Under crescent and cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages (review)

Reviews 153 absurdity. CamUle's idea that 'the people of the Middle Ages saw themselves at the edge, the last ageing dregs of a falling-off of humanity,... Everything was worse not better, everything was mere imago ...' deserves a far deeper analysis than he has granted it. O n the same page, the statement that 'Women were associated with the dangers of excess . . . with the artifices of representation—then fashionable clothes and cosmetics' is gender restrictive, not to say discriminatory, when seen in the light of CamUle's style of writing. In any case, he speaks presumably of the haute bourgeoisie and the nobility, where males were no less guilty of these immoderations. Camille errs in designating the figure surmounting a world map in figure 2 as God, since the iconographical elements point to a representation of Christ. Also, a husband is on the left of a drawing, rather than the right, as he states (fig. 80). When speaking of the tail of a letter 'p' being joined by the illuminator to an arrow, the author claims that the 'wordfightsback' (p. 22). Is he saying that the text isfightingback before the illumination existed? The reader is supplied withreferences,a very full bibliography, and a list of illustrations with then respective sizes, which the publisher has reproduced with great clarity. However, the absence of an index will limit the study's use for serious research or as a tool for the inquiring minds of undergraduates. In order to cool off after reading the author's overheated presentation, non-specialists would be advised to consult some less lurid tides selected from the bibliography. Peter Rolfe Monks TownsvUle Cohen, Mark R., Under crescent and cross: the Jews in the Middle Ages, Princeton, Princeton University Press, 1994; cloth; pp. xxi, 280. R.R.P. ? The author states in his preface that he seeks to explain why Islamic-Jewish and Christian-Jewish relationships followed different courses during the Middle Ages. Under Islam, the Jews of Spain have been perceived by historians as enjoying a 'Golden Age' whereas the same historians have had a 'lachrymose conception' of the Jewish condition under Christianity. While both images are still dominant in historical thinking, and it is clear that both need modification, overall Jews lived more easily in the Muslim world than they did in Christendom. The reasons for this are not always 154 Reviews clear. Cohen seeks to to go beyond the facile arguments of the past to portray the realities as he sees them and from thereal,rather than idealized situation, he tries to create a hypothesis ofrelationshipsthat would cover all circumstances. The result of his exploration of the evidence is an interesting, stimulating, and worthwhile book which certainly presents a global, and at times compelling, hypothesis of inter-religious relationships. Unfortunately, the hypothesis fails when tested in some situations because of the complex economic and social realities which have to be considered. The essence of Cohen's argument is that Christianity was in conflict with mainstream Judaism from the moment that it was bom. That conflict was not only spiritual but also at times physical. It was recorded in the Gospels and thenceforth coloured therelationshipof Jews and Christians in that the Gospels served as a constant reminder of Jewish perfidy and hostility to believers. This, in turn provoked a constant chain of hostile reactions to Jews and Judaism. Cohen contrasts the origins of Christianity and its documentation with the origins of Islam and its documentation. The author claims that Islam, by which is meant Sunni Islam, the dominant and policy directing source of that tradition, was never in rivalry with Judaism. Though it adopted and adapted Jewish practices, it had no literary source to serve as a constant stimulus to hostile relationships. Hence, it is argued, Jews in the Muslim world were persecuted neither as much, nor as intensively, as Jews in Christendom. The author supports his case with comparisons between the legal position of Jews under Islam and Christianity, then economic position, then place in the social order, and responses to persecution in both worlds. If one takes the author's arguments at face value it becomes difficult to understand why there was a shift...