Preface xiii
core of these, even if not every word, was his own work. indeed we can often dis-
cern concrete evidence of a pope’s own ‘voice’ in his letters since a significant
number have a highly personal flavour.
Reading such papal correspondence in the light of the complex history of
christian–Jewish relations is another serious issue which confronts the historian,
who may too easily be seduced by an anachronistic reading of medieval thought
and practice. so, for example, the decree of the Fourth Lateran council of 1215
that Jews should wear distinguishing garb—which thirteenth-century popes were
keen to implement—imitated similar legislation in countries under Muslim rule.
The subsequent wearing of a yellow, green, or red badge, which over time became
common practice in many countries of medieval europe, reminds us of the nazis
revival of this badge as a yellow star in the twentieth century. Yet, as we shall see, unless
we recognize the very particular reasons for the decree and its implementation—
religious rather than racial—we shall not understand how it was both ostensibly
similar to, but also fundamentally different from, nazi anti-semitic practice.
That is not, of course, to deny that historically christians have a very bad record
when it comes to Jews, especially since until recently many thought of them as the
murderers of christ. in the twentieth- and twenty-first centuries the horrors of the
Holocaust have forced many christians to think more deeply about the Jewishness
of Jesus and the ethical teachings and ceremonial practices which christianity
derived from Judaism. The development of theology and recent biblical interpret-
ation have led to the repudiation of the deicide accusation as well as of projects to
convert Jews, even if this is still less acceptable among some christians than it
should be. The Holocaust has also made christians assess the church’s teachings
and historical record with respect to Jews, and examine links between traditional
anti-Jewish rhetoric—visible in medieval discourse—and nazi anti-semitism.
The concept of ‘anti-semitism’ as we know it is a modern one: the word was
coined c.1873 by wilhelm Marr to describe and advocate a certain ‘racist’ view of
Jews. Marr’s theory was fully developed during the second half of the nineteenth
century. scholars have long debated the difference between ‘anti-Judaism’ and ‘anti-
semitism’. Hence Gavin Langmuir distinguished ‘anti-Judaism’ as a non-rational
reaction to overcome non-rational doubts and ‘anti-semitism’ as an irrational reac-
tion to repressed rational doubts. For Langmuir ‘non-rational’ seems to imply
something close to what Max weber called ‘value rationality’: ie a social action
which is pursued because of the supposed intrinsic value of the action itself, regard-
less of its consequences. when i use the terms ‘anti-Judaism’ and ‘anti-semitism’
my primary aim is to emphasize how difficult it is for us to know whether medieval
people would—and indeed could—have distinguished between ‘anti-Judaism’—
i.e. anti the religion—and ‘anti-semitism’—i.e. a peculiar and distinctive visceral
antipathy to the people as a race—when they expressed their hatred of Jews. in a
looser sense many medieval people might perhaps be described as both ‘anti-Jewish’
and ‘anti-semitic’.
Moving from the medieval to the early modern period, the picture is further
complicated by the title ‘old christians’, a category used in the iberian peninsula
from the late fifteenth and early sixteenth century onwards at the time of