Download or read book Strategies of Medieval Communal Identity written by Wout Jac. van Bekkum and published by . This book was released on 2004 with total page 206 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The leading theme of this collection of essays and studies is the diversity of aspects of medieval communal identity. While the authors were selected for the very diversity of their interests, their final papers do tend to cohere around some recurrent themes. All of the studies in this volume touch upon one or more of the complex issues that lie at the heart of religious identity in the Middle Ages. They do so through concrete study of the very real practices by which medieval Jews, Christians and Muslims could police the perimeters of their spiritual communities. The authors were especially urged to note instances where religious identity was shaped without reference to dogmas, creeds, or sacred law. In no case are any of these papers satisfied with normative, legal definitions of Jew, Christian, or Muslim in medieval times. Sometimes small and subtle, sometimes explicit, dire, and violent, the techniques that emerge from these studies testify to the diversity of strategies of medieval communal identity over space and their changes over time.

Download or read book Trent 1475 written by R. Po-chia Hsia and published by Yale University Press. This book was released on 1992-01-01 with total page 203 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: "On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested all eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman living in Trent on the charge of ritual murder - the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. Under judicial torture and imprisonment, the men confessed and were condemned to death; their women-folk, who had been kept under house arrest with their children, denounced the men under torture and eventually converted to Christianity. A papal hearing in Rome about possible judicial misconduct in Trent made the trial widely known and led to a wave of anti-Jewish propaganda and other accusations of ritual murder against the Jews." "In this engrossing book, R. Pochia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tragic persecution, drawing principally on the Yeshiva Manuscript, a detailed trial record made by authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Download or read book Contra Iudaeos written by Ora Limor and published by Mohr Siebeck. This book was released on 1996 with total page 308 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: