Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen
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Living Lettersof the Law
Ideas of the Jew inMedieval Christianity
Jeremy Cohen
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London
The cost of preparing this manuscript was offset
by a grant from the Diaspora Research Institute of
Tel Aviv University.
University of California Press
Berkeley and Los Angeles, California
University of California Press, Ltd.
London, England
© 1999 by
The Regents of the University of California
Library of Congress
Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Cohen, Jeremy
Living letters of the law : ideas of the Jew in
medieval Christianity / Jeremy Cohen.
p. cm.—(The S. Mark Taper
Foundation imprint in Jewish studies)
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978-0-520-21870-3 (alk. paper)
1. Judaism (Christian theology)—History of
doctrines—Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Title.
BT93.C64 1999
261.2'6'0902—dc21 99-20634
CIP
Manufactured in the United States of America
15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07
11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2
The paper used in this publication meets the
minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-
1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).
Contents
PART ONE: AUGUSTINIAN FOUNDATIONS
1. The Doctrine of Jewish Witness
PART TWO: THE AUGUSTINIAN LEGACY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES: ADAPTATION, REINTERPRETATION, RESISTANCE
2. Gregory the Great: Between Sicut ludaeis and Adversus Iudaeos
3. Isidore of Seville: Anti-Judaism and the Hermeneutics of Integration
4. Agobard of Lyons: Battling the Enemies of Christian Unity
PART THREE: RECONCEPTUALIZING JEWISH DISBELIEF IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY
5. Reason in Defense of the Faith: From Anselm of Canterbury to Peter Alfonsi
6. Against the Backdrop of Holy War: Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable
7. Renaissance Men and Their Dreams
PART FOUR: THE FRIARS RECONSIDERED
8. Judaism as Heresy: Thirteenth-Century Churchmen and the Talmud
9. Ambiguities of Thomistic Synthesis
Acknowledgments
Work on this book has extended over much of the present decade, and I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the many individuals who have helped me bring the project to its conclusion. Martin Goodman, Ora Limor, Ivan Marcus, Marc Raphael, Michael Signer, David Stern, and Kenneth Stow graciously agreed to read portions of the manuscript in various stages of its evolution and provided me with invaluable constructive criticism. Many others responded graciously to my variegated calls for assistance, including Ram Ben-Shalom, Martin Bertram, Naomi Cohen, Sander Gilman, Thomas Hahn, Colum Hourihane, Aryeh Kasher, Joel Kraemer, Sara Lipton, Joseph Lynch, Robert Markus, Aharon Oppenheimer, Alexander Patschovsky, Kenneth Pennington, Judith Rosen, Shlomo Simonsohn, Michael Toch, and John Van Engen; I remain appreciatively in their debt.
Fellowships at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, at the Hebrew University's Institute for Advanced Studies, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed me precious time for pursuing this project; and grants from the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and the College of Humanities at The Ohio State University, the State of Israel's Ministry of Absorption, and the Diaspora Research Institute at Tel Aviv University helped to offset the expenses of my research. I am similarly grateful to the directors and staffs of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, where I profited from several fruitful and pleasant weeks of research, and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, which allowed me to organize an international symposium on the subject of this book in 1993. The characteristically good nature and dedication of librarians too numerous to mention here have consistently served me well.
Finally, my wife and children have never wavered in their support for my work. In the appreciation that we share for the powerful impact of ideas and symbols on our lives, the bustle of our busy household and my historian's vocation have blended to imbue my life with meaning and with satisfaction.
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