Living Letters of the Law. Jeremy Cohen

Dagens, Saint Grégoire, esp. chaps. 1–2, 7.

      56. Gregory, Moralia 2.29.48, 6.18.3 I.

      57. Straw, Gregory, p. 18.

      58. Paul Meyvaert, “Gregory the Great and the Theme of Authority,” Spode House Review 3 (December 1966), 5. In addition to the works cited in notes 53–55 above, seealso Sandra Zimdars-Swartz, “A Confluence of Imagery: Exegesis and Christology Accordingto Gregory the Great,” in Gr égoire le Grand, ed. Jacques Fontaine et al., Colloquesinternationaux du C.N.R.S. (Paris, 1986), pp. 327–35; de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 21:53–98; and Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, jd ed.(Oxford, 1983), pp 32–35.

      59. Gregory, Moralia, epist. ad Leandrum 3, CCSL 143:4; cf. the helpful comments of Jean Laporte, “Une Théologie systématique chez Grégoire,” in Grégoire le Grand, ed. Jacques Fontaine et al., Colloques internationaux du C.N.R.S. (Paris, 1986), p. 235.

      60. Gregory, Moralia 29.2.4–29.3.5.

      61. Ibid. 34.7.12, for instance.

      62. Ibid. 1.16.23–24, 2.1.6, 27.43.71, 29.26.52, 30.9.28–34.

      63. Ibid. 31.23.42.

      64. Ibid. 34.12.23.

      65. Ibid. 1.16.23–24, 35.16.36–39.

      66. Ibid. 11.15.24.

      67. Ibid. 18.40.61, CCSL 143 A:927–28.

      68. Ibid., epist. ad Leandrum 5, CCSL 143:7.

      69. Ibid, 18.30.47–48, CCSL 143 A:g16–17.

      70. Markus, End of Ancient Christianity, passim.

      71. Markus, “Sacred and the Secular,” p. 93.

      72. Richards, Consul of God, p. 69.

      73. Ibid., p. 54; and see the more thorough discussion of Dagens, Saint Grégoire,chaps. 7–9.

      74. Pierre Daubercies, La Condition charnelle: Recherches positives pour la théologied'une realite terrestre (Paris, 1958), and “La Théologie de la condition charnelle chez les maitres de haut Moyen Âge,” RTAM 30 (1963), 5–54.

      75. Gregory, Epistulae 11.56a.8, MGH, Epistulae 2:340–41. On the importance of this letter in ecclesiastical tradition, see Pierre J. Payer, Sex and the Penitentials: The Development of a Sexual Code, 550-IIJO (Toronto, 1984), pp 35–36, 65.

      76. Straw, Gregory, p. 134. On Augustine's defense of “Christian mediocrity,” see, above all, Markus, End of Ancient Christianity, passim.

      77. In this regard, see also Robert Gillet, “Spiritualité et place du moine dans I'église selon Saint Grégoire le Grand,” in Théologie de la vie monastique, Théologie 49 (Paris, 1961), pp. 313–51; Jean Leclercq, The Love of Learning and Desire for God: A Study of Monastic Culture, gd ed., trans. Catharine Misrahi (New York, 1982), pp. 25–36;and Matthew Baasten, Pride According to Gregory the Great: A Study of the Moralia,Studies in the Bible and Early Christianity 7 (Lewiston, N.Y., 1986).

      78. See Jaroslav Pelikan, The Christian Tradition: A History of the Development of Doctrine (Chicago, 1971–89), 1:35off.

      79. See above, n. 7; for Gregory's other uses of these two phrases, cf. Thesaurus Sancti Gregorii Magni, microfiche pp. 1177, 15840.

      80. De Lubac's magisterial study of the Exeègéseméddieéual (21:53–128) proceeds almost directly, with minimal interruption, from the allegorical exegetical “‘barbarie’ desaint Grégoire” to the characteristically Jewish “bovinus intellectus” perceived by high medieval Christian theologians, which I discuss in part 3 of this book.

      81. Cf. Gregory, Homilia in Euangelia 2.72.4–5: Now that Christianity is no longer persecuted and has spread throughout the world, the emphasis of Christian preaching must fall on the quality of the confession of faith, so that Christians will truly be the members of Christ. See also Moralia 34.4.8.

      82. Ibid. 19.12.19, CCSL 143 A:970–71: “Sicut uniuscuiusque hominis, sic sanctae Ecclesiae aetas describitur. Parvula quippe tunc erat…. Adulta vero Ecclesia dicitur…. Universae quippe Ecclesiae…adolescentulae vocantur…. Cum in diebus illis Ecclesia, quasi quodam senio debilitata….”

      83. See above, nn. 20, 36–38.

      84. See the comments of Dagens, Saint Grigoire, pp. 352ff.

      85. Cf. above, chapter 1, n. 118.

      86. Gregory, Moralia 14.44.51, CCSL 143 A:729. Other references to the carnality of the Jews include Moralra 7.8.8; Expositiones in librum primum Regum 3.41, 3.473.63, 3.66, 5.99; and Homiliae in Hiezechihelem 2.9.2, 2.10.8.

      87. Gregory, Moralia 34.4.8, CCSL 143 B:1738–39.

      CHAPTER 3

      Isidore of Seville

       Anti-Judaism and the Hermeneutics of Integration

      Like Gregory the Great, Isidore of Seville is often considered one of the last of the Latin church fathers. He, too, “was a true bridge-builder between early and late medieval times, a bridge-builder also between the Germanic and Roman nations”;¹ and, much as Gregory did, Isidore contributed directly to the developing idea of the Jew in early medieval Christendom. Yet Isidore undertook this responsibility deliberately, with a determination that rendered anti-Jewish polemic more of a critical aspect of his scholarly opus than it had been for Gregory's or for Augustine's. Not since Tertullian had a Latin churchman compiled a treatise of Adversus Iudaeos doctrine as extensive as Isidore's De fide catholica contra Iudaeos (On the Catholic Faith against the Jews),² which proved popular and influential for generations to come, both within and beyond the confines of Christian Spain.

      Isidore's writings echo numerous motifs of Augustine's anti-Jewish polemic—and his doctrine of Jewish witness—including the exegesis of Psalm 59:12 (“Slay them not”), the resistance of the Jews to religious assimilation in pagan (especially Roman) antiquity, and the Jews' function as the desks (scriniaria) of Christians in a properly ordered Christian world.³ A principal investigator of Isidore's anti-Judaism has rightly acknowledged his debt to Augustine, Jerome, and others, suggesting that “it is the great bishop of Hippo that was, indisputably, Isidore's model and inspiration” and that the De fide in particular demonstrates “this tendency of assimilation from the oeuvre of Augustine.”⁴

      Nonetheless, although Isidore may have relied heavily on the works of his predecessors, the zeal with which he attacked the Jews and Judaism exceeded that of all earlier Latin fathers. Castigating the Jews more harshly than did Augustine, Isidore challenged the disingenuousness of the error that caused ancient Jewry to crucify Jesus,⁵ and that which led contemporary Jews to reject Christ and Christianity:

      Denying Christ, the son of God, with nefarious disbelief, the Jews—impious, hardhearted, incredulous toward the prophets of old, and impervious toward those of late—prefer to ignore the advent of Christ rather than to acknowledge it, to deny it rather than to believe it. Him whom they accept as yet to come, they wish not to have come. Him who they read will rise from the dead, they do not believe to have arisen. Yet thus they feign not to understand these things, for they know that they have been fulfilled through their own sacrilege.⁶

      Quicunque eos ita perdiderit, septem vindictas exsolvet, id est, auferet ab eis septem vindictas, quibus alligati sunt propter reatum occisi Christi, ut hoc toto tempore, quod septenario dierum numero volvitur, magis quia non interiit genus Judaeorum, satis appareat fidelibus Christianis, sed solam dispersionem meruerint, juxta quod ait Scriptura: “Ne occideris eos….” Hoc revera mirabile est, quemadmodum omnes gentes quae a Romanis subjugatae sunt, in ritum Romanorum sacrorum transierint…; gens autem Judaeorum sive sub