Course Code
HIST 0135
Course Type
Tutorials
Subject Credit
Course Availability

This tutorial examines interactions between the Christian majority and their Jewish neighbours in western Europe during the middle ages.  This period has been characterised with reference to violence and persecution such as the massacres of First Crusade (1096), and a series of expulsions from the thirteenth century onwards.  However, a more nuanced story emerges from consideration of both Jewish and Christian sources, which allow us to explore a range of possible interaction, ranging from theological debate among elite intellectuals, to everyday social, economic and cultural experience.

Sample readings:

Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christian-Jewish Relations, 1000-1300: Jews in the Service of Medieval Christendom (2011)

Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (1995)

Elisheva Baumgarten, Mothers and Children: Jewish Family Life in Medieval Europe (2004)

Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (1994)

R. Chazan, The Jews of Medieval Western Christendom, 1000-1500 (2006)

R.I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society (second edition 2008)

David Nirenbrg, Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages (1996)