Christian–Jewish Relations, 1000–1300 by Anna Sapir Abulafia

Author:Anna Sapir Abulafia
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 978-1-317-86770-8
Publisher: Routledge

part 3

The religious and cultural ambiguities of Jewish service

‘Although Jews are enemies of our faith, they serve us and are tolerated and defended by us.’

(Hostiensis, Apparatus, ad 5.6.9, adapted from John A. Watt, ‘Jews and Christians in the Gregorian Decretals’, in Diana Wood [ed.], Christianity and Judaism Studies in Church History, 29 [Oxford, 1992], 105.)

chapter 7

Jewish experience of the crusades

Crusades were wars preached by the papacy in defence of Christendom. Knights were called upon to serve Christ as his own knights, defending him against his enemies. This service would make up for the sins they had committed; if they died in battle they would be rewarded in heaven as holy martyrs. The First Crusade and its successors were deemed to be just and holy because they were fought with the right intention, that is love for God, and preached by the right authority, namely the Pope, against those who were seen to have attacked Christian interests. The combination of service for Christ with sanctioned warfare proved to be a heady and a popular cocktail with wide-ranging ramifications for the development of Christian life and thought and for Christian relations with Muslims and Jews.

Reform

An important aspect of crusading was the manner in which it transcended the lay and ecclesiastical frontiers within medieval Europe. It was a concrete manifestation of late eleventh-century papal rhetoric concerning a universal institutional Church which was headed by the Pope and which was led by him from its centre in Rome. This kind of rhetoric developed in Rome from 1046 when the first of four German reforming popes was installed at the behest of Emperor Henry III of Germany. Their election followed years of monastic reform which had radiated out to Germany from Cluny in Burgundy and its daughter-houses throughout France. Henry III (r. 1039–56) keenly supported reformers who attempted to reinvigorate monastic life through closer attention to the Benedictine rule, unencumbered by lay interference. In time new monastic orders such as the Cistercians (1098) would intensify this kind of reform by finding new ways for monks to express personal inner conversion to Christ and to live out their personal devotion to Christ. An important aspect of monastic reform and, indeed, of the Reform Movement in general, was a closer engagement with the figure of Christ. Men and women closely identified with the life of Christ and his suffering on the cross as a method of enhancing their own spirituality. As we shall see in the next chapter, the figure of the Virgin Mary also played a vital role in this kind of religious activity.

One main concern of papal reformers was the desire to safeguard the institutional Church as a whole from lay control. Another principal concern was the relationship between the Pope and the rest of the ecclesiastical hierarchy. Where should the seat of ecclesiastical power be? Should it lie in the centre with the Pontiff or in the dioceses with the bishops? It was during the reign of Pope Gregory VII (r. 1073–85) that these issues were articulated with uncompromising enthusiasm.

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