The Development of Rhetoric from Anti-Judaism to Anti-Semitism

In a famous monastery, the abbot sent a monk, raised in the faith since his childhood, to lodge in a cell attached to the church. While living in this cell, the monk fell sick and was attended by a Jew who knew medicine. As the pair became friends, the monk, curious about black magic, demanded initiation into the practice by the Jew whom he was convinced knew something about it. The Jew agreed to the monk’s demands and arranged a meeting between the monk and his master, the Devil. When the day came, the monk stood before the Devil and asked to be initiated into his teaching. The Devil replied that the monk must renege his baptismal vows and offer a sacrifice before he would consider him for initiation. When the monk asked what the Devil wanted as a sacrifice, the Devil replied, “You will make me a libation of your sperm. When you have poured it out to me, you will taste it first, as it behooves the one offering the sacrifice.” 1 Despite what the reader may be inclined to think, this strange story is not a passage from a poorly written erotica novel. Instead, it was taken from the memoirs of one of the most studied clerics of the twelfth century, Guibert of Nogent. Guibert was born in 1060 on the day before Easter at Clermont-enBeauvais.2 He was the youngest son of Evard, a warrior of King Henry of France, and his wife, a highly pious woman.3 They were a noble and influential family in their locality, but they were not wealthy or highly placed.4 Evard died shortly after

I n a famous monastery, the abbot sent a monk, raised in the faith since his childhood, to lodge in a cell attached to the church. While living in this cell, the monk fell sick and was attended by a Jew who knew medicine. As the pair became friends, the monk, curious about black magic, demanded initiation into the practice by the Jew whom he was convinced knew something about it. The Jew agreed to the monk's demands and arranged a meeting between the monk and his master, the Devil. When the day came, the monk stood before the Devil and asked to be initiated into his teaching. The Devil replied that the monk must renege his baptismal vows and offer a sacrifice before he would consider him for initiation. When the monk asked what the Devil wanted as a sacrifice, the Devil replied, "You will make me a libation of your sperm. When you have poured it out to me, you will taste it first, as it behooves the one offering the sacrifice." 1 Despite what the reader may be inclined to think, this strange story is not a passage from a poorly written erotica novel. Instead, it was taken from the memoirs of one of the most studied clerics of the twelfth century, Guibert of Nogent. Guibert was born in 1060 on the day before Easter at Clermont-en-Beauvais. 2 He was the youngest son of Evard, a warrior of King Henry of France, and his wife, a highly pious woman. 3 They were a noble and influential family in their locality, but they were not wealthy or highly placed. 4 Evard died shortly after Guibert's birth,5 leaving Guibert at the fringes of an already small patronage network. 6 His mother never remarried; instead she focused her efforts on providing an education for Guibert and securing a private tutor for him. 7 According to Guibert, his tutor agreed to teach him because of a dream in which an old man led the young Guibert to his bedside. 8 Eventually, Guibert entered the Church of Saint-Germer for monastic training despite his mother's insistence that he was not yet ready. By 1104, Guibert had obtained an appointment as the abbot of Nogent. 9 For a while, Guibert struggled to be accepted as a monk and was determined to prove that he was elected abbot on "merit alone." 10 During his time at Nogent, Guibert began to funnel his intellectual efforts into his writing -writings that occurred during a turbulent time 5. In "Guibert of Nogent and the Subject of History" Heather Blurton argued that Guibert developed a fascination and obsession with sexual mutilation, money, and fear of death due to his father's early death and Guibert's subsequent rearing by a strict and pious mother and tutor. Blurton's argument is similar to that of John Benton's earlier article "The Personality of Guibert of Nogent," in which Benton discusses the possibility that Guibert suffered from an Oedipus complex that influenced his views of the world. It is worth noting that both Benton and Blurton postulated that psychological damage from Guibert of Nogent's early years may account for his hatred of the "other" and the fantastical charges he brought against them. 6. Rubenstein,Portrait of a Medieval Mind,[17][18] of Christian-Jewish relations, a fact that is reflected in Guibert's attitudes toward Jews throughout his life's work.
Guibert of Nogent wrote Gesta Dei per Francos, or The Deeds of God through the Franks, between 1106 and 1109. It was a revision of an earlier anonymous chronicle titled Gesta Francorum. Though his chronicle of the First Crusade was not well known in his own time, Guibert of Nogent is today one of the best known chroniclers of the crusades, perhaps due to his autobiography Monodiae, or Memoirs, which is popularly referred to as A Monk's Confession. Guibert wrote his memoirs around 1115, which was quickly followed by his treatise against relic cults, On the Relics of Saints, in 1119. In these later works, Guibert accused Jews of using black magic; he was one of the first anti-Semitic writers to do so. 11 In this paper, I argue that the previous anti-Judaic clerical sentiments of Guibert in The Deeds of God through the Franks developed into anti-Semitic rhetoric in his later works. This development will be traced chronologically through three prominent works of Guibert This paper also discusses how the historical background of increasingly poor Christian-Jewish relations and the violence of the First Crusade fueled the development of Guibert's anti-Semitic rhetoric in the twelfth century.
Historiography Though Guibert of Nogent was not well known to his contemporaries, modern scholarship is fascinated by the abbot who deemed himself important enough to write a memoir before memoirs became a common literary convention. In fact, there have been several attempts to untangle the mind of Guibert of Nogent and discover the reasons behind not only his self-importance but also the fantastical stories he depicts when discussing sinners, heretics, and Jews.
In 1970, John F. Benton wrote "The Personality of Guibert of Nogent." This article, published in The Psychoanalytic Review, focused on Guibert's formative years and argued that the death of Guibert's father eight months after his birth and Guibert's subsequent isolated childhood, reared by an extremely pious mother and strict tutor, led to the development of an Oedipus complex. Benton postulated that this complex fueled Guibert's hatred of sin and warped the way in which Guibert perceived sinners. 13 On Jews and Judaizers was not included in this paper because an English translation could not be located. 13. Benton, "The Personality of Guibert of Nogent," 563-586.
In 1997, Steven Kruger published an article in the journal New Literary History entitled "Medieval Christian (Dis)Identifications: Muslims and Jews in Guibert of Nogent." Though Kruger steered away from the psychoanalytic nature of Benton's previous article, he noted that Guibert translated his fears about Jews into actions that he could depict as "monstrous" and "animal." However, Kruger spent the majority of his article discussing the rich history of biblical exegesis that came before the writings of Guibert and how this tradition influenced Guibert's own depiction of Jews and Muslims. 14 A large part of Kruger's article also focused on the idea that the proximity of Jewish communities to Christian writers like Guibert increased their fears of corruption and conversion, leading Christian writers to treat the Jews more harshly in their works than the Muslims who did not pose the same threat of proximity. Thus Kruger's article sought to explore the religious issues that drove Guibert's works instead of the personal issues that John Benton had focused on nearly thirty years prior. 15 Despite Steven Kruger's departure from psychoanalytical explanations of Guibert's attitudes, historians did not completely turn a blind eye to the role of the mind in Guibert

Christian-Jewish Relations: A Background
In the late eleventh century, Christian-Jewish relations took a violent turn that began a fluctuation between two competing anti-Jewish attitudes. 19 Anti-Judaism upheld the stance of the Church and though it considered Judaism evil, it did not find the Jewish people to be innately evil or wish for their destruction. Anti-Judaism also supported the civil Jewry laws of the Middle Ages. The foundation of civil law was the Theodosian Code, which held that Jews were part of a group of heretics, but were free to practice their religion. 20 The Code also opposed forced baptism and protected existing synagogues. 21 In theory, the Theodosian Code proved to be a balancing act between repression and toleration by the state.
While the Theodosian Code set important precedents for the treatment of Jews in Christendom, medieval Church and civil laws regarding Jews pulled heavily on the theory of Augustinian witness. Saint Augustine believed that God allowed the Jews to survive and live amongst Christians because they were "witnesses" to the glory of Christ. 22 To Augustine, the Jew's served to authenticate the scriptures by demonstrating to enemies of the Church that biblical testimonies were not forged. 23 Most importantly, Jews proved the truth of Christian scripture since "in not comprehending the truth they offer additional testimony to the truth, since they do not understand those books by which it was foretold that they would not understand." 24 In Augustine's eyes, the rejection of Christ by 20 the Jews as foretold by scripture proved the truth of Christianity.
In addition, Augustine believed if the Jews had not put Christ to death that independence and Jerusalem would still be theirs. 25 By putting Christ to death, the Jews became a defeated people living amongst the new chosen people of God. 26 Thus, Jews living in Christendom served as "witnesses" to remind Christians of the truth of their faith. In the early Middle Ages, "Augustinian witness" was adapted and reinterpreted but it was still widely held that Jews should be allowed to live and worship within Christendom, albeit with certain restrictions, to continue to serve as witnesses to the truth of Christ. 27 Despite the protections laid out by the Theodosian Code and the idea of Augustinian Witness in the Middle Ages, Gavin Langmuir summed up the Christian rejection of these protections in his book History, Religion, and Antisemitism when he explained the nature of anti-Judaic thought in the First Crusade: If they hated Jews because of doubts about the value of their own identity and killed Jews to stifle those doubts, they were nonetheless correct in thinking that Jews did not believe in Christ and mocked those who believed in "the hanged one." Moreover, [they] did not project on Jews any characteristics Jews did not have, such as 40 horns. They killed Jews because they were Jews, because Jews were people in the midst of Christendom who stubbornly rejected the nonrational beliefs of Christianity and persisted in adhering to their Judaic religion to the point of martyrdom. 28 Thus, anti-Judaism was dedicated to the repression and persecution of a religion, not the repression or demonization of a people. Ambivalence towards the Jewish faith also partially fueled anti-Judaic beliefs. 29 In an attempt to protect his Jewish subjects from the growing unrest, the German emperor Henry IV confirmed in 1090 the previously granted rights to the Jewish community in Speyer: the reservation of a walled quarter, a plot to bury their dead, and permission from their provost to arbitrate disputes between or against themselves. 30 Henry also gave the Jews of Speyer freedom of commerce in the city, the right to employ Christian servants, and the right to defend and fortify their quarter. These laws contrasted with the laws of the Church that forbade Jews from having Christian servants. 31 Though the separation of the Jews in their quarter was for their protection, it made them a more visible target during riots. In addition to this heightened visibility, economic competition, church reforms, and the First Crusade fueled anti-Jewish sentiments among the Christian populace. 32 Crusaders who lacked the funds to make it to the East often turned their attention to the "Christ-killers" at home. 33 The increasing popularity of anti-Semitic sentiments, like the idea of the "Christ-killer," led to the 1096 massacres along the Rhine. During the summer months, Count Emicho of Leiningen led his followers down the Rhine to the cities of Speyer, Worms, Mainz, Trier, and Cologne. 34 Though some bishops tried to protect the Jews, Emicho's men massacred most of the Jewish population before moving on to Hungary where the army was later crushed. 35 There are also varying reports of forced conversion during the attacks. While some crusading armies left the European Jewish populations alone, the varying reactions of the crusading armies to Jewish communities show that the upholding of the Church's policy of toleration depended on who was in command. 36 Such massacres were not repeated after the summer of 1096, but the century that followed saw a rise in violent persecutions and extortions. 37 In contrast with Anti-Judaism, the development of an Anti-Semitism went beyond the previous treatment by the Church to include hostile and repressive attitudes towards Jews as an innately evil people. 38 Before the rise in anti-Semitic violence in the eleventh century, literature against the Jews was fairly rare in Latin Christendom. 39 Literature that did exist focused on Old Testament exegesis that involved Jewish opposition to and denial of Jesus and their ultimate responsibility for the Crucifixion. 40 However, after the mid eleventh century a rise in Contra Judaeos included development of irrational sentiments about the place of Jews in Christendom. 41 Contra Judaeos further tarnished the image of the Jew in the mind of Christians through their repeated exegesis of the Old Testament and the "sins of the Jews," as well as accusations of deicide. The widening circulation of these works increased the antipathy of clerical readers toward the Jewish populations around them and made them more accepting of anti-Jewish measures. 42 In the aftermath of the First Crusade, Henry IV allowed Jews forcibly converted during the 1096 massacres to return to the religion of their fathers in 1097. 43

Guibert of Nogent and His Works
By examining the differences in Guibert's rhetoric about Jews and Judaizers in The Deeds of God through the Franks, A Monk's Confession: The Memoirs of Guibert of Nogent, and On the Relics of Saints chronologically, this section will show that Guibert's language shifted over time from anti-Judaic rhetoric focusing on the shortcomings of Judaism to anti-Semitic rhetoric focusing on the evils of Jews as a people. 51 For the purposes of this paper, anti-Judaism will refer to the point of view that regards the Jewish religion and its doctrine as evil and the Jews as a people who have been conditioned for evil because of their practice of Judaism. 52 Anti-Semitism will refer to the attempt to give justification for Jew hatred outside of theological differences by depicting the Jews as an inherently evil and inferior group whose religion is 50. Abulafia, "Twelfth-Century Renaissance Theology and the Jews," 131. 51. Hyam Maccoby published an excellent article detailing the differences between anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism in European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe. It is entitled "Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism" and can be found in volume eighteen issue two of the 1985 journal. 52. Maccoby, Hyam. "Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism." European Judaism: A Journal for the New Europe 18.2 (1985), 27-30. an ideological expression of their innate evil. 53 During the twelfth century, authors began to reach back into the Old Testament to find biblical precedents for the crusaders, which eventually led to the use of the Maccabees as "protocrusaders." 54 The Maccabees were a Jewish rebel force active in the mid-second century BCE who fought to reassert Judaism in Judea against the influence of Hellenism and the Seleucid Empire. 55 The Maccabees made an apt comparison for crusaders because they used forced conversion and conquest to meet their aims, much like the crusaders. 56 In his early works, Guibert  Guibert continued this critique of the Maccabees when he related the "despicable vanity of the Jewish people." 61 Though Guibert excused Jewish fathers now celebrated by the Church, such as David, Joshua, and Samuel, he accused the Jews of being a "wretched" people who served God only to fill their own bellies. 62 Guibert then declared that these "idolaters" were given their victories, while the Christian crusaders were sacrificing to achieve theirs. 63 While Guibert seemed to emphasize the disadvantages the crusaders faced, he later said "if celestial help appeared long ago to the Maccabees fighting for circumcision and the meat of swine, how much more did those who poured out their blood for Christ, purifying the churches and propagating the faith, deserve such help." 64 Guibert used these passages not only to demonstrate to his readers the weakness of the Maccabees, who needed worldly comforts and divine help in order to succeed, but to assure his readers that the crusaders would be victorious because of their greater sacrifice and true devotion to God. crusaders did not just possess purer motive and devotion than the Maccabees, but actually surpassed the accomplishments of their greatest warriors. 66 The differences between the Maccabees and the crusaders were frequently brought to light in Guibert's chronicle. In yet another passage, Guibert claimed that modern men underwent greater suffering than the Jews of old. 67 He elaborated by stating that the Jews had their families for company and full bellies to fight on while angels led their way into battle. 68 He juxtaposed the comforts of the Maccabees with the hardship of the crusaders saying, "today's men are the ones whom he [God] more truly saves, because he truly receives as his children those whose bodies he has allowed to be slain, and whom he punishes in the temporal world." 69 Elizabeth Lapina argued that this juxtaposition was an implication that the crusaders avoided temptations of the flesh due to circumstances and their own conscious decision, while the Maccabees continued to give into these temptations by bringing along their families. 70 More literally, Guibert's claims were another example of the hardships that the crusaders faced. When juxtaposed with the relative comfort of the Maccabees, these hardships were meant to construe the Jewish warriors as weak, unable to put their lives fully in the hands of God, while the crusaders came across as devout Christians willing to sacrifice everything for God and their cause.
The last major instance in which Guibert seeks to raise the crusaders above the memory of the Maccabees occurs a few pages later. Guibert writes: If someone cites the sons of Israel and the miracles of God performed for them, I shall offer something more miraculous: an open sea filled with Gentiles; a cloud of divine fear rising from a column among them; I shall point to the light of divine hope offered to those whom Christ inspired, himself a column of uprightness and strength, those who were comforted by the food of the word of God only, like divine manna, when they had no earthly hope. Those men spurned the heavenly food that they were offered, and looked back in their minds and with their voices to the Egypt they had left behind, but our men never looked back, but instead eagerly embraced whatever poverty and suffering came upon them. 71 In this passage, Guibert paralleled the miracles performed for the Jews, like the parting of the Red Sea, with the actions of the crusaders and the conditions they faced, like a sea of soldiers. While the Jews were provided with an abundance of miracles, Guibert claims that they still looked back to the oppression God had freed them from because of the comforts Egypt offered. In contrast, the crusaders never complained about the conditions they endured, but charged ahead to complete their godly mission. This passage shows that Guibert not only argued that the occurrence of miracles was not an important indication of divine favor to the Maccabees, but also underscored the differences in the carnal devotion of the Maccabees and the spiritual devotion of the Christian crusaders. 72 Throughout The Deeds of God through the Franks, Guibert made frequent parallels between the Jewish warriors, the Maccabees, and the Christian crusaders of the First Crusade. With allusions to the miracles performed for the Maccabees juxtaposed with the hardships and suffering of the crusaders, Guibert attempted to steer the reader away from the idea of the Maccabees as equals of the Crusaders and instead tried to convey a type of Christian superiority by making the Maccabees inferior "proto-Crusaders." The Maccabees were depicted as needy, unable to succeed without God's help yet unable to fully dedicate themselves to God. In contrast, Guibert goes into great detail about the hardships the crusaders faced and pointedly talked about the lack of miracles performed for the crusaders. However, Guibert decried the idea that God favored the Jews through his miracles. Instead these hardships were proof that the Christians crusaders were more devout than 72. Lapina, "Anti-Jewish Rhetoric in Guibert of Nogent's Dei gesta per Francos," 251. their Jewish predecessors as they were willing to fight for God without any reward and with great personal sacrifice.
The presentation of Christians as superior through critical examinations of the Old Testament was typical of exegesis in the twelfth century. Guibert's argument concerning the superiority of Christian crusaders over the Maccabees in The Deeds of God through the Franks was largely based on theological differences. The Maccabees were depicted as selfish warriors with weak faith in order to highlight the devoutness of the crusaders. However, Guibert did not suggest that the Maccabees were agents of the Devil, possessors of black magic, or sexual deviants, nor did he depict them as Christkillers or murderers of Christians. In The Deeds of God through the Franks, Guibert's language was anti-Judaic because it focused on what he saw as the theological shortcomings of the Jews. In contrast, in his later works Guibert's language began to focus on the evils of the Jews as a people and not on the shortcomings of Judaism as a faith.
When Guibert wrote his memoirs, or Monodiae, in 1115 he was certainly proficient in weaving a tale about Jews engaging in black magic on behalf of the devil. In fact, Guibert's memoirs spoke more about other figures and their sins than himself. 73 After the first book, Guibert spent most of the memoir reflecting on the sins of various clerics, Christians, and Jews. 73. Blurton, "Guibert of Nogent and the Subject of History," 116-120.

46
The first mention of a Jew in the second book of Monodiae was rather mild. It recounted a great storm that hit a monastery while the monks were walking to the high altar to sing the litanies. 74 Lightning struck the altar, blinding a priest and sending two young boys flying across the room. 75 It is interesting that Guibert chooses this story to describe one of the altar boys as "a converted Jew, but… deeply devout." 76 Though Jews only entered Guibert's social world after they converted, 77 he still felt that he needed to not only mention that they were once Jewish, but that they were devoted to the Christian faith. This suggests that Guibert still did not trust even converted Jews.
Guibert goes on to an anecdote, previously employed in the introduction of this paper, designed to illustrate the corrupting influence of Christian friendships with Jews. Guibert introduced his story by saying: "For demons admit no one to their evil doings except those whom they have first stripped of the honor of their baptism through some terrible sacrilege." 78 He then told the tale of a monk who befriended a Jewish doctor after he fell ill. 79 The monk's fascination with 74. Guibert "Affection" tempted Will before captivating it through beauty and pleasure, leading Will to accept Affection's earlier suggestions of sin. 88 Reason must then agree to follow Will and Affection into sin. 89 In this case, it appeared that Affection was the Jewish doctor whom the monk befriended. However, the monk's own Will and Reason must agree to follow the Jew to sin, so Guibert cannot lay blame for the priest's fall solely on the Jew, but did frame the Jew as a seducer and Devil's agent. This was a common trope in Guibert's memoirs that enabled him to construct a perceived Jewish threat to Christian selfhood. 90 By doing so, Guibert was able to reconcile his previously held views on morality with his anti-Semitic views of Jews as an evil people.
The introduction of this passage also revealed Guibert's views of Jews as inhuman monsters by indirectly comparing Jews to demons; 91 the introduction of the tale attributed the stripping of baptismal vows to the work of demons, while the Jewish doctor facilitated the stripping of the priest's baptismal vows in the anecdote itself. Despite this negative outlook, Guibert did make exceptions to his presentation of Jews as vile corrupters when he remarked on converts in monasteries.
Guibert's passage about one boy's conversion was the only 88 written account of the violence against the Jews in northern France. 92 Guibert described the boy's rescue: At the time when talk of a crusade to Jerusalem began to reverberate throughout the Latin world for the first time he was rescued from his superstition in the following manner. At Rouen one day, some men who had taken the cross with the intention of leaving for the crusade began complaining among themselves. "Here we are," they said, "going off to attack God's enemies in the East, having to travel tremendous distances, when there are Jews right here before our very eyes. No race is more hostile to God than they are. Our project is insane!" Having said this they armed themselves, rounded up some Jews in a church -whether by force or by ruse I don't know -and led them out to put them to the sword regardless of age or sex. Those who agreed to submit to the Christian way of life could, however, escape the impending slaughter. It was during this massacre that a nobleman saw a little boy, took pity on him, whisked him away, and took him to his own mother. 93 The inclusion of the violence against the Jews of Rouen in Guibert's memoirs showed that Guibert was not only involved with the theological aspects of anti-Judaism and anti-Semitism, but was aware of the physical and violent aspects of anti-Jewish movements in the eleventh 92. Abulafia. Christian-Jewish Relations, 141. 93. Guibert, A Monk's Confession, 111.