Curriculum and Calendar
Faculty:
Dr. Anthony Bale (Birbeck College, University of London)
Professor Jeremy Cohen (Tel Aviv University)
Professor Daniel J. Lasker, Norbert Blechner Professor of Jewish Values (Ben-Gurion University of the Negev)
Associate Professor Sara Lipton (SUNY-Stony Brook)
Professor Irven Resnick (University of Tennessee, Chattanooga)
Professor Robert Stacey (University of Washington)
Texts recommended for review before the beginning of the institute
- Abulafia, Anna Sapir. Christians and Jews in the Twelfth Century Renaissance. London; New York: Routledge, 1995. ISBN: 0415000122.
- Cohen, Jeremy. Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999. ISBN: 0520216806
- Cohen, Jeremy, ed. From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought. Wolfenbutteler Mittelalter-Studien, Bd. 11. Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996. (essays from parts 1 and 4)
- Moore, R.I. The Formations of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950-1250. Oxford, New York: B. Blackwell, 1987. ISBN: 0631171452.
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Lasker, Daniel J. Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity. 2nd ed. Oxford ; Portland, Or.: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 2007. ISBN: 978-1904113515
- Berger, David. The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages. Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society of America, 1979. Introduction. ISBN: 0827601042.
- Roth, Cecil. The Jews of Medieval Oxford. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951.
Week I. July 6-13: Asserting Oneself through Negating the Other
Tuesday, 6 July:
Evening Banquet. Welcome from David Ariel, President of the Oxford Centre for Hebrew and Jewish Studies
Wednesday, 7 July:
Morning session and orientation (Irven M. Resnick)
Transfer to Bodleian library to obtain library cards
Thursday, 8 July: Towards Exclusion and Demonization (Jeremy Cohen)
Morning session: Saint Augustine and the Jews
Read: Augustine, Tractatus adversos Judaeos
Selections from: Augustine, Contra Faustum; Enarrationes in Psalmos; De civitate Dei. Read Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, pp. 23-65 (on Augustine).
St. Augustine, fresco, Florence (Botticelli, ca. 1480)
Afternoon session: Jews as “Other” in Early Medieval EuropeRead: Gregory the Great, selected letters and excerpts from the biblical commentaries.
Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, pp. 73-94 (on Gregory the Great)
Isidore of Seville, excerpts from the Chronicon and historia Gothorum.
Agobard of Lyons, Selected Letters.
Amon Linder, The Jews in Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (selections)
Friday, 9 July: Crusades and Crusading
Read: Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, pp. 225-242 and 50-179.
Peter the Hermit leading the 1st Crusade
Monday, 12 July: Monasticism and Spirituality (Peter of Cluny, Bernard of Clairvaux, and Hermann of Cologne)
Read: Bernard of Clairvaux, Letter 363; Sermons on the Song of Songs 13-14; 59-60
Peter the Venerable, Letter 130; De laude dominici sepulchri
Amos Funkenstein, Perceptions of Jewish History (selections)
Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in Dispute (selections)
R.I. Moore, “Anti-Semitism and the Birth of Europe,” in Studies in Church History, 29 (Oxford: Ecclesiastical History Society, 1992): 33-57.
Tuesday, 13 July:
Morning session: Law and Papal Leadership (Canonists, papal legislation, and the Talmud)
Read: Solomon Grayzel, The Church and the Jews in the Thirteenth Century (selected letters)
Walter Pakter, Medieval Canon Law and the Jews (selections)
Afternoon session: Mendicant Inquisitors, Missionaries, Theologians, and their Legacy
Read: The Barcelona Disputation of 1263—Hebrew and Latin Reports in Translation
Thomas Aquinas, Summa Theologiae (selections from 1-2.98-103; 2-2.10, 3.47)
John Y.B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (selections)
Wednesday, 14 July:
Informal Meetings and Research
Week II. July 15-20: Theology in Art and Images
Thursday, 15 July: Rationalism and Theology from Anselm to Abelard (Irven Resnick)
Read: Anselm of Canterbury, Cur Deus Homo (selections)
Odo of Tournai, A Disputation with a Jew, Leo
Peter Alfonsi, Dialogues with Moses the Jew (selections)
Peter Abelard, Dialogue of a Philosopher with a Jew and a Christian (selections)
Peter the Venerable, Against the Inveterate Hardness of the Jews (selections)
Friday, 16 July: Signs of Otherness in Medieval Art and Literature
Jews in Gothic Art (Sara Lipton)
Topics to be covered include typological iconography, identifying signs,
Synagoga personified, host desecration imagery, Passion iconography.
Readings:
Suzanne Lewis, "Tractatus Adversus Judaeos in the Gulbenkian Apocalypse,"Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 543-566.
Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance, Chapters One and Two.
Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol, Chapter Four.
Monday, 19 July: Signs of Otherness. Jews in Gothic Art. Continued (Sara Lipton)
Ecclesia and Synagoga, from Notre-Dame de Paris
(3rd statue [from left to right] on the West Entrance)
Topics to be covered include typological iconography, identifying signs,
Synagoga personified, host desecration imagery, Passion iconography.
Readings:
Diane Hughes, "Distinguishing Sign: Ear-rings, Jews, and Franciscan Rhetoric in the Italian Renaissance City," Past and Present 112 (1986): 3-59.
James Marrow, "Circumdederint me canes multi: Christ's Tormenters inNorthern European Art of the Later Middle Ages," The Art Bulletin 59 (1977): 167-181.
Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Prioress's Tale."
Tuesday, 20 July:
Morning session: Representations of Heresy and Witchcraft. (Sara Lipton)
Topics include the visual conflation of Jews and heretics, heresy as diseaser, accusations of animal worship, sexual and gendered polemics, images of the devil.
Readings:
Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance, Chapters Four and Five.
Elizabeth Pastan, "Tam Haereticos Quam Judaeos: Shifting Symbols in the Glazing of Troyes Cathedral," Word and Image 10 (1994): 66-83.
Walter Cahn, "Heresy and the Interpretation of Romanesque Art," in Romanesque and Art. Ed. Neil Stratford, pp. 27-33.
Henry Kraus, The Living Theatre of Medieval Art.
Dorinda Neave, "The Witch in 16th Century German Art," Woman's Art Journal 9:1 (1988): 3-9.
Afternoon session: The Non-European Other. (Sara Lipton)
An examination of depictions of Muslims and Africans.
Readings:
Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol, Chapter Three.
Paul Kaplan, "Black Africans in Hohenstaufen Art," Gesta 26.1(1987): 29-36.
The Song of Roland (selections)
William Chester Jordan, "The Last Tormenter of Christ," Jewish Quarterly Review 78 (1987): 21-47.
Wednesday, 21 July: Informal Meetings and Research
Week III. July 22- 27: Public Disputations and Literary Polemics
Thursday, 22 July: The Beginnings of the Jewish Critique of Christianity (Daniel Lasker)
Readings:
Herford, R. Travers. Christianity in Talmud and Midrash. different editions; pp. 35-96.
Lasker, Daniel J., and Sarah Stroumsa, The Polemic of Nestor the Priest. Jerusalem, 1996, vol. 1, pp. 13-89.
Lasker, Daniel J., "The Jewish Critique of Christianity under Islam," Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 57 (1991): 121-153
Saadia Gaon, The Book of Beliefs and Opinions, trans. by Samuel Rosenblatt, New Haven, 1948, pp. 103-110; 157-167; 312-322.
Friday, 23 July: The Transition of the Jewish critique of Christianity to Christendom. (Daniel Lasker)
Readings:
Berger, David, "Mission to the Jews and Jewish-Christian Contacts in the Polemical Literature of the High Middle Ages," The American Historical Review 91:3 (June, 1986): 576-591.
Chazan, Robert, “The Christian Position in Jacob Ben Reuben's Milhamot Ha-Shem.” From Ancient Israel to Modern Judaism. Intellect in Quest of Understanding. Essays in Honor of Marvin Fox. Eds. Jacob Neusner, et al.; 4 vols.; Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989. 2: 157-170.
Kimhi, Joseph, The Book of the Covenant, trans. F. Talmage, Toronto, 1972.
Lasker, Daniel J., and Sarah Stroumsa eds. and trans. The Polemic of Nestor the Priest. 2 vols.; Jerusalem: Ben-Zvi Institute for the Study of Jewish Communities in the East, 1996. Vol. 1, pp. 93-131.
Lasker, Daniel J. “Jewish-Christian Polemics in Transition: From the Lands of Ishmael to the Lands of Edom,” in Benjamin Hary, et al., eds., Judasim and Islam: Boundaries, Interaction, and Communication. Leiden, 2000, pp. 53-65.
----, Jewish-Christian Polemics at the Turning Point: Jewish Evidence from the Twelfth Century, Harvard Theological Review 89:2 (1996): 161-173.
Monday, 26 July: Public Disputations and Philosophical Polemics (Daniel Lasker)
Readings:
Chazan, Robert. Barcelona and Beyond: the Disputation of 1263 and its Aftermath. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1992. (selections)
______ Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and the Jewish Response. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1989. (selections)
Tuesday, 27 July: Public Disputations and Philosophical Polemics (Daniel Lasker)
Readings: Crescas, Hasdai, The Refutation of the Christian Principles. Trans. Daniel J. Lasker. Albany: State University of New York, 1992. (selections)
Lasker, Daniel J., "Averroistic Trends in Jewish-Christian Polemics in the Late Middle Ages," Speculum 55:2 (1980): 294-304.
______"Transubstantiation, Elijah's Chair, Plato, and the Jewish-Christian Debate," Revue des Etudes Juives 143:1-2 (January-June, 1984): 31-58.
Maccoby, Hyam, trans. Judaism on Trial: Jewish-Christian Disputations in the Middle Ages. Rutherford, N.J.: Fairleigh Dickinson University Press, 1982. Pp. 97-167.
Rosenthal, Judah, "The Talmud on Trial," Jewish Quarterly Review 47 (1956): 58-76; 145-69.
Wednesday, 28 July: Informal meetings and Research
Week IV. 29 July-3 August: the Jews of England
St. William of Norwich
(15th C. Anon. Rood Screen painting; Saint Peter and Paul, Eye, Suffolk.)
Thursday, 29 July: Later Medieval Determinations of the “Other”: Jews in English History (Robert Stacey): “The First Century of English Jewish History”
Morning Session:
Cecil Roth, A History of the Jews in England, 3rd ed. (1964), pp. 1-10
R.C. Stacey, “Jewish Lending and the Medieval English Economy,” in A Commercialising Economy: England 1086 to c. 1300, ed. R.H. Britnell and B.M.S. Campbell (Manchester Univ. Press, 1995), pp. 78-88.
Thomas of Monmouth: The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. A. Jessop and M.R. James (Cambridge, 1895), Books I and II only
Afternoon Session: The Angevin Era Begins, 1054-1199
Roth, History, pp. 10-37
Stacey, “Jewish Lending and the Economy,” in A Commercialising Economy, pp. 88-97
R.C. Stacey, “Jews and Christians in 12th Century England: Some Dynamics of a Changing Relationship,” in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. M.A. Signer and J. Van Engen (Notre Dame Univ. Press, 2001), pp. 340-54
R.C. Stacey, “Crusades, Martyrdoms, and the Jews of Norman England, 1096-1190,” in Juden und Christen zur Zeit der Kreuzzüge, ed. Alfred Haverkamp (Sigmaringen, 1999), pp. 233-51.
Friday, 30 July: (Robert Stacey)
Roth, History, pp. 38-67
R.C. Stacey, “The English Jews under Henry III,” in The Jews in Medieval Britain: Historical, Literary and Archaeological Perspectives, ed. Patricia Skinner (Boydell, 2003), pp. 41-54
R.C. Stacey, “1240-1260: A Watershed in Anglo-Jewish Relations?” Historical Research 61 (1988), pp. 135-50.
R.C. Stacey, “The Conversion of Jews to Christianity in 13th Century England,” Speculum 67 (1992), pp. 263-83.
Monday, 2 August:
Cecil Roth, The Jews of Medieval Oxford (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1951), pp. 1-168.
Tuesday, 3 August: The 13th Century (Robert Stacey)
Morning Session:
Roth, History, pp. 68-90
Robin Mundill, “Edward I and the Final Phase of Anglo-Jewry,” in Jews in Medieval Britain, pp. 55-70
R.C. Stacey, “Jewish Lending and the Economy,” in A Commercialising Economy, pp. 98-101
R.C. Stacey, “Thirteenth-Century Anglo-Jewry and the Problem of the Expulsion,” in Expulsion and Resettlement, ed. Yosef Kaplan and David Katz (Jerusalem, 1993), pp. 9-25 (in Hebrew; English translation will be provided).
R.C. Stacey, “Parliamentary Negotiation and the Expulsion of the Jews from England,” in Thirteenth Century England VI,. ed. R.H. Britnell, R. Frame, and M. Prestwich (Boydell Press, 1997), pp. 77-101.
Afternoon Session:
“The Passion of Adam of Bristol,” English translation (to be provided) of an untranslated ritual crucifixion tale from 13th century England.
Roth, History, pp. 91-131
R.C. Stacey, “Antisemitism and the Medieval English State,” in The Medieval English State: Essays Presented to James Campbell, ed. J.R. Maddicott and D.M. Palliser (Hambledon Press, 2000), pp. 163-77
Anthony Bale, “Fictions of Judaism in England before 1290,” in Jews in Medieval Britain, pp. 129-44.
Wednesday, 4 August: A Walking Tour of Medieval Jewish Oxford (Optional)
Week V. August 5-10: Jews in Later Medieval English Literature
Thursday, 5 August: (Anthony Bale)
Morning session:
The Establishment of a Cultural Stereotype: Early English Stereotypes
Cecil Roth, Essays and Portraits in Anglo-Jewish History (Philadelphia, 1962), pp. 22-5
Michael Camille, The Gothic Idol (Cambridge, 1992), pp. 182-5
Frank Felsenstein, ‘Jews and devils: antisemitic stereotypes in late medieval and Renaissance England’, Literature and Theology 4 (1990): 15-28
Willis Johnson, ‘Textual sources for the study of Jewish currency crimes in thirteenth-century England’, British Numismatic Journal 66 (1997): 21-32
V. D. Lipman, The Jews of Medieval Norwich (London, 1967), esp. pp. 59-64.
Afternoon Session: (with travel to Chalgrove)
Reading the Jewish Image.
Frescoes (fourteenth-century) at Chalgrove church, near Oxford
‘Assumption of Mary’ play, in ed. Stephen Spector, The N-Town Plays (Oxford, 1991)
Stephen Shoemaker, ‘”Let us go and burn her body”: the image of the Jews in the Early Dormition Traditions’, Church History 66 (1999): 775-823.
Friday, 6 August: (Anthony Bale)
Jewry and the Cult of the Saints
The zeal and death of St Stephen, Acts 6-8
Thomas of Monmouth: The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, ed. A. Jessop and M.R. James (Cambridge, 1895), to p. 111.
John Lydgate, Praier to St Robert, in Anthony Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book (Cambridge, 2006), appendix 1.
The ‘Jewish’ Boy and Sacramental Childhood.
Song of the Three Children, Daniel 3 (in Douay-Rheims bible)
Massacre of the Innocents, Matthew 2:15-20
‘The Jewish Boy’ from the Vernon Manuscript: text to the circulated
Geoffrey Chaucer, The Prioress’s Prologue and Tale in ed. Larry D. Benson, The Riverside Chaucer (Oxford, 1987)
Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia, 2004), pp. 1-39
C. F. O’Meara, ‘In the hearth of the virginal womb: the iconography of the holocaust in late medieval art’, Art Bulletin 63 (1981): 75-88.
Monday, 9 August: (Anthony Bale)
Gender and Jewish Difference.
‘The Jew’s Daughter’ from The Alphabet of Tales: text to be circulated
Lisa Lampert, Gender and Jewish Difference from Paul to Shakespeare (Philadelphia, 2002), chapter 1 (‘Made, Not Born’, pp. 1-21)
Judith Baskin, ‘Jewish Women in the Middle Ages’, in ed. J. R. Baskin, Jewish Women in Historical Perspective, 2nd ed. (Detroit, 1998), pp. 101-128.
Suzanne Bartlet, ‘Women in the medieval Anglo-Jewish community’, in ed. Patricia Skinner, Jews in Medieval Britain (Woodbridge, 2003), pp. 113-128
I.M. Resnick, “Medieval Roots of the Myth of Jewish Male Menses,” Harvard Theological Review 93 (2000): 241-63.
Jews Respond to Christians I
Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts, ed. Vivian Mann (Cambridge, 2000), chapter 3, ‘The Art of the Other’
Ruth Mellinkoff, Antisemitic Hate-Signs in Hebrew Illuminated Manuscripts from Medieval Germany (Jerusalem, 1999)
Shalev-Eyni, Sarit, ‘In the Days of the Barely Harvest: The Iconography of Ruth’, Artibus et Histoire 51 (2005): pp. 37-57
Marc Michael Epstein, Dreams of Subversion in Medieval Jewish Art and Literature (University Park, 1997), pp 1-38 (chapters 1 & 2)
Sefer Chasidim, ed. and trans. Avraham Finkel (Northvale NJ, 1997), chapter 15 (‘Converts to Judaism’), chapter 29 (‘Animosity, Hatred, and Quarreling’), and Part V (‘Jews Living Among Christians’).
Israel Abrahams, Jewish Life in the Middle Ages (Philadelphia, 1911), chapters xxiii (‘Personal Relations’) and xxiv (‘Personal Relations (continued)’.
Israel Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antioquity and the Middle Ages (Berkeley, 2006), chapters 3 and 4
Tuesday, 10 August: Concluding sessions (Irven Resnick)
Wednesday, 11 August: Departures
