So Many Tall Tales: Constantijn L’Empereur’s Polemical Reading of Benjamin of Tudela’s Book of Travels

2020 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 53-81
Author(s):  
Marci Freedman
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Rabbinic Literature ◽  
Hebrew Language ◽  
Language Study ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract The twelfth-century Jewish traveller, Benjamin of Tudela and his Book of Travels has attracted widespread attention since the Middle Ages. The narrative, however, has largely been read and studied in the context of what it can tell scholars about the medieval world. This article shifts the approach away from the Book of Travels’ content to its reception. Under discussion is Constantijn L’Empereur’s 1633 Latin edition. This article reveals how L’Empereur elevated the Book of Travels from a travelogue into a work of rabbinic literature to undermine the text’s authority. It argues that by attacking the veracity of the account, L’Empereur employed the narrative in anti-Jewish polemics against the cunning, and theologically blind Jews to illustrate the errors of their beliefs. By illuminating L’Empereur’s engagement with the text, the article also situates L’Empereur’s use of rabbinic literature in the wider early modern debate about the utility of Hebrew language study and rabbinic literature for Christian scholars.

Medieval Roots of the Myth of Jewish Male Menses

2000 ◽  
Vol 93 (3) ◽  
pp. 241-263 ◽  
Author(s):  
Irven M. Resnick
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Historical Fiction ◽  
Jewish Life ◽  
Cultural Attitudes ◽  
Ritual Murder ◽  
Anti Semitism ◽  
Blood Libel ◽  
Anti Jewish ◽  
The Middle Ages

Good historical fiction reveals not only the realities of a particular epoch, but also its cultural attitudes. An excellent example is Bernard Malamud's The Fixer, which succeeds in disclosing the nature of Russian anti-semitism by artfully weaving together enduring themes of anti-Jewish Christian mythology—the blood libel and accusations of ritual murder—to illustrate the fabric of Jewish life in early modern Russia. Perhaps almost unnoticed in his work, however, are references to the myth of Jewish male menses. Consider the following passages from The Fixer, in which the Jewish defendant, Yakov Bok, is confronted by this bizarre contention:“You saw the blood?” the Prosecuting Attorney said sarcastically. “Did that have some religious meaning to you as a Jew? Do you know that in the Middle Ages Jewish men were said to menstruate?” Yakov looked at him in surprise and fright. “I don't know anything about that, your honor, although I don't see how it could be.”

Allegra Iafrate, The Long Life of Magical Objects: A Study in the Solomonic Tradition. The Magic in History Series. University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 2019, xi, 235 pp., 19 b/w images, 2 tables.

Mediaevistik ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 252-254
Author(s):  
Albrecht Classen
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Literary Texts ◽  
Modern World ◽  
State University ◽  
Eastern Culture ◽  
Historical Objects ◽  
History Of ◽  
Religious Objects ◽  
The Middle Ages

Throughout times, magic and magicians have exerted a tremendous influence, and this even in our (post)modern world (see now the contributions to Magic and Magicians in the Middle Ages and the Early Modern Time, ed. Albrecht Classen, 2017; here not mentioned). Allegra Iafrate here presents a fourth monograph dedicated to magical objects, primarily those associated with the biblical King Solomon, especially the ring, the bottle which holds a demon, knots, and the flying carpet. She is especially interested in the reception history of those symbolic objects, both in antiquity and in the Middle Ages, both in western and in eastern culture, that is, above all, in the Arabic world, and also pursues the afterlife of those objects in the early modern age. Iafrate pursues not only the actual history of King Solomon and those religious objects associated with him, but the metaphorical objects as they made their presence felt throughout time, and this especially in literary texts and in art-historical objects.

The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography

2020 ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Final Section ◽  
Full Range ◽  
Early Modern Period ◽  
Book Production ◽  
Cultural Dynamics ◽  
Comprehensive Overview ◽  
Modern Period ◽  
The Middle Ages

The Oxford Handbook of Latin Palaeography provides a comprehensive overview of the development of Latin scripts from Antiquity to the Early Modern period, of codicology, and of the cultural setting of the mediaeval manuscript. The opening section, on Latin Palaeography, treats a full range of Latin book hands, beginning with Square and Rustic Capitals and finishing with Humanistic minuscule. The Handbook is groundbreaking in giving extensive treatment to such scripts as Old Roman Cursive, New Roman Cursive, and Visigothic. Each article is written by a leading expert in the field and is copiously illustrated with figures and plates. Examples of each script with full transcription of selected plates are frequently provided for the benefit of newcomers to the field. The second section, on Codicology, contains essays on the design and physical make-up of the manuscript book, and it includes as well articles in newly-created disciplines, such as comparative codicology. The third and final section, Manuscript Setting, places the mediaeval manuscript within its cultural and intellectual setting, with extended essays on the mediaeval library, particular genres and types of manuscript production, the book trade in antiquity and the Middle Ages, and manuscript cataloguing. All articles are in English. The Handbook will be an indispensable guide to all those working in the various fields concerned with the literary and cultural dynamics of book production in the Middle Ages and Early Modern period.

scholarly journals XVIII.—Letter from Sir Thomas Phillipps, Bart., F.R.S., F.S.A., addressed to Albert Way, Esq., Director, communicating a transcript of a MS. Treatise on the preparation of Pigments, and on various processes of the Decorative Arts practised during the Middle Ages, written in the twelfth century, and entitled Mappæ Clavicula

Archaeologia ◽  
1847 ◽  
Vol 32 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-244 ◽  
Author(s):  
Thomas Phillipps
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Decorative Arts ◽  
The Middle Ages

The manuscript entitled Mappæ Clavicula, signifying the Little Key of Drawing, or Painting, is a small duodecimo volume of sixty-seven leaves of vellum, written in the twelfth century. It appears to be perfect, except a leaf torn out between pp. 64 and 65 of the modern paging, and a little cropping in two leaves.

Apocalypticism and Globalization in the Early Modern World: A Medievalist’s Perspective

2021 ◽  
Vol 0 (0) ◽  
Author(s):  
Jay Rubenstein
Keyword(s):  
Early Modern ◽  
Middle Ages ◽  
Belief Systems ◽  
World History ◽  
Natural World ◽  
Seventh Century ◽  
Modern World ◽  
Early Modernity ◽  
Age Of Discovery ◽  
The Middle Ages

Abstract The apocalyptic belief systems from early modernity discussed in this series of articles to varying degrees have precursors in the Middle Ages. The drive to map the globe for purposes both geographic and symbolic, finds expression in explicitly apocalyptic manuscripts produced throughout the Middle Ages. An apocalyptic political discourse, especially centered on themes of empire and Islam, developed in the seventh century and reached extraordinary popularity during the Crusades. Speculation about the end of world history among medieval intellectuals led them not to reject the natural world but to study it more closely, in ways that set the stage for the later Age of Discovery. These broad continuities between the medieval and early modern, and indeed into modernity, demonstrate the imperative of viewing apocalypticism not as an esoteric fringe movement but as a constructive force in cultural creation.

Clothing and Female Reclusion in The Life of Mary of Egypt and The Life of Christina of Markyate

2021 ◽  
Vol 3 (1) ◽  
pp. 17-31
Author(s):  
Anna McKay
Keyword(s):  
Middle Ages ◽  
Twelfth Century ◽  
Feminist Scholarship ◽  
Literary Representation ◽  
The Past ◽  
The World ◽  
Holy Women ◽  
Experiences Of Women ◽  
Mary Of Egypt ◽  
The Middle Ages

Over the past two decades, medieval feminist scholarship has increasingly turned to the literary representation of textiles as a means of exploring the oftensilenced experiences of women in the Middle Ages. This article uses fabric as a lens through which to consider the world of the female recluse, exploring the ways in which clothing operates as a tether to patriarchal, secular values in Paul the Deacon’s eighthcentury Life of Mary of Egypt and the twelfth-century Life of Christina of Markyate. In rejecting worldly garb as recluses, these holy women seek out and achieve lives of spiritual autonomy and independence.

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