Alterum Byzantium

Collana | Alterum Byzantium
Recensione | Byzantium and Its Neighbours
Capitolo | À qui s’adressait vraiment la polémique antijudaïque à Byzance ?

À qui s’adressait vraiment la polémique antijudaïque à Byzance ?

Abstract

The identification of the ‘real’ audience for any given anti-Jewish treatise often remains elusive due to a perplexing blend of lengthy, ahistorical theological sections and much briefer allusions to the time of the writing. It seems more expedient to determine for each text what it is not rather than to speculate about what it ‘might be’, and to admit that long segments of some texts are actually ‘dead pages’, included for the sake of genre conventions or out of adherence to authoritative precedents, but of little significance even to the author. In some cases, these passages are a camouflage for the insertion of seemingly more relevant topics at the margins of the text. From the eleventh century onwards, anti-Jewish sections of general theological encyclopaedias and even of dedicated works have more of a protocol function: authors cannot dispense with the time-honoured practice of anti-Jewish polemics, albeit with little genuine urgency. From the fourteenth century onwards, however, a new wave of anti-Jewish writings appears more as a by-product of the increasingly intense polemics against Islam: the two genres mirrored each other, and anti-Jewish discourse was strategically instrumentalized for anti-Muslim arguments.


Open access

Presentato: 19 Giugno 2024 | Accettato: 27 Agosto 2024 | Pubblicato Prossimamente | Lingua: fr

Keywords Anti-JewishPolemicAudienceByzantineIslam