Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

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       THE S. MARK TAPER FOUNDATION

       IMPRINT IN JEWISH STUDIES

       BY THIS ENDOWMENT

       THE S. MARK TAPER FOUNDATION SUPPORTS

       THE APPRECIATION AND UNDERSTANDING

       OF THE RICHNESS AND DIVERSITY OF

       JEWISH LIFE AND CULTURE

       The publisher gratefully acknowledges the generouscontribution to this book provided by theS. Mark Taper Foundation.

       Living Lettersof the Law

       Ideas of the Jew inMedieval Christianity

       Jeremy Cohen

       UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS Berkeley • Los Angeles • London

      The cost of preparing this manuscript was offset

      by a grant from the Diaspora Research Institute of

      Tel Aviv University.

      University of California Press

      Berkeley and Los Angeles, California

      University of California Press, Ltd.

      London, England

      © 1999 by

      The Regents of the University of California

      Library of Congress

      Cataloging-in-Publication Data

      Cohen, Jeremy

      Living letters of the law : ideas of the Jew in

      medieval Christianity / Jeremy Cohen.

      p. cm.—(The S. Mark Taper

      Foundation imprint in Jewish studies)

      Includes bibliographical references and index.

      ISBN 978-0-520-21870-3 (alk. paper)

      1. Judaism (Christian theology)—History of

      doctrines—Middle Ages, 600-1500. I. Title.

      BT93.C64 1999

      261.2'6'0902—dc21 99-20634

      CIP

      Manufactured in the United States of America

      15 14 13 12 11 10 09 08 07

      11 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2

      The paper used in this publication meets the

      minimum requirements of ANSI/NISO Z39.48-

      1992 (R 1997) (Permanence of Paper).

      Contents

       Acknowledgments

       List of Abbreviations

       Introduction

       PART ONE: AUGUSTINIAN FOUNDATIONS

       1. The Doctrine of Jewish Witness

       PART TWO: THE AUGUSTINIAN LEGACY IN THE EARLY MIDDLE AGES: ADAPTATION, REINTERPRETATION, RESISTANCE

       2. Gregory the Great: Between Sicut ludaeis and Adversus Iudaeos

       3. Isidore of Seville: Anti-Judaism and the Hermeneutics of Integration

       4. Agobard of Lyons: Battling the Enemies of Christian Unity

       PART THREE: RECONCEPTUALIZING JEWISH DISBELIEF IN THE TWELFTH CENTURY

       5. Reason in Defense of the Faith: From Anselm of Canterbury to Peter Alfonsi

       6. Against the Backdrop of Holy War: Bernard of Clairvaux and Peter the Venerable

       7. Renaissance Men and Their Dreams

       PART FOUR: THE FRIARS RECONSIDERED

       8. Judaism as Heresy: Thirteenth-Century Churchmen and the Talmud

       9. Ambiguities of Thomistic Synthesis

       Afterword

       References

       Index

      Acknowledgments

      Work on this book has extended over much of the present decade, and I gratefully acknowledge my indebtedness to the many individuals who have helped me bring the project to its conclusion. Martin Goodman, Ora Limor, Ivan Marcus, Marc Raphael, Michael Signer, David Stern, and Kenneth Stow graciously agreed to read portions of the manuscript in various stages of its evolution and provided me with invaluable constructive criticism. Many others responded graciously to my variegated calls for assistance, including Ram Ben-Shalom, Martin Bertram, Naomi Cohen, Sander Gilman, Thomas Hahn, Colum Hourihane, Aryeh Kasher, Joel Kraemer, Sara Lipton, Joseph Lynch, Robert Markus, Aharon Oppenheimer, Alexander Patschovsky, Kenneth Pennington, Judith Rosen, Shlomo Simonsohn, Michael Toch, and John Van Engen; I remain appreciatively in their debt.

      Fellowships at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, at the Hebrew University's Institute for Advanced Studies, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed me precious time for pursuing this project; and grants from the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and the College of Humanities at The Ohio State University, the State of Israel's Ministry of Absorption, and the Diaspora Research Institute at Tel Aviv University helped to offset the expenses of my research. I am similarly grateful to the directors and staffs of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, where I profited from several fruitful and pleasant weeks of research, and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, which allowed me to organize an international symposium on the subject of this book in 1993. The characteristically good nature and dedication of librarians too numerous to mention here have consistently served me well.

      Finally, my wife and children have never wavered in their support for my work. In the appreciation that we share for the powerful impact of ideas and symbols on our lives, the bustle of our busy household and my historian's vocation have blended to imbue my life with meaning and with satisfaction.

      Abbreviations