The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History

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Cambridge University Press, May 4, 1998 - History - 621 pages
This 1998 book is a comprehensive account of the high Hebraic culture developed by the Jews in Normandy during the Middle Ages, and in particular during the Anglo-Norman period. This culture has remained virtually unknown to the public and to the scholarly world throughout modern times, until a combination of recent manuscript discoveries and archaeological findings delineated this phenomenon for the first time. The book explores the origins of this remarkable community, beginning with topographical evidence pointing to the arrival of the Jews in Normandy as early as Roman and Gallo-Roman times, through autograph documentary testimony available in the Cairo Genizah manuscripts and early medieval Latin sources, finally using the rich manuscript evidence of twelfth- and early thirteenth-century writers which attest to the high cultural level attained by this community and to its social and political interaction with the Christian world of Anglo-Norman times and their aftermath.
 

Contents

The Extent and Antiquity of Jewish Settlement in Normandy
33
From Robert of Normandy until the First Crusade
111
The Jewish Quarter of Rouen in the Twelfth Century
137
School and Community in the Reign of Henry I and
171
Masters of the Law in the Midtwelfth Century
217
Abraham Ibn Era and his Literary Activities in Normandy
253
Rouennaise Scholars during the
297
The Civil Status of the Jews from Henry II to John Lackland
349
From the Last Years of Philip Augustus to the Reign of Louis IX
413
The Final Decades
495
Appendixes
547
Guibert of Nogents account of the persecution of the Jews
557
The schools of the Jews of royal France Normandy
563
Bibliography
577
Index of manuscripts
601
Index of toponyms
613

The Tosafists
379

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Page 591 - MATTHEW OF WESTMINSTER'S Flowers of History, especially such as relate to the affairs of Britain, from the beginning of the World to AD 1307. By CD Yonge. 2 vols. NENNIUS. Chronicle of.— See Six OE Chronicles. ORDERICUS VITALIS' Ecclesiastical History of England and Normandy.

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