Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe / Edition 1

by Kenneth Stow

Overview

This narrative history surveying one thousand years of Jewish life integrates the Jewish experience into the context of the overall culture and society of medieval Europe. It presents a new picture of the interaction between Christians and Jews in this tumultuous era.

Alienated Minority shows us what it meant to be a Jew in Europe in the Middle Ages. The story begins in the fifth century, when autonomous Jewish rule in Palestine came to a close, and when the papacy, led by Gregory the Great, established enduring principles regarding Christian policy toward Jews. Kenneth Stow examines the structures of self-government in the European Jewish community and the centrality of emerging concepts of representation. He studies economic enterprise, especially banking; constructs a clear image of the medieval Jewish family; and portrays in detail the very rich Jewish intellectual life.

Analyzing policies of church and state in the Middle Ages, Stow argues that a firmly defined legal and constitutional position of the Jewish minority in the earlier period gave way to a legal status created expressly for Jews, who in the later period were seen as inimical to the common good. It was this special status that paved the way for the royal expulsions of Jews that began at the end of the thirteenth century.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780674015937
Publisher:	Harvard University Press
Publication date:	08/19/1998
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	360
Product dimensions:	6.12(w) x 9.25(h) x 0.70(d)

About the Author

Kenneth Stow is Professor of Jewish History, Emeritus, at the University of Haifa. He is the author of numerous books, including Theater of Acculturation: The Roman Ghetto in the Sixteenth Century, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Medieval Latin Europe, and the two-volume work The Jews in Rome.

Table of Contents

Introduction

1. A Christianizing Society

2. Early Medieval Realities

3. Cultural Beginnings

4. Maturing Culture and Politics

5. The Crusades

6. Hasidei Ashkenaz

7. Exegesis

8. Community

9. Family

10. Economics

11. Instability and Decline

12. Expulsion

Bibliography

Index

Editorial Reviews

What has heretofore been lacking both to students of medieval Jewish history and to general historians is a manageable, yet in-depth, analysis in English of the medieval Jewish experience. Stow provides such a study.

Steven Bowman

In exemplary fashion, Stow blends Jewish and Christian sources, a meld lamentably lacking in other English-language studies of similar topics.

Choice

[An] enlightening and learned book.

The Forward - Mark Miller

[An] enlightening and learned book.

Forward - Mark Miller

What has heretofore been lacking both to students of medieval Jewish history and to general historians is a manageable, yet indepth, analysis in English of the medieval Jewish experience. Stow provides such a study.

Religious Studies Review - Steven Bowman

What has heretofore been lacking both to students of medieval Jewish history and to general historians is a manageable, yet indepth, analysis in English of the medieval Jewish experience. Stow provides such a study.
— Steven Bowman

Religious Studies Review

[An] enlightening and learned book.
— Mark Miller

Forward

What has heretofore been lacking both to students of medieval Jewish history and to general historians is a manageable, yet indepth, analysis in English of the medieval Jewish experience. Stow provides such a study.
— Steven Bowman

Religious Studies Review