Jews, Lordship, and the Experience of Power in Early Eleventh Century France

ABSTRACT

The article explores the views of Jews in the early eleventh century on issues of rulership and power through analysis of a Hebrew text known as the ‘1007 Anonymous’. The article opens with a discussion of this work’s account of practices of lordship, showing that its protagonist is presented as a lord. It then turns to examine papal involvement in the power struggles that characterised France, concluding that the protagonist’s appeal to the papacy was at the time a common practice. It moves on to analyse anti-Jewish rhetoric and its underlying political messages, presenting it as a manifestation of power narratives. Finally, the article reframes the Hebrew account as evidence of Jewish attempts to cope with the rise of new practices of rulership in early eleventh century France, and as depicting a Jewish-Christian dispute over the symbolic role (or lack thereof) of the Jews within this political dynamic.

KEYWORDS:

• Lordship
• Jews
• power
• France
• papacy
• persecution
• rulership
• eleventh century

Scholars have identified transformations of power in Europe around the year 1000, especially in France and Catalonia, and argued extensively about their significance for the development of institutions and social structures. The growing power of lords and the importance of lordship are often highlighted as major features of these processes, even if the exact manner by which they occurred is in question.¹ The role of the Jews in these transformations is rarely discussed, though they inhabited the relevant areas.² They must have witnessed the rise of local lords to power, the crystallization of new social institutions, and the development of ideas brought forth to justify new structures of authority and power. Did the Jews hold a symbolic or practical role in these processes? How did they navigate the protection of their status as a legitimate minority in the troubled waters of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries?

This article presents some answers to these questions, based on a Hebrew text known as the ‘1007 Anonymous’, which describes the persecution of Jews in France at this date and their subsequent protection by the pope.³ When contextualised within the political, religious and social atmosphere of the early eleventh century, this account shows that Jews were well aware of the power structures among which they lived, and endeavoured to manipulate them for their own survival, or even benefit. Some Jews knew the language of power used by the prominent lords of France, be it dukes, counts, bishops, abbots or even the king himself, and applied it. Indeed, the hero of the 1007 Anonymous, Jacob b. Yekutiel, is presented as a victim of Christian violence, but at the same time as a person able to translate Christian symbols of power to present himself as a high lord. Thus, his story reveals a new layer of the Jewish experience of power in France around the year 1000. Jews indeed suffered violence and abuse, and were subjected to arbitrary decisions and actions of lords, yet they sometimes could, and probably did, navigate the political tides to their advantage.

The article opens with a discussion of practices of lordship and power displayed in the 1007 account, showing that Jacob b. Yekutiel himself is presented as a lord. It then turns to examine papal involvement in the power struggles that characterised France, concluding that Jacob’s appeal to the papacy was at the time a common practice. It moves on to analyse anti-Jewish rhetoric and its underlying political messages, presenting it as a manifestation of power narratives. Finally, the article reframes the Hebrew account as evidence of Jewish attempts to cope with new practices of rulership in early eleventh century France, and as depicting a Jewish-Christian dispute over the symbolic role (or lack thereof) of the Jews within this political dynamic.

Scholars have been aware of the 1007 account for about a century and a half, and it has sparked several historiographical debates.⁴ Some historians have used it as part of large-scale narratives of Jewish history.⁵ Robert Chazan read this text as evidence of a wave of anti-Jewish persecution in France and the German Empire in 1007–1012, a precursor for the extensive violence of 1096.⁶ Norman Golb, on his part, emphasised the local aspects of the 1007 account, and used it as a cornerstone of his argument for the prominence of the Jewish community of Rouen, and of Normandy more generally.⁷ Kenneth Stow argued strongly that the whole text was composed in the thirteenth century, and actually reflects notions typical of this era regarding papal authority.⁸ Richard Landes suggested that the persecution described in the account should be dated to 1009 or 1010, subsequent to the cause presented for it in the Latin chronicle of Raoul (or Rodulfus) Glaber, namely the destruction of the Church of the Holy Sepulchre by the Fatimid caliph al-Ḥākim.⁹ This article moves away from previous emphasis on the persecution itself to better portray the dynamic of power surrounding anti-Jewish sentiments and violence.

Still, Stow’s extensive attempt to redate and recontextualized the 1007 account have to be addressed further, especially since it led other scholars to view this source as a later text. He claims, and I concur, that the whole account should be read as a sophisticated work with a coherent message. However, his insistence on considering the text outside of its declared historical context leads him to miss important aspects of this message, which, this article shows, was to present the Jews as capable of rulership in its eleventh century form: public lordship. We will see that many of the literary elements are better understood against the background of the power culture of the eleventh century. In cases where the 1007 account shows some similarity to other eleventh or twelfth century sources, Stow is often quick to claim that it was directly influenced by these other sources, without considering the most likely explanation, that all available texts represent a much wider cultural or political reality. He is also quick to dismiss aspects of the text that points towards earlier dating, as we will see.¹⁰ The main goal of this article is to better understand the 1007 account, not refute Stow on every point, but where his reading clearly contradicts the arguments presented here, it is addressed.

Lordship and Rituals of Power in the 1007 Anonymous Account

The 1007 narrative is composed of two main parts and an epilogue. The first describes how the people of France turned against the Jews, and King Robert II (‘the Pious’), with the advice of his nobles, tried to force the Jews to convert. They refused to do so and were attacked by Christians, and thus some had to flee and a few were killed. The second part narrates the tale of Jacob b. Yekutiel, a rich Jew from Rouen, who travelled to Rome to enlist the pope’s help (presumably John XVIII). He convinced the pope to send one of his bishops as a legate to France to intervene for the Jews and ensure their protection. The epilogue describes the rest of Jacob’s life: after four years in Rome and twelve more back in the North he moved to Flanders under the patronage of Count Baldwin IV. Both parts, but especially the first, apply imagery taken from the biblical book of Esther, as several scholars have noted.¹¹ Indeed, the book of Esther depicts the saving of Jews from impending persecution, much like the 1007 narrative. I would suggest, though, that the author of the 1007 account found the book of Esther useful for a more fundamental reason: it deals with the arbitrary use of power by the king, and even more prominently by high nobles, to unleash unbridled violence. In both texts, moreover, a clever Jew is able to manipulate power dynamics to protect his people through knowledge of contemporary rulership practices. This section demonstrates the prevalence of power practices typical of the high lords of France in the text, and the representation of Jacob as well immersed in such practices, indeed acting as a lord.

Lordship was a central feature of the social, religious and political life of early eleventh century France. The tenth century saw a rise in the power of local lords, who established themselves in small castles and took control over the surrounding countryside. They demanded services or goods from the people they saw as their subjects (sometimes violently), fought rival lords, and claimed different titles. Beyond the power they possessed as military leaders or landowners, they often claimed lordship attached to the power of the ban (the right to exercise authority or enforce justice). Their ability to publicly take and hold control of possessions and resources served as evidence of such jurisdictional control. Thus, they occasionally challenged the authority of counts, bishops, abbots and even the king by their disregard for other claims of rulership. The higher lords, who legitimised their own power by emphasising its divine source, sometimes denounced seigneurial violence, but their power was limited. They relied on rituals of power to emphasise their authority, but still often resorted to similar methods of violent lordship. The same was true for ecclesiastical lords, that is bishops and abbots, who called for peace or protection of the church, but often had to display their power using arms. Historians have discussed this privatisation of power, violence and authority extensively. Some see it as a ‘feudal revolution’ that gave rise to a new society with fundamentally different institutions.¹² Others are more sceptical, arguing that the castellans may have indeed gained power, but acted in many ways like their late Carolingian predecessors, and certainly did not dominate all forms of social interaction. The existence of a surge of violence, traditionally associated with these changes, has also been challenged.¹³ In contrast, some suggest that the transformation completely eradicated old institutions and structures of power, leaving brute force as the main instrument of authority.¹⁴ This complicated set of issues is far too vast to be adequately covered here. Still, for our purposes, the tenth century saw local lords gaining power at the expense of traditional powers such as kings, counts and bishops, taking control over resources, services and people, and establishing their claims based on concepts of lordship. In the late tenth and early eleventh century counts, dukes, bishops, abbots and the king himself made some attempts to revive some of the old symbols of power and create new ones, in order to exercise authority in a less direct manner. The term ‘lordship’ is used in this article to describe the practices and rituals used by these high nobles to exercise power as a personal act. It focuses more on practices beyond public exhibition of brute force (though violence, we will see, was certainly a possible scenario), and on those more typical of the early eleventh century. Lordship in a more general sense remained a feature of European public life through the high Middle Ages, and perhaps was such even before the tenth century, but this article aims at reading expressions of lordship in the 1007 account as practices typical of its declared time and place.¹⁵

Indeed, claims of authority by high nobles and public violence are both ubiquitous in the 1007 account. The decision to force the Jews to choose between conversion and death is depicted as originating from the nobility: ‘the king and the queen have consulted with his lords and nobles (sarav ve-paḥotav) in all his land around his kingdom […] and the heart of the king and all the nobles was one, as they agreed to this decision (etzah)’.¹⁶ Some of the nobles involved, likely those titled paḥot, controlled territories ‘around the kingdom’ of Robert II, namely were counts.¹⁷ Lords enacting royal authority (sarai) are also mentioned when the king presents their decision to the Jews. Like most contemporary kings, King Robert’s authority stemmed from two main sources: his famous piety (hence his epithet) and consensus with his nobles.¹⁸ Once many of these nobles, including some of the counts, united against the Jews, going against their wishes could carry significant political implications, especially when the issue revolved around Christian unity. Robert II may have been similarly guided by political considerations when he ordered the burning of alleged heretics in Orléans in 1022.¹⁹ This is likely the background for the statement, which Stow has focused on, that the 1007 text ascribes to Robert: ‘I have consulted with my nobles and servants, as I wish the people to be one (she-retzoni le-am eḥad)’.²⁰ The king desired stability above all, the 1007 author suggests, so he had to follow the unanimous decision of his nobles. If the Jews could also be harmonised into this (rather flimsy) Christian unity through conversion, all the better.

After the Jews reject Christianity, their ‘enemies’, perhaps local warlords, attack them with great violence. When a Jew named Shneior defies the attackers’ demand to convert and profanes Christ they ‘cut him apart with their swords and trampled him under the feet of their horses’.²¹ This description corresponds to Latin sources, but the scene is depicted as a symbol of Jewish resistance.²² The ‘wise’ Jew ‘scorns [the Christians’] idolatry and curses their statues’, thus highlighting his own death as an act of Jewish martyrdom (kiddush ha-Shem).²³ The martyr’s name also points towards a symbolic meaning (though other eleventh-century Jews were also called Shneior).²⁴ It can be read as the vernacular seigneur, that is lord, thus featuring the victim, rather than the attackers, as displaying true lordship.²⁵ The involvement of (high) lords in determining the Jews’ fate is also apparent when Jacob b. Yekutiel, in his attempt to stop the violence, has to confront not the king, but rather Duke Richard II of Normandy. Richard was King Robert’s ally, and tried to established himself as one of the high lords of the kingdom, while ruling Normandy by relying on his connections to local warlords.²⁶ The duke ‘placed [Jacob] in prison (bet ha-sohar) with his wife and sons, and wanted to cut his head off with his sword. He tied him at the tail of his horse and drew out his sword to kill him’—a fate that Jacob miraculously escaped as the duke’s hand gets entangled in his scabbard band.²⁷ Lords, especially high lords, are thus presented as the driving force behind the events, both as decision makers and as wielders of power. Another high lord, Count Baldwin IV of Flanders, is depicted as Jacob’s benefactor later in his life, after his return from Rome.²⁸ The 1007 account thus presents high lords as the dominant force in this society, especially in regard to the Jews, but emphasises that authority is often expressed through violence.

Another recurring sign of lordship in this text is the frequent mention of horses. The lords of France, those of Normandy in particular, were known for their skill in breeding, training and riding warhorses. This skill is thought to have offered a military advantage to Norman lords over their Anglo-Saxon counterparts during the 1066 invasion, as the Bayeux tapestry vividly depicts.²⁹ The examples of anti-Jewish violence in the 1007 Anonymous fit well into this picture, as Christian warriors ‘trample [Shneior] under the feet of their horses’, and Richard II ties Jacob behind his horse. We might wonder whether these warlords needed the military advantage provided by their horses to inflict violence on Jews, but the warhorse was also a symbol. Riding and fighting from a horseback came to represent the military might and elevated social status of these lords.³⁰ Even if Duke Richard could have simply executed Jacob while he was imprisoned, tying him behind his horse and killing him from an elevated position served as a public exhibition of lordship.³¹

Indicators throughout the Hebrew narrative mark Jacob b. Yekutiel as a high lord, or at least as applying practices of rulership. First, he is noticeably depicted owning horses and servants. When Jacob travels to Rome, he takes with him his family and ‘his four servants [or slaves, avadav] and his twelve horses’.³² As he attempts to convince the pope to send one of his bishops as a legate to France, he promises these twelve horses, in addition to a large sum, to be used by this legate. This suggests that the horses were not only an effective mode of transportation—the text does not specify whether they were draft animals or warhorses—but also a symbol of power, authority and chivalry, to be handed from one (Jewish) lord to another (ecclesiastical). Another practice of lordship is revealed when Duke Richard II allows Jacob to leave for Rome, but keeps his youngest son, Judah, as a hostage (eravon), to make sure that he will return. Jacob only comes back after four years in Rome, and his son, presumably, remains with the duke (he appears later in the story, so he was indeed returned to his father safe and sound). Judah is kept hostage to ensure that the agreement between Richard and Jacob will be kept, not as means of punishment or as leverage to extract ransom.³³ Exchange of hostages was a common practice among the nobility of France, and the duke’s father, Richard I of Normandy, spent a long stretch of his childhood as a hostage, and later captive, of King Louis IV d’Outremer. This was, however, a practice often used between nobles of equal status.³⁴ In taking a hostage from Jacob, Richard II marked him as an equal, or so the author of the 1007 account wished to imply. The author also points to Jacob’s elevated status when describing his interaction with the pope. Jacob ‘stood before the pope and did not bow down, nor prostrate himself before him as the gentiles use to do’—a clear sign of equal status, resonating, again, with the book of Esther.³⁵ But there is more to this situation than first meets the eye. Placing oneself below the person from whom one asks for favour was a clear visual symbol of supplication, a prominent political (and religious) practice in early eleventh century Europe, especially in France.³⁶ By denying the pope this customary sign of respect, Jacob indeed placed himself as his equal, but also made almost sure that his request for assistance would be denied (which, as the tale goes, did not happen). The author clearly had more interest in presenting Jacob as a lord, taking the narrative role of Mordecai, rather than as a person who would subject himself to the gentile ruler for the sake of his people, that is, Esther’s role.³⁷

Finally, Jacob’s prominent position is expressed through his involvement in practices of rulership towards other Jews. When he asks the pope to appoint a legate to France, he suggests: ‘I shall give to him a letter bearing my signature (ktav ḥatimati, perhaps seal) so all the [Jewish] communities pay him respect’.³⁸ The practice of providing travellers with a document of safe conduct or a letter of recommendation was not unknown among Christians and Jews, but it is striking that Jacob presented himself as someone whose letter would be acknowledged as authoritative by all Jews, implying that he was a person of power.³⁹ Indeed, the narrative also portrays three Roman Jewish noblemen paying their respects to Jacob, offering him lodging.⁴⁰ All in all, the 1007 Anonymous paints Jacob as a man well versed in contemporary rituals of power, skilled in his conduct with other rulers, ecclesiastical, temporal or Jewish.

All this, one might argue, is interesting but circumstantial. To be sure, violent lordship takes centre stage in the 1007 text, and Jacob is described applying common medieval tactics of rulership to get his wish. But is there something here particularly typical of early eleventh-century France? After all, as Stow points out, Jews continued to navigate their relationships with Christian rulers in later centuries, and their violent encounters with Christian warriors were far from over.⁴¹ Some details of the text, however, evidence eleventh-century composition. First, Jacob’s invitation to Flanders by Count Baldwin only makes sense as an eleventh-century affair. Stow argues, correctly, that there is no evidence of Jews living in the area before the thirteenth-century.⁴² This, however, does not disprove the story. According to the text, Jacob was invited to Arras with a small group of thirty men around 1023, and stayed there for three months until his death, after which his sons took his body to burial in Reims. There is no mention of a permanent settlement. Indeed, Jacob’s sons likely had to transport the body to Reims, where a Jewish community lived, because there was no Jewish cemetery in Arras.⁴³ Arras was central for Baldwin—he led military campaigns and was involved in monastic reform in the area, so it is possible that he was there in 1023.⁴⁴ His successors, however, permanently lost Arras in 1128.⁴⁵ It is unlikely that a thirteenth century Jew, the presumed author of the 1007 account according to Stow, would consider Arras a part of Flanders.⁴⁶ An eleventh-century author, in contrast, could have been aware of contemporary political circumstances. Second, the monetary reality described by the 1007 account fits the early eleventh century, despite Stow’s reservation.⁴⁷ Jacob declares ‘here I have two hundred livres (litra), half of Anjou and the rest of Le Mans [or perhaps Limoges]’.⁴⁸ Minting of local coinage was common around the year 1000, and Angers, Le Mans and Limoges minted their own coins. Archaeological findings affirm that such local coins were common in Normandy at the end of the tenth century, particularly those of Le Mans. These coins were deniers, not livres, but the latter term was used for accounting.⁴⁹ When it comes to actual gold and silver, Jacob suggests: ‘seven golden marks (zquqim zahav) I shall weigh (eshqol) for the bishop … [and give] two hundred silver coins (shqalim) for his travel expenses’.⁵⁰ The only coinage actually available for Jacob was of silver—gold had to be weighed before use, and marks represent here a measure of weight or money of account.⁵¹ These details support the composition of the 1007 account in the period it describes.

Still, the main key for this contextualisation is juxtaposing Jacob’s actions with those taken by monastic and ecclesiastical leaders of his time and place. While comparing ecclesiastical and Jewish political strategies may sound counterintuitive, we should remember that the two groups faced rather similar challenges at the time. Seigneurial violence was often directed against churches or monasteries, their lands and property, or the people subjected to them. The famous peace movement was, at least in part, an attempt by churchmen to use the tools at their disposal—the council, the divine oath and the call for excommunication—to limit their exposure to violent exhibitions of temporal lordship.⁵² The outburst of violence against Jews in 1007, even if sanctioned by the king, seem to have stemmed from the same root, namely the need to publicly manifest authority. Jacob, whom we have seen presented as a lord in the 1007 account, is depicted acting within the political circumstances of the early eleventh century in the context of interactions with the papacy as well.

Papal Involvement in Lords’ Power Struggles

As the 1007 account narrates, the papacy played a part in the power struggles of French high lords. Violence was never off limits for ecclesiastical lords,⁵³ but they also applied other tactics (e.g. peace councils) to defend or claim their rights, and the papacy had a significant role in such tactics around the year 1000. Notably, the great abbots turned to the papacy in order to secure privileges, in addition to relying on non-ecclesiastical patrons, kings in particular.⁵⁴ In 995 or 996, Abbo, head of the celebrated Fleury monastery, travelled to Rome to convince Pope John XV to award such a privilege to his abbey and assist his struggle against the bishop of Orléans. He failed to navigate Roman politics, but shortly after his journey a new pope, Gregory V, rose to power with imperial support. Abbo approached him in Rome in late 997, and this time successfully secured an extensive charter, acknowledging the abbot of Fleury (namely, himself) as the foremost abbot in France. The charter gave the abbot freedom from any intervention by local bishops, or lords other than the king himself.⁵⁵ In the following year, abbot Odilo of Cluny also went to Rome to meet with the pope and secure papal protection for all monasteries affiliated with Cluny, probably based on the charter awarded to Fleury. Indeed, the pope granted him such a charter, ‘so that no duke, nor bishop, nor some other prince, nor any other person large or small, would dare to molest or hinder any of the above-mentioned things or tithes, which are seen to apply to apply here’.⁵⁶ Namely, the primary goal of the protection awarded was to prevent any lords, ecclesiastical or temporal, from taking over the monasteries’ property or economic rights or intervene in their internal administration.⁵⁷ Other monasteries seem to have followed suit.⁵⁸

The papacy was also involved in other power struggles that ecclesiastical lords took on, often against each other. Several popes were asked to intervene in the conflict over the archiepiscopal see of Reims during the last decade of the millennium, as well as in that over the bishopric of Orléans around 1010.⁵⁹ Archbishop Liéri of Sens sought papal protection against several bishops and lords, and even travelled to Rome and appealed to Pope Sylvester II in 1000.⁶⁰ Soon, temporal lords turned to the papacy when they struggled against abbots or bishops. At some point before 1007, bishop Fulbert of Chartres came in conflict with a certain lord named Raoul (or Ralph, Rodulfus) who claimed possessions held by his church. The lord seized some of the possessions by force, killing one of Fulbert’s men, and was also able to get two others to turn their allegiance to him. Fulbert approached Robert II for help, but Raoul would not appear in the king’s court, nor in front of other bishops, so Fulbert applied the final tool at his disposal and excommunicated him. Raoul, in return, appealed to Pope John XVIII to lift his excommunication, while Fulbert asked the pope to keep him under sanction.⁶¹ We do not know what happened next, but clearly, at this point disputes between lords could reach the level of papal intervention quite quickly. The same is true for the struggle between Fulk Nerra, count of Anjou, and the counts of Blois supported by the archbishop of Tours, starting around 1005. As part of the conflict, the archbishop would not consecrate a church that Fulk had built in his archdiocese. After Fulk had murdered a member of the house of Blois, he was condemned by King Robert and travelled to Rome to seek the protection of Pope John in early 1008. The pope intervened and sent one of his bishops, Peter of Piperno, to consecrate the new church to the dismay of (some) local bishops and lords.⁶² The practice of penitential pilgrimage to Rome, which worked well for Fulk, became more prominent at this period, including by temporal and ecclesiastical lords involved in violent conflicts.⁶³

All of this goes to show that, as Chazan points out and in contrast to Stow’s sceptical opinion, papal involvement in conflicts in France around 1007 was common.⁶⁴ High lords, bishops and abbots appealed to popes to bolster their position in struggles of all kinds, and even travelled to Rome to do so. Thus, the idea that Jacob b. Yekutiel would appeal to papal protection after being turned down by his king and his duke is not unlikely as it may first seem. In fact, such an appeal was a popular and effective instrument of political leverage in 1007. Especially revealing is the case of abbot Gauzlin of Fleury. Gauzlin acted to expand the territories controlled by his abbey, soon placing himself in conflict with Bishop Fulk of Orléans, who opposed his claims for monastic independence. Fulk disregarded the privilege awarded to Fleury in 997, attempting to enter the monastery without Gauzlin’s approval. In addition, he excommunicated Gauzlin and approached other ecclesiastical lords, such as Bishop Fulbert of Chartres and Archbishop Liéri of Sens, asking them to do the same.⁶⁵ In late 1008 or early 1009, the conflict came before Robert II. Gauzlin presented the papal privilege awarded to his predecessor Abbo of Fleury (and later reapproved) but Fulk and Liéri were not impressed and threatened to throw the document into the fire. The king, perhaps because Gauzlin called on papal rather than royal patronage, did not defend him this time.⁶⁶ A bishop Peter, likely the same Peter of Piperno sent by Pope John XVIII to intervene in the dispute involving Fulk Nerra, reported this incident to the pope.⁶⁷ The pope sent a long letter to the king, supporting Gauzlin’s claim and demanding that Fulk and Liéri arrive in Rome the next Easter to face papal judgment. Letters were also sent to the bishop and archbishop, threatening them with excommunication if they did not show up, and another to Gauzlin, asking for his presence in Rome to plead his case. The trial at the papal Curia apparently did not occur, as Gauzlin only came to Rome in 1012, but his claim for freedom from episcopal intervention seems to have been respected.⁶⁸

In addition to being another example of papal intervention in a French power struggle, the story of Gauzlin corroborates many details of the 1007 account. Like Jacob, Gauzlin faced what he saw as injustice on the part of high lords (though ecclesiastical in this case), and like him, he came to be disappointed by the lack of royal protection. In both cases, the pope intervened against a coalition of the king and the lords through the action of a papal legate, one of his bishops. The Hebrew text even mentions papal excommunication as the major threat to be deployed by the legate, and a sealed papal document of defence (shlaḥ ḥotamkha ve-shluḥakha ve-ḥerem pikha alyhem).⁶⁹ Above all, this story shows that in 1008 this papal legate, Peter of Piperno, was indeed active in King Robert’s court, meddling in his decisions regarding his lords’ affairs in the pope’s name. While Latin sources do not mention that he did so to protect local Jews, the other details seem to fit perfectly with the timeline presented in the 1007 narrative.⁷⁰ At the very least, this shows that the author of this narrative had an extensive knowledge of the political manoeuvres which could force the king and high temporal and ecclesiastical lords to change their position. Chazan’s suggestion, that it was written shortly after Robert II’s death in 1031 by someone related to Jacob’s sons, thus seems plausible.⁷¹ This can also explain why the name of the relevant pope is not mentioned while those of temporal rulers are: six popes ruled between 996 and 1024, while Robert II, Richard II and Baldwin VI reigned for long periods. If the text was composed more than a couple of decades (but not two centuries) after the events, its author would have been likely to remember only the rulers who lasted.

This undermines the position of scholars who have suggested, for an array of reasons, that the persecution of Jews described in the Hebrew account happened after 1007. Landes claims, following Raoul Glaber’s narrative, that the violence erupted after the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre, only in late 1009 or 1010.⁷² This is unlikely, as the papal legate, who was allegedly sent after the persecution, was already present in France in 1008. Stow, we recall, claims that the Hebrew text was only composed in the thirteenth century. Some scholars agree, while others suggest different dates later than the early eleventh century or doubt the historicity of the text altogether, implying that any persecution that may have occurred cannot be dated.⁷³ One of the determining factors that has driven this historiographical scepticism is the resemblance between the extent of papal protection presented in the 1007 narrative and the famous papal bull sicut Iudaeis, first issued by Pope Calixtus II between 1119 and 1124.⁷⁴ Yitzḥak Baer was the first to notice this, but while he considered it as evidence that the 1007 narrative represented medieval papal policy accurately, Stow and others insisted that this was a sign of anachronism by its author.⁷⁵ Early versions of this papal bull do not survive, nor can the wording of Jacob’s request be accurately deduced from the Hebrew text, so the debate is quite speculative.⁷⁶ Still, papal charters of protection and papal privileges, usually awarded to monasteries, were issued from the ninth century on and became even more popular around the turn of the millennium.⁷⁷ Their structure is fairly stable: they include a statement that no ruler should presume to infringe on the rights of the institution protected, followed by a threat of excommunication.⁷⁸ These charters can be considered a part of a wider tradition of exemption documents awarded to monasteries by lay rulers as well.⁷⁹ Also pertinent are ninth-century charters and formulae by Emperor Louis the Pious protecting Jews and employing a similar language to later papal charters, while the latter show some similarities to privileges awarded to Jews in the late eleventh century.⁸⁰ Therefore, two established traditions of exemption and protection charters did exist in the early eleventh century: in canon law for the exemption of monasteries and in imperial law for the protection of Jews (and monasteries). Both could have inspired a papal decree for the protection of Jews in 1007, if indeed such was granted, or at least to provide legal precedent for intervention on their behalf.⁸¹ Indeed, the closest surviving papal correspondence to address the Jews, four letters by Pope Alexander II dated 1063–65, praise both bishops and temporal rulers for protecting Jews from violence, stressing that conversion should not be obtained by force.⁸² Moreover, the 1007 account discusses abuses relevant for the Jews’ situation at the time, namely, deadly attack, injury, seizure of property and forced conversion.⁸³ It is hardly surprising that Jacob b. Yekutiel was portrayed highlighting these matters, later also featured in the sicut Iudaeis bull, to the pope. Therefore, despite historiographical scepticism, the mechanisms of power described in the 1007 account fit well into the political environment of the early eleventh century, and even to 1007–8 in particular, also in the context of appeal to papal authority and the practices deployed by the pope and his legate.

Anti-Jewish Ideas in Early Eleventh-Century France

To fully understand the 1007 account, its references to power dynamics should be contextualised within contemporary Jewish-Christian relations and anti-Jewish notions. Since, as argued above, the persecution apparently predated the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre, and also later events like the crusading movement, we have to ask what could have caused it. Considering its date, suspicion quickly falls on millenarian ideas and apocalyptic sentiments, and the chronicle of Adémar of Chabannes indeed points in this direction. Adémar reports a series of ominous signs that occurred before the bishop of Limoges forced local Jews into a debate with Christian scholars, ending in the demand that the Jews either convert or leave town. Astrological omens, including lunar and solar eclipses, were coupled with droughts so severe as to cause parts of the Vienne River to dry up, but also with excessive rains. These apparently caused mass famine and disease. Adémar also recalls a vision he had at the time, a great crucifix that appeared to him in the night sky, leading him to tears over the suffering of Christ. The destruction of the Holy Sepulchre, according to Adémar, happened only later.⁸⁴ Several scholars present such a mindset as a factor that could have caused, or at least facilitated, the persecution of Jews.⁸⁵ Their position, however, stands in opposition to scholarly claims that the year 1000 transpired without a significant outburst of millenarian terror, as far as most sources indicate, and such a sentiment was more common around 1033, if at all.⁸⁶ Both positions are supported by compelling evidence, but even if apocalyptic ideas became popular, it is unclear why, and in what way, they would jeopardise the position of French Jews. While Jews did play an important role in contemporary Christian apocalyptic narratives, and both Adémar and Raoul Glaber presented clear anti-Jewish tendencies, none of the surviving sources connects the apocalypse to the persecution of 1007 explicitly.⁸⁷

So, to clarify the issue we need to dive deeper into contemporary anti-Jewish ideas. Important but understudied in this context are three sermons against the Jews by Fulbert of Chartres.⁸⁸ These sermons, composed before 1028, are the main early eleventh-century source presenting a coherent attitude towards the Jews.⁸⁹ Notably, they show no tendency towards apocalyptical or conspiratorial thought in the Jewish context. All three focus on exegetical readings of the verse ‘The sceptre shall not be taken away from Judah, nor a ruler from his thigh, till he come that is to be sent, and he shall be the expectation of nations’ (Gen 49:10). They make a similar point, in three different ways; the verse, a prophecy given by the biblical Jacob to his son Judah, ties the end of Jewish independent rule with the coming of the messiah. This rule, according to Fulbert, ended when Herod took control over Judea for Rome, which immediately preceded the coming of Christ, the true messiah. The Jews refuse to acknowledge that this prophecy was fulfilled, but after a thousand years of living under Christian rule it is clear that Judah has lost his ruling sceptre, which was passed on to Christ.

The first sermon focuses on supposed Jewish claims that while the Jews are captives under Christian rule, they may someday return to their country and reform their line of kings, or that this line was never broken since some Jews in different parts of the world hold a limited political autonomy. Fulbert argues that the Jewish rule, the ‘sceptre of Judah’, was composed of three elements: the kingdom of Judea, the kings themselves, and the prophets who anointed them. Even if one of the elements is missing the sceptre was clearly taken away from Judah; thus Fulbert dismisses any claims that medieval Jewish leaders, or even historic ones like Mordecai who led the Jews during their exile, are true heirs to the biblical kings. The second sermon asserts that Christ has indeed come, and that the sceptre of Judah has transferred to him. Here Fulbert applies traditional polemical techniques—exegesis of biblical verses supposedly foretelling the coming of Christ. The third sermon returns to the issue of rulership. It follows the line of Jewish leaders from Moses to Herod, claiming continuity of the line through the Babylonian exile. Herod is depicted as a Roman ruler, who initiated the process leading to the destruction of Jerusalem and the long exile of the Jews. Fulbert then turns to an (imagined?) polemical discourse with a Jew who might reject this rendering of history. Many of his arguments are an expansion of those presented in the first sermon, but the final section of the last sermon is intriguing. If some Jews claim that they may regain their rule at some point as occurred after the Babylonian exile, Fulbert states, they should note that they are now people completely devoid of leadership. They have no kings, priests or prophets. They are completely dispersed, and have been for a thousand years. Thus, Fulbert concludes, the Jews should realise that their current state is a divine decree, which will never change. And so, the lack of Jewish rulership serves as the axis for Fulbert’s anti-Jewish sermons.⁹⁰

These ideas have precedents in Christian thought, primarily in Augustine, the fifth-century bishop of Carthage Quodvultdeus, and Paul Alvar.⁹¹ Yet Fulbert expands on this theme further, developing it into an array of anti-Jewish arguments. Margot Fassler states convincingly that the centrality of the ‘sceptre of Judah’ verse, and Quodvultdeus’s exegesis, in the Advent liturgy was key in Fulbert’s choice to highlight it.⁹² At the same time, the fact that these sermons were composed shortly after the reported persecution suggests that the arguments presented in them could have been applied against actual Jews. If these were not the exact claims set against them in 1007, they can at least allow us a glimpse into what Fulbert thought of Jews. And, as we have seen above, Fulbert was not only a great scholar and innovator of liturgy, but also a shrewd leader involved in the power struggles that characterised France. It is likely that he composed his sermons (also) to undermine the political position of the Jews or facilitate their conversion, willingly or by force, as the third sermon indeed suggests.⁹³

Circling back to the 1007 account, some of the anti-Jewish statements that were read by scholars as generic references to the book of Esther actually make historical sense when considered with Fulbert’s arguments in mind. The high lords reportedly approached the king claiming that ‘There is a certain people scattered among all the provinces, and they do not obey us, and their rules and religion (torato) are different from all other people’.⁹⁴ Jewish geographical dispersion and political fragmentation are presented here, as in Fulbert’s sermons, as major anti-Jewish claims. The other issue was that the lords feared that the Jews’ different religious law would lead them to reject comital authority. After all, they saw themselves as ruling, like the king, ‘with God’s grace (gratia Dei)’, a claim that the Jews presumably could not accept.⁹⁵ They thus demanded that ‘he who will not obey us (yeot elyinu) or will not adhere to our words, shall be put to death’.⁹⁶ The king, however, subsequently presented the Jews with something more similar to Fulbert’s ideas, depicting conversion as the remedy of the Jews’ supposed disloyalty: ‘I wish the people to be one, and you shall be lords and nobles (shalitim ve-nikhbadim), and you should return to our religious law (toratenu) since it is more correct than yours (ki hi nekhonah yoter mi-shelakhem)’.⁹⁷ Jewish political inferiority is here tied to adherence to a wrong religious doctrine. If the Jews were to abandon their expectation of religious superiority, they would gain equal access to lordship, or even rulership. The Jews, of course, persist in their devotion to their faith.

Other evidence also suggests that rulership was key in anti-Jewish views typical of early eleventh century France, and beyond. Alpert of Metz, writing a chronicle before 1021, recorded a relevant contemporary debate. One Wecelinus, who served at the court of Duke Conrad of Carinthia, converted to Judaism around 1006, and consequently wrote a letter scorning Christianity. The letter found its way (or perhaps was sent) to King Heinrich II, who ordered one of his clerics, also named Heinrich, to respond. Among the many arguments presented against Wecelinus, Heinrich cited the ‘sceptre of Judah’ prophecy as evidence of divine preference of Christianity over Judaism.⁹⁸ Another reference to rulership in the Jewish context comes from Raoul Glaber, who presented Count Raynard II of Sens as a despicable and insane ruler, and also blatantly pro-Jewish. He managed the affairs of Sens poorly, judged the people harshly, and acted against the Church. ‘He even favoured the sinful customs of the Jews so much, that he ordered all of his men that his title, placed before his name (which was obviously Raynard), be their [the Jews’] king’.⁹⁹ Raynard the Judaizer (iudaizante) continued in his outrageous behaviour until Robert II decided to intervene, and took Sens by force in 1015.¹⁰⁰ Raoul Glaber is an unreliable chronicler, but Fulbert of Chartres also justified the king’s attack against Raynard by labelling him ‘a heretic who persecuted the Lord’s Church’.¹⁰¹ Still, we might suspect that Raynard’s actions against the Church stemmed more from his struggle with archbishop Liéri of Sens than from any pro-Jewish sentiment.¹⁰² Bernhard Blumenkranz suggested that Fulbert indeed considered Raynard to be influenced by the Jews, and wrote his sermons to denounce such an influence, but this is merely a conjecture.¹⁰³ Still Raoul, like Fulbert, saw the conflict with the Jews as revolving around lordship and power. Raynard’s ‘Jewishness’ was demonstrated not by any acts of religious devotion, but by his disregard for ‘proper’ rulership practices, his challenge to Archbishop Liéri and to King Robert (who wished to take Sens as part of his campaign to control the Duchy of Burgundy), and his claims for lordship over the Jews.¹⁰⁴ Also in Raoul’s vituperative (and likely completely fabricated) account of the involvement of Jews in the destruction of the Holy Sepulchre, the Jews of Orléans are described as ‘puffed up, hostile and bold’.¹⁰⁵ The letters they allegedly sent Caliph al-Ḥākim warned him that ‘if he did not quickly destroy the venerable church of the Christians, then they would soon occupy his whole realm, depriving him of all his power’.¹⁰⁶ The Jews here point to a military or political threat that Christian pilgrims might pose for the caliph, not to any theological argument or religious sentiment. They are, Raoul perhaps implies, blaming the pilgrims for their own sin: political subversion.

The subjugation of Jews to Christian high lords is also expressed as a religious directive in an Easter ritual described by Adémar of Chabannes. He reports that sometime around 1018, Hugh, the chaplain (capellanus) of the Viscount of Rochechouart Aimery I, was present at Toulouse with his master during Easter. He performed a tradition of slapping a local Jew, and did so with such force that he killed the man.¹⁰⁷ Since this happened during Easter, we may assume that the slap was a symbolic punishment for the Crucifixion. At the same time, this was a ritual of power, a brute display of Christian lordship over a humiliated Jew. In this case the slap was performed by a chaplain, who held a religious office for a temporal lord, thus echoing this dual message. As in Fulbert of Chartres’s sermons, the fact that Jews were helpless facing of Christian domination was both a divine punishment for their rejection of Christ and a proof of their mistake in taking this position.

Some Jews may have been perceived as undermining Christian authority and the peace. R. Gershom b. Judah of Mainz (Me’or Hagolah, d. 1028) was asked to rule in a case involving a Jew who regularly traded in property, livestock in particular, plundered by Christian lords from their enemies or their enemies’ villagers. This occupation, which the Jew practiced for six or seven years, perhaps around Flanders or Burgundy, placed him in conflict with other lords.¹⁰⁸ They were apparently hoping to regain, or simply seize, the property he handled. Moreover, ‘the hearts of the villagers who had been seized and the hearts of their lords, the nobles [sarim], were upset [with him], as they were saying: “this Jew incites our enemies against us, since he is always ready to buy the spoils [of war]. Therefore, they are becoming used to doing this evil deed, as they go [plundering] with certainty [that they will gain from their actions]”’.¹⁰⁹ Eventually, when the Jew practiced his trade during a major siege involving Robert II, some of his enemies imprisoned him, and perhaps later killed him (leaving his wife in an uncertain legal status, and in need of R. Gershom’s ruling).¹¹⁰ The claims levelled against this Jewish trader are especially revealing. We have mentioned that starting in the late tenth century, the continuous conflicts between lords led bishops to promote what they called ‘peace’ through a series of councils, especially in Aquitaine. They endorsed public oaths limiting warfare to certain times and places, and protecting Church institutions and unarmed people. Some temporal lords also took on the language of peace and the oath sworn to keep it to support their claims for power and authority and establish alliances for military action. Most pertinent to our case, canons issued by peace councils regulated the seizure of property by lords. Seizure of a villager’s (villanus, which can also mean serf) property, including livestock, for the misdeed of his lord was forbidden, unless during formal war (werra).¹¹¹ The fact that the Jewish trader supported the regular seizure of villagers’ property outside of formal warfare placed him as a violator of the peace. The peace was a prominent Christian value, as well as a practice of power building and legislation, and stood at the heart of contemporary religious and temporal struggles.¹¹² The Jewish trader was not only causing economic damage to Christians, but also encouraging illegitimate violence. In his presumption to intervene in the world of lordship and warfare for gain, he spurred the worst outcomes that this world could unleash.

Not all Christian-Jewish tensions at the time revolved around themes of lordship or rulership directly. Acts of conversion, commemoration of the Crucifixion, economic interests and cultural fears surely also stimulated hostility.¹¹³ That said, in a society so enrapt in struggles over rights of lordship, it is not surprising that this issue often emerged in anti-Jewish claims as well. The Jews, we have seen, have been depicted as lacking powers of rulership. For Fulbert of Chartres, this was the ultimate proof of their fundamental mistake in rejecting Christ, and thus any attempt on their part to present themselves as lords should be refuted. The same sentiment was conspicuous in the Easter ritual of slapping a Jew. The 1007 account also has Robert II introducing conversion as the only way for Jews to gain significant powers of lordship. If any Jews tried to intervene in the world of Christian lords, as the cases of Raynard ‘the Judaizer’ and the Jewish trader show, they were to be forcibly denied and punished. Thus, the old theme of Jewish inferiority and Christian victory was often pronounced at this period through the symbols and practices of lordship, especially those typical of the high lords.¹¹⁴

This can help us in finally deciphering the 1007 narrative as a whole. Chazan saw the first part of this account, describing anti-Jewish claims, royal deliberation, and the persecution of Jews, as essentially disconnected from its second part, depicting Jacob b. Yekutiel’s interaction with Richard II, his journey to Rome, and his final days.¹¹⁵ Yet from the perspective of Christian lordship as a challenge for Jews, these two parts convey a single coherent message. Anti-Jewish claims and actions presented in the first part are based on the idea that the Jews lack political agency and cannot act as lords or rulers, as some contemporary Latin sources also stress. The presence of Jews as aliens in France, uninvolved in power and authority structures, cannot last, according to these claims, and the only remedy to their disloyalty is conversion. The second part highlights Jacob as a high lord for all intents and purposes. He faces Duke Richard with courage, argues in the name of proper rulership, manoeuvres the pope to his side, proposes a mechanism to enact papal authority in France, and ends his life in Baldwin’s IV court. For the narrative’s author, Jacob proves by his actions that Jews can function as lords and exercise power at the highest level, applying the most up-to-date political strategies and rituals of power. Jacob not only harnesses papal authority against Christian violence; by his behaviour he demonstrates that the very argument that supported Christian anti-Jewish claims, the impossibility of Jewish lordship or rulership, is in fact false. Like the biblical Mordecai, he is both a Jewish leader and a gentile nobleman, which allows him to hinder the evil plans of Christian lords.

This tale is very likely rooted in the social and political reality of the early eleventh century, with its great emphasis on lordship. Whether Jacob b. Yekutiel ever existed, or if the papal legate intervened for the Jews around 1007–1011, remains unknown. What is clear is that this story could not have been composed by someone lacking knowledge of contemporary political rituals and practices in France. This may have been one of Jacob’s sons or someone related to them, as Chazan suggested, or another Jew writing in the first half of the eleventh century.¹¹⁶ Whoever they may have been, the author saw the existence of Jewish lordship as necessary for Jewish survival in France. Jacob’s ability to manoeuvre the proper language and rituals of power allows him to overcome both Duke Richard and King Robert, using papal authority despite his Jewishness. Christian leaders (including churchmen) naturally opposed such a potential Jewish display of power, which could have undermined their claims for legitimacy through religious expression, but Jacob is depicted defeating them at their own game. For the 1007 author, lordship was so essential in holding political and religious status that Jews could not hope to remain a protected minority without exhibiting it. This desire for Jewish lordship should be understood in the context of the response to the rise in seigneurial power, religious engagement in the regulation of power and violence, and the growing political influence of monastic figures and the papacy, all typical of early eleventh century France. Jews, like all other agents, had to play the game of power rituals, religious justification of rulership and displays of lordship, even if they did so from a point of distinct disadvantage.

Acknowledgements

I thank Adam Kosto for reading a previous version of this article and offering valuable feedback.

Disclosure Statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

¹ This highly debated subject cannot be covered here. For historiographical reviews and discussion: Richard Abels, ‘The Historiography of a Construct: “Feudalism” and the Medieval Historian’, History Compass 7 (2009): 1008–31; Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘Feudalism: Reflections on a Tyrannical Construct’s Fate’, in Using Concepts in Medieval History: Perspectives on Britain and Ireland, 1100–1500, eds. Jackson W. Armstrong, Peter Crooks and Andrea Ruddick (Cham: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022), 15–48; Susan Reynolds, ‘The Use of Feudalism in Comparative History’, in Explorations in Comparative History, eds. B.Z. Kedar (Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 2009), 191–217; Adam J. Kosto, ‘What about Spain? Iberia in the Historiography of Medieval European Feudalism’, in Feudalism: New Landscapes of Debate, eds. Sverre Bagge, Michael H. Gelting, and Thomas Lindkvist (Turnhout: Brepols, 2011), 135–58 – see also other articles in this volume. A short discussion of some of the issues also appears below. Since this paper focuses on the period of Robert II, I have opted for ‘France’ over ‘West Francia’. Throughout, Patriologia cursus completes, series latina (ed. Jacques-Paul Migne, Paris: 1841–1855) is abbreviated as PL.

² Emily Taitz, Jews of Medieval France: The Community of Champagne (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1994), 41–94; Avraham Grossman, Ḥakhmei Tzarfat ha-rishonim: koroteihem, darkam be-hanhagat ha-tzibur, yetziratam ha-ruḥanit (The Early Sages of France: Their Lives, Leadership and Works) (Jerusalem: Magnes, 1995), 13–21; Gérard Nahon, ‘Ẓarfat: Medieval Jewry in Northern France’, in The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages, ed. Christoph Cluse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 205–20 (205–8); Robert Chazan, Medieval Jewry in Northern France: A Political and Social History (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1973), 9–24; Simon Schwarzfuchs, Yehudei Tzarfat be-yemei ha-beinaym (A History of the Jews in Medieval France) (Tel Aviv: ha-Kibbutz ha-Meuḥad, 2001), 65–106; Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096 (Paris: Mouton, 1960). Norman Golb, The Jews in Medieval Normandy: A Social and Intellectual History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 16–17, Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens, 386–9, and Taitz, Jews of Medieval France, 64, 71–6 comment briefly on the Jews’ place in the ‘feudal system’. Schwarzfuchs, Yehudei Tzarfat, 65–72 discusses Jewish-Christian tension in the context of political changes.

³ Text preserved in Parma, Biblioteca Palatina, Cod. 2295 (hereafter: Parma 2295), fols. 128a–130a. The MS is in late thirteenth century Ashkenazi script: Malachi Beit-Arié, Hebrew Manuscripts in the Biblioteca Palatina in Parma: Catalogue, ed. Benjamin Richler (Jerusalem: Jewish National and University Library, 2001), 458–60.

⁴ First printed: Abraham Berliner and David Hoffmann in Otzar Tov 8 (Berlin: Julius Benzian, 1878), 46–8. Commonly cited: Abraham M. Habermann, Sefer gzeirot Ashkenaz ve-Tsarfat (Book on the Persecutions in Germany and France) (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1946), 19–21. Also in: Norman Golb, Toledot ha-yehudim ba-ir Rouen be-yemei ha-beinaym (History and Culture of the Jews of Rouen in the Middle Ages) (Tel Aviv: Dvir, 1976), 171–3. English translation: Golb, Jews in Medieval Normandy, 547–50.

⁵ Salo W. Baron, A Social and religious History of the Jews, 2nd ed. (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952–83), 4:56–8; Shmuel Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 143–53; David Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz: The Human Face of Franco-German Jewry, 1000–1250 (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2008), 61–71; Yitzḥak (Fritz) Baer, ‘Ha-megamah ha-datit-ḥevratit shel Sefer Ḥasidim’(The Religious-Social Tendency of “Sefer Ḥasidim”), Zion 3 (1937), 1–50 (3–5); Rebecca Rist, Popes and Jews, 1095–1291 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2016), 40–3; Chazan, Medieval Jewry, 12–15; Taitz, Jews of Medieval France, 87–9; Schwarzfuchs, Yehudei Tzarfat, 67–72; Blumenkranz, Juifs et chrétiens, 135–7.

⁶ Robert Chazan, ‘1007–1012: Initial Crisis for Northern European Jewry’, Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 38/39 (1971): 101–17; Chazan, Medieval Jewry, 12–15. This view is challenged by Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz, 61–71.

⁷ Golb, Toledot ha-yehudim, 13–20; Golb, Jews in Medieval Normandy, 1–33; Golb, Les Juifs de Rouen au moyen âge: Portrait d'une culture oubliée (Rouen: Presses universitaires de Rouen et du Havre, 1985), 31–50. Also see Elma Brenner and Leonie V. Hicks, ‘The Jews of Rouen in the Eleventh to the Thirteenth Centuries’, in Society and Culture in Medieval Rouen, 911–1300, eds. Leonie Hicks and Elma Brenner (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013), 369–72.

⁸ Kenneth R. Stow, The ‘1007 Anonymous’ and Papal Sovereignty: Jewish Perceptions of the Papacy and Papal Policy in the High Middle Ages (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College, 1984); and more extensively: Stow, Levi’s Vindication: The 1007 Anonymous ‘as It Really Is’ (Cincinnati: Hebrew Union College Press; Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2017).

⁹ Richard Landes, ‘The Massacres of 1010: On the Origins of Popular Anti-Jewish Violence in Western Europe’, in From Witness to Witchcraft Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, eds. Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996): 79–112; Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, ed. and trans. John France (Oxford: Clarendon, 1989), 132–7.

¹⁰ Stow, Levi's Vindication, especially 3–75, 158–204. For other critics of Stow’s position: Robert Chazan, ‘Review of K. Stow, ‘The “1007 Anonymous” and Papal Sovereignty’, Speculum 62 (1987): 728–31; Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs, 329 n. 41.

¹¹ Chazan, ‘1007’, 103–6; Stow, Levi's Vindication, 36–7, 75, 113–4, 177 n. 398; Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz, 63; Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs, 145.

¹² Some classic works: Marc Bloch, Feudal Society, trans. L. A. Manyon, 2 vols. (London: Routledge, 1962), esp. 1:59–71, 145–75, 2:2–68, 132–44; Georges Duby, The Three Orders: Feudal Society Imagined, trans. Arthur Goldhammer (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1980), 1–166; Robert Fossier, Enfance de l'Europe, X-XIII siècles: aspects économiques et sociaux (Paris: Presses universitaires de France, 1982), 289–318, 364–494.

¹³ Two famous critics of ‘feudalism’: Elizabeth A. R. Brown, ‘The Tyranny of a Construct: Feudalism and Historians of Medieval Europe’, The American Historical Review 79 (1974): 1063–88; Susan Reynolds, Fiefs and Vassals: The Medieval Evidence Reinterpreted (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994). Some alternative interpretations of these processes: Dominique Barthélemy, The Serf, the Knight, and the Historian, trans. Graham Robert Edwards (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2009); Stephen D. White, Feuding and Peace-Making in Eleventh Century France (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005); Charles West, Reframing the Feudal Revolution: Political and Social Transformation Between Marne and Moselle, c.800–c.1100 (New York: Cambridge University Press, 2013), esp. 171–227; Geoffrey Koziol, Begging Pardon and Favor: Ritual and Political Order in Early Medieval France (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 5–7, 129–33. For additional bibliography: Warren Brown, Violence in Medieval Europe (London: Routledge, 2014), 128–9 n. 7.

¹⁴ Most notably: Thomas N. Bisson, The Crisis of the Twelfth Century: Power, Lordship and the Origins of European Government (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2009), esp. 22–68, 128–68.

¹⁵ I use ‘lordship’ to describe particular public behaviors of medieval rulers, similarly to Koziol, Begging Pardon, while acknowledging that the term can also refer to medieval forms of rulership more generally: Thomas N. Bisson, ‘Medieval Lordship’, Speculum 70 (1995): 743–59. I also accept that some elements of lordship developed before the tenth century, and that the concept of lordship is not a well-defined set of stable practices: Charles West, ‘Lordship in Ninth-Century Francia: The Case of Bishop Hincmar of Laon and his Followers’, Past & Present 226 (2015): 3–40; Richard E. Barton, Lordship in the County of Maine, c. 890–1160 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2004); Barthélemy, The Serf, 154–244. Still, this article is focused on the characteristics of lordship specifically typical of France at the turn of the millennium.

¹⁶ Parma 2295, fol. 128a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 19. This source ascribes a prominent position to the queen, probably retrospectively. In 1007 a rift formed between Queen Constance of Arles and King Robert: Penelope Ann Adair, ‘Constance of Arles: A Study in Duty and Frustration’, in Capetian Women, ed. Kathleen Nolan (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), 9–26 (11–14).

¹⁷ The term paḥot represented territorial rulership also in its biblical use: Esth. 3:12. Indeed, Count Baldwin is also described as ‘peḥah of Flanders’ (Parma 2295, fol. 129b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 21). Shlomo bar Shimshon, writing in the 1140’s, also used the title peḥah for Count Emicho of Flonheim: Eva Haverkamp, ed., Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des ersten Kreuzzugs (Hannover: Hahn, 2005), 307.

¹⁸ Geoffrey Koziol, ‘The Conquest of Burgundy, the Peace of God, and the Diplomas of Robert the Pious’, French Historical Studies 37 (2014): 173–214 (184–87); Koziol, Begging Pardon, 125–31; Elizabeth M. Hallam and Charles West, Capetian France 987–1328, 3rd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2020), 86–8.

¹⁹ Michael Frassetto, ‘The Heresy at Orléans in 1022 in the Writings of Contemporary Churchmen’, Nottingham Medieval Studies 49 (2005): 1–17 (2–4, 9–10); Robert-Henri Bautier, ‘L’hérésie d’Orléans et le mouvement intellectuel au début du XIe siècle: documents et hypotheses’, Actes du 95e congrès national des sociétés savantes, Reims, 1970. Section de philologie et d'histoire jusqu'à 1610, vol. 1 (Paris: Bibliothèque nationale, 1975), 63–88 (87–88); Robert I. Moore, The War on Heresy (London: Profile Books, 2012), 13–15; Chazan, ‘1007’, 112–3.

²⁰ Parma 2295, fol. 128b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 19. Stow, Levi's Vindication, 17–19, 71, 105, 167–8, 177, 180, 187, 204.

²¹ Parma 2295, fol. 128b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 20.

²² Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 134–5; Adémar of Chabannes, Chronicon, eds. Pascale Bourgain, Richard Landes, Georges Pon. Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio Mediaevalis 129 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 166.

²³ Parma 2295, fol. 128b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 20.

²⁴ Siegmund Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nürnberger Memorbuches (Berlin: Leonhard Simion, 1898), 7–10. Of the 1,186 Jews listed as killed in 1096, three were named Shneior, and one Judah b. Shneior. This name was thus known among Jews, but not very common.

²⁵ Chazan, ‘1007’, 104 transcribes the name as ‘Seigneur’ without commenting on the issue.

²⁶ The fact that he is called ‘dux’, military leader, in many of the narrative sources but ‘comes’, count, in most of the charters attest to this duality: Eleanor Searle, Predatory Kinship and the Creation of Norman Power, 840–1066 (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1988), 125–9; Koziol, ‘Conquest of Burgundy’, 197–8; Mark Hagger, Norman Rule in Normandy, 911–1144 (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2017), 78–94.

²⁷ Parma 2295, fol. 128b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 20. Stow, Levi's Vindication, 31–7 sees this part of the narrative as a literary trope borrowed from thirteenth century romances. Yet, Norman warriors used a short, sometimes ornate, band to attach their scabbards to their belts. Such bands are visible in the Bayeux tapestry, especially in scenes 9 and 37, where warriors take off their swords. That a seasoned warrior like Richard II would have his hand entangled in his scabbard band would indeed be almost miraculous, but the scene fits with contemporary military equipment. Furnishing swords or their fixtures with gold was common among Norman lords: Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans, ed. and trans. Eric Christiansen (Woodbridge: Boydell, 1998), 19, 41, 65, 74.

²⁸ Parma 2295, fol. 129b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 21.

²⁹ R.H.C. Davis, ‘The Warhorses of the Normans’, Anglo-Norman Studies 10 (1987): 67–82; Searle, Predatory Kinship, 195–6, 203–4, 217–18, 238–9; Michael Lewis, ‘Identity and Status in the Bayeux Tapestry: The Iconographic and Artefactual Evidence’, in Anglo-Norman Studies 29: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2006, ed. Christopher Lewis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2007), 100–20 (103–15). Warhorses are ubiquitous in Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans.

³⁰ Dominique Barthélemy, ‘The Chivalric Transformation and the Origins of Tournament as seen through Norman Chroniclers’, trans. Graham Robert Edwards, The Haskins Society Journal 20 (2008): 141–60 (146–49); Joyce Salisbury, The Beast Within: Animals in the Middle Ages, 3rd ed. (Abingdon: Routledge, 2022), 26–36; Ann Hyland, The Medieval Warhorse: From Byzantium to the Crusades (Stroud: Sutton, 1994), 76–85; Davis, ‘Warhorses’, 67–9; Koziol, Begging Pardon, 117, 132, 158–9; Barton, Lordship, 193.

³¹ Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans, 117–18 describes how Louis IV descended from his horse to the feet of his captive to beg for his freedom. For other occasions of dismounting or carrying a saddle as a sign of humility: Koziol, Begging Pardon, 132; Barton, Lordship, 102; Hagger, Norman Rule, 98.

³² Parma 2295, fol. 129a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 20.

³³ Note the difference: Gershom b. Judah, She’elot u-teshuvot (Responsa), ed. Shlomo Eidelberg (New York: Yeshiva University, 1956), 103–4, §36; Irving Agus, ed. Teshuvot ba’alei ha-tosafot (Responsa of the Tosafists) (New York: Yeshiva University, 1954), 39–42 (a responsum by R. Joseph Tov Elem).

³⁴ Dudo of St. Quentin, History of the Normans, 104–5, 125; Bernard S. Bachrach, David S. Bachrach and Michael Leese, eds. Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai: Translation and Commentary (London: Routledge, 2018), 98, 100, 115, 187, 212–14; Thomas Head and Richard Landes, eds., The Peace of God: Social Violence and Religious Response in France around the Year 1000 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 330; Koziol, Begging Pardon, 16, 59, 110, 155–7; Barton, Lordship, 87; Adam J. Kosto, Hostages in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2012), 56–9; Jean Dunbabin, Captivity and Imprisonment in Medieval Europe, 1000–1300 (Houndmills: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 30–1.

³⁵ Parma 2295, fol. 129a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 20. Esth. 3:2–4.

³⁶ Koziol, Begging Pardon, esp. 59–76.

³⁷ Interestingly, a prominent model for early eleventh century queens: Diane J. Reilly, The Art of Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders: Gerard of Cambrai, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Saint-Vaast Bible (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 267–85. Stow notices this early eleventh century symbol, but does not reconsider his dating: Stow, Levi's Vindication, 15 n. 31.

³⁸ Parma 2295, fol. 129b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 21. Golb, Jews in Medieval Normandy, 14–17 suggests that Jacob was one of a group of Jewish nobles, but the evidence for a wider phenomenon is limited.

³⁹ Adam J. Kosto, ‘Ignorance about the Traveler: Documenting Safe Conduct in the European Middle Ages’, in The Dark Side of Knowledge: Histories of Ignorance, 1400 to 1800, ed. Cornel Zwierlein (Leiden: Brill, 2016), 267–95 (269–70, 276–77); Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 471.

⁴⁰ While housing foreign coreligionists may have been common among medieval Jews (Albert Kohn, ‘To Dwell Away from Home: Lodging Jewish Transients in the Communities of Medieval Ashkenaz [1150–1350', unpublished paper], Jacob was purportedly offered a house of his own. I thank Albert Kohn for permission to cite his unpublished work.

⁴¹ Stow, Levi's Vindication, 3–124.

⁴² Parma 2295, fols. 129b–130a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 21; Stow, Levi's Vindication, 65–7, 174–5; Christoph Cluse, ‘The Structure of Medieval Jewish Settlement in the Southern Low Countries’, Jewish Studies 40 (2000): 43–56.

⁴³ For Jews in Reims: Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, 117; Agus, Teshuvot, 39; Golb, Jews in Medieval Normandy, 7; Henri Gross, Gallia Judaica: Dictionnaire géographique de la France d’après les sources rabbiniques, (1897; reprint, Paris: Peeters, 2011), 633–4.

⁴⁴ Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, 56–7, 113–16, 169–71; Jean Dunbabin, France in the Making, 843–1180. 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), 207–10; David Van Meter, ‘Count Baldwin IV, Richard of Saint-Vanne and the Inception of Monastic Reform in Eleventh-Century Flanders’, Revue Bénédictine 107 (1997): 30–48; Reilly, Art of Reform, 20, 94, 97, 164–6.

⁴⁵ Dunbabin, France in the Making, 262, 366.

⁴⁶ Rainer Josef Barzen, ‘West and East in Ashkenaz in the Time of Judah he-Ḥasid’, Jewish History 34 (2021): 53–81, esp. map, 64.

⁴⁷ Stow, Levi's Vindication, 40–5, 175–6.

⁴⁸ Parma 2295, fol. 129a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 21. For the currency, compare: Agus, Teshuvot, 39.

⁴⁹ Agus, Teshuvot, 39; Nicholas Mayhew, Coinage in France from the Dark Ages to Napoleon (London: Seaby, 1988), 19–63; Marc Bompaire and Françoise Dumas, Numismatique médiévale: monnaies et documents d'origine française (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 106–8, 275–83; Barton, Lordship, 52–6.

⁵⁰ Parma 2295, fol. 129b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 21.

⁵¹ Gershom b. Judah, She’elot u-teshuvot, 94, §29; Mark Blackburn, ‘Gold in England During the “Age of Silver” (Eighth–Eleventh Centuries)’, in Silver Economy in the Viking Age, eds. James Graham-Campbell and Gareth Williams (London: Routledge, 2007), 55–98; Jane Kershaw, ‘Gold as a Means of Exchange in Scandinavian England (c. AD 850–1050)’, in Silver, Butter, Cloth: Monetary and Social Economies in the Viking Age, eds. Jane Kershaw and Gareth Williams (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2019), 261–88.

⁵² Geoffrey Koziol, The Peace of God (Leeds: Arc Humanities Press, 2018), 33–5; Jehangir Y. Malegam, The Sleep of Behemoth: Disputing Peace and Violence in Medieval Europe, 1000–1200 (Ithaca: Cornell University press, 2013), 27–42; Koziol, Begging Pardon, 129–30, 178–9, 194–8; Andre Debord, ‘The Castellan Revolution and the Peace of God in Aquitaine’, in Peace of God, eds. Head and Landes, 135–64; Bisson, Crisis, 49–50. Barthélemy, The Serf, 245–301, is sceptical. For overviews and historiography: Koziol, Peace of God, esp. 56–81; Frederick S. Paxton, ‘History, Historians, and the Peace of God’, in Peace of God, eds. Head and Landes, 21–40; Dunbabin, France in the Making, 150–4.

⁵³ Dominique Barthélemy, ‘The Peace of God and Bishops at War in the Gallic Lands from the Late Tenth to the Early Twelfth Century’, in Anglo-Norman Studies 29: Proceedings of the Battle Conference 2000, ed. Christopher Lewis (Woodbridge: Boydell, 2010): 1–23 (3–8); Bisson, Crisis, 45–6.

⁵⁴ Kriston R. Rennie, ‘The Normative Character of Monastic Exemption in the Early Medieval Latin West’, Medieval Worlds 6 (2017): 61–77; Rennie, Freedom and Protection: Monastic Exemption in Medieval France, c.590–c.1100 (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2018), 121–61; Geoffrey Koziol, The Politics of Memory and Identity in Carolingian Royal Diplomas: The West Frankish Kingdom (840–987) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2012), 263–314; Barbara Rosenwein, Negotiating Space: Power, Restraint, and Privileges of Immunity in Early Medieval Europe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2018), 152–68.

⁵⁵ Elizabeth Dachowski, First Among Abbots: The Career of Abbo of Fleury (Washington: Catholic University of America Press, 2008), 167–71, 178–86; Levi Roach, Forgery and Memory at the End of the First Millennium (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2021), 153–88; Aimoin of Fleury, ‘Vita et passio sancti Abbonis’, in L'abbaye de Fleury en l'an mil, eds. Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Labory (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 2000), 34–138 (88–94); Johannes Ramackers, ed. Papsturkunden in Frankreich, vol. 6, Orléanais, Abhandlungen der Akademie der Wissenchaften in Göttingen, Philologisch-Historische Klasse, 41 (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1958), 46–51.

⁵⁶ ‘Ita ut nullus dux, neque episcopus, neque aliquis princeps, neque quaelibet magna parvaque persona de praefatis omnibus rebus et decimis, quae inibi pertinere videntur, audeat molestare vel inquietare.’ ‘Gregorii Papae V epistolae et privilegia’, PL 137: 932–5 (935).

⁵⁷ Pope Benedict VIII issued a letter in the same vein in 1016: PL 139:1601–4; also see Giles Constable, The Abbey of Cluny: A Collection of Essays to Mark the Eleven-Hundredth Anniversary of its Foundation (Berlin: Lit, 2010), 23–5, 88–9, and Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 168–73.

⁵⁸ Rennie, Freedom and Protection, 150–61; Philippus Jaffé, ed., Regesta pontificum Romanorum: ab condita ecclesia ad annum post Christum natum MCXCVIII (Berlin: Veit, 1851), 339–51. This is not to say that patronage by lords necessarily eroded: Koziol, Begging Pardon, 193–4. The two charters discussed are likely original (Roach, Forgery and Memory, 182–3), but others may have been forged: William Ziezulewicz, ‘A Monastic Forgery in an Age of Reform: Bull of Pope John XVIII for Saint-Florent-de-Saumur (April 1004)’, Archivum historiae pontificiae 23 (1985): 7–45.

⁵⁹ Jelle Lisson, ‘“The King and the Bishops Have Much to Offer”: Episcopal Appointments and the Legitimacy Conflict over the Archiepiscopal See of Reims (989–99)’, Early Medieval Europe 28 (2020): 592–626 (617–23); Fulbert of Chartres, Letters and Poems of Fulbert of Chartres, ed. and trans. Frederick Behrends (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1967), 38–41; Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, 110–14.

⁶⁰ Robert-Henri Bautier and Monique Gilles, eds., Chronique de Saint-Pierre-le-vif de Sens, dite de Clarius (Paris: CNRS, 1980), 102–7.

⁶¹ Fulbert of Charters, Letters, 14–17.

⁶² Jean-Hervé Foulon, ‘Stratégies politiques, fondation monastique et recours à Rome vers l'an mil: le cas de Beaulieu-lès-Loches’, Revue historique 307 (2005): 251–81 (269–75); Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 60–5; privileges by popes John XVIII and Sergius IV, PL 139:1491–92, 1525–27; Theodor Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten in Frankreich vom Vertrage von Meersen (870) bis zum Schisma von 1130 (Berlin: Ebering, 1935), 45–7; Bernard S. Bachrach, Fulk Nerra, the Neo-Roman Consul, 987–1040: A Political Biography of the Angevin Count (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1993), 88–117.

⁶³ Robin Ann Aronstam, ‘Penitential Pilgrimages to Rome in the Early Middle Ages’, Archivum historiae pontificiae 13 (1975): 65–83; Koziol, Begging Pardon, 259–60.

⁶⁴ Chazan, ‘1007’, 115–16; Stow, Levi's Vindication, 53–4.

⁶⁵ André of Fleury, Vie de Gauzlin, abbé de Fleury, eds. Robert-Henri Bautier and Monique Gilles (Paris: CNRS, 1969), 50–5; Frederick S. Paxton, ‘Abbas and Rex: Power and Authority in the Literature of Fleury, 987–1044’, in The Experience of Power in Medieval Europe, 950–1350, eds. Robert Berkhofer, Alan Cooper and Adam Kosto (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), 206–8; Fulbert of Chartres, Letters, 17–21.

⁶⁶ Despite the patronage of Robert II over Fleury, and Gauzlin himself: Helgaud of Fleury, Vie de Robert le pieux: Epitoma vitae regis Rotberti pii, eds. and trans. (into French) Robert-Henri Bautier and Gillette Labory (Paris: CNRS Éditions, 1965), 116–23.

⁶⁷ Foulon, ‘Stratégies politiques’, 251–2, 269–77; Schieffer, Die päpstlichen Legaten, 45–8; Bachrach, Fulk Nerra, 135–6; Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 62–3; privilege by pope Sergius IV, PL 139: 1525–27.

⁶⁸ André of Fleury, Vie de Gauzlin, 50–61; the letter to king Robert is also printed in: PL 139:1490–91.

⁶⁹ Parma 2295, fol. 129a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 20. The pope indeed ‘sent his bishop with the seal in his hand’ (va-yishlaḥ hegmono ve-ha-ḥotam be-yado). Papal bulls were (at least occasionally) sealed at the time and had a stable formulation: Julius von Pflugk-Harttung, Die Bullen der Päpste bis zum Ende des 12. Jahrhunderts (Gotha: Perthes, 1901), 44–8, 142–60.

⁷⁰ Golb, Jews in Medieval Normandy, 9. The Latin sources mentioning the legate are André of Fleury, Vie de Gauzlin, 52–5; Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 62–3; privilege by pope Sergius IV PL 139:1525–27.

⁷¹ The text opens ‘at the time of King Robert of France’, thus it was likely composed after his death, but knowledge of the events suggests not much later: Chazan, ‘1007’, 103–6.

⁷² Landes, ‘Massacres of 1010’, 83–96.

⁷³ Stow, Levi's Vindication, 3–124; Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz, 61–71; Grossman, Ḥakhmei Tzarfat, 19–20 n. 15; Schwarzfuchs, Yehudei Tzarfat, 67–72; Rist, Popes and Jews, 40. The first to present a sceptical opinion regarding the 1007 text was Israël Lévi, ‘Les Juifs de France du milieu du IX° siècle aux croisades’, Revue des études juives 52 (1906): 161–8 (164–68).

⁷⁴ Shlomo Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and the Jews, 8 vols. (Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1988–91), 1: 15–16, 44, 51–2, 66–8. The original document did not survive, but was later reissued. In 1199 pope Innocent III reissued the bull, but changed its content significantly, so later versions do not keep the original structure. See also Rist, Popes and Jews, 40–3, 74–81.

⁷⁵ Baer, ‘Ha-megamah ha-datit-ḥevratit’, 4 n. 7; Stow, Levi's Vindication, xii, 39–40, 45–9; Rist, Popes and Jews, 40.

⁷⁶ With the exception of a letter by pope Gregory I, which inspired the opening phrase of the twelfth-century text, but not its content: Simonsohn, Apostolic See, 1:15–16. Regarding the precedents and the possible circumstances for issuing this document, see Solomon Grayzel, ‘The Papal Bull Sicut Judeis’, in Essential Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, ed. Jeremy Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1991): 231–59 (231–237).

⁷⁷ See nn. 54–57 above.

⁷⁸ Many are printed in PL 137: 906–38; 139:270–88, 1477–94, 1499–528. Compare Simonsohn, Apostolic See, 1: 51; Baer, ‘Ha-megamah ha-datit-ḥevratit’, 4 n. 7.

⁷⁹ Rennie, ‘Normative Character’; Rennie, Freedom and Protection, 121–61; Koziol, Politics of Memory, 263–314; Rosenwein, Negotiating Space, 152–68.

⁸⁰ Compare charters and privileges awarded to Jews by Emperors (Amnon Linder, The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages [Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1997], 333–43, 353–8, 365–7, 391–400) to those awarded to monasteries around the year 1000 (see n. 78 above).

⁸¹ Friedrich Lotter, ‘The Scope and Effectiveness of Imperial Jewry Law in the High Middle Ages’, Jewish History 4 (1989): 31–58 (31–34) claims that additional imperial charters protecting Jews were issued in the tenth and eleventh centuries but did not survive. Koziol, Politics of Memory, 267–70 points out that protection documents use a similar language to discuss monks and women, both considered helpless and in need of physical defence. The same concept, mundeburdium (‘being under the ruler’s hand’), was used consistently by Louis the Pious to describe the protection of Jews: Linder, Legal Sources, 333–8, 341–2.

⁸² Linder, Legal Sources, 450–3; Simonsohn, Apostolic See, 35–7.

⁸³ All these abuses are explicitly discussed in the 1007 account, other than seizure of property. But considering the major place that property claiming took in contemporary power struggles, it seems likely that Jews suffered it: Brown, Violence, 100–27; Taitz, Jews of Medieval France, 41–5, 61–2; Koziol, Peace of God, 68, 130.

⁸⁴ Adémar of Chabannes, Chronicon, 165–6.

⁸⁵ Richard Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, and the Deceits of History: Ademar of Chabannes, 989–1034, 40––6; Landes, ‘Massacres of 1010’, 103–12; Rachel Fulton, From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2005), 64–5, 68–71; Jay Rubenstein, Armies of Heaven: The First Crusade and the Quest for Apocalypse (New York: Basic Books, 2011), 4–7; Daniel F. Callahan, ‘Ademar of Chabannes, Millennial Fears and the Development of Western Anti-Judaism’, Journal of Ecclesiastical History 46 (1995): 19–35; Johannes Fried, ‘Awaiting the End of Time around the Turn of the Year 1000’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000: Religious Expectation and Social Change, 950–1050, eds. Richard Landes, Andrew Gow and David Van Meter (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003), 17–63 (35–36, 60–61).

⁸⁶ For a review of this debate: Edward Peters, ‘Mutations, Adjustments, Terrors, Historians, and the Year 1000’, in The Year 1000: Religious and Social Response to the Turning of the First Millennium, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002), 9–28 (13–21). Scholars have often opted for a rephrasing of the question: Landes, Gow, and Van Meter, eds. The Apocalyptic Year 1000; Barthélemy, The Serf, 260–2, 284–301.

⁸⁷ A contemporary example: Adso of Montier-en-Der, ‘Libellus de Antichristo’, PL 101:1291–93, 1296. See Fried, ‘Awaiting the End’, 60–1; Regula Meyer Evitt, ‘Eschatology, Millenarian Apocalypticism, and the Liturgical Anti-Judaism of the Medieval Prophet Plays’, in The Apocalyptic Year 1000, eds. Landes, Gow, and Van Meter, 205–29. On the role of Jews in the narratives see Callahan, ‘Ademar of Chabannes’, 25–35; Michael Frassetto, ‘Heretics and Jews in the Early Eleventh Century: The Writings of Rodulfus Glaber and Ademar of Chabannes’, in Christian Attitudes Toward the Jews in the Middle Ages: A Casebook, ed. Michael Frassetto (New York: Routledge, 2007), 43–59 (48–52).

⁸⁸ PL 141:305–18; translation in Margot E. Fassler, The Virgin of Chartres: Making History Through Liturgy and the Arts (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2010), 429–37. Also see Bernhard Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens latins du moyen âge sur les juifs et le judaïsme (Paris: Mouton, 1963), 237–43. For a description of the manuscripts, see Bernhard Blumenkranz, ‘A propos du (ou des) “Tractatus contra Iudaeos” de Fulbert de Chartes’, Revue du moyen âge latin 8 (1952): 51–4.

⁸⁹ This is arguably the most significant anti-Jewish text between Agobard of Lyon and Peter Damian: see Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens, 152–272. On the dating see Blumenkranz, ‘Tractatus contra Iudaeos’, 54; Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens, 237–38 argues for 1009 as the composition date, based on a possible connection of these sermons to the revolt of Count Raynard II of Sens (Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 128–33; Fulbert of Charters, Letters, 50–1). Frederick Behrends, ‘Kingship and Feudalism according to Fulbert of Chartres’, Mediaeval Studies 25 (1963): 93–9 (93 n. 2) corrects the date of the revolt to 1015. Fassler, Virgin of Chartres, 93, tends towards 1020. Fulbert’s reference to Christian heretics (PL 141:313) suggest that the sermons were composed after their burning in Orléans in 1022 (see n. 19 above). Fulbert died in 1028, the terminus ad quem for these sermons.

⁹⁰ As Behrends, ‘Kingship and Feudalism’, 93 has also noted.

⁹¹ Quodvultdeus, ‘Liber promissionum et praedicatorum Dei’, in Opera Quodvultdeo Carthagiensi Episcopo Tributa, ed. René Braun, Corpus Christianorum series latina 60 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 1–223 (154–155); Fassler, Virgin of Chartres, 89–92; Behrends, ‘Introduction’, in Fulbert of Charters, Letters, xxvi–xxvii; Meyer Evitt, ‘Eschatology’, 208–13. Paul Alvar focused on Jewish leadership in his argument with the convert Bodo-Elazar: Paulus Alvarus, ‘Liber epistolarum,’ in Corpus Scriptorum Mozarabicorum 1, ed. Juan Gil (Madrid: Antonio de Nebrija Institute, 1973), 144–269 (227–243); Frank Riess, The Journey of Deacon Bodo from the Rhine to the Guadalquivir: Apostasy and Conversion to Judaism in Early Medieval Europe (Abingdon: Routledge, 2019), 74–88.

⁹² Fassler, Virgin of Chartres, 93–6. See also Meyer Evitt, ‘Eschatology’, 217–19.

⁹³ PL 141:313, 317–18, and as Behrends in Fulbert of Charters, Letters, xxvi–xxvii and Blumenkranz, ‘Tractatus contra Iudaeos’, 54 claimed.

⁹⁴ Parma 2295, fol. 128a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 19. Compare Esth. 3:8.

⁹⁵ Koziol, Begging Pardon, 8–9, 19, 170–2.

⁹⁶ Parma 2295, fol. 128a; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 19.

⁹⁷ Parma 2295, fol. 128b; Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 19.

⁹⁸ Alpert of Metz, De diversitate temporum, Monumenta germaniae historica, Scriptores 4, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz (Hannover: Hahn, 1841), 700–23 (704, 720–23); Anna Sapir Abulafia, ‘An Eleventh-Century Exchange of Letters between a Christian and a Jew’, Journal of Medieval History 7 (1981): 153–74; Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens, 247–50.

⁹⁹ ‘Iudaeorum quoque in tantum preuaricatorias diligebat consuetudines ut se regem ipsorum suo prenomine (Rainardus quippe dicebatur) suis omnibus imperaret’. Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 128–9. My translation.

¹⁰⁰ Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 132–3. Raynard’s defeat was only temporary: Bautier and Gilles, Chronique de Saint-Pierre-Le-Vif, 110–13.

¹⁰¹ Fulbert of Charters, Letters, 50–1.

¹⁰² Bautier and Gilles, Chronique de Saint-Pierre-Le-Vif, 110–13.

¹⁰³ Blumenkranz, ‘Tractatus contra Iudaeos’, 54.

¹⁰⁴ Koziol, ‘Conquest of Burgundy’, 194; Dunbabin, France in the Making, 179–80; Hallam and West, Capetian France, 89–90. Adalberon, bishop of Laon, presents in a satirical poem his political rival, Count Landry of Nevers, as ‘Aḥitophel of Burgundy’. Like the biblical Aḥitophel (2 Sam. 16:15–17:23), Landry is depicted as a traitorous character, whom King Robert should not trust. This is perhaps a depiction of Jewishness as a sign of political subversion: G. A., Hückel, ‘Les poèmes satiriques d’Adalbéron’, in Mélanges d’histoire du moyen âge, Université de Paris, Bibliothèque de la faculté des lettres 13, ed. Achille Luchaire (Paris: Alcan, 1901), 49–185 (82–83).

¹⁰⁵ ‘tumidiores et inuidi atque audatiores’: Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 134.

¹⁰⁶ Rudolfus Glaber, Historiarum libri quinque, 134–5.

¹⁰⁷ Adémar of Chabannes, Chronicon, 171; Frassetto, ‘Heretics and Jews’, 48–9; Kati Ihnat, ‘Getting the Punchline: Deciphering Anti-Jewish Humour in Anglo-Norman England’, Journal of Medieval History 38 (2012): 408–23 (414).

¹⁰⁸ See below, esp. n. 110.

¹⁰⁹ Gershom b. Judah, She’elot u-teshuvot, 103, §36. For discussion and partial translation, see Ephraim Shoham-Steiner, Jews and Crime in Medieval Europe (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2021), 46–52, 265–66.

¹¹⁰ Shlomo Eidelberg (Gershom b. Judah, She’elot u-teshuvot, 104, n. 17) suggests that this Jew was killed trying to buy property during the siege of Valenciennes in 1006. This is plausible, as this battle involved a long siege and much plunder, and occurred in Lotharingia, so the question was likely to come before R. Gershom in Mainz. However, the Hebrew text mentions Burgundian warriors, while in this case Robert II was supported by Richard II of Normandy: Deeds of the Bishops of Cambrai, 56–7, 115; Sigebert of Gembloux, Sigeberti chronica, Monumenta germaniae historica, Scriptores 6, ed. Georg Heinrich Pertz (Hannover: Hahn, 1844), 354. Robert’s recurring military campaigns in Burgundy, starting in 1003, also included several siege battles: Koziol, ‘Conquest of Burgundy’, 189–91, 195, 198.

¹¹¹ Head and Landes, Peace of God, 327–42, esp. 327, 332–33. The peace of 1023 states: ‘I will not seize villeins of either sex, or sergeants or merchants, or their coins, or hold them for ransom, or ruin them with exactions on account of their lord’s war, or whip them for their possessions … I will not, to my knowledge, harbour or assist an admitted and notorious public robber’. See also Koziol, Peace of God, 44, 64–70, 78–79; Elisabeth Magnou-Nortier, ‘The Enemies of the Peace: Reflections on a Vocabulary, 500–1100’, in Peace of God, eds. Head and Landes, 58–79 (71–74, 78–79).

¹¹² Malegam, Sleep of Behemoth, 27–42; Koziol, Peace of God, 56–81; Paxton, ‘History, Historians’, 21–40; Barthélemy, ‘Peace of God’, 1–14; Koziol, ‘Conquest of Burgundy’, 200–7; Dunbabin, France in the Making, 150–4; Landes, Relics, Apocalypse, 28–37; Paul, ‘Les conciles’.

¹¹³ Habermann, Sefer Gzeirot, 11–18; Gershom b. Judah, She’elot u-teshuvot, 57–61, §5–6; Agus, Teshuvot, 39–42; Blumenkranz, Les auteurs chrétiens, 235–62; Callahan, ‘Ademar of Chabannes’, 25–35; Frassetto, ‘Heretics and Jews’, 48–52; Shoham-Steiner, Jews and Crime, 37–71; Schwarzfuchs, Yehudei Tzarfat, 67–72; Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz, 61–72; Taitz, Jews of Medieval France, 51–3, 58–60, 71–4, 85–90; Chazan, ‘1007’, 101–17; Chazan, Medieval Jewry, 11–15, 19; Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs, 143–60; Landes, ‘Massacres of 1010’, 83–111.

¹¹⁴ Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 19–145.

¹¹⁵ Chazan, ‘1007,’ 103–6. See also Malkiel, Reconstructing Ashkenaz, 63–4.

¹¹⁶ Chazan, ‘1007’, 103–6.