Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators

Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators PDF

Author: Katherine Aron-Beller

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2024-01-09

Total Pages: 441

ISBN-13: 1512824119

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In Christian Images and Their Jewish Desecrators, historian Katherine Aron-Beller analyzes the common Christian charge that Jews habitually and compulsively violated Christian images, identifying this allegation as one that functioned alongside other anti-Jewish allegations such as ritual murder, blood libel, and host desecration to ultimately inform dangerous and long-lasting prejudices in medieval and early modern Europe. Through an analysis of folk tales, myths, legal proceedings, and religious art, Aron-Beller finds that narratives alleging that Jews committed violence against images of Christ, Mary, and the disciples flourished in Europe between the fifth and seventeenth centuries. She then explores how these narratives manifested differently across the continent and the centuries, finding that their potency reflected not Jewish actions per se, but Christians’ own concerns about slipping into idolatry when viewing depictions of religious figures. In addition, Aron-Beller considers Jews’ own attitudes toward Christian imagery and the ways in which they responded to and rejected—or embraced—such allegations. By examining how desecration allegations affected Jewish individuals and communities spanning Byzantium, medieval England, France, Germany, and early modern Spain and Italy, Aron-Beller demonstrates that this charge was a powerful expression of the Christian majority’s anxiety around committing idolatry and their eagerness to participate in practices of veneration that revolved around visual images—an anxiety that evolved through the centuries and persists to this day.

Images of Intolerance

Images of Intolerance PDF

Author: Sara Lipton

Publisher: Univ of California Press

Published: 1999-09-28

Total Pages: 268

ISBN-13: 9780520921580

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Around the year 1225, an illuminated Bible was made for the king of France. That work and a companion volume, the two earliest surviving manuscripts of the Bible moralisée, are remarkable in a number of ways: they are massive in scope; they combine text and image to an unprecedented extent; and their illustrations, almost unique among medieval images in depicting contemporary figures and situations, comprise a vehement visual polemic against the Jews. In Images of Intolerance, Sara Lipton offers a nuanced and insightful reading of these extraordinary sources. Lipton investigates representations of Jews' economic activities, the depiction of Jews' scriptures in relation to Christian learning, the alleged association of Jews with heretics and other malefactors in Christian society, and their position in Christian eschatology. Jews are portrayed as threatening the purity of the Body of Christ, the integrity of the text of scripture, the faith, mores, and study habits of students, and the spiritual health of Christendom itself. Most interesting, however, is that the menacing themes in the Bible moralisée are represented in text and images as aspects of Jewish "perfidy" that are rampant among Christians as well. This innovative interdisciplinary study brings new understanding to the nature and development of social intolerance, and to the role art can play in that development.

Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean

Interfaith Relationships and Perceptions of the Other in the Medieval Mediterranean PDF

Author: Sarah Davis-Secord

Publisher: Springer Nature

Published: 2021-12-16

Total Pages: 387

ISBN-13: 3030839974

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This book is a collaborative contribution that expands our understanding of how interfaith relations, both real and imagined, developed across medieval Iberia and the Mediterranean. The volume pays homage to the late Olivia Remie Constable’s scholarship and presents innovative, thought-provoking, interdisciplinary investigations of cross-cultural exchange, ranging widely across time and geography. Divided into two parts, “Perceptions of the ‘Other’” and “Interfaith relations,” this volume features scholars engaging with church art, literature, historiography, scientific treatises, and polemics, in order to study how the religious “Other” was depicted to serve different purposes and audiences. There are also microhistories that examine the experiences of individual families, classes, and communities as they interacted with one another in their own specific contexts. Several of these studies draw their source material from church and state archives as well as jurisprudential texts, and span the centuries from the late medieval to early modern periods.

Luther and the Jews

Luther and the Jews PDF

Author: Richard S. Harvey

Publisher: Wipf and Stock Publishers

Published: 2017-08-02

Total Pages: 130

ISBN-13: 1498245005

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Luther and the Jews: Putting Right the Lies is a timely and important contribution to the debate about the legacy of the Protestant Reformation. It brings together two topics that sit uncomfortably: the life, ministry, and impact of Martin Luther, and the history of Jewish-Christian relations to which he made a profoundly negative contribution. As a Messianic Jew, Richard Harvey considers Luther and his legacy today, and explains how Messianic Jews have a vital role to play in the much-needed reconciliation not only between Protestants and Catholics, but also between Christians and Jews, in order for Luther's vision of the renewal and restoration of the church to be realized.

Images at Work

Images at Work PDF

Author: David Morgan

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2018

Total Pages: 241

ISBN-13: 0190272112

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Images can be studied in many ways--as symbols, displays of artistic genius, adjuncts to texts, or naturally occurring phenomena like reflections and dreams. Each of these approaches is justified by the nature of the image in question as well as the way viewers engage with it. But images are often something more when they perform in ways that exhibit a capacity to act independent of human will. Images come alive--they move us to action, calm us, reveal the power of the divine, change the world around us. In these instances, we need an alternative model for exploring what is at work, one that recognizes the presence of images as objects that act on us. Building on his previous innovative work in visual and religious studies, David Morgan creates a new framework for understanding how the human mind can be enchanted by images in Images at Work. In carefully crafted arguments, Morgan proposes that images are special kinds of objects, fashioned and recognized by human beings for their capacity to engage us. From there, he demonstrates that enchantment, as described, is not a violation of cosmic order, but a very natural way that the mind animates the world around it. His groundbreaking study outlines the deeply embodied process by which humans create culture by endowing places, things, and images with power and agency. These various agents--human and non-human, material, geographic, and spiritual--become nodes in the web of relationships, thus giving meaning to images and to human life. Marrying network theory with cutting-edge work in visual studies, and connecting the visual and bodily technologies employed by the ancient Greeks and Romans to secular icons like Che Guevara, Abraham Lincoln, and Mao, Images at Work will be transformative for those curious about why images seem to have a power of us in ways we can't always describe.

Jewish Images in the Christian Church

Jewish Images in the Christian Church PDF

Author: Henry N. Claman

Publisher:

Published: 2000

Total Pages: 248

ISBN-13:

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"Beginning in the Third Century with frescoes in the catacombs of Rome, public art began to illustrate the doctrine of supersessionism. This analysis of a millennium of Christian art outlines the path by which Christians reinterpreted the Hebrew Scriptures to prove they foretold the ascendancy of Christianity. Starting with a solid introduction to the origins of Christianity and the beginnings of Christian art in the catacombs of Rome, Henry Claman skillfully demonstrates the development of the anti-Jewish message of Christian art. The study culminates with analyses of the majestic cathedral at Chartres, the public burning of the Talmud in Paris in 1248, and the expulsion of the Jews from France and England."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved

Aesthetics and the Divine

Aesthetics and the Divine PDF

Author: Shimon Dovid Cowen

Publisher: Hybrid Publishers

Published: 2020-09-01

Total Pages: 117

ISBN-13: 1925736644

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"Rabbi Cowen's creative engagement with these contemporary artists reveals how spirituality can enhance the power of the visual image, the emotional persuasiveness of the literary text, and the neurological impact of music ..." - Mel Alexenberg, formerly Professor of Art at Columbia University In the realm of contemporary aesthetic high culture, there are many painters, writers and composers of great talent, but few with deep religious knowledge and belief. In the realm of faith, there are many with deep belief and religious knowledge, but very few with developed great artistic talent. Is there some way of making good the absent but essential combination of artistic prowess and religious depth required to produce great religious artworks in the various artistic media? In response to this question, this book addresses the theory and practice of engaging significant artists – not necessarily religiously learned or committed – to draw forth from them genuinely religious high art. After exploring the concept of the religious artwork, it documents three religious-creative encounters through which important religious artworks emerged, in the realms of painting, literature and music. It concludes with thoughts on the methodology and kinds of successful engagements between religion and aesthetics – with broader implications for education to religious art.

Judaism and Christian Art

Judaism and Christian Art PDF

Author: Herbert L. Kessler

Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press

Published: 2012-10-08

Total Pages: 456

ISBN-13: 0812208366

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Christian cultures across the centuries have invoked Judaism in order to debate, represent, and contain the dangers presented by the sensual nature of art. By engaging Judaism, both real and imagined, they explored and expanded the perils and possibilities for Christian representation of the material world. The thirteen essays in Judaism and Christian Art reveal that Christian art has always defined itself through the figures of Judaism that it produces. From its beginnings, Christianity confronted a host of questions about visual representation. Should Christians make art, or does attention to the beautiful works of human hands constitute a misplaced emphasis on the things of this world or, worse, a form of idolatry ("Thou shalt make no graven image")? And if art is allowed, upon what styles, motifs, and symbols should it draw? Christian artists, theologians, and philosophers answered these questions and many others by thinking about and representing the relationship of Christianity to Judaism. This volume is the first dedicated to the long history, from the catacombs to colonialism but with special emphasis on the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, of the ways in which Christian art deployed cohorts of "Jews"—more figurative than real—in order to conquer, defend, and explore its own territory.

An Unusual Relationship

An Unusual Relationship PDF

Author: Yaakov Ariel

Publisher: NYU Press

Published: 2013-06-24

Total Pages: 317

ISBN-13: 0814770681

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"In this enormously well researched and gracefully argued book, Ariel develops a nuanced theme: the complexity, ambivalence, and even paradox that has characterized conservative Protestant beliefs regarding Jews and Israel, and the diverse responses among Jews. . . . First-rate scholarship presented in a pleasingly accessible style." —Stephen Spector, author of Evangelicals and Israel: The Story of American Christian Zionism It is generally accepted that Jews and evangelical Christians have little in common. Yet special alliances developed between the two groups in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Evangelicals viewed Jews as both the rightful heirs of Israel and as a group who failed to recognize their true savior. Consequently, they set out to influence the course of Jewish life by attempting to evangelize Jews and to facilitate their return to Palestine. Their double-edged perception caused unprecedented political, cultural, and theological meeting points that have revolutionized Christian-Jewish relationships. An Unusual Relationship explores the beliefs and political agendas that evangelicals have created in order to affect the future of the Jews. This volume offers a fascinating, comprehensive analysis of the roots, manifestations, and consequences of evangelical interest in the Jews, and the alternatives they provide to conventional historical Christian-Jewish interactions. It also provides a compelling understanding of Middle Eastern politics through a new lens. Yaakov Ariel is Professor of Religious Studies at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. His book, Evangelizing the Chosen People, was awarded the Albert C. Outler prize by the American Society of Church History. In the Goldstein-Goren Series in American Jewish History