Between Judaism and Christianity: The semicircumcision of Christians according to Bernard Gui, his sources and R. Eliezer of Metz

Harvard Theological Review

Volumn 94, Issue 3, 2001, Pages 285-321

  Cohen, Shaye J D ^a  

^a HARVARD UNIVERSITY   (United States)

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EID: 67649256015     PISSN: 00178160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
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References (60)

1. and from the edition of part 5 by G. Mollat with the assistance of G. Drioux, Bernard Gui, Manuel de l'inquisiteur (2 vols.; Paris: Honoré Champion, 1927).
2. The following works, which are cited frequently, are cited by author's name and brief title: Antoine Dondaine, "Le manuel de I'inquisiteur (1230-1330)," Archivum Fratrum Praedicatorum 17 (1947) 85-194;
3. Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century, Vol. 2: 1254-1314 (ed. Kenneth Stow; New York: Jewish Theological Seminary, 1988);
4. Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents 492-1404 (Studies and Texts 94; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988)
5. Walter Wakefield and Austin Evans, Heresies of the High Middle Ages (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969; repr., 1991);
6. Yosef H. Yerushalmi, "The Inquisition and the Jews of France in the Time of Bernard Gui," HTR 63 (1970) 317-76.
7. Yerushalmi, "Inquisition";
8. A. Vernet, "Guidonis, Bernardo," Lexikon des Mittelalters 1 (1980) 1976-78;
9. Bernard Gui el son monde (Cahiers de Fanjeaux 16; Toulouse: Edouard Privat, 1981);
10. Jeremy Cohen, The Friars and the Jews (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1982) 89-96.
11. M. Romanello, "Eymerich, Nicolas," Lexikon des Mittelallers 4 (1989) 190-91.
12. th c.) makes clear that converts to Judaism require regular circumcision; see Jacob Glassberg, ed., Zichron Berit Larishonim (Cracow: Fischer, 1892), 2.132-36.
13. R. Jacob ben Asher (ca. 1270-1340), a contemporary of Bernard, describes the circumcision of a convert to Judaism in precisely the same language as the circumcision of a Jewish infant; see Tur, Yoreh De'ah 268.
14. Similarly Maimonides, Hilkhot Milah 1:8.
15. In fact, none of the bulls issued by Nicholas IV mentions the circumcision of Christians; see Grayzel, Church. 164-92
16. Louis Newman, Jewish Influence on Christian Reform Movements (New York: Columbia University Press, 1925) 263-65,
17. Salo Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 13: Inquisition, Renaissance, and Reformation (New York: Columbia University Press, 1969) 9-10 with 306-7 n. 8;
18. I owe my knowledge of Lévi to its summary by Newman, Jewish Influence, 263-64,
19. and Yerushalmi, "Inquisition," 319-20 n. 8. It was Lévi who, as cited by Newman, directed my attention to Eymeric and Pegna.
20. On this manuscript see Auguste Molinier, Catalogue général des manuscrits des bibliothèques publiques de France: catalogue des manuscrits de la bibliothèque Mazarine (Paris: Libraire Plon, 1886) 2:323.
21. For medieval usage see, e.g., Dictionary of Medieval Latin from British Sources(ed. R. E. Latham, et al.; vol. 1 [A-L]; Oxford: Oxford University Press for the British Academy, 1975-97) 1507.
22. On the absence of an "objective" meaning for the term, see B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental (Études juives 2; Paris: Mouton, 1960) 59-64;
23. Simonsohn, History, 234-35;
24. Robert Dán, " 'Judaizare': The Career of a Term," Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the Sixteenth Century (ed. R. Dán and A. Pirnát; Budapest: Hungarian Academy of Sciences, 1982) 25-34;
25. Vincent Déroche, "Iudaizantes," RAC 19:130-42 (Lieferung 146, 1999).
26. The text is reprinted by Grayzel, Church, 209 no. 78 (the date given in note I, "May 7, 1288," is clearly an error) and Simonsohn, Documents, 285-86 no. 278. The Liber Sextus Decretalium was promulgated by Boniface VIII in 1298.
27. In fact, Eymeric tried to expand the scope of inquisitorial supervision over Jews and Jewish "heretics"; see Yitzhak (Fritz) Baer, A History of the Jews in Christian Spain (2 vols.; Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1961-66) 2.86-87,
28. Cohen, Friars and the Jews 98-99.
29. For possible connections see Joseph Shatzmiller, "The Albigensian Heresy as Reflected in the Eyes of Contemporary Jewry," Culture and Society in Medieval Jewry: Studies Dedicated to the Memory of H. H. Ben Sasson (in Hebrew) (ed. Menahem Ben-Sasson et al.; Jerusalem: Historical Society of Israel, 1989) 333-52.
30. Gustave Saige, Les Juifs de Languedoc (Paris: Picard, 1881; repr., Westmead: Gregg International, 1971) 236: simplices plurimos seducendo et circuncidendo seductos.
31. William Chester Jordan, The French Monarchy and the Jews: From Philip Augustus to the Last Capetians (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, 1989) 200-51,
32. and his "Jews, Regalian Rights and the Constitution in Medieval France," AJS Review 23 (1998) 1-16;
33. David Nirenberg, Communities of Violence (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1996) 43-68.
34. The precise contours of the Shepherds'e Crusade and of the expulsion of 1322 - if indeed expulsion is the right term - are much debated but do not affect my discussion. On the Jewish community of Toulouse in the decades before 1306, see Jordan, French Monarchy, 168-76,
35. and Yves Dossat, "Les Juifs à Toulouse," in Juifs et judaisme de Languedoc (ed. Marie-Humbert Vicaire and B. Blumenkranz; Cahiers de Fanjeaux 12; Toulouse: Édouard Privat, 1977) 117-39,
36. and "Quelques documents inédits sur les juifs à Toulouse," in his Église et hérésie en France au XIII' siècle (London: Variorum Reprints, 1982) no. 19.
37. Baron, Social and Religious History, 13:10.
38. Cf. Gavin Langmuir, "L'absence d'accusation de meurtre rituel à l'ouest du Rhône," in Juifs et judaisme de Languedoc (ed. Marie-Humbert Vicaire and B. Blumenkranz; Cahiers de Fanjeaux 12; Toulouse: Edouard Privat, 1977) 235-49.
39. A. Pales-Gobilliard, "L'Inquisition et les juifs," in Juifs et judaisme de Languedoc, 97-114;
40. Joseph Shatzmiller, "Converts and Judaizers in the Early Fourteenth Century," HTR 74 (1981) 63-77;
41. Kristine Utterback, " 'Converts' Revert: Voluntary and Forced Return to Judaism in the Early Fourteenth Century," CH 64 (1995) 16-28.
42. Shatzmiller, "L'inquisition et les juifs";
43. Maurice Kriegel, "Prémarranisme et inquisition dans la Provence," Provence historique 29 (1979) 313-23; as well as the studies cited in the previous footnote.
44. Salo Baron, Social and Religious History of the Jews, vol. 9: Under Church and Empire (New York: Columbia University Press, 1965) 24.
45. Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999) 27.
46. "Kenneth Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992) 262.
47. Claudine Fabre-Vassas, The Singular Beast: Jews, Christians, and the Pig (New York: Columbia University Press, 1997) 119 (commenting on the passage of Basnage cited in note 13 above);
48. Jonathan M. Elukin, "From Jew to Christian? Conversion and Immutability in Medieval Europe," in Varieties of Religious Conversion in the Middle Ages (ed. James Muldoon; Gainesville: University Press of Florida, 1997) 172-89, at 183. Elukin himself develops this conjecture in a slightly different direction: "A Jewish standard that discriminated between 'real' Jews and Christian converts was comforting to Gui, for it meant that one could still make a distinction between true Jews and the unfortunate Christian apostates who had been attracted to the perfidia Judaeorum."
49. "Israel Ta-Shma,"Eliezer ben Samuel of Metz," Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971) 6.628-29;
50. Ephraim Urbach, The Tosaphists: Their History, Writings, and Methods (in Hebrew) (4th ed.; Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1980) 154-64.
51. On the Qetia story see Shaye J. D. Cohen, "The Conversion of Antoninus," in The Talmud Yerushalmi and Graeco-Roman Culture I (ed. Peter Schäfer; Tübingen: Mohr-Siebeck, 1998) 141-71, at 164-68.
52. E. Gottlieb,"Recanati, Menahem ben Benjamin," Encyclopaedia Judaica 13 (1971) 1608;
53. Moshe Idel, R. Menahem Recanati the Kabbalist (Jerusalem: Schocken, 1998).
54. Elijah Posek, Sefer Koret Haberit (Lemberg, 1892) 76a-b, sec. 264;
55. Glassberg, Zikhron Berit Larishonim 3.187.
56. On this tractate see Dondaine, "Manuel," 180-83,
57. The French provenance of the paragraphs is argued by W. Preger; "Der Tractat des David von Augsburg über die Waldesier," Abhandlungen der historischen Classe der königlich bayerischen Akademie der Wissenschafien 14, no. 2 (Munich, 1878) 235n. 2.
58. followed by Claudia Rüegg, David von Augsburg (Deutsche Literatur von den Anfängen bis 1700,4; Bern: Peter Lang, 1989) 12 n.10.
59. A. Patschovsky, "Passagi(n)er," Lexikon des Mittelalters 6 (1993) 1756 s.v. Passagi(n)er.
60. See Yerushalmi, "Inquisition," 375 n. 149,