Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France

In light of the growing tendency to view both religious communities as intimately linked, this work seeks to examine a variety of perspectives on Jewish and Christian life in northern France during the thirteenth-century. Contributors investigate the social and cultural changes which took place in European medieval society through legal developments, religious polemic, gender, social history, perceptions of the 'other,' language, literature and art. A secondary, but no less important goal, of this collection is to break down the artificial boundaries that divide the various academic disciplines and those that separate 'medieval studies' from 'Jewish studies'.

Elisheva Baumgarten is Associate Professor of Medieval History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Israel. Her publications include Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe and Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz: Men, Women and Everyday Religious Observance.

 
Judah D. Galinsky is Senior Lecturer in the Talmud Department at Bar-Ilan University, Israel. His various studies explore aspects of medieval rabbinic culture and society, mainly of Northern France and Christian Spain. His most recent study is "The Different Hebrew Versions of the 'Talmud Trial' of 1240 in Paris,' in New Perspectives on Jewish-Christian Relations: In Honor of David Berger.

Introduction: Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France; Elisheva Baumgarten and Judah D. GalinskyPART I: LEARNING, LAW, AND SOCIETY

1. Continuity and Change in the Study of the Bible: the Ten Commandments in Christian Exegesis; Lesley Smith
2. Psalters for Men, Books of Hours for Women: Arras as a Case Study; Margo Strumsa-Uzan
3. What Happened to Christian Hebraism in the Thirteenth Century?; Ari Geiger

4. "I Have Asked for Nothing except the Ius Commune": Legal Change in Thirteenth-Century France; Karl Shoemaker
5. Between Ashkenaz (Germany) and Tsarfat (France): Two Approaches towards Popularizing Jewish Law; Judah D. Galinsky
6. Authority, Control and Conflict in Thirteenth-Century Paris: Contextualizing the Talmud Trial; Yosef Schwartz

PART II: POLEMICS, PERSECUTIONS, AND MUTUAL PERCEPTIONS
7. Joseph ben Nathan's Sefer Yosef ha-Mekanné and the Medieval Jewish Critique of Christianity; Daniel J. Lasker
8. How, When, and To What Degree was the Jewish-Christian Debate Transformed in the Twelfth and Thirteenth Centuries?; David Berger
9. Of Milk and Blood: Innocent III and the Jews, revisited; John Tolan
10. The Image of Christians in Medieval Ashkenazic Rabbinic Literature; Ephraim Kanarfogel
11. Jews "Feigning Devotion": Christian Representations of Converted Jews in French Chronicles before and after the Expulsion of 1306; Jessica Marin Elliot
12. Women behind the Law: Lay Religious Women in Thirteenth-Century France and the Problem of Textual Resistance; Anne E. Lester

PART III: CULTURAL EXPRESSIONS AND APPROPRIATIONS: ART, POETRY, AND LITERATURE
13. Mirroring Samson the Martyr: Reflections of Jewish-Christian Relations in the North French Hebrew Illuminated Miscellany; Sara Offenberg
14. The Lament on the Martyrs of Troyes as a Monument of Judeo-French on the Verge of the Expulsions; Cyril Aslanov
15. Exegesis and Romance: Revisiting the Old French Translation of Kallir; Susan E. Einbinder, with an appendix by Samuel N. Rosenberg
16. Abstinence in Medieval France: A Comparison of "A Slave for Seven Years" in Sefer ha-ma'asim to "The Life of St. Alexis"; Rella Kushelevsky