Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in Medieval Europe

2021 ◽  
pp. 78-99
Author(s):  
Ryan Szpiech
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Christian Belief ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
First Millennium ◽  
Fourth Lateran Council

This chapter discusses the interaction between Judaism, Christianity, and Islam in medieval Europe. It considers the importance of Augustine’s doctrine of Jews as ‘witnesses’ to Christian truth in the formation of the medieval image of the ‘hermeneutical Jew’. Jews, who lived primarily in the Islamic world in the first millennium, began to migrate into Christian lands in greater numbers from the eleventh century. As Christian ideas about Judaism evolved in the twelfth century, culminating in the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, Jewish authors responded with detailed critiques of Christian belief. The simultaneous Christian engagement with Muslim sources led to a triangular encounter, especially significant in the Iberian Peninsula, between Jewish, Christian, and Muslim writers, reflected in numerous dialogues and polemics about prophecy and history. Beginning in the thirteenth century, mendicant friars, including converts, played a greater role in engagement with Islam and Judaism, taking on important roles as translators and inquisitors.

Signs of Salvation: The Evolution of Stigmatic Spirituality Before Francis of Assisi

2013 ◽  
Vol 82 (1) ◽  
pp. 40-68
Author(s):  
Carolyn Muessig
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Early Middle Ages ◽  
Medieval Europe ◽  
The Face ◽  
Biblical Commentaries ◽  
The Ideal

Francis of Assisi's reported reception of the stigmata on Mount La Verna in 1224 is widely held to be the first documented account of an individual miraculously and physically receiving the wounds of Christ. The appearance of this miracle, however, in the first quarter of the thirteenth century, is not as unexpected as it first seems. Interpretations of Galatians 6:17—“I bear the marks of the Lord Jesus Christ in my body”—had been circulating in biblical commentaries since the early Middle Ages. These works posited that clerics bore metaphorical and sometimes physical wounds(stigmata)as marks of persecution, while spreading the teaching of Christ in the face of resistance. By the seventh century, the meaning of Galatians 6:17 had been appropriated by bishops and priests as a sign or mark of Christ that they received invisibly at their ordination, and sometimes visibly upon their death. In the eleventh century, Peter Damian articulated a stigmatic spirituality that saw the ideal priest, monk, and nun as bearers of Christ's wounds, a status achieved through the swearing of vows and the practice of severe penance. By the early twelfth century, crusaders were said to bear the marks of the Passion in death and even sometimes as they entered into battle. By the early thirteenth century, “bearing the stigmata” was a pious superlative appropriated by a few devout members of the laity who interpreted Galatian 6:17 in a most literal manner. Thus, this article considers how the conception of “bearing the stigmata” developed in medieval Europe from its treatment in early Latin patristic commentaries to its visceral portrayal by the laity in the thirteenth century.

The Merovingian monastery of St Evroul in the light of conflicting traditions

1972 ◽  
Vol 8 ◽  
pp. 31-40
Author(s):  
Marjorie Chibnall
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Tenth Century ◽  
Archaeological Evidence ◽  
Documentary Sources ◽  
The Subject ◽  
Historical Truth ◽  
Almost All ◽  
Old Men

Historians of early monasticism in Frankish Gaul either have little to say about the monastery founded by St Evroul or, like Dom Laporte, devote their attention to a discussion of the probable date of his life. The disappearance of almost all early documentary sources is one reason for this: there was certainly a break in the occupation of the site for perhaps half the century between the destruction of the monastery in the tenth century and its refoundation in 1050, and only one charter, dated 900, was rescued and copied in the eleventh century. The fact that there has been no systematic excavation of the site, so that archaeological evidence of buildings before the thirteenth-century church is lacking, is another. Early annals and reliable lives of other saints have nothing at all to say on the subject. The first historian to tackle it, Orderic Vitalis, writing in the early twelfth century, had to admit that he could discover nothing about the abbots for the four hundred years after St Evroul; and he had to draw on the memories and tales of the old men he knew, both in the monastery and in the villages round about. Needless to say he harvested a luxuriant crop of legends and traditions of all kinds. The problem of the modern historian is to winnow a few grains of historical truth out of the stories that he garnered, and the hagiographical traditions, some of which he did not know.

On the History of the Jews in Twelfth- and Thirteenth-Century Poland

1997 ◽  
pp. 287-318
Author(s):  
Israel M. Ta-Shma
Keyword(s):  
Jewish Community ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Direct Descendant ◽  
Religious Learning ◽  
History Of ◽  
Hasidei Ashkenaz

This chapter traces the history of the Jews in twelfth- and thirteenth-century Poland. Jewish traders of Ashkenazi origin passed through Poland on their way to Russia on business as early as the first half of the eleventh century. The Jewish traders who passed through Poland in the twelfth century included scholars and other individuals versed in religious learning. By the last quarter of the twelfth century, there was a well-established Jewish community in Cracow, probably a direct descendant of the community whose existence was recorded some 150 years earlier. The chapter then considers a variety of Hebrew sources that reveal more about the existence of an admittedly sparse Jewish presence, including Jews well versed in Torah, in thirteenth-century Poland; about the continuous existence of this presence throughout the twelfth and thirteenth centuries; and, above all, about its Ashkenazi origins and its special, ongoing contacts with the circles of ḥasidei Ashkenaz in Germany. The extent of the links between Russia–Poland and Ashkenaz, particularly eastern Ashkenaz, was much greater than believed up to the present. Moreover, these links were essentially persistent and permanent, rather than a series of random occurrences.

Western Converts to Islam (Later Eleventh to Later Fifteenth Centuries)

Traditio ◽  
2013 ◽  
Vol 68 ◽  
pp. 153-231
Author(s):  
A. J. Forey
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Holy Land ◽  
Beliefs And Practices ◽  
Mediterranean Regions ◽  
Crusader States ◽  
Made In

The early expansion of Islam led in time to widespread conversions of Christians in conquered territories. In the later eleventh century, however, western Christendom was in turn launching offensives against Islam on several fronts. Territorial gains were made in various Mediterranean regions and, although by the end of the thirteenth century the Holy Land had been lost again, Sicily remained in Christian hands, and in the second half of the thirteenth century in the Iberian peninsula only Granada remained under Muslim control: the whole peninsula was under Christian rule before the end of the fifteenth century. This expansion was accompanied, especially in the thirteenth century, by attempts to convert Muslims and other non-Christians. Yet in the period from the late eleventh until the later fifteenth century some western Christians converted to Islam. The purpose of the present paper is to consider the situations that prompted the adoption of Islam, and the reasons for such conversions, although the evidence is usually insufficient to indicate exactly why a particular Christian became a Muslim: the preconceived ideas voiced in western sources about forced conversions can be misleading and, although a crude distinction might be made between conversions from conviction and those based on worldly considerations, motives did not necessarily always fit neatly into just one of these two categories. But obviously not all converts would have had an equal understanding of the nature of Islamic beliefs and practices. The response of western ecclesiastical and secular authorities to renegades will also be considered. Further conversions of Christian peoples who had already for centuries been living under Muslim rule will not be examined, but only the adoption of Islam by those whose origins lay in western Christian countries or who were normally resident in these, and by westerners whose lands were newly conquered by Muslim powers after the eleventh century; and the focus will be mainly, though not exclusively, on the crusader states and the Iberian peninsula.

Peter Damian: Could God Change the Past?

1978 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 259-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Peter Remnant
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Heavy Weight ◽  
The Third ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Trinity

Histories of philosophy frequently depict the later eleventh century as the scene of a series of bouts between dialecticians and anti-dialecticians — Berengar vs. Lanfranc, Roscelin vs. Anselm — preliminaries to the twelfth century welterweight contest between Abelard and St. Bernard and — dare one say? — the thirteenth century heavy-weight championship between St. Thomas and St. Bonaventure.The bouts took place — no question about that — but whether the contestants can properly be characterized as dialecticians and anti-dialecticians is less certain. Dialectics is logic, the third part of the trivium, and increasingly cultivated in the eleventh century; men like Berengar and Roscelin were plainly eager to apply the logical tools with which they had been equipped to the solution of intellectual problems. In particular they undertook the solution of certain central problems of theology — Berengar that of the Eucharist and Roscelin that of the Trinity — and it was this, we are told, that aroused the ire of the anti-dialecticians: if the aim of the dialecticians was to lay bare the mysteries of faith to the light of reason that of the anti-dialecticians was to protect those same mysteries from profanation.

Introduction

2019 ◽  
pp. 1-26
Author(s):  
Sarah Stroumsa
Keyword(s):  
Iberian Peninsula ◽  
Fifteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eighth Century ◽  
Distinctive Character ◽  
Islamic World ◽  
Different Sources ◽  
Speculative Thought ◽  
Over Time

This introductory chapter provides a background of al-Andalus. Within the Islamic world, “al-Andalus” (Islamic Spain) constituted a distinct cultural unit with its own unique characteristics. The borders of this territory changed over time, following the advance of the Christian conquests. Toward the end of the second/eighth century, al-Andalus covered most of the peninsula (today's Spain as well as Portugal), while in the eighth/fifteenth century, the shrunken Emirate of Granada alone, at the southernmost tip of the peninsula, remained in Muslim hands. This book's period of interest extends mainly from the tenth to the sixth/twelfth century, when Jews living under Islam in the Iberian Peninsula played a significant cultural role, and when philosophy flourished in al-Andalus. The philosophy and theology that were produced in this cultural unit developed as a continuation of speculative thought in the Islamic East and remained in constant dialogue with it. Yet the philosophical and theological works of Andalusian authors are not servile replicas of Maghreban or Eastern sources. They have a distinctive character that, while showing their different sources, displays their originality and their Andalusian provenance.

Learned Discussions of Indulgences for the Dead in the Middle Ages

1992 ◽  
Vol 61 (4) ◽  
pp. 367-381 ◽  
Author(s):  
Robert W. Shaffern
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Holy Places ◽  
The Dead ◽  
The Middle Ages

By the thirteenth century, Latin Christians had been dispensing and collecting indulgences for two centuries. Though indulgentia was a relatively late term, and first the favorite of thirteenth-century Dominican theologians, remissions of temporal penalty for sin had been granted since the eleventh century, whether they were known as remissiones or relaxationes, the two most popular terms of eleventh- and twelfth-century ecclesiastics. Bishops granted partial indulgences for visitations of holy places. Partial indulgences remitted a fraction of all penalty incurred through sin. Contributions to pious works, such as church, hospital, or bridge constructions, were also rewarded with indulgences. Other prelates granted indulgences until Lateran IV. The popes granted both partial and plenary indulgences (those which remitted all penalty for having sinned). They granted partial indulgences for much the same reasons as other bishops. Plenary indulgences were almost exclusively granted to crusaders or contributors to crusades.

Charity and Social Work in Toulouse, 1100–1250

Traditio ◽  
1966 ◽  
Vol 22 ◽  
pp. 203-287 ◽  
Author(s):  
John H. Mundy
Keyword(s):  
Social Work ◽  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Long Period ◽  
Basic Resource

Other than the labors of the clergy, the basic resource for public charity and social work was pious giving by layfolk. During the long period from the later eleventh century until around 1250, both the forms of giving changed and the sums involved grew considerably. About the year 1100, the principal ways of financing charity and social work were the founding of charitable institutions by living people and the giving of gifts during a donor's lifetime to already existing institutions. During the twelfth century, however, as the practice of drawing testaments became more widespread, testamentary bequests became increasingly significant as a means of supporting the work of charity. Later on, during the thirteenth century, a further source of wealth was more extensively tapped than had hitherto been the case. Designed specifically for social or charitable ends, confraternities, whose members were obligated to give regularly or annually, began to play an ever more important role.

Motoori-Norinagas Contribution to a Scheme of Japanese Grammar

1950 ◽  
Vol 13 (2) ◽  
pp. 474-503 ◽  
Author(s):  
S. Yanada
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Eleventh Century ◽  
Spoken Language ◽  
The Other ◽  
Japanese Language ◽  
Reference Book ◽  
Vital Part ◽  
Teachers And Students

In Japan, since the eleventh or twelfth century, when teachers and students of the tanka (, a short poem) recognized the importance of the teniwoha for expressing thoughts or feelings, its study became a vital part of kagaku (, the study of verse-making). One of the earliest books on the matter, the “ Teniwoha Taigaisyô ” ( ), was said to have been written by Huziwara-Sadaie (, 1162–1241), a well-known poet of the thirteenth century. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries the study of the teniwoha made further headway, the reason being that the gap between the written and spoken language which had been developing since the eleventh century had widened so much that people found it difficult to understand the tanka of earlier times. There were at this time two groups of people who studied the teniwoha for the art of verse-making; one group was concerned with the tanka, and the other with the renga (, a linked poem) which was then very popular. Although these studies of the teniwoha could be called the origin of the grammatical study of the Japanese language, they were very naive; all that the scholars did was to compile glossaries or reference book for verse-making.

The Scholar’s Suitcase: Books and the Transfer of Knowledge in Twelfth-Century Europe

2004 ◽  
Vol 38 ◽  
pp. 87-97 ◽  
Author(s):  
Christoph Egger
Keyword(s):  
Thirteenth Century ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Full Text ◽  
Critical Discussion ◽  
Literary Genre ◽  
Transfer Of Knowledge ◽  
The Bible ◽  
The North ◽  
New Concepts ◽  
Medieval Europe

One day early in the thirteenth century a wandering scholar broke his journey at the Benedictine monastery of Prüfening near Regensburg in Bavaria. Of the books this scholar was carrying, one Liebhard, a monk of the monastery, was especially fascinated by a copy of Peter the Chanter’s Distinctiones Abel, a dictionary of the Bible for the preacher’s use and a prominent example of the recently developed literary genre of biblical distinctiones. Unfortunately, soon afterwards the scholar resumed his interrupted journey, and was not willing to leave the book behind at Prüfening, so Liebhard was unable to copy the full text but could only take down excerpts, which he later completed with texts from other sources. The result, which he called Horreum formicae (the ant’s harvest), still extant in at least two manuscripts, combines the approach of the masters of the Parisian schools with that of monastic theology. It is, therefore, an excellent example of a process ongoing throughout the whole twelfth century: the transfer of knowledge from the centres of learning in the north of France (Laon, Chartres, Paris) and of Italy (Bologna) towards the periphery of medieval Europe, resulting in the reception and critical discussion of new concepts and ideas, a process most readily visible in the distribution of books. This paper offers a preliminary sketch of this process with special emphasis on medieval Bavaria and Austria.

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