From Crusades to Blood Libels to Expulsions: Some new approaches to Medieval antisemitism

Abstract

Despite ubiquitous, ritualized gestures of obeisance toward Salo Baron's rejection of the "lachrymose conception" of Jewish history, most historians of medieval Jewry continue to employ a periodization structured by patterns of toleration and persecution. On the whole, the Jewish condition in the early Middle Ages emerges as relatively stable and secure, while the later period is marked by a growing hostility which finally erupts into libels, pogroms and expulsions.¶

Sweeping generalizations are, of course, always vulnerable to attack, and this one more than most. Even if limited, as it is, to Christian Europe, it characterizes the treatment of a dispersed group across a thousand years and a multitude of political and cultural boundaries. Thus, all observers make an exception for the persecution of Jews in seventh-century Visigothic Spain. Beyond this instance, some historians have raised more general questions about what they see as a rose-colored perception of the early period. Kenneth Stow, for example, challenges the view that Jews were treated so well in the early Middle Ages that one can justly speak of an alliance with Christian rulers or even of Jewish political power.' Although his rejection of this position unquestionably has concrete ramifications for our perception of early medieval Jewry, what he substitutes for a political alliance which ultimately breaks down is a legal status which ultimately becomes anomalous. The fundamental periodization remains intact. (from Introduction)