Barbarians and Jews Jews and Judaism in the Early Medieval West

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 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.