Introduction: Jews and Christians in Thirteenth-Century France

Abstract

This collection of essays explores a variety of perspectives on Jewish and Christian life in northern France during the thirteenth century. The incentive for this volume was the changing paradigms within the field of medieval studies connected with Jewish-Christian relations and the growing understanding that has characterized the past decade and a half of scholarship, underlining not only the animosity but also the intimacy and similarities between the two faith communities.¹ In light of the growing tendency to view both religious communities as more closely linked than in the past, this work aims to examine these relationships on multiple levels and in a variety of disciplines. It sets as its goal an examination of the thirteenth century specifically as it is somewhat overlooked, sandwiched between the “twelfth-century renaissance” and the late thirteenth- and fourteenth-century famine and disease that changed the face of Europe and, in the case of the Jews, the persecution and expulsions.² This book seeks to examine the thirteenth century in particular—although a long thirteenth century, broadly defined—specifically through the prism of the changes that took place within the Jewish and Christian urban communities. Our objective has been to outline the continuity alongside the changes and the similarities as well as the differences in a coherent way.