Sebastian Münster and his Sources: The Messiah in Rome and the Convergence of Christian-Jewish Polemic and Intra-Christian Conflict

The Talmudic story of an encounter between Rabbi Joshua ben Levi and the Messiah at the gate of Rome served medieval Christians well in their polemics against the Jews. This was, it seemed, a Jewish affirmation of the truth of Christianity: not only did the legend indicate that the Messiah had already come, it also placed him in Rome, the epicenter of the Christian faith. For that very reason, however, later Protestant polemicists could hardly be expected to utilize the story correspondingly, not after rejecting the primacy of Rome. This article considers a number of Protestant responses to the Jewish Messiah in Rome tradition. Its primary focus, though, is on two anti-Jewish treatises by Sebastian Münster. As Stephen G. Burnett has demonstrated, Münster’s texts draw heavily from pre-Reformation polemical works – in other words, works that accepted Rome’s preeminence; the present article argues that Münster managed to subtly convey his own Protestant sensitivities in discussing the Joshua b. Levi story, all the same. This close reading of Münster offers a unique perspective on the convergence of Christian-Jewish controversy and Protestant-Catholic tensions, and especially on the role and development of the former in light of the latter.