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Anti-Semitism and the Birth of Europe*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

R. I. Moore
R. I. Moore*
Affiliation:
University of Sheffield
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Extract

In August 1976 the remains of a substantial building were uncovered in the courtyard of the Palais de Justice at Rouen, by the street which has been called at least since 1116 the rue aux Juifs (see plate I). That it was a Jewish building is confirmed by the Hebrew graffiti on its interior walls. It can be dated firmly to the years around 1100 by its scale, style, and workmanship, which are strongly reminiscent of the so-called ‘Norman exchequer’ in the ducal castle at Caen. The quality of its masonry is as good as may be found anywhere in northern Europe at this time. The function of the building is not altogether certain. At 14.14 X 9.46 metres, with at least one storey above the ground floor, it seems too large for a private dwelling, and indeed it is bigger than any known synagogue of this date north of the Alps. Not only the graffiti, but the lions of Judah finely carved at the base of one column, and the dragon from Psalm 91 on another, strongly suggest a religious purpose. The synagogue was on this street, but it is usually thought to have been on the south side, opposite the Palais de Justice site. This has led Norman Golb, the author of a major study of the Jewish community at Rouen, to suggest that the building unveiled in 1976 was a school, which acted as a centre of advanced study, not only for the Jewry of Rouen, but for a much larger region in which educational and scholarly activity is attested throughout the twelfth century by a rich crop of surviving manuscripts and other references, including many from places like Pont-Audemer, Touques, Falaise, Evreux, and Coutances, which were by no means major urban centres at this time.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 29: Christianity and Judaism , 1992 , pp. 33 - 57
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

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Footnotes

*

An earlier paper on this subject was presented to The Parting of the Ways conference at York in July 1988, and to meetings at Brandeis and Southampton Universities, the University of Pittsburgh, and the Free University of Amsterdam. I have benefited greatly from all the comments received on those occasions, and especially from those of Professors Colin Morris and Bernard Wasserstein.

References

1 Varoqueaux, C., ‘Découvertes de vestiges médiévaux à Rouen, Rue aux Juifs’, in Foreville, R., ed., Les Mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des xie.-xiie. siècles (Paris, 1984), pp. 147–8.Google Scholar

2 Dominique Halbout-Bertin, ‘Le Monument juif d’époque romane du Palais de Justice de Rouen’, Archéologie médiévale, 14 (1984), pp. 77-125 (with plates).

3 Golb, Norman, Les Juifs de Rouen au moyen âge: portrait d’une culture oubliée (Rouen, 1985), pp. 77–168.Google Scholar

4 Blumenkranz thought the building more probably a synagogue, de Boüard a residence: Halbout-Bertin, ‘Le Monument’, pp. 99-105.

5 J. G. Hillaby, ‘Beth miqdash me’at: the synagogues of medieval England’, JEH (forthcoming).

6 Commentarius Cantabrigiensis, quoted by Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 1st edn (Oxford, 1941), p. 55. On the author and date, Luscombe, D. E., The School of Peter Abelard (Cambridge, 1969), pp. 145–53.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

7 See Moore, R. I., The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250 (Oxford, 1987), pp. 27–9, 80–5.Google Scholar In general. I would distinguish, with Gavin I.Langmuir, History, Religion and Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1990) passim, between anti-Semitism, based on irrational and unfounded beliefs about Jews and Judaism, and anti-Judaism, based on essentially correct information, though possibly containing irrational inferences from it. I am not convinced, however, that this justifies a distinction between the various grounds upon which Jews were characterized as the conscious enemies of Christ in the twelfth century, as argued ibid., pp. 289–303. In these terms Anselm of Laon’s teaching seems to me anti-Semitic rather than anti-Judaic: see pp. 42, 49, below.

8 Bachrach, Bernard S., Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (Minneapolis, 1977), pp. 9–26 Google Scholar; cf. Collins, Roger, Early Medieval Spain (London, 1983), pp. 130–45 Google Scholar; Bonnassie, Pierre, From Slavery to Feudalism in South-Westem Europe (Cambridge, 1991), pp. 67–8, 96–9.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

9 Chazan, Robert, Medieval Jewry in Northern France (Baltimore and London, 1973), pp. 24–9 Google Scholar; European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, 1988), pp. 85ff.

10 Guibert of Nogent, De vita sua, II.5, ed. Labande, E. R., Guibert de Nogent: Autobiographie (Paris, 1981) [hereafter De vita sua], pp. 246–8.Google Scholar

11 Eadmer, Historia Novorum in Anglia, ed. M. Rule, RS (1884), pp. 99-101; William of Malmesbury, Gesta Regum Anglorum, ed. W. Stubbs, RS (1887-9), II, p. 371.

12 Golb, Juifs de Rouen, pp. 101-416; Jordan, William Chester, The French Monarchy and the Jews (Philadelphia, 1989), pp. 52–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

13 Agobard of Lyons, De judaeorum superstilionibus, ed. E. Dümmler, MGH Epistolae: Epistolae Karolini Aevi, V, pp. 182-9.

14 Duby, Georges, La Société aux XIe et XIIe siècles dans la région maconnaise (Paris, 1953), pp. 119–21 Google Scholar; Fossier, Robert, Enfance de l’Europe (Paris, 1982), p. 591.Google Scholar

15 Golb, Juifs de Rouen, pp. 51-63.

16 See n. 12, above. The estates of twelfth-century Rhenish Jews ‘with the exception of houses and an occasional vineyard … were composed exclusively of moveable property. Even when Jews did own land they do not seem to have worked it’: Kenneth R. Stow, ‘The Jewish family in the Rhineland in the High Middle Ages: form and function’, AHR, 92 (1987), p. 1097.

17 Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, pp. 39-42.

18 This familiar aspecr of the Jewish predicament has been greatly illuminated in recent years, notably by R. C. Stacy, ‘1240-60: a watershed in Anglo-Jewish relations’, HR., 61 (19B8), and Jordan, French Monarchy.

19 Richardson, H.G., English Jewry under the Angevin Kings (London, 1960), p. 27.Google Scholar

20 Abelard, , Dialogus inter Phihsophus, Judaeus et Chrislianus, ed. Thompson, R. (Stuttgart, 1970), p. 51 Google Scholar, tr. Payer, P.J. (Toronto, 1970), p. 31.Google Scholar On the date, C.J. Mews, ‘On dating the works of Peter Abelard’, AHDL, 52 (1985), pp. 122-6.

21 Eadmer, Historia Novorum, pp. 99-101.

22 Cf. Langmuir, Gavin I., ‘Historiographic Crucifixion’, in Towards a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley, 1991), pp. 282–98.Google Scholar My own interest in this subject was first awakened by the apparent willingness of so distinguished a historian as Léon Poliakov (in The History of Anti-semilism, 1 [London, 1974]) to seek the explanation for the persecution of Jews in the Jewish rather than in the Christian community.

23 Jeremy Cohen, ‘The Jews as the killers of Christ in the Latin tradition from Augustine to the friars’, Traditio, 39 (1983), pp. 1-27.

24 Devttasua, I.26, p. 202; cf. Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews (New Haven, 1943), pp. 66, 213.

25 Letter 130, The Letters of Peter the Venerable, ed. Giles Constable (Cambridge, Ma„ 1967), 1, p. 329.

26 The Life and Miracles of William of Norwich, ed. and tr. Augustus Jessopp and M. R. James (Cambridge, 1896); cf. G. I. Langmuir, ‘Thomas of Monmouth, detector of ritual murder’, Speculum, $9 (1984), pp. 820–46, and Towardsa Definition, pp. 209–36.

27 Langmuir, Towards a Definition, pp. 263-8 r; Miri Rubin, ‘Desecration of the Host; the Birth of an Accusation’, pp. 169–85, below. I am grateful to Miri Rubin for a copy of her paper.

28 Little, Lester K., Religious Poverty and the Profit Economy (London, 1978), p. 53 Google Scholar; Blumenkranz, Bernhard, Le Juif médiévale au miroir de l’art chrétien (Paris, 1966), pp. 15–32.Google Scholar

29 Riley-Smith, Jonathan, ‘The First Crusade and the persecution of the Jews’, SCH, 21 (1984), pp. 51–72.Google Scholar

30 B. Blumcnkranz, ed., Gisleberti Crispini Disputatio interlude! et Christiani (1965): quoted by Richardson, English Jewry, p. 34. On the date, Southern, R. W., St. Anselm and his Biographer (Cambridge, 1963), p. 91n.Google Scholar

31 Mansi, J. D., Sacrorum conciiiorum nova et amplissima collectio (Venice, 1776, repr. Paris and Leipzig, 1903), 22, col. 356.Google Scholar

32 Cohen, Jeremy, The Friars and the Jews (Cornell, 1982).Google Scholar

33 Jordan, French Monarchy, pp. 253-5.

34 Chazan, European Jewry, pp. 61-84.

35 Dobson, R. B., The Jews of Medieval York and the Massacre of March 1190—Borlhwick Papers, no. 45 (York, 1974), p. 33.Google Scholar

36 Ibid., p. 38; see also Miller, E., ‘Medieval York’, VCH Yorkshire: City of York (London, 1961), p. 47.Google Scholar

37 Dobson, Jews of York, p. 20.

38 Peter the Venerable, letter 30, pp. 328-30.

39 Cf. Langmuir, ‘Peter the Venerable: Defense against Doubt’, in Towards a Definition, pp. 197–208, at p. 202; ibid., p. 383, nn. 14-21, on the difficulties which Peter’s anti-Semitism has presented to his scholars.

40 Georges Duby, ‘Le Budget de l’abbaye de Cluny entre 1080 at 1155: économie domaniale et économie monétaire1, Annales ESC, 7 (2) (1951), pp. 155-71, also in Hommes et structures du moyen âge (Paris, 1973), pp. 61–82. Langmuir, ‘Peter the Venerable’, comments that Peter does not direct his execrations equally at the Christian usurers whose existence he casually confirms.

41 Murray, Alexander, Reason and Society in the Middle Ages (Oxford, 1978), p. 69 Google Scholar, and similarly Little, Religious Poverty, pp. 42–57.

42 Constable, The Family of Peter the Venerable’, in Letters, 2, pp. 233-46: ‘A feudal family of secondary or tertiary rank in terms of wealth or political power which was able through the church to exercise influence of the first importance.’

43 Moore, R. I., ‘Guibert of Nogent and his World’, in Mayr-Harting, H. and Moore, R. I., eds, Studies in Medieval History Presented to R. H. C. Davis (London, 1985), pp. 107–17.Google Scholar We have no information about Thomas of Monmouth’s social origins or what he did before entering Norwich Cathedral Priory.

44 Cohen, The Jews as killers of Christ’, pp. 9–15.

45 De vita sua, p. 246.

46 Noël Coulet, ‘De l’intégration a l’exclusion: la place des juifs dans les cérémonies d’entrée solonelle au moyen âge’, Annales: Economies, sociétés, civilisations, 34.4 (1979), pp. 672–83.

47 Suger, Vie de Louis VI le Gros, ed. H. Waquet (Paris, 1964 edn), p. 264.

48 William of Malmesbury, Historia Novella, ed. K. R. Potter (London, 1955), p. 10.

49 R. H. Baurier, ‘La Personnalité de Philippe Auguste’, in R. H. Baurier, ed.. La France de Philippe Auguste: le temps des mutations (Paris, 1982); cf.J.-P. Poly and Eric Bournazel, in ibid., p. 228.

50 Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, pp. 140–53; on the episodes mentioned see respect ively Chazan, European Jewry, pp. 32–5; B. Blumenkranz, ‘Les Juifs à Blois au moyen âge: à propos de la démographie historique des Juifs’, Etudes de civilisation médiévale (ix-xiis.): mélanges… E. R. Labande (Poiters, 1975), pp. 33-8.

51 For example, Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents, 4f) 2-1404—Studies and Texts 94 (Toronto, 1988), pp. 120, 130 (Hungary); 136, 227-8 (Portugal); 225 (Poland); 239 (Languedoc), etc. It should perhaps be added, though it is a familiar point, that the thirteenth-century papacy was no less determined to insist that the canonical disabilities of the Jews should not be exceeded than that they should be enforced.

52 De vita sua, pp. 426, 202, 422.

53 Petrus Alfonsi, Dialogus Petri et Moysi Judaei, PL 157, cols 537-672—e.g. at cols 573-4, 581. I am grateful to John Toland for directing my attention to this work, of which he is preparing an extensive study.

54 Southern, St.Awelm and his Biographer, p. 88; Suini Anselm: a Portrait in a Landscape (Cambridge, 1990), pp. 198–202.1 am grateful to Professor D. E. Luscombe for drawing my attention to the latter. Susan Reynolds notes continuing indications of intellectual insecurity in the face of Judaism, even in the thirteenth century: ‘Social mentalities and the case of medieval scepticism’, TRHS, ser 6, 1 (1991), pp. 34-5.

55 Langmuir, Towards a Definition, pp. 197–208.

56 Rubin, ‘Desecration of the Host’.

57 Cf. Langmuir, ‘Majority History and Post-Biblical Jews’, in Towards a Definition, pp. 21–41.

58 Cf. Peter Brown, ‘Sorcery, Demons and the rise of Christianity: from Late Antiquity into the Middle Ages’, Witchcraft Confessions and Accusations—Association of Social Anthropologists Mono graph, 9 (1970), pp. 17-45; also in Brown, Religion and Society in the Age of Saint Augustine (London, 1972), pp. 119–46.

59 Moore, Formation of a Persecuting Society, pp. 66-99.

60 Ibid., pp. 91–4, based almost entirely on John Boswell, Christianity, Social Tolerance and Homo sexuality (Chicago, 1980), esp. pp. 169–302. Even if Boswell’s critics (e.g. Southern, Saint Anselm, pp. 148–53) had successfully rebutted his contention that male homosexuality was first clearly distinguished and set apart from other forms of non-reproductive sexual activity during our period, it would remain the case that ‘sodomites’ were singled out for particularly savage persecution at this time, and that the chronology and rhetoric of this development corresponded closely to those of other persecutions.

61 A. Grabois, ‘Écoles et structures sociales des communautés juives d’occident aux ixe.—xiie. siècles’, Cli ebrei nel alto medio evo, Settimani di studio del centro Italiano nel’alto medio evo, 26 (1978) (Spoleto, 1980), pp. 937–62.