Giudei e cristiani nell'agiografia dell'alto medioevo

The book examines the relationship between Jews and Christians in the early medieval hagiography, with the goal of studying the role played by the Jews in the hagiographic texts of the early Middle Ages. In this period in fact, on the one hand the confrontation between Christians and Jews took forms and tones different from those of the first Christian Centuries and, on the other hand, Jews weren’t considered a group being marginalized, as happened in the 13th and 14th Centuries. The relationship between Jews and Christians recalls other aspects of Late antique and Medieval society, such as the conversions or the worship of relics and images. The research confirms that, even within the same thematic, “fixed” narrative patterns are not predominating; on the contrary, a certain number of circumscribed episodes is treated according to its own dynamics. The diversity of issues related to the Jews in the hagiographic texts implies that these issues not automatically became literary clichés. Some themes of the Christian anti-Jewish controversy come from a core broadly defined in pre-Constantinian era; however the examined sources and documents show that these themes are constantly enriched by new elements and motives, often linked to local circumstances, which is not always easy to reconstruct. The texts, moreover, show that Jews don’t have a special place in the early Medieval hagiography, because they don’t seem to be a major concern of the hagiographers. Jews are presented as individuals and/or as a community; in numerous texts the protagonists of the stories are depicted within the broader context of their group, with reference to the synagogue as a symbol of the Jewish community. The hagiographical sources of the early Middle Ages, overall considered, dwell shortly on Judaism as a religious system; they only recall the role of the Jews in the socio-economic development, highlighting certain features of their dynamism from a political point of view.