Jack Salzman, Cornel West Struggles in the Promised

54 54 // // WILLIAM WILLIAM CHESTER
CHESTER JORDAN
upon their strong negative feelings toward Jews. 2 On more than one occasion
there were also "popular" attacks on Jewish communities in western Europe. Yet,
despite instances of this sort, it is widely accepted by scholars that the intensity
of anti-Jewish hatred and the number of violent attacks on Jews were far lower in
the early Middle Ages than they were after 1096, the year of the massacres of Jews
in the Rhineland during preparations for the First Crusade. 3 Moreover, the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while frequently punctuated by exceptionally
brutal anti-Jewish incidents, also witnessed the emergence of more consistently
bad relations between Jews and Christians in ordinary daily life. This development
did not take place everywhere according to the same timetable; it is generally
agreed, for example, that northern Europe led the way in the worsening of
relations. Nonetheless, the broad negative shift is discernible everywhere Jews
lived in Latin Christendom by the end of the fourteenth century/ 1
Along with this shift went a degeneration in the "image" of the Jew. Polemics
and similar sources aimed deliberately at humiliating or ridiculing Jews focused
on their lack of "humaneness." According to many polemicists Jews were "felons"
(anti-social); they were ritual murderers who martyred innocent children; and in
persisting in their Judaism they wilfully joined their ancestors in bearing responsibility
for the crucifixion of Jesus. Rowdy, drunken, perverse (as the stereotype
went), they would always be anathema in a well-ordered, which was to say,
Christian, society. At the same time their role—as usurers, bribers of rulers, and
subverters of the faith of poor, uneducated Christians—was seen as jeopardizing
Christian society. 5
This rhetorical picture might be summarized by using the language of chivalry.
Jews were said to lack courtoisie, prud'homie, and debonnairete. Though hard to
define, the first, usually translated "courtesy" or "courtliness," denoted civility
and propriety; the second, almost untranslatable, represented the virtues of
Christian knighthood which made a just society possible; the third, which the
quasi-English "debonaire-ness" positively distorts, denoted the abundance of
goodness required to transform a just society into a compassionate one. The Jews
were found wanting on all counts. 6
Slippage from this stereotypical picture into demonic and bestial metaphors
and depictions, that is, into a denial of the essential humanity of Jews, was not
unknown in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the classical period of high
medieval civilization. The simian and other disagreeable images of usurers seen in
manuscript paintings and in sculpture are a case in point, but there are many others.
7 Nonetheless, such slippage became increasingly common in the later Middle
Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. It was then, for example, that the
Judensau, the representation of the Jew as a bloated sow nurturing Jews/piglets on
excrement, became a common motif, especially in Germany. 8 At the same time
the trio of the Jew, the Devil, and the Witch became irrevocably linked in the premodern
imagination. 9
upon their strong negative feelings toward Jews.
Many reasons have been put forward to explain this worsening of the images
2 On more than one occasion
there were also "popular" attacks on Jewish communities in western Europe. Yet,
despite instances of this sort, it is widely accepted by scholars that the intensity
of anti-Jewish hatred and the number of violent attacks on Jews were far lower in
the early Middle Ages than they were after 1096, the year of the massacres of Jews
in the Rhineland during preparations for the First Crusade. 3 Moreover, the
twelfth and thirteenth centuries, while frequently punctuated by exceptionally
brutal anti-Jewish incidents, also witnessed the emergence of more consistently
bad relations between Jews and Christians in ordinary daily life. This development
did not take place everywhere according to the same timetable; it is generally
agreed, for example, that northern Europe led the way in the worsening of
relations. Nonetheless, the broad negative shift is discernible everywhere Jews
lived in Latin Christendom by the end of the fourteenth century/ 1
Along with this shift went a degeneration in the "image" of the Jew. Polemics
and similar sources aimed deliberately at humiliating or ridiculing Jews focused
on their lack of "humaneness." According to many polemicists Jews were "felons"
(anti-social); they were ritual murderers who martyred innocent children; and in
persisting in their Judaism they wilfully joined their ancestors in bearing responsibility
for the crucifixion of Jesus. Rowdy, drunken, perverse (as the stereotype
went), they would always be anathema in a well-ordered, which was to say,
Christian, society. At the same time their role—as usurers, bribers of rulers, and
subverters of the faith of poor, uneducated Christians—was seen as jeopardizing
Christian society. 5
This rhetorical picture might be summarized by using the language of chivalry.
Jews were said to lack courtoisie, prud'homie, and debonnairete. Though hard to
define, the first, usually translated "courtesy" or "courtliness," denoted civility
and propriety; the second, almost untranslatable, represented the virtues of
Christian knighthood which made a just society possible; the third, which the
quasi-English "debonaire-ness" positively distorts, denoted the abundance of
goodness required to transform a just society into a compassionate one. The Jews
were found wanting on all counts. 6
Slippage from this stereotypical picture into demonic and bestial metaphors
and depictions, that is, into a denial of the essential humanity of Jews, was not
unknown in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, the classical period of high
medieval civilization. The simian and other disagreeable images of usurers seen in
manuscript paintings and in sculpture are a case in point, but there are many others.
7 Nonetheless, such slippage became increasingly common in the later Middle
Ages, the Renaissance, and the Reformation. It was then, for example, that the
Judensau, the representation of the Jew as a bloated sow nurturing Jews/piglets on
excrement, became a common motif, especially in Germany. 8 At the same time
the trio of the Jew, the Devil, and the Witch became irrevocably linked in the premodern
imagination. 9
Many reasons have been put forward to explain this worsening of the images