paola Tartakoff considers paradigmatic of inquisitorial proceedings against Jews in the period. The trials also serve as the backbone of her nuanced consideration of Jewish conversion to Christianity—and the unwelcoming Christian response to Jewish conversions—during a period that is usually celebrated as a time of relative interfaith harmony. The book lays bare the intensity of the mutual hostility between Christians and Jews in medieval Spain. Tartakoff's research reveals that the majority of Jewish converts of the period turned to baptism in order to escape personal difficulties, such as poverty, conflict with other Jews, or unhappy marriages. They often met with a chilly reception from their new Christian brethren, making it difficult to integrate into Christian society. Tartakoff explores Jewish antagonism toward Christians and Christianity by examining the aims and techniques of Jews who sought to re-Judaize apostates as well as the Jewish responses to inquisitorial prosecution during an actual investigation. Prosecutions such as the 1341 trial were understood by papal inquisitors to be in defense of Christianity against perceived Jewish attacks, although Tartakoff shows that Christian fears about Jewish hostility were often exaggerated. Drawing together the accounts of Jews, Jewish converts, and inquisitors, this cultural history offers a broad study of interfaith relations in medieval Iberia.

The Jews of Provence and Languedoc
The Jews of Provence and Languedoc

Author: Ram Ben-Shalom

Publisher: Liverpool University Press

Published: 2024-05-08

Total Pages: 875

ISBN-13: 183553340X

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This exhaustive history of Provençal Jewry examines the key aspects of Jewish life in Provence over some 1,500 years of cultural florescence with far-reaching consequences. A seminal examination of the crucial role of the Jews of Provence in shaping medieval Jewish culture in the Mediterranean basin.

Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators
Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators

Author: Katherine Aron-Beller

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2024-01-09

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1512824119

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In Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators, historian Katherine Aron-Beller analyzes the common Christian charge that Jews habitually and compulsively violated Christian images, identifying this allegation as one that functioned alongside other anti-Jewish allegations such as ritual murder, blood libel, and host desecration to ultimately inform dangerous and long-lasting prejudices in medieval and early modern Europe. Through an analysis of folk tales, myths, legal proceedings, and religious art, Aron-Beller finds that narratives alleging that Jews committed violence against images of Christ, Mary, and the disciples flourished in Europe between the fifth and seventeenth centuries. She then explores how these narratives manifested differently across the continent and the centuries, finding that their potency reflected not Jewish actions per se, but Christians’ own concerns about slipping into idolatry when viewing depictions of religious figures. In addition, Aron-Beller considers Jews’ own attitudes toward Christian imagery and the ways in which they responded to and rejected—or embraced—such allegations. By examining how desecration allegations affected Jewish individuals and communities spanning Byzantium, medieval England, France, Germany, and early modern Spain and Italy, Aron-Beller demonstrates that this charge was a powerful expression of the Christian majority’s anxiety around committing idolatry and their eagerness to participate in practices of veneration that revolved around visual images—an anxiety that evolved through the centuries and persists to this day.

The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 6, The Middle Ages: The Christian World
The Cambridge History of Judaism: Volume 6, The Middle Ages: The Christian World

Author: Robert Chazan

Publisher: Cambridge University Press

Published: 2018-10-31

Total Pages:

ISBN-13: 1108340199

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Volume 6 examines the history of Judaism during the second half of the Middle Ages. Through the first half of the Middle Ages, the Jewish communities of western Christendom lagged well behind those of eastern Christendom and the even more impressive Jewries of the Islamic world. As Western Christendom began its remarkable surge forward in the eleventh century, this progress had an impact on the Jewish minority as well. The older Jewries of southern Europe grew and became more productive in every sense. Even more strikingly, a new set of Jewries were created across northern Europe, when this undeveloped area was strengthened demographically, economically, militarily, and culturally. From the smallest and weakest of the world's Jewish centers in the year 1000, the Jewish communities of western Christendom emerged - despite considerable obstacles - as the world's dominant Jewish center by the end of the Middle Ages. This demographic, economic, cultural, and spiritual dominance was maintained down into modernity.

Jews and Muslims Made Visible in Christian Iberia and Beyond, 14th to 18th Centuries
Jews and Muslims Made Visible in Christian Iberia and Beyond, 14th to 18th Centuries

Author:

Publisher: BRILL

Published: 2019-05-06

Total Pages: 404

ISBN-13: 9004395709

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This volume aims to show through various case studies how the interrelations between Jews, Muslims and Christians in Iberia were negotiated in the field of images, objects and architecture during the Later Middle Ages and Early Modernity. . By looking at the ways pre-modern Iberians envisioned diversity, we can reconstruct several stories, frequently interwoven with devotional literature, poetry or Inquisitorial trials, and usually quite different from a binary story of simple opposition. The book’s point of departure narrates the relationship between images and conversions, analysing the mechanisms of hybridity, and proposing a new explanation for the representation of otherness as the complex outcome of a negotiation involving integration. Contributors are: Cristelle Baskins, Giuseppe Capriotti, Ivana Čapeta Rakić, Borja Franco Llopis, Francisco de Asís García García, Yonatan Glazer-Eytan, Nicola Jennings, Fernando Marías, Elena Paulino Montero, Maria Portmann, Juan Carlos Ruiz Souza, Amadeo Serra Desfilis, Maria Vittoria Spissu, Laura Stagno, Antonio Urquízar-Herrera.