Harvey J. Hames

The limits of conversion: ritual murder and the Virgin Mary in the account of Adam of Bristol

In a manuscript in the Harley Collection at the British Library (957), there is an account of what appears to be a case of ritual murder in Bristol, written c. 1280 but referring back to the reign of Henry II (1154-98). This account entitled in the 1808 catalogue of the Harleian Manuscripts Fabula ineptissima de filio Willelmi Wallensis civis Bristolliae is far more than just another example of ritual murder, of Jewish hatred towards Christians. Although we are provided with a Christian martyr, the young Adam, we are also given insight into the corruption of the priesthood and the beauty and salvific effect of Marian devotion. In fact, the story about the ritual murder and cruelty shown by the Jew Samuel, his wife and son to Adam is part of the backdrop for what is truly important, the liturgy surrounding Mary, the mother of Jesus. The ritual murder while described in all its gory detail provides a didactic framework for the all important moral of the legend. Yet, the presence of the Jew and the ritual murder accusation are a necessary part of the story. All the elements in the account coalesce as the audience is provided with further evidence of the known wickedness and perfidy of the Jews, as portrayed in folk tales, anecdotes, on the stage and in sermons. The antidote to the demonic presence and deeds of the Jew is the Virgin Mary, who not only protects and embraces the martyr Adam, but also is instrumental in returning a stray and wayward priest to the fold. However, unlike other Marian miracle stories, in this case, the Jewish protagonists are neither punished not converted to Christianity. Mary is seemingly unable or unwilling to bring about their conversion and bring them into the Christian fold. Hence, written in the build up to the expulsion of the Jews from England and the first account of the ritual desecration of the host in Paris in 1290, this tale is a cautionary one in that it questions the efficacy of Jewish conversion and establishes a clear impermeable boundary between the satanic Jew and the Christian commenwealth.

From Calabria Cometh the Law, and the Word of the Lord from Sicily: The Holy Land in the Thought of Joachim of Fiore and Abraham Abulafia

An anonymous Vita written in the years immediately following Joachim of Fiores death presents him as an alter-Jeremiah or Ezekiel, a prophet of the exile. His life is described as a transmigration from the Holy Land, where he received his first revelation, to the monastery he founded in Fiore, or as a journey from exile to redemption. Calabria becomes the new Holy Land, blessed by the Holy Spirit. In contrast, the thirteenth-century Kabbalist Abraham Abulafia depicts Sicily as the place where prophecy will be renewed and the Messiah revealed. He refers to himself as Zachariah, the prophet of redemption, particularly in work in which his connection with Christians is emphasized. This article suggests that Abulafia adapted the Joachite teachings which he would have encountered in Sicily and southern Italy to a polemical dialogue with his Christian counterparts in an attempt to prove to them that he was the one who would bring the redemption and unification of Jews and Christians in a spiritual understanding of the divine Name.

A Jew amongst Christians and Muslims: introspection in Solomon ibn Adret's response to ibn Hazm

Solomon ibn Adret, one of the foremost Rabbis of the Jewish community in the Iberian peninsula in the late thirteenth century, wrote a treatise that engaged directly with the claims and arguments of ibn Hazm, a Muslim scholar who had been dead for some two hundred years. His preoccupation with ibn Hazm seems strange given his many other concerns such as the spread of Averroism and Christian attacks on the Jewish post-biblical texts. One of ibn Adrets Christian interlocutors was the famous Dominican, Ramon Martí, and it is he who provides the key for understanding the treatise written against ibn Hazm. Ibn Adrets treatise is his way of exploring his own religious beliefs in the face of the Christian attacks against rabbinical Judaism.

A Seal Within a Seal: The Imprint of Sufism in Abraham Abulafia's Teachings

Medieval Encounters 12,2 Also available online – www.brill.nl 1 Sefer ha-Haim, in Metzaref ha-Sechel, ed. A. Gross ( Jerusalem: n.p., 2001), 83. 2 See H. Hames, “From Calabria Cometh the Law and the Word of the Lord from Sicily: The Holy Land in the Thought of Joachim of Fiore and Abraham Abulafia,” Mediterranean Historical Review 20, no. 2 (2005): 187-99; and my forthcoming book, Like Angels on Jacob’s Ladder: Abraham Abulafia, the Franciscans and Joachimism (Albany: State University of New York Press). A SEAL WITHIN A SEAL: THE IMPRINT OF SUFISM IN ABRAHAM ABULAFIA’S TEACHINGS

Jewish magic with a christian text: a hebrew translation of Ramon Llull's Ars Brevis

In July or August 1474 in Senigallia, a town on the coast of the Adriatic sea, a translation into Hebrew was completed of the Ars brevis , a work by the medieval Christian philosopher, mystic, and missionary Ramon Llull. Within a couple of years, this translation had been copied a number of times, and from the colophon of one of these copies, it appears that this work was rated very highly by its Jewish readers as an aid for achieving mystical experience. Any interest shown by the adherents of one faith in the texts of another is important for shedding light on common intellectual interests and contacts. This translation is of especially great significance in that there appears to have been in Italy in the fifteenth century a circle of Jewish scholars willingly engaging with a Christian text in order to achieve divine illumination. Here, I will try to shed some light on this group of Jewish savants and to situate their interests within the wider context of the Renaissance.

Ramon Llull’s Ars brevis Translated into Hebrew: Problems of Terminology and Methodology

The translation into Hebrew of Ramon Llulls Ars brevis was completed in July or August 1474 in Senigallia, a coastal town on the shores of the Adriatic in the March of Ancona. Ramon Llull finished writing the Ars brevis in Pisa in January 1308. The work is a much more concise and more easily digestible version of the much larger and more extensive Ars generalis ultima written between 1305-1308. In the first section of the Ars brevis, Llull explains the alphabet of the Art and how the letters are to be used. Ars brevis deals with the nine subjects of the Art starting with God and descending the scala naturae all the way down to the instrumentative, and sets out four conditions which will help the intellect examine and understand these subjects using the principles and rules of the Art. Keywords: Ars Brevis ; God; Hebrew translation; Ramon Llull