Interreligious Conflict and Confluence

Open appreciation of Christendom's social or religious realities is, it goes without saying, far from the norm in the Jewish Middle Ages. Yet in the late medieval period one finds an impressive number and array of Hispano-Jewish voices, most distinguished but some ordinary, expressing admiration for and even urging Jewish emulation of a range of mores and intellectual and religious trends associated with the majority Christian environment. In particular, one can point to two trends: 1) growing receptivity to and appreciation for aspects of the Christian world, including distinctly "religious" elements, among segments of the Jewish intelligentsia and 2) at a deeper level, and pointing in a somewhat opposite direction, evidence of occasional changes in the categories by which this Christian world was defined that suggests some late medieval Spanish Jews' innovative (if perhaps mostly unconscious) exclusion of various areas from the domain of religion. It is important to note that this evidence of impressive interreligious awarenesses of and borrowings from the Christian realm on the part of Spanish Jews emerges from a period when Spanish Jewry found itself in a most severe socioreligious crisis associated with the rival Christian religious community (attested most notably in the form of swelling ranks of *conversos*). Yet it seems that precisely at the point when late medieval Spanish Jews felt most besieged by Christian society they at times evinced appreciation of a diversity of Christian accomplishments in the religio-intellectual and related spheres.

The survey may profitably begin with a moral tract composed following the 1391-92 riots that swept through Spain leaving tens of thousands of Jews dead or forcibly converted to Christianity. In this work, Solomon Alami, an eyewitness to the events, wrote: "If you ask yourself, `wherefore have these things come upon us,' know that we brought this upon ourselves by our many sins." Alami's 'Iggeret Musar (Epistle of Admonition) offers a long litany of alleged Hispano-Jewish transgressions and transgressors, including scholars who clothed Scripture in (Greco-Arabic) philosophic garb, courtiers who reveled in their wealth while neglecting the poor, and Spanish Jews generally, who, he said, failed to observe the commandments with pure devotion. "Do you not see," Alami further observes, that "those in whose land we live bring tithes and give gifts to their scholars out of the generosity of their heart . . . and through this their religion is strengthened; and their princes and noblemen yearn to dedicate their children to the covenant of their faith." By contrast, "the wealthy among the Jews and their communal leaders keep their sages on scanty bread and insufficient water . . . and do not aspire or desire to dedicate their children to the covenant of the vocation of Torah . . . ." "You will further observe," notes Alami -- now referring by name to "those in whose land" Spanish Jews lived -- that when Jews gathers to hear "Torah from a scholar," the preacher is "stupefied by the talking of men and chattering of women" in contrast to "our Christian neighbors, who listen quietly and reverently to their preacher, and who are RESPONSIVE TO HIS SCOLDING." Alami's conclusion is clear: "We have not heeded the lesson of those around us."

Before considering Alami's words further, it will be well to recall, however briefly, the wider canvass of medieval Jewish images of and attitudes towards Christendom on which they should be placed. One may begin with one of medieval Judaism's dominant symbols: Esau, another of whose biblical names was Edom. In rabbinic texts, Esau/Edom was identified with imperial Rome. Medieval Jews identified Esau/Edom with Christian Rome and, then by extension, with the lands of western Christendom generally. For their part, Christians had long viewed Esau as the very "type" of the Synagogue or Jew -- the elder son of the divine oracle of Gen. 25:23 ("the elder shall serve the younger") destined to serve the younger Church. This exegetical battle over Esau's symbolic purport may serve as a pars pro toto for that portion of the history of medieval Jewish-Christian relations that often garners historical attention: a story of economic and social friction, theological disputation, and especially in the "second half" of the Middle Ages (roughly the mid-eleventh century through fifteenth century), of forced conversions and massacres of Jews and, eventually, the expulsion of most of Latin Europe's major Jewish communities.

To be sure, it has long been recognized that massacres and expulsions were hardly the whole story. The great twentieth-century historian, Salo Baron, is perhaps best remembered for his protest against what he dubbed a "lachrymose conception of Jewish history" according to which Jewish life in premodern Christian lands amounted to little more than a series of harsh persecutions. More recently, time-honoured contrasts between the demerits of Jewish life in medieval Christendom over and against the alleged merits of Jewish existence under medieval Islam have been revisited and, in some measure, revised. Oft-quoted in recent discussions of the subject is the verdict issued by the greatest of Jewish thinkers to emerge from the Muslim sphere, Moses Maimonides. In his epistle to the Jews of Yemen this offshoot of al-Andalus remarked that "God has cast us among this nation, I mean, the nation of Ishmael [Islam] . . . . NEVER HAS A NATION ARISEN AGAINST ISRAEL MORE HARMFUL THAN IT."

Whatever his view of the deficiencies of Jewish life under Islam, Maimonides was convinced of the superiority of Ishmael to Edom in what for him was the decisive respect: scientific-philosophic achievement conducive to the attainment of ultimate human perfection. In a letter sent to the southern French translator of his Guide of the Perplexed, Samuel ibn Tibbon, Maimonides expressed amazement that "a son born among the stammerers [Christians] is [nevertheless] a devoted student of the sciences." The perception of Christendom and its Jewries as culturally and, in the view of some, morally degenerate was held by earlier representatives of Muslim Spain's so-called "Jewish Golden Age" as well. Thus Moses ibn Ezra, forced to abandon al-Andalus for Christian Spain during his closing years, lamented: "Fortune has hurled me to a land where the lights of my understanding dimmed / And the stars of my reason were beclouded with the murk of faltering knowledge and stammering speech / . . . AMONGST SAVAGES WHO LOVE CORRUPTION."

Yet, even as Maimonides revealed his astonishment at the scientific learning of a Jew living among Christians, the rhythm of religio-intellectual developments in the Islamic and Christian spheres had begun to shift. Awareness of the change is evident in Samuel ibn Tibbon's observation that "the true sciences are far better known among the nations . . . in whose lands we live than they are in the lands of Ishmael." His insight notwithstanding, ibn Tibbon -- like Maimonides, the son of a family forced to flee Muslim Spain -- remained rooted in the Greco-Arabic philosophic tradition. But his aside penned in the early thirteenth century heralds a turning point in late medieval Jewish awareness and appreciation of aspects of Christendom -- one marked initially in scholarly expressions stemming from Jewish communities in Italy and southern France. Later Hispano-Jewish manifestations of this turn would turn out to be especially multifaceted and decidedly more plentiful.

Returning to Alami, since his appreciation of various Christian achievements appears in a polemical text, albeit of an intra- rather than interreligious sort, one must ask whether to attribute it simply to the rhetorical needs of the moment. In some measure, perhaps. And yet, if use of the "other" as a model is a commonplace in the rhetoric of self-criticism, it cannot be simply a ploy since (as the scholar Marc Saperstein has noted) "its effectiveness depends upon arousing in the audience an acceptance of verisimilitude." That is, to be convincing, Alami had to be sure that his sharp contrasts between Jews and Christians would ring true to his Jewish audience, however shocking they may have been (thus, of course, their benefit, since the moralist always seeks dramatic ways to make familiar points).

There is more. Other late medieval Iberian figures laud a range of Christian social and religious habits, some in a manner highly reminiscent of Alami. The turn-of-the-fifteenth-century Catalonian grammarian, Profet Duran, lamenting what he deems Jewish neglect of Bible study and biblically-based prayer, invokes "a great sage of the Romans" whose dream led him to turn away from the study of philosophic texts to single-minded devotion to sacred Scripture. The allusion to Saint Jerome seems clear. According to Duran, this same sage instituted the commendable Christian practice of "repeated reading of the psalms in their prayers." In the mid-fifteenth century, Joseph ibn Shem Tov observes in his `En ha-Qoreh (Eye of the Reader), one of the earliest known Hebrew treatises on preaching: "A gentile may preach against kings and nobles proclaiming their sins for all to hear. But in our own nation no one will raise his tongue against any Jew whatsoever, AND CERTAINLY NOT IF THE MAN IS WEALTHY." At century's end, Joseph Yavetz, an itinerant Spanish preacher living in Italy after the expulsion of 1492, relates: "If you open your eyes, you will envy them [i.e., the Christians]; for you will see them practicing the rational commandments -- "doing justice and loving mercy" (Micah 6:8) -- more than we in our sins. Their nobles pride themselves on [observing] the commandment of charity . . . and their scholars re gracious to one another." After conflating Alami's and ibn Shem Tov's praise of Christian solicitude for preachers, Yavetz concludes that "with us, it is the opposite. The preacher is rebuked and humiliated, and the parishioners tell him, `You who would rebuke The people, did you not do this abominable sin [yourself]?'"

To appreciate the novelty of these expressions, we should recall that earlier medieval Jews often insisted -- at least in polemical contexts-- that the true Israel could be distinguished by her deeds; that is, they used social, and not just exegetical or theological, criticism as a way to argue the flawed religious foundations of Christian society. A well-known example of this argument occurs in the Sefer ha-Berit (The Book of the Covenant) of the late twelfth-century southern French grammarian and biblicist, Joseph Kimhi, who contrasted Christian robbery, brutality, vulgarity, and other vices with Jewish modesty, compassion, and other virtues. "What more," he asks, "CAN YOU ASK FOR IN THE WAY OF GOOD DEEDS FOUND AMONG JEWS AND BAD DEEDS FOUND AMONG CHRISTIANS?"

Counterposed to the spirit and assumptions of Kimhi's remarks, the comments of the late medieval Hispano-Jewish moralists just highlighted, which highlight what they present as characteristic virtues of Christian society, are quite unexpected. The amplitude of the praise is itself notable; it goes far beyond polemical exigencies and hence, it would seem, can only be seen as a reflection of genuine admiration. But the assumption which makes the utterance of such praises by Jewish scholars possible is, if anything, more important. It is that Christian mores can be extolled without granting the validity of Christianity. We see here a tacit distinction being made between Christian society and Christian religion, or between Christendom and Christianity, on which more presently.

In addition to Christian comportment at sermons, late medieval Jews were sometimes impressed by the sermons themselves. Explaining the impetus for his homiletical tract `Aqedat Yishaq (The Binding of Isaac), Isaac Arama, a noted Spanish preacher who left Iberia in the mass exodus of 1492, states: "Our Jews are an intellectual people and they dwell in the midst of another people with profound and articulate speakers everywhere: the refined people of Edom. In every city, their scholars master all branches of knowledge and their priests and princes stand at the fore in philosophy, integrating it with their theological doctrine." For "some time now," continues Arama, "calls have gone out. . . summoning the people to hear their learned discourses. . . . Among those who came were Jews." (Arama may be alluding to the phenomenon of forced Jewish attendance at Christian sermons, though this is not certain.) The Jews who heard the Christian preachers "found them impressive" and had their appetites "whetted for similar fare." Accordingly, Arama aimed to "regale" his coreligionists with biblical "gems" that highlighted Scripture's manifold dimensions, taking his cue from Christian scholars who searched "enthusiastically for religious and ethical content" in contrast to "the interpreters of the books of our Torah," who only explained "THE SIMPLE MEANING OF THE STORIES AND COMMANDMENTS."

From this rich passage one may extract several high points. First, Arama's remarks attest not so much to his own perception of the power of Christian preaching but to the favorable assessments of his parishioners trying to make their way in a society that they consider highly sophisticated. Thus, Arama's words substantiate the claim made at the outset, that not all of the late medieval Jewish voices that acknowledge Edom's accomplishments are scholarly.

Second, Arama's stress on the multilayered profundity of Holy Writ and his corresponding complaint that scriptural polysignificance had been ignored by earlier Hebrew exegetes is not unique. His contemporary, ISAAC ABARBANEL, harped on the same theme. Consider, for example, Abarbanel's biting criticism of his Andalusi-Jewish predecessor, Abraham ibn Ezra, for contenting himself with "the grammar of the words and a superficial rendering of the text's contextual sense" in consequence of which "his works of [scriptural] commentary were shorter than scriptural text [they purported to explain] itself." Ibn Ezra and others shaped by the school of Jewish biblical interpretation established in Muslim Spain mainly saw the biblical commentator's task as the provision of sensible, grammatical expositions of the individual words and phrases of Scripture. Later Iberian Hebrew commentators, however, found this notion of the exegetical enterprise wanting. Abarbanel, Arama, and others sought to broaden the discipline of biblical commentary to include, among other things, more theologically searching and spiritual insight. This development in the history of Jewish biblical interpretation was, it would seem, stimulated in significant measure by popular and scholarly Jewish appreciation of Christian strides in this sphere.

Third, Arama's remarks attest to a Jewish perception of Christian mastery of powerful speech -- that is, rhetoric -- a discipline long at the center of medieval Latin education, but one cultivated relatively little by medieval Jews. Other Hispano-Jewish writers of Arama's period reveal a similar awareness of Christian oratorical proficiency while deploring its injurious consequences. Abraham Saba, for example, who lived through the Spanish expulsion of 1492 and forced conversion of Portuguese Jewry in 1497, lamented Edom's "power of the tongue," at times contrasting it with the deficiency thereof in the Islamic world. Isaac Abarbanel did the same, finding in Isaiah's promise that "No weapon formed against you shall succeed / And every tongue that contends with you at law you shall defeat (Isa. 54:17)" an allusion to the two modes of religious oppression encountered by medieval Jews, with compulsion through disputation being the favored approach of "the scholars of Edom, WHO ARE ACCOMPLISHED IN THE DISCIPLINE OF RHETORIC."

Arama's words allude to yet another area where late medieval Hispano-Jewish writers challenged what they considered lamentable (indeed pernicious) developments in their own community by (at times) appealing to laudable Christian counter-examples. The background to his remark that Christendom's leaders "stand at the fore in philosophy, integrating it with their theological doctrine" is the great controversy over philosophy that erupted among Europe's Jewish communities in the thirteenth century, a controversy that continued into the fifteenth century even though intercommunal battles over the issue had long since subsided. Arama developed this idea more fully elsewhere. Assailing latter-day Jewish rationalists for failing to make philosophy a handmaiden of theology, he extolled Christian theologians who adopted philosophy's teachings and methods but attributed contradictions between philosophy and religion to "a deficiency in [philosophy]." Isaac Abarbanel voiced a similar sentiment when defending the literal veracity of the account in Joshua 10 of the sun's stopping at Gibeon against philosophic-naturalistic explanations of various earlier Jewish commentators. The wisdom of Christendom's scholars exceeds "that of all the ancients," he observed, and yet none would "dare to contradict or malign the plain sense of the Torah despite their prodigious investigations into the sciences."

As in the case of social criticism, a glance back brings the novelty of this line of argument into sharp relief. Earlier medieval Jewish writers regularly asserted the irrationality of Christian doctrines -- the trinity and incarnation especially but transubstantiation and the virgin birth as well -- adding that if reason did not support Jewish beliefs, it at least was not incompatible with them. In mid-fifteenth-century Spain, the Jewish critique of "irrational" Christianity could still be heard. When Hayyim ibn Musa attempted to rebut the charge of a Christian that Jews possessed only a single work of theology, Maimonides' Guide of the Perplexed, whereas Christians had innumerable such tracts, he argued that the multitude of Latin theological tomes reflected an ultimately futile Christian effort to square the circle, for "all the books in the world could not force this [Christian belief] into the mind of intelligent people at all, especially those raised in the Torah, which is distant from such doctrines."

Now Arama and Abarbanel no doubt shared ibn Musa's outlook. Yet in their statements quoted above, the inadmissible content of the views defended by the Church's doctors is overlooked so that the praiseworthy intentions of these theologians can be used as a foil in an attack on their overly rationalistic Jewish counterparts. Here again is the distinction already noted between Christianity and Christendom: the religion that Christendom's spiritual authorities seek to buttress is indefensible, but these theologians' harnessing of philosophic tools to its service should be emulated.

When Arama and Abarbanel complimented Edom's theologians, they almost certainly had Christian scholastics, Thomas Aquinas especially, in mind. In their awareness of Latin theology, they were not alone. Among the many late medieval Ibero-Jewish writers who referred to -- and at times adapted or adopted -- ideas, methods, or conceptual terms known to them from various strata of the Christian theological tradition, Hasdai Crescas, Meir Alguades, Joseph Albo, Joseph ibn Shem Tov and his son Shem Tov, Abraham Shalom, and Abraham Bibago stand out.

Perusal of the writings of some of these figures and more obscure ones highlights two additional phenomena. One is a break in the conventions governing reference to Christian writers in Hispano-Jewish literature; the other is a change in attitude towards "the language of the Christians" -- Latin. It has been argued that ideas of Duns Scotus, the turn-of-the-fourteenth-century Franciscan theologian, informed the religious thought of Hasdai Crescas, the late Middle Ages' leading Jewish theologian, and that Crescas was also influenced by his Christian contemporary, Bernat Metge. Yet Crescas fails to mention a single Christian author in his works, an omission not explained simply by the general lack of a concept of literary individuality in medieval times. It is more likely that Crescas was simply keen to avoid indicating to his readers that he was well-versed in Christian philosophic literature. Similarly, why does Profet Duran dub Jerome "a great sage of the Romans," and cast the habit of reading Psalms in prayers as one that Jerome established "for the Romans"? The inhibitions and social distance that such missing or cloaked references to Christians reflect seem clear. And yet, within one half-century or so after Crescas and Duran had ceased putting pen to paper, many Hispano-Jewish Spanish writers were speaking openly about Christendom's scholars and about their own willingness -- nay, eagerness -- to absorb and broadcast these scholars' teachings.

The change is especially pronounced in the expressions of several Hebrew translators of Latin theological texts working on the eve of the Spanish expulsion. One, Abraham ibn Nahmias, used biblical imagery drawn largely from Song of Songs to impart his strong feelings for Thomas Aquinas. Abraham first informs his reader of his discovery of Thomas' commentary on Aristotle's Metaphysics after having previously searched fruitlessly for one who could explain to him this "closed Aristotelian book." He counsels Jews who "thirst for waters out of the well of philosophy" to seek out "the scholars of Edom." Next, he describes his effort to acquire Latin and his initial encounter with the one for whom his soul yearned, Thomas, "whose scent is myrrh and frankincense . . ., who never strayed from the right path, whose foot was never ensnared, whose words in all of his works admit neither of supplementation nor diminution," and so forth.

Similarly, Eli Habillo, translator of tracts penned by various Christian theologians (Thomas Aquinas, William of Ockham, Johannes Versor, Antonio Andreas), relates that having found biblical pronouncements concerning the soul inscrutable and discussions of the topic by his coreligionists misdirected, he set out to master "the language of the Christians." Eventually, he discovered the "exalted scholar, Thomas," whose Quaestiones disputatae de anima (Disputed Questions on the Soul) revealed to Eli a philosopher, as least as regards this subject, greater than all who had preceded him. Elsewhere, Eli tells of the "smooth path" that Thomas offers one seeking "peace and truth." He speaks here in eulogistic biblicisms about the manner in which Thomas "rebukes the sea of heresy (cf. Nahum 1:4)" and "draws out words of truth from mighty waters (cf. 2 Sam. 22:17)." Lest it be thought that the attaching of honorifics to the names of Christian scholars was a habit only of obscure Hispano-Jewish translators, we should recall that the most famous Jewish scholar to live and work in late medieval Spain, Isaac Abarbanel, dubs Thomas "the greatest" of the Christian sages and Nicholas of Lyre "their most accomplished exegete."

Placing such remarks (hurriedly) in a bit of comparative perspective, two points may be made. First, in regard to the matter of praise, even Maimonides, who would readily have admitted the unsurpassed philosophic profundity of some of his Muslim predecessors, never spoke in nearly such glowing terms about his Arabic masters as various late fifteenth-century Jewish writers do about Thomas and other scholastics. Second, in regards to the matter of language, it must be recalled that knowledge of Latin among Jews living in Christendom was never a given as was knowledge of Arabic among Jews living in the orbit of medieval Islam. Following the Muslim conquests of the early Middle Ages, Jews in the newly conquered territories swiftly became Arabized, with the language of Islam serving both as the language of everyday Jewish life and, in the form of Judeo-Arabic, as the main vehicle of Jewish literary expression. By contrast, Latin, a language of learning known by relatively few Christians, was identified by Jews with the Church and was as such, repellent. So for Jews, learning Latin took a special effort. In the early and high Middle Ages it was an effort few chose to make.

Beginning in the thirteenth century, however, some Jewish scholars did begin to make the effort, and not only in order to further the cause of Jewish anti-Christian polemic (though this was often an impetus). For Abraham, Eli, and other Hispano-Jewish admirers of scholasticism, Latin remained essentially "the language of the Christians." This conception puts them at a remove from various early modern Jewish scholars who came to see Latin as a neutral language of learning. Still, the remarks and activities of these late medieval scholars offer evidence that by the fifteenth century the visceral early medieval Jewish aversion to "the language of the Christians" was fast fading.

And what of Abarbanel? Having just mentioned this celebrated courtier, financier, and leader of Spanish Jewry at the time of the 1492 expulsion, it is now time to say a few words about him. If it is true that Abarbanel was the leading anti-Christian polemicist of his day, it is also the case that his profound interest in and openness to Christian exegetical, theological, and historical literature are as impressive as the intensity of his anti-Christian critique. (They are striking all the more for persisting even after the trauma of 1492.) Abarbanel's willingness to engage Christians thinkers in dialogue regarding relatively neutral topics such as the virtues (or, as Abarbanel argued, vices) of monarchism might not occasion surprise. Even his admiration for what he takes to be the faith-inspired intention informing scholastic theology is understandable. More surprising is the fact that Abarbanel at times considers the comments of Christian biblical interpreters as superior to those of their Jewish counterparts. One example -- among many -- reflects historical concerns that, in their profundity, places him at a remove from nearly all of his Jewish contemporaries. Abarbanel concludes in one instance that earlier Jewish exegetes have misconstrued a passage in Daniel due to their ignorance of ancient historical sources. The interpretation offered by Christian exegetes, on the other hand, he believes to be "appropriate and satisfying in that it accords with Persian and Egyptian royal chronicles."

At this point a reminder is in order: even the awareness that the Christian world exerted a powerful pull did not necessarily engender Jewish appreciation of this force of attraction. It has been noted how Jewish scholars and communal leaders like Isaac Abarbanel and Abraham Saba did not welcome the recurrent conversionary preaching that was a main conduit for their familiarity with the potency of Christian oratory. In a passage partially censured from most editions of his Torah commentary, Saba went so far as to speak of "the demon who rules the Cross according to the Christian belief," suggesting that any attraction Christianity may have is satanic. Were there space, one could explore additional expressions of this sort as they appear, for instance, in an anonymous mid-fifteenth century kabbalistic work of Spanish origin. Such demonization probably reflects an attempt to repay Christianity, whose representatives had often spoken of the "diabolical synagogue," in its own coin. For now, let it suffice to air such perceptions so that the other side of the late medieval scene not be obscured.

When applied to the traditional periodization used by students of medieval Jewry, the late medieval Hispano-Jewish sources cited above serve a different purpose. Most historians continue to employ a periodization of Christian-Jewish relations according to which early medieval Jews enjoyed a relatively stable and secure condition in Christian lands while late medieval Jews suffered from growing hostility as reflected in blood libels, attacks on Jewish communities, and expulsions. It has now become clear, however, that the late Middle Ages also offers considerable evidence of positive evaluations of Christians and Christendom by Jews such as are hardly to be found in the earlier epochs. And in Spain these, and the changing attitudes to which they attest, arose at precisely the point when the Jewish communities of the Christian kingdoms of Spain were beset by severe socioreligious challenges issuing from their larger Christian environment, most obviously in the form of the swelling ranks of the conversos.

Placed in their tense and conflictual social-psychological context, the expressions of admiration for diverse achievements of Christian society proffered by various fifteenth-century Hispano-Jewish writers handsomely illustrate what the Hispanist, Thomas Glick, has called the "complexities of the social dynamics of cultural interaction." Elsewhere Glick has observed that medieval people "tended to think of culture and religion as coextensive or coterminus categories." Yet the brief sampling of texts and figures just seen opens a window not only on late medieval Spanish Jews appreciating achievements of the "refined people of Edom" and occasionally calling for Jews to emulate these, but also a tendency among some of these Jews to split off from the category of religion (Christianity) certain dimensions of life and to transfer them to the distinct domain of culture (Christendom).

It might be argued that the category of "culture" is largely misapplied to the Middle Ages. However this may be, in characterizing the distinction between Christianity and Christendom made by some of Hispano-Jewish witnesses seen above (with what degree of consciousness remains an open question), it seems fair to speak of late medieval Hispano-Jewish appreciation of Christian culture with greater semantic accountability than is usual. One if left to wonder in what measure the distinction between Christianity and Christendom drawn by some late medieval Spanish Jews held within it the seeds of a secular appreciation of the Christian world such as increasingly characterized Jewish perceptions of Christian Europe in early modern and modern times.