7/27/2019 LernerReviewThe Feast of Saint Abraham

1/3

Review: [untitled]Author(s): David BurrReviewed work(s):

The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews by Robert E. LernerSource: The Catholic Historical Review, Vol. 87, No. 2 (Apr., 2001), pp. 317-318Published by: Catholic University of America PressStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/25025941Accessed: 08/09/2009 11:41

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available athttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp . JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unlessyou have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you

may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use.

Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained athttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuap .

Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printedpage of such transmission.

JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with thescholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform thatpromotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.

Catholic University of America Press is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access toThe Catholic Historical Review.

http://www.jstor.org

http://www.jstor.org/stable/25025941?origin=JSTOR-pdfhttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuaphttp://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=cuaphttp://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsphttp://www.jstor.org/stable/25025941?origin=JSTOR-pdf

7/27/2019 LernerReviewThe Feast of Saint Abraham

2/3

BOOK REVIEWS 317

have made possible a much more detailed picture of the topic. Attention is

given to the geography and to the castle-building which resulted from the divi

sion of Castile and Le?n into two kingdoms between 1157 and 1230. Also con

sidered are the properties of the Order of the Holy Sepulchre which were

incorporated into the Hospital in 1498. There are studies of parish churches,

hospitals, rural hermitages, and minor chapels, and of the sumptuous palaces of

early-modern commanders. Initially donations were important in providing

many of these buildings, while the Hospital itself created others. Then, from the

fifteenth century onwards, patronage came to depend increasingly on the in

tervention of individual commanders. That was partly because the Hospital'sbenefices came under the control of a nobility whose members were in partfreed from the technical constraints of their vows of

povertyand were con

cerned to ensure themselves comfortable living conditions, to advertise their

family wealth, to secure ostentatious burial, and to display their family arms. The

author's awareness of such historical factors informs her artistic appreciations

making this a useful and attractive work.

Bath, England

Anthony Luttrell

The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews. By Robert

E. Lerner. [The Middle Ages Series.] (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press. 2001. Pp. viii, 186. $35.00.)

In this intriguing study Robert Lerner describes what he sees as a Joachitetradition concerning the role of the Jews in an apocalyptic future time. He be

gins in the twelfth century with Joachim of Fiore and ends in the fifteenth withNicholas of Buldesdorf. Along the way he pays particular attention to the

thirteenth-century Franciscans (especially Peter John Olivi), John of Rupe

scissa, Frederick of Brunswick, and Francesc Eiximenis.

According to Lerner joachim went well beyond the common medieval view

that in the period after Antichrist the Jews would be converted to Christianity.Instead he anticipated a third age of history marked by "a mutually beneficial

union of Christians and Jews." The Holy Spirit would offer clarification of both

the Old and New Testaments. The new people profiting from this clarification

would be, in Lerner's words, "neither Jew nor Gentile but 'spiritual.'"

We are then shown how the various authors considered by Lerner fit into

what is in some ways a linear progression. While all anticipated a new age that

would involve Jewish-Christian reconciliation, neither Joachim nor Olivi

showed much interest in delineating a particular messianic figure who would

play a major role in its inception. Rupescissa connected the new age with such

a person; then Frederick of Brunswick wrote himself into the scenario as a Johnthe Baptist heralding that person; and finally Nicholas of Buldesdorf completedthe process by suggesting that he himself was the messianic figure.

7/27/2019 LernerReviewThe Feast of Saint Abraham

3/3

318 BOOK REVIEWS

Nevertheless, the central question posed by this study cannot be answered in

terms of linear development. Joachim offered a tantalizing suggestion that the

third age would involve much more than the Jews simply converting to Chris

tianity; yet Olivi thought in terms of straightforward Jewish conversion. So did

Rupescissa, but he complicated the matter by predicting that the converted

Jews would become an imperial nation, an idea he never quite reconciled with

the Joachite-Olivian notion of Jews and Gentiles merging into a single people.Frederick of Brunswick too predicted that the converted Jews would presideover an empire. Eiximenis changed his opinion frequently but returned late in

life to the Joachite notion of synthesis, predicting an age in which the saints of

the Old Testament would be honored along with those of the New. The feasts

of Adam and Abraham would take theirplace

in the calendaralongside

those of

Francis and Dominic. Nicholas of Buldesdorf echoed the idea of a Jewish world

empire but added a new element: The Jews would "live according to the law of

the God of their fathers," by which he meant "the law of Moses," which suggeststhat their religion would remain distinct even in the third age. Thus the question of what would be left of Judaism was answered in a variety of ways dis

playing not linear development but a kaleidoscopic series of changes.

Lerner sees that these writers are significant not only for what they said but

for when they said it. At a time when "the Jews were becoming pariahs," these

men "held to the view that Jews had a special dignity."

Virginia TechDavid Burr

Parisian Scholars in the Early Fourteenth Century: A Social Portrait. ByWilliam J. Courtenay. [Cambridge Studies in Medieval Life and Thought,

Fourth Series, 4L] (New York: Cambridge University Press. 1999. Pp. xix,284. $64.95.)

This isWilliam J. Courtenay s third book on medieval universities, students,

and masters. It is definitely his most unusual; in its mix of urban topography,

prosopography, university financial records, and a criminal law case, it is even a

path-breaking book.

The genesis of the book came about with Courtenay's recovery or re-discoveryof a document from the University of Paris, a computus (financial record) from

1329-30. Written on the last quire of the oldest surviving register of the proctorsof the English-German nation at Paris, it is a list of university faculty and students

who contributed money for a special legal fund for the defense of a student ac

cused of rape.

Part I consists of three chapters describing the computus (its text is con

tained in App. l),how such collections were made, and the precipitating event:

the rape of a woman named Symonette. The quire containing the computushad been folded incorrectly when itwas inserted into its codex; by rearranging