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IMC 2004: Sessions

Session 1510: Imagined Jewishness and Imposed Limits on Christian Identity: Some Uses of 'Judaize' in 12th- to 16th-Century Europe

Thursday 15 July 2004, 09.00-10.30

Organiser:Sean Murphy, Department of Liberal Studies, Western Washington University
Moderator/Chair:David Nirenberg, Department of History, Johns Hopkins University
Paper 1510-aAnxiety about 'Judaizers' and 'Judaizing' Theologies in 12th-Century Discussions of the Status of the 'Law'
(Language: English)
Sean Murphy, Department of Liberal Studies, Western Washington University
Index terms: Mentalities, Religious Life, Theology
Paper 1510-c'Making' Enemies: Augustin Bader of Augsburg and the Judaizing Controversy of 1530
(Language: English)
Robert Bast, Department of History, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Index terms: Ecclesiastical History, Lay Piety, Religious Life, Theology
Abstract

A fascination with real or imagined notions of Jewishness informs a wide array of religious experience and discourse in western Christianity from the 12th to the 16th century. The perils and possibilities of Jewishness, as construed in Christian efforts at self-definition, is nowhere more apparent than in the use of the polemical terms 'judaize' and 'judaizer' or, at least, the concepts encapsulated by these terms. An accusation of 'judaizing' in this period, though sometimes merely casual and opportunistic, often reveals an experience of profound unease, even outright conflict, about Christian religious identity. The frequency, the obsessiveness of Christian discourse on 'judaizing' in this period indicate an anxious recognition of fluidity at the boundaries of majority religious identity. The papers in this session examine controversies about Judaizing in distinct cultural contexts, in order to illuminate this important, dimly understood 'clash of cultures' in western Christianity.