History%20282

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History 282

• Jews in Medieval Christendom

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Settlement Patterns

• From Mediterranean Lands northwards
• Spain
• Italy
• Jews as merchants

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Traditional Explanations

• Jews as intermediaries between empires
• Pirenne thesis
• Jews shared legal system
• Ethnicity as an economic advantage

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Simon Kusnetz
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• The Jews. Their History, Culture and Religion
• Edited by Louis Finkelstein
• 3rd edition, 1960 reprinted 1979
• DS102.4 .F5 1979

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• Minority by Choice
• Fully Manned Economy
• Marginalization
• Concentration
• High Risk and High Reward

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Charters

• Jews as Urbanizing Element
• Charters are negotiated
• Rudiger of Speyer 1084
• http//www.history.umd.edu/Faculty/BCooperman/NewC
  ity/Charters.html
• power shifts will challenge Jews position
• directed towards frontiers

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Jews as Moneylenders

• what are the advantages to Jews?
• what are the advantages to non-Jewish society?
• source of capital
• control of illegal activity

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Inevitable Tensions

• Visigothic Spain - Jews within diverse Christian
  society
• Papal Protections (Gregory the Great)
• Ethnicity focuses social animosity
• The Limits of religious tolerance
• Importation of Jew Badge
• Black Death 1348 -- well poisoning

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Blood Libel Magic

• Ascription of child murder
• Male, innocent, blood
• Host desecration
• Projection of social tensions

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Ghettoization

• Origins of the term and the phenomenon
• The ghetto as protection
• The ghetto as inclusive
• The ghetto as marginalizing

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Expulsion

• England 1290
• France 1304
• Spain 1492
• Survival in German and Italian lands

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Defining Anti-Semitism

• modern word based on modern ethnographies and
  biologies
• anti-Judaism?
• religious ideology social and economic reality
• kings and popes, priests and peasants -- and
  burghers

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H
Have it your way!!!
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Protestant Reformation
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Martin Luther

• d. 1526
• Christ was Born a Jew
• Later hostility

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Conversos

• Marranos, New Christians, anusim
• Racial hostility -- 1455
• Inquisition -- not re Jews -- 1478
• Portuguese conversion

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Burning of the Talmud

• Medieval occurrences
• Banning in 16th century
• Reaction to printing?