Jewish Views on Governance and Lordship in Early Eleventh Century France: The ‘1007 Anonymous’ Reevaluated.

• In Event: Power, Authority, and Law in Medieval and Early Modern Ashkenaz

Abstract

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 role of the Jews in these transformations was rarely discussed, though they must have witnessed the rise of local lords to power, the crystallization of new social institutions, and the development of contemporary ideas brought forth to justify new structures of authority and power. How did Jews navigate the protection of their status as a legitimate minority in the troubled waters of the late tenth and early eleventh centuries?
This paper will present some answers 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. Some scholars, in particular Kenneth Stow, have argued for a much later composition date of this text. However, by contextualizing this account within the political, religious and social atmosphere of the early eleventh century, this paper will show that Jews were well aware of the power structures among which they lived, and endeavored to manipulate them for their own survival, or even benefit. Some Jews knew the language of power used by the prominent lords of France 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 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.

Author

• Tzafrir Barzilay, Bar Ilan University