Theological Anti-Judaism in Gregory the Great

RODRIGO LAHAM COHEN

Sefarad. Revista de Estudios Hebraicos y Sefaradíes

CSIC

Lugar: Madrid; Año: 2015 vol. 75 p. 225 - 252

The Christian use of anti-Jewish topics during the first millennium has generated discussions concerning the reasons for that discursive practice. Some researchers have considered a genuine conflict between Jews and Christians as the root of the Adversus Iudaeos literature. In contrast, another position emphasized discursive aspects, highlighting the Christian need for defining its identity in opposition to the Jewish past. From that point of view anti-Judaism thus stands as a textual question largely disconnected from the social context. The work of Gregory the Great, due to its noticeable textual variability, becomes a fundamental tool to understand the dynamics of anti-Judaism. In this article we explore all the Gregorian texts in a qualitative and quantitative analysis, underlining the kind of texts in which the topoi Adversus Iudaeos appear and concluding that, at least for the Pope between 590 and 604, anti-Judaism was a strictly symbolic question.