The Scholastics and the Jews: Coexistence, Conversion, and the

The Scholastics and the Jews: Coexistence, Conversion, and the Medieval Origins of Tolerance

"An astounding, beautiful work ...Â indispensable for looking beyond the polemics of this controversial issue"--ROY SCHOEMAN
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"A significant step forward in the literature on toleration during the Latin Middle Ages"--CARY J. NEDERMAN

It has become commonplace in Medieval Studies to speak of the "formation of a persecuting society" in Catholic Europe of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The efforts of St. Raymond of Penafort and the Order of Preachers to convert Jews, Muslims, and other non-Christians is a conspicuous example. Edmund J. Mazza's The Scholastics and the Jews, however, marks a major historiographical revision. While in no way diminishing the reality of Jewish suffering across the centuries, Mazza identifies the origins of missionary overtures to non-believers not so much with the drive for homogeneity as for holiness.

The Scholastics and the Jews, above all, is devoted to re-discovering a tradition, the development and implementation of a medieval worldview--or sacramentality--that saw the institutions and inhabitants of this world not primarily as means to the pursuit and maintenance of power but as sanctified symbols reflecting God's own infinite majesty, and at the same time as flesh-and-blood sinners in need of redemption. How this Scholastic "hermeneutic" simultaneously hindered--and helped--the cause of tolerance is a tale largely yet untold.

Country	USA
Author	Edmund J. Mazza
Binding	Paperback
EAN	9781621382737
ISBN	1621382737
Label	Angelico Press
Manufacturer	Angelico Press
NumberOfPages	296
PublicationDate	2017-04-11
Publisher	Angelico Press
Studio	Angelico Press
ReleaseDate	0000-00-00

The Scholastics and the Jews: Coexistence, Conversion, and the Medieval Origins of Tolerance

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