Jewish Ideas about the Papacy 33
extent by guiding élites.27 Nevertheless, legends and folktales are interesting because
they offer insight into a wide range of collective ideas, feelings, and emotions as well
as a taste of particular concerns affecting Jewish communities over generations.28
A well-known tale, existing in several versions and languages, is the legend of a
Jewish pope, sometimes referred to as ‘Andreas’ but more notoriously as ‘Elhanan’—a
reference presumably to the israelite ‘Elhanan’ of 2 Samuel 21: 19 who slew goliath
the gittite.29 Hebrew accounts of this tale, written down between the early fourteenth
and the early sixteenth centuries, exist in four different manuscripts. one version
eventually formed part of the Ma’aseh Book, a collection of Jewish legends compiled at
the beginning of the fifteenth century when Jews were living in the rhenish provinces,
and developed further during the subsequent migrations to russia and poland;
yet it probably originated from the very early fourteenth century.30 importantly
for us, it may reflect memories of the twelfth century and in particular of pope
Alexander iii (1159–1181), who, as we have seen, issued a number of letters con-
cerning Jews during his twenty-two-year-long pontificate.31 or it may be interpreted
27 For discussion of forms of élite Judaism in the High Middle Ages, see ivan Marcus, Piety and
Society. The Jewish Pietists of Medieval Germany (Leiden, 1981), pp.1–17; Ephraim Kanarfogel, ‘Peering
through the lattices’. Mystical, Magical and Pietistic Dimensions in the Tosafist Period (Detroit, 2000),
pp.93–129; Elliot wolfson, Along the Path. Studies in Kabbalistic Myth, Symbolism, and Hermeneutics
(Albany, 1995), pp.xi–xiii. to understand the phenomenon of ritual and remembrance, Jewish litur-
gical and doctrinal texts—in particular selihot (penitential prayers), memorbucher (memorial books),
and megillah (scrolls narrating events)—are also of course very useful. See, for example, discussion in
Yerushalmi, Zakhor, p.xv and pp.45–8. These included benedictions for the well-being of the pope
in Comtat liturgies. For discussion of papal rule in the Comtat, see Chester Jordan, ‘The Jews and
the transition to papal rule in the Comtat-Venaissin’, pp.213–32.
28 Eli Yassif, Jewish Folklore. An Annotated Bibliography (New York, London, 1986), pp.xi–xv. There
is a vast bibliography on the history of emotions and their relationship to collective memory only a few
of which can be mentioned here. Seminal works which have emerged in the twentieth and twenty-first
centuries include Henry taylor, The Medieval Mind. A History of the Development of Thought and
Emotion in the Middle Ages, 4th edn (London, 1925), 2 vols, passim; Feeling and Emotion. A History of
Theories, ed., H. M. gardiner, r. C. Metcalf, J. g. Beele-Center (New York, 1937) (First greenwood
reprinting, 1970), pp.89–118; Stephen white, ‘The politics of Anger’, in Anger’s Past. The Social Uses
of an Emotion in the Middle Ages, ed. B. H. rosenwein (ithaca, London, 1998), pp.127–52; John
Corrigan, ‘introduction. A Critical Assessment of Scholarly Literature in religion and Emotion’, in
Emotion and Religion. A Critical Assessment and Annotated Bibliography, ed. J. Corrigan, E. Crump, J.
Kloos (westport, Conneticut, London, 2000), pp.1–19; Jutta Eming, Emotion und expression.
Untersuchungen zu deutschen und franzözischen liebes- und abenteuerromanen des 12.–16. jahrhunderts
(Berlin, New York, 2006), pp.1–7.
29 For recent discussions of this tale see, for example, Sara Zfatman, The Jewish Tale in the Middle
Ages. Between Ashkenaz and Sepharad (Jerusalem, 1993), passim; peter Bietenholz, Historia and Fabula:
Myths and Legends in Historical Thought from Antiquity to the Modern Age (Leiden, 1994), pp.105–6;
Lucy raspe, ‘payetanim as Heroes of Medieval Folk Narrative: the Case of r. Shimón B. Yishaq of
Mainz’, in Jewish Studies Between the Disciplines. Judaistik zwischen den disziplinen. Papers in Honour of
Peter Schäfer on the Occasion of his Sixtieth Birthday, ed. K. Hermann, M. Schlüter, g. Veltri (Leiden,
Boston, 2003), pp.354–69. For discussion of the tradition of the idea of a Jewish pope in different
versions of Hebrew legends, see Joshua Schwartz, Marcel poorthuis, Saints and Role Models in Judaism
and Christianity (Leiden, Boston, 2004), pp.289–310.
30 The Ma’aseh Book, 2 vols, ed. M. gaster (philadelphia, 1934), Vol. 2, pp.410–18.
31 For recent discussion of the tradition of a Jewish pope in the Ma’aseh Book, see ‘The Jewish pope’,
in Encyclopedia of the Jewish Story. Sippur okev sippur, ed. Y. Elstein, A. Lipsker, r. Kushelevsky
(ramat-gan, 2004), Vol. 1, pp.351–62 and Lucy raspe, Jüdische hagiographie im mittelalterlichen
Aschkenas (tübingen, 2006), pp.291–322. For the letters of Alexander iii concerned with the Jews,
see Simonsohn, pp.50–62, passim.