In Contested Treasure, Thomas Barton examines how the Jews in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries negotiated the overlapping jurisdictions and power relations of local lords and the crown. The thirteenth century was a formative period for the growth of royal bureaucracy and the development of the crown’s legal claims regarding the Jews. While many Jews were under direct royal authority, significant numbers of Jews also lived under nonroyal and seigniorial jurisdiction. Barton argues that royal authority over the Jews (as well as Muslims) was far more modest and contingent on local factors than is usually recognized. Diverse case studies reveal that the monarchy’s Jewish policy emerged slowly, faced considerable resistance, and witnessed limited application within numerous localities under nonroyal control, thus allowing for more highly differentiated local modes of Jewish administration and coexistence. Contested Treasure refines and complicates our portrait of interfaith relations and the limits of royal authority in medieval Spain, and it presents a new approach to the study of ethnoreligious relations and administrative history in medieval European society.

In Contested Treasure, Thomas Barton examines how the Jews in the Crown of Aragon in the twelfth through fourteenth centuries negotiated the overlapping jurisdictions and power relations of local lords and the crown. The thirteenth century was a formative period for the growth of royal bureaucracy and the development of the crown’s legal claims regarding the Jews. While many Jews were under direct royal authority, significant numbers of Jews also lived under nonroyal and seigniorial jurisdiction. Barton argues that royal authority over the Jews (as well as Muslims) was far more modest and contingent on local factors than is usually recognized. Diverse case studies reveal that the monarchy’s Jewish policy emerged slowly, faced considerable resistance, and witnessed limited application within numerous localities under nonroyal control, thus allowing for more highly differentiated local modes of Jewish administration and coexistence. Contested Treasure refines and complicates our portrait of interfaith relations and the limits of royal authority in medieval Spain, and it presents a new approach to the study of ethnoreligious relations and administrative history in medieval European society.

Jews and Converts in Late Medieval Castile examines the ways in which Jewish-Christian relations evolved in Castile, taking account of social, cultural, and religious factors that affected the two communities throughout the fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries. The territorial expansion of the Christian kingdoms in Iberia that followed the reconquests of the mid-thirteenth century presented new military and economic challenges. At the same time the fragile balance between Muslims, Jews, and Christians in the Peninsula was also profoundly affected. Economic and financial pressures were of over-riding importance. Most significant were the large tax revenues that the Iberian Jewish community provided to royal coffers, new evidence for which is provided here. Some in the Jewish community also achieved prominence at court, achieving dizzying success that often ended in dismal failure or death. A particular feature of this study is its reliance upon both Castilian and Hebrew sources of the period to show how mutual perceptions evolved through the long fourteenth century. The study encompasses the remarkable and widespread phenomenon of Jewish conversion, elaborates on its causes, and describes the profound social changes that would culminate in the anti-converso riots of the mid-fifteenth century. This book is valuable reading for academics and students of medieval and of Jewish history. As a study of a unique crucible of social change it also has a wider relevance to multi-cultural societies of any age, including our own.

An indispensable resource for readers investigating how religion has influenced societies and cultures, this three-volume encyclopedia assesses and synthesizes the many ways in which religious faith has shaped societies from the ancient world to today. Each volume of the set focuses on a different era of world history, ranging through the ancient, medieval, and modern worlds. Every volume is filled with essays that focus on religious themes from different geographical regions. For example, volume one includes essays considering religion in ancient Rome, while volume three features essays focused on religion in modern Africa. This accessible layout makes it easy for readers to learn more about the ways that religion and society have intersected over the centuries, as well as specific religious trends, events, and milestones in a particular era and place in world history. Taken as a a whole, this ambitious and wide-ranging work gathers more than 500 essays from more than 150 scholars who share their expertise and knowledge about religious faiths, tenets, people, places, and events that have influenced the development of civilization over the course of recorded human history.

Ten writers with different viewpoints explore the political, religious, cosmological, and psychological principles of the creator of The Lord of the Rings.

These literary sketches, including early works by Thackeray and Jerrold, were written to the pictures and not, as some have imagined, the pictures drawn in illustration of the letterpress. cf. Academy, 1874. II, 360.