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Sanctifying the Name of God : Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade / Jeremy Cohen.

By: Material type: TextTextSeries: Jewish Culture and ContextsPublisher: Philadelphia : University of Pennsylvania Press, [2013]Copyright date: ©2004Description: 1 online resource (224 p.) : 8 illusContent type:
Media type:
Carrier type:
ISBN:
  • 9780812219562
  • 9780812201635
Subject(s): DDC classification:
  • 943/.004924 22
LOC classification:
  • DS135.G31 C64 2004eb
Other classification:
  • online - DeGruyter
Online resources: Available additional physical forms:
  • Issued also in print.
Contents:
Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations for Primary Sources -- Introduction: The Persecutions of 1096 -- PART I: Problems and Solutions -- Chapter 1 To Sanctify the Name of God -- Chapter 2 The First Crusade and Its Historians -- Chapter 3 Points of Departure -- PART II: Martyrs of 1096 -- Chapter 4 Last Supper at Xanten -- Chapter 5 Master Isaac the Parnas -- Chapter 6 Mistress Rachel of Mainz -- Chapter 7 Kalonymos in Limbo -- Chapter 8 The Rape of Sarit -- Afterword -- Notes -- Bibliography of Secondary Sources -- Index
Summary: How are martyrs made, and how do the memories of martyrs express, nourish, and mold the ideals of the community? Sanctifying the Name of God wrestles with these questions against the background of the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland during the outbreak of the First Crusade. Marking the first extensive wave of anti-Jewish violence in medieval Christian Europe, these "Persecutions of 1096" exerted a profound influence on the course of European Jewish history.When the crusaders demanded that Jews choose between Christianity and death, many opted for baptism. Many others, however, chose to die as Jews rather than to live as Christians, and of these, many actually inflicted death upon themselves and their loved ones. Stories of their self-sacrifice ushered the Jewish ideal of martyrdom-kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's holy name-into a new phase, conditioning the collective memory and mindset of Ashkenazic Jewry for centuries to come, during the Holocaust, and even today.The Jewish survivors of 1096 memorialized the victims as martyrs as they rebuilt their communities during the decades following the Crusade. Three twelfth-century Hebrew chronicles of the persecutions preserve their memories of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, tales fraught with symbolic meaning that constitute one of the earliest Jewish attempts at local, contemporary historiography. Reading and analyzing these stories through the prism of Jewish and Christian religious and literary traditions, Jeremy Cohen shows how these persecution chronicles reveal much more about the storytellers, the martyrologists, than about the martyrs themselves. While they extol the glorious heroism of the martyrs, they also air the doubts, guilt, and conflicts of those who, by submitting temporarily to the Christian crusaders, survived.
Holdings
Item type Current library Call number URL Status Notes Barcode
eBook eBook Biblioteca "Angelicum" Pont. Univ. S.Tommaso d'Aquino Nuvola online online - DeGruyter (Browse shelf(Opens below)) Online access Not for loan (Accesso limitato) Accesso per gli utenti autorizzati / Access for authorized users (dgr)9780812201635

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Abbreviations for Primary Sources -- Introduction: The Persecutions of 1096 -- PART I: Problems and Solutions -- Chapter 1 To Sanctify the Name of God -- Chapter 2 The First Crusade and Its Historians -- Chapter 3 Points of Departure -- PART II: Martyrs of 1096 -- Chapter 4 Last Supper at Xanten -- Chapter 5 Master Isaac the Parnas -- Chapter 6 Mistress Rachel of Mainz -- Chapter 7 Kalonymos in Limbo -- Chapter 8 The Rape of Sarit -- Afterword -- Notes -- Bibliography of Secondary Sources -- Index

restricted access online access with authorization star

http://purl.org/coar/access_right/c_16ec

How are martyrs made, and how do the memories of martyrs express, nourish, and mold the ideals of the community? Sanctifying the Name of God wrestles with these questions against the background of the massacres of Jews in the Rhineland during the outbreak of the First Crusade. Marking the first extensive wave of anti-Jewish violence in medieval Christian Europe, these "Persecutions of 1096" exerted a profound influence on the course of European Jewish history.When the crusaders demanded that Jews choose between Christianity and death, many opted for baptism. Many others, however, chose to die as Jews rather than to live as Christians, and of these, many actually inflicted death upon themselves and their loved ones. Stories of their self-sacrifice ushered the Jewish ideal of martyrdom-kiddush ha-Shem, the sanctification of God's holy name-into a new phase, conditioning the collective memory and mindset of Ashkenazic Jewry for centuries to come, during the Holocaust, and even today.The Jewish survivors of 1096 memorialized the victims as martyrs as they rebuilt their communities during the decades following the Crusade. Three twelfth-century Hebrew chronicles of the persecutions preserve their memories of martyrdom and self-sacrifice, tales fraught with symbolic meaning that constitute one of the earliest Jewish attempts at local, contemporary historiography. Reading and analyzing these stories through the prism of Jewish and Christian religious and literary traditions, Jeremy Cohen shows how these persecution chronicles reveal much more about the storytellers, the martyrologists, than about the martyrs themselves. While they extol the glorious heroism of the martyrs, they also air the doubts, guilt, and conflicts of those who, by submitting temporarily to the Christian crusaders, survived.

Issued also in print.

Mode of access: Internet via World Wide Web.

In English.

Description based on online resource; title from PDF title page (publisher's Web site, viewed 24. Apr 2022)