This book responds to a need to provide an examination of Jewish-Christian relations in northern France between the “twelfth-century renaissance” and the calamitous late thirteenth and fourteenth centuries that were riddled with famine, disease, constant warfare, and the persecution and expulsions of Jews. Sixteen scholars, several of whom are known for their many past writings on medieval Jewish-Christian relations, focus on the intellectual, social, religious, and cultural changes that took place during this century in this region of northern Europe. What began as a relatively stable period of social relations at the beginning of the thirteenth century ended with a very intolerable situation for the Jewish community due to the rise of polemics, trials, and expulsions.

The scholars focused on medieval France because of the unique situation of Jews and Christians living in that area of Europe. Although there were many similarities between the Jews of France and Germany during this period, the scholars found significant differences, which are highlighted in the text. One difference is that the Jews of Europe's northern region were called Ashkenazi Jews, in contrast to the Sephardic Jews of southern Europe.

Church historians will find much value in these articles pertaining to events in thirteenth-century Christianity. Several of these articles deal primarily with the roles of theology, biblical studies, preaching, and women in the development of Christianity in the high Middle Ages.

The key historical events of this century that are highlighted by many of the authors of this book are the 1215 Fourth Lateran Council, the Talmud trial and burning of the early 1240s, and the expulsions of Jews from France in 1182 and 1306. Several authors focus on Innocent III and the Fourth Lateran Council, which legislated on many issues crucial to the Christian and non-Christian society of the thirteenth century: the crusades, the doctrine on the Eucharist (transubstantiation) and Trinity, new religious orders, heresies, education of the clergy, and policies toward Jews and Muslims. The council had a definitive impact on Jewish-Christian relations as it gave directives about employment and shared commerce, along with the imposition of the distinctive clothing for Jews living in Christendom. The Council's focus on the Eucharist may have indirectly created an environment in which the host desecration charge against Jews became a major issue in the late thirteenth century and beyond.

Many of these articles provide us with an in-depth exploration and analysis of religious and legal texts written in the thirteenth century. These texts include biblical exegesis and commentary, theological and spiritual texts, records of historical events (such as the Talmud Trial of 1240), and written responses (a hymn or piyyut) to the martyrdom of Jews in the late thirteenth century.

One of the book's major themes concerns polemics and its use in each of the Jewish and Christian communities. We learn that this literature was often written as an individual or communal response to personal religious attacks. The use of polemical literature, along with legal restrictions, often led to persecution, and in the case of the Jews of the late thirteenth century, expulsions. One example of a new form of polemics was “polemical Hebraism,” in which Christians mined Jewish texts for “the purpose of missionary activities and to further the ‘persecution’ of rabbinical literature” (54). Especially in the articles dealing with Christian polemical literature against the Jews, we see the development of an anti-Judaic attitude that leads eventually to the persecution and expulsion of Jews in the thirteenth century.

Much of the book is devoted to Christian relations with the Jewish community, but we also get a taste of inner Jewish life and their responses (legal, polemical, and poetical) to the Christian society in which they lived. Especially highlighted are the various responses of Jews to the events happening to them: the attack on the Talmud, Jews burned at the stake, persecutions, false charges of image and host desecration, and expulsion.

A major focus of many of these articles is on the daily ritual and culture of the common person, both Christian and Jewish, of thirteenth-century France. Some chapters contain significant information about education of the laity and the religious life of laywomen in both Judaism and Christianity. We also learn how members of Judaism and Christianity developed in the context of the northern French cultural environment.

This book is valuable for its presentation not only of Christians and Jews in their respective communities but also for its in-depth presentation of how the relationship between Christians and Jews changed so dramatically from the beginning of the thirteenth century to the beginning of the fourteenth century.