The Black Road – Trade and State-building in Medieval Sub-Saharan Africa
By the early fourteenth century, the Mediterranean was approaching maturity as a commercial structure. Various arteries of exchange brought into its scope the full range of European, African and Asian commodities.
The Riddle of Gollum: Was Tolkien Inspired by Old Norse Gold, the Jewish Golem, and the Christian Gospel?
I would like to speculate on Tolkien’s sources for Gollum. As a start, it is likely that Tolkien’s conscious sources for Gollum were the same as his sources for ents.
Jews and Dogs Prohibited: The Psychology of Medieval Anti-Semitism
Professor Stow speaks about the image of ‘Jewish dogs’ found in the Middle Ages, and on his research related to the treatment of the Jewish minority in medieval Europe.
Qui coierit cum muliere in fluxu menstruo… interficientur ambo (Lev. 20:18) – The Biblical Prohibition of Sexual Relations with a Menstruant in the Eyes of Some Medieval Christian Theologians
What attitudes did medieval Christian theologians have towards the prohibition in Leviticus of sexual relations with a menstruating woman?
Homicidal Pigs and the Antisemitic Imagination
This is not parody. It is not carnival. It is not a bestiary. The case of the black-snouted sow of Senlis is an actual legal document – one of upwards of thirty-five such cases known-in which various beasts were tried, convicted, and punished for criminal acts of brutality.
Labor Markets After the Black Death: Landlord Collusion and the Imposition of Serfdom in Eastern Europe and the Middle East
The differences in the imposition of serfdom led to different economic and political effects for the peasantry in Europe. In Western Europe, wages rose, grain prices fell, and the consumption of meat, dairy products, and beer increased. More and more peasants moved into a widening “middle class” that could afford to buy manufactured goods.
A Tale of “Benevolent” Governments: Private Credit Markets, Public Finance, and the Role of Jewish Lenders in Medieval and Renaissance Italy
In Tuscan private credit markets, Jewish lending helped households to smooth consumption, buy working capital, and provide dowries for daughters.
Vicente Ferrer and the Kings’ Jews: Reassessing the Modern Image of a Medieval Dominican
This investigation of his sermons will provide insight into Ferrer’s goals, his lasting impact on Jewish communities, and will provide a new lens through which to view Ferrer’s place in the history of the Sephardim.
Moses Ibn ‘Ezra’s “Treatise of the Garden” and Maimonides’ “Guide of the Perplexed”
The Spanish poet Moses Ibn ‘Ezra (1055-1138 ca.) is also known for a Judeo-Arabic book dealing with philosophical and philological questions, the Treatise of the Garden.
ARABIC CONFLUENCE FROM CONSTANTINE TO HERACLIUS: The Preparation for a 7th Century Religio-Racial Explosion
This paper’s argument is purposeless without the reader knowing the seventh century events of the so-called explosion of Islam, and the interpretation of which I find so contentious. Thus a brief description of the episode is necessary.
Mary and the Jews in Anglo-Norman Monastic Culture
This thesis looks at the ways in which Benedictine monks contributed to the fashioning of images of Jews in sources related to the Marian cult in the post-Conquest period, 1066-1154.
Jews and Magic in Medici Florence
Between 1615 and 1620, Benedetto Blanis (c.1580-c.1647), a Jewish scholar and businessman in the Florentine ghetto, sent 196 letters to Don Giovanni dei Medici (1567-1621), an influential member of the ruling family.
‘Crossing Borders: Manuscripts from the Bodleian Libraries’ comes to New York this fall
The Jewish Museum in New York will be featuring over 60 medieval Hebrew, Arabic, and Latin manuscripts this fall as it presents a new exhibition based on works found in the Bodleian Library at Oxford University.
Jewish trading in Fes on the eve of the Almohad conquest
The status of Jewish communities under Almohad rule has been the subject of scholarly interest for different reasons notably in the framework of the disruption of convivencia in al-Andalus among the people of the three abrahamic faiths.
Captives or prisoners: society and obligation in medieval Iberia
In medieval Iberia, particularly from the twelfth century onward, warfare took on some religious overtones. As a consequence, the prisoners of war that appear in the sources were for the most part defined by their religious status, as either Muslims or Christians.
Black Africans’ Religious and Cultural Assimilation to, or Appropriation of, Catholicism in Italy, 1470-1520
Current scholarship emphasizes that the old model of conversion—of, say, Christianity being actively forced onto passive and subordinate peoples—is no longer satisfactory, and instead prefers to frame the issue around concepts of cultural interaction or cultural transmission, and selective appropriation of the host religion.
The Meanings of Nudity in Medieval Art: An Introduction
This simplification is frankly astonishing when one considers the complex, multivalent and inventive iconographic contexts in which full or partial nakedness appears in medieval art.
Fourth-century Hebrew inscription discovered in Portugal
Find is the oldest Jewish archaeological evidence discovered on the Iberian Peninsula
The Difference A King Makes: Religion And National Unity In Spain
It is the end of the Roman period, however, that interests us most. What happened then is a model for the relationship between Church and state that has had an enduring and powerful influence.
Imagining the Witch: A Comparison between Fifteenth-Century Witches within Medieval Christian Thought and the Persecution of Jews and Heretics in the Middle Ages
This paper will examine how the prominent image of the witch in Christian thought during the early modern period emerged from earlier images of the non-Christian Other, Jews and heretics for example.
York’s Blackest Hour
The infamous Shabbos HaGadol massacre of the Jews of York in 1190 was the most notorious example of anti-Semitism in medieval England.
The Stealing of the “Apple of Eve” from the 13th century Synagogue of Winchester
In January 1252, King Henry III sent a remarkable writ to the sheriff of Hampshire.
Social alienation and political subversion: Anti-Judaism in medieval Spanish music
In this thesis, the prevalence of anti-Judaism in the music of Christian Spain from the thirteenth to the end of the fifteenth century is explored.
A partnership culture: Jewish economic and social life seen through the legal documents of the Cairo Geniza
This dissertation explores economic partnership relations in the Jewish community of medieval Egypt, primarily as described in the documents of the Cairo Geniza.