Barbarians and Jews

The essays in this volume attempt to re-evaluate, understand and explain various aspects of Jewish history within the broader historical context of the post-Roman Barbarian world. They address a wide variety of topics, sources, and geographies, and together they provide a nuanced and more balanced history of the Jews in the early medieval West. Although written independently of one another by some of the most prominent historians of Late Antiquity and the early Middle Ages, the various essays collected here reveal a remarkable tension between the 'imaginary' (or 'hermeneutical') Jew and the 'real' one. As this volume demonstrates, Augustine's positive theological understanding of Jews and Judaism was often overshadowed by anti-Jewish sentiments, and consequently anti-Jewish invective remained the drive wheel of Christian theology, especially in the context of debates and polemics among the Christians themselves.