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  • 8 - The Church and the Jews

  • from Part II - The Church in the Thirteenth Century
  • David Abulafia, University of Cambridge
  • Book:
    The New Cambridge Medieval History
    Published online:
    28 March 2008
    Print publication:
    21 October 1999, pp 204-219

  • Summary

    Throughout the Middle Ages, the policies of the Church towards the Jews rested on a set of consistently enunciated principles. These principles referred to Christian salvation, the promotion of the Church as both a spiritual and a worldly institution and to the Jews ultimately Christian soteriological role. The achievement of order and equilibrium typified the thirteenth-century Church's formal stance toward the Jews. It did so even in the face of what came to be viewed as enormous provocations, namely, those associated, first, with the contents of the Talmud, and, second, with the wooing back to Judaism of converts to Christianity. By the thirteenth century, Christians began studying Hebrew, better to know the Bible, often instructed by rabbis. Thomas's discussion of the Jews in his Summa theologica is predicated on the idea that Jews are an indispensable block in the seamless scholastic building fabric of society and its ideals.