I remain appreciatively in their debt.
Fellowships at the Shalom Hartman Institute in Jerusalem, at the Hebrew University's Institute for Advanced Studies, and from the National Endowment for the Humanities allowed me precious time for pursuing this project; and grants from the Melton Center for Jewish Studies and the College of Humanities at The Ohio State University, the State of Israel's Ministry of Absorption, and the Diaspora Research Institute at Tel Aviv University helped to offset the expenses of my research. I am similarly grateful to the directors and staffs of the Escuela de Estudios Hispano-Americanos in Seville, where I profited from several fruitful and pleasant weeks of research, and the Herzog August Bibliothek in Wolfenbüttel, Germany, which allowed me to organize an international symposium on the subject of this book in 1993. The characteristically good nature and dedication of librarians too numerous to mention here have consistently served me well.
Finally, my wife and children have never wavered in their support for my work. In the appreciation that we share for the powerful impact of ideas and symbols on our lives, the bustle of our busy household and my historian's vocation have blended to imbue my life with meaning and with satisfaction.
Abbreviations
| AHDL | Archives d'histoire doctrinale et littéraire du Moyen Age |
| AHR | American Historical Review |
| AJSR | Association for Jewish Studies Review |
| ASJD | The Apostolic See and the Jews: Documents |
| CCCM | Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaevalis |
| CCM | Cahiers de civilisation médiévale |
| CCSL | Corpus Christianorum, Series latina |
| CJ | The Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century |
| CSEL | Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum latinorum |
| FWW | From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen, Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien 11 (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1996) |
| GCS | Die griechischen christlichen Schriftsteller |
| HTR | Harvard Theological Review |
| ICM | Islam et Chrétiens du Midi (xiie-xive s.), Cahiers de Fanjeaux 18 (Toulouse, France, 1983) |
| JIM | Judentum im Mittelalter: Beiträge zur christlich-jüdischen Gespräch, ed. Paul Wilpert, Miscellanea mediaevalia 4 (Berlin, 1966) |
| JJS | Journal of Jewish Studies |
| JMH | Journal of Medieval History |
| JQR | Jewish Quarterly Review |
| MGH | Monumenta Germaniae historica |
| MSC | Les Mutations socio-culturelles au tournant des xie-xiie siècles, ed. Raymonde Foreville, Études anselmiennes 4 = Spicilegium beccense 2 (Paris, 1984) |
| PAPV | Pierre Abélard, Pierre le Vénérable: Les Courants philo-sophiques, littéraires et artistiques en Occident au milieu du xiie siecle, Colloques internationaux du Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique 546 (Paris, 1975) |
| PG | Patrologia graeca |
| PL | Patrologia latina |
| RB | Revue bénédictine |
| REA | Revue des études augustiniennes |
| REJ | Revue des études juives |
| RIM | Religionsgespräche im Mittelalter, ed. Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, Wolfenbiitteler Mittelalter-Studien 4 (Wiesbaden, Germany, 1992) |
| RMAL | Revue du Moyen Age latin |
| RT | Revue thomiste |
| RTAM | Rech er ches de théologie ancienne et médiévale |
| SC | Sources chrétiennes |
| SCH | Studies in Church History |
| ST | Summa theologiae |
Introduction
Some years ago, I offered a course on the history of Judaism at a Protestant seminary in the midwestern United States. Both as a Jew and as a historian committed to studying the interdependence of Christian and Jewish civilizations, I found it gratifying that my course fulfilled a distribution requirement in church history at the seminary; the genuine interest of Christian divinity students in my Judaic subject encouraged me no less. Surprisingly, however, my interaction with the president, the dean, and some faculty colleagues at the school proved less gratifying. Although I understood my role in their community primarily as an academic one, to teach about Jewish civilization, they took but a secondary interest in my instruction. Instead, they habitually focused on the satisfaction they derived from my presence at their seminary, from having, as they put it, “a Jew in our midst.” In their eyes, my Jewish identity—or what they believed that identity to be—somehow rounded out their picture of how their Christian community should properly appear. For these colleagues, who welcomed me onto their campus with genuine, memorable warmth, I functioned less as the historian I construed myself to be and more as a player on a theological stage set long before my arrival.
This book concerns that stage and its players. Throughout much of its history, in various manners and to differing extents, Christianity has accorded Jews and Judaism a singular place in a properly ordered Christian society. From the people who received God's Old Testament, to those who parented, nurtured, and, allegedly, murdered Jesus, to those whose conversion will signal the second coming of Christ, Jews have had distinctive tasks in Christian visions of salvation history. The idea that Christendom needs the Jews to fill these
