The Red Jews: Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200-1600 (Studies in Mediaeval and Reformation Thought): 55 (Studies in Medieval and Reformation Traditions) - Hardcover

Gow, Professor Of History Andrew Colin

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 9004102558 ISBN 13: 9789004102552

Publisher: Brill, 1994

Synopsis

The German legend of the Red Jews, a medieval conflation of the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel with the biblical destroyers Gog and Magog, articulated throughout the Middle Ages and well into the sixteenth century a fundamentally antisemitic strain of popular apocalypticism. This undigested piece of medievalia disappeared as more strictly biblical narratives of the End replaced medieval myth. As a result, the Red Jews have not been noticed by modern historians - though they were a universally-known feature of German apocalyptic belief for over three centuries.

About this title

Review:

'A solid contribution to the history of ideas, which will be of interest to a wide variety of readers.'
S.D. Benin, Choice, 1995.
'Gows Studie ist eine faszinierende Exkursion in die Alltags- und Mentalitätengeschichte des Hochmittelalters und der frühen Neuzeit.'
Matthias Zimmer, Zeitschrift für Geschichtswissenschaft.

Synopsis:

This text describes the history of an imaginary people - the Red Jews - in vernacular sources from medieval and early modern Germany. From the 12th to the 17th century, German-language texts repeated and embroidered on an antisemitic tale concerning an epochal threat to Christianity, the Red Jews. This term, which expresses a medieval conflation of three separate traditions (the biblical destroyers Gog and Magog, the "unclean peoples" enclosed by Alexander, and the Ten Lost Tribes of Israel) is a hostile designation of wickedness. The Red Jews played a major role in late medieval popular exegesis and literature, and appeared in a hitherto unnoticed series of 16th-century pamphlets, in which they function as the medieval "spectacles" through which contemporaries viewed such events as Turkish advances in the Near and Middle East. The Red Jews disappear from sources after 1600, and consequently never found their way into historical scholarship.

About this edition

• Publisher: Brill
• Publication date: 1994
• ISBN 10: 9004102558
• ISBN 13: 9789004102552
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 432