In the urban communities of medieval Germany and northern France, the beliefs, observances, and practices of Jews allowed them to create and define their communities on their own terms as well as in relation to the surrounding Christian society. Although medieval Jewish texts were written by a learned elite, the laity also observed many religious rituals as part of their everyday life. In Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz, Elisheva Baumgarten asks how Jews, especially those who were not learned, expressed their belonging to a minority community and how their convictions and deeds were made apparent to both their Jewish peers and the Christian majority. Practicing Piety in Medieval Ashkenaz provides a social history of religious practice in context, particularly with regard to the ways Jews and Christians, separately and jointly, treated their male and female members. Medieval Jews often shared practices and beliefs with their Christian neighbors, and numerous notions and norms were appropriated by one community from the other. By depicting a dynamic interfaith landscape and a diverse representation of believers, Baumgarten offers a fresh assessment of Jewish practice and the shared elements that composed the piety of Jews in relation to their Christian neighbors.

Bringing together artifacts, texts, and practices within an interpretive framework that stresses the cultural work performed by saints, Kathleen Ashley presents a comparative study of the cults of the medieval Sainte Foy at a number of the sites where she was especially venerated. This book analyzes how each cult site produced the saint it needed, appropriating or creating whatever was required to that end. Ashley’s approach is thoroughly interdisciplinary, incorporating visual, religious, medieval, and women’s and gender studies as well as literary studies and social history. She uses the theoretical framework of "cultural work" to analyze how the cult of Sainte Foy was sponsored and received by specific groups in different locales in Europe. The book is comprehensive in terms of historical as well as geographical range, tracing the history of the cult from the early Middle Ages into the present day. It also includes historiographical analysis, examining the way the cults of Sainte Foy have been represented in various historical accounts. Ashley’s narrative challenges the boundary between "elite" and "popular" culture and complicates the traditional vernacular vs. Latin language binary. A chief aim of the study is to show how "art" objects always operated in conjunction with other cultural texts to construct a saint’s cult. The volume is heavily illustrated, showing artifacts such as stained-glass windows and wall paintings which are not readily available from any other source. This book will be of special interest to scholars in art history, medieval history, gender studies, and religion.

Through a detailed analysis of ghost tales in the Ashkenazi pietistic work Sefer ḥasidim, Susan Weissman documents a major transformation in Jewish attitudes and practices regarding the dead and the afterlife that took place between the rabbinic period and medieval times. She reveals that a huge influx of Germano-Christian beliefs, customs, and fears relating to the dead and the afterlife seeped into medieval Ashkenazi society among both elite and popular groups. In matters of sin, penance, and posthumous punishment, the infiltration of Christian notions was so strong as to effect a radical departure in Pietist thinking from rabbinic thought and to spur outright contradiction of talmudic principles regarding the realm of the hereafter. Although it is primarily a study of the culture of a medieval Jewish enclave, this book demonstrates how seminal beliefs of medieval Christendom and monastic ideals could take root in a society with contrary religious values—even in the realm of doctrinal belief.

In this book, Megan McLaughlin explores the social and cultural significance of prayer for the dead in the West Frankish realm from the late eighth century through the end of the eleventh century. She argues that the primary function of funerary and commemorative rituals in the early middle ages was to sustain the dead as members of the Christian community on earth, and to link them symbolically with the community of saints in heaven.

Throughout history, Christians have prayed for the dead - both for continual growth of the faithful and for their advancement from purgatory, and sometimes, even, for the deliverance of the unsaved from hell. Understanding Prayer for the Dead defends all three kinds of prayer. It challenges Protestants, who seldom pray for the dead, to begin doing so - and Roman Catholics and Eastern Orthodox, who pray only for the Christian dead, to include the unsaved as well. James B. Gould addresses the biblical credentials of prayer for the dead and provides a historical overview of such prayers from ancient Christianity to the current practice of the three main branches of the Church. He also discusses the logical assumptions prayer for the dead requires - that prayer is effective, that the dead are conscious, and that the afterlife involves change - and lays out a theological framework for such prayers. Prayer for the departed raises the most basic of theological questions, matters that go to the centre of God's purpose in creating spiritual beings and redeeming sinful humankind. The argument, while revisionary in some respects, is orthodox, ecumenical, and integrative, engaging a range of academic disciplines so as to be biblically accurate, historically informed, and philosophically reasoned.

This volume deals with shifts and changes that took place during the Middle Ages when things, or ideas, or writings, were transferred from time to time, place to place, or one ideological realm to another. The same objects, ideas, or texts changed their meaning, impact, or symbolic value according to different contexts. The twelve papers, written by leading experts, investigate the authority attributed to texts and their canonization in different contexts; the shifting uses and meanings of gifts, from honorable instruments in the settlement of disputes to corruption and bribery; and the transition of violence and power from relationships between equals to a tool for the maintenance of hierarchies. Contributors include: Gadi Algazi, Monique Bernards, Arnoud-Jan Bijsterveld, Esther Cohen, Valentin Groebner, Yitzhak Hen, Mayke de Jong, Rob Meens, Marco Mostert, Thomas F.X. Noble, Timothy Reuter, Hendrik Teunis, and Stephen D. White.

A study of the implications and practices of wills and will-making in Anglo-Saxon society, and of the varieties of inheritance strategies and commemorative arrangements adopted. A remarkable series of Anglo-Saxon wills have survived, spanning the period from the beginning of the ninth century to the years immediately following the Norman Conquest. Written in Old English, they reflect the significance of the vernacular, not only in royal administration during this period, but in the recording of a range of individual transactions. They show wealthy laymen and women, and clerics, from kings and bishops to those of thegnly status, disposing of land and chattels, and recognising ties of kinship, friendship, lordship and service through their bequests; and whilst land is of prime importance, the mention in some wills of such valuable items as tableware, furnishings, clothing, jewellery and weapons provides an insight into lifestyle at the time. Despite their importance, no study has hitherto been specifically devoted to Anglo-Saxon wills in their social and historical context, a gap which this book aims to fill. While the wills themselves can be vague and allusive, by establishing patterns of bequeathing, and by drawing on other resources, the author sheds light on the factors which influenced men and womenin making appropriate provision for their property. Linda Tollerton gained her PhD from the University of York.