Insularity, A literary history of Muslim Lucera

Early medieval southern Italian chroniclers related the great strife Muslim forces brought to their lands. Their accounts, however, were far more nuanced than scholars have previously proposed. A closer reading of the evidence reveals that these authors did not consider Saracens to be evil incarnate. Indeed, some sources offer examples of their humanity. Moreover, Muslims were not always considered a distant and unapproachable other. These writers also showed that Franks, Byzantines, and some Lombard rulers could be far worse. Through examining three surviving chronicles, which narrate the history of the southern Lombards, the Deeds of the Neapolitan Bishops, and a Jewish-family history, this article will advocate for a new reckoning of the way southern Italian peoples perceived Muslims during the early Middle Ages.

Journal of Medieval History , 1995

In 1268/9, in the aftermath of the crusades against the Hohenstaufen in Italy, the papacy launched a crusade for the destruction of the Muslim colony of Lucera in northern Apulia. The article traces the events leading up to this crusade by looking at the Lucera Muslims' involvement in the struggle between the papacy and its political enemies in Italy. It investigates the way in which the Italian Muslims entered papal crusade rhetoric and describes how the crusade propaganda against them developed. At the centre of the article lies an analysis of three crusade sermons by Cardinal Eudes of Châteauroux, which he preached in support of the Lucera crusade in 1268/9 and which are the only extant evidence for the way in which the propaganda against the Lucera Muslims was conducted. This analysis shows the connections between Eudes's sermons and contemporary prophetical writings and tries to establish the psychological strategies used by Eudes to attract crusading support against the Lucera Muslims. The sermons, which have survived in a manuscript collection of Eudes's sermons now at Arras, are transcribed in an appendix at the end of the article.

Interruptions and Disruptions in the Medieval Mediterranean, 400 – 1500 Department of History and Archaeology, University of Crete, Rethymnon 11 – 15 July, 2022

In the 1260s Southern Italy experienced a series of conflicts between two rival dynasties, the Angevins and the Hohenstaufen, who fought for control of the Kingdom of Sicily. This paper will examine the role of the Muslims of Lucera, who became an easy target for papal propaganda due to their support for the Hohenstaufen. Of particular interest is the comparison of the attitudes of Clement IV and Charles of Anjou towards the Muslims versus their stance against their Christian adversaries. An examination of contemporary sources can yield valuable information about the reactions to non-Christians and illustrate aspects of the Guelph – Ghibelline rivalry in Italy during the second part of the 13th century.

2009

2009

This paper is an exercise in the history of reading and textual production in seventeeth-century Florence. Through the analysis of a very short and fascinating miscellaneous manuscript (BNCF, ms. Magliabechi, XXXIV.31), I aim to disentangle the complex and intertwined relations between European orientalism, Italian intellectual history and Muslim exegesis of the Qur'an in the seventeenth century. Despite its fragmentary nature, the material, linguistic and doctrinal features of this miscellaneous manuscript shed a new light on the study of Oriental languages in seventeenth-century Florence and, especially, on Barthélemy d'Herbelot's stay in Tuscany between 1666 and 1671.

The life and dispersion of Lucerine Muslims in Apulia (c.1220–1300) are examined from the onomastic point of view. Many Muslim names are recorded in Latin-scripted official documents. These do not differ greatly from those reported by Salvatore Cusa and those found in the Maltese Militia List of 1419/20. Some Lucerine names present several variants which can be used as ‘markers’ to locate the presence of Muslims after their dispersion. The diffusion of modern surnames related to these markers confirms reports in Angevin documents, namely that the cities of Naples and Barletta were the main centres for the subsequent relocation of Muslims. However, large concentrations of these surnames are to be found also in the regions of Latium and the Marches.

This article offers new insights into literary exchanges in and around the Venetian ghetto during the first half of the seventeenth century. It relates writings of Jewish thinkers to those of Christians. It shows these literary compositions inscribed into the literary tradition of a group of Venetian accademie, fostered through several decades. The literary impresa and the philosophic discorso as practiced within these academies became the vehicles through which specific Jewish and Christian writers reciprocally offered to each other nuanced concepts of the human soul, the Republic and the Creation, while seeking their self-definitions as Jews or Christians.

Success and Failure in the Seventeenth-Century Ghetto of Venice: The Life and Thought of Leon Modena, 1571-1648”, 1985

PhD (Near Eastern and Judaic Studies) Brandeis University, 1985 Directed by Benjamin Ravid, Marvin Fox, Mark Cohen

Al-Masaq: Islam and the Medieval Mediterranean 24, no. 2, 2012

The goal of this essay is to call attention to some of the more positive and ambivalent depictions of Muslims in a set of historical texts associated with the Norman takeover of Sicily in the fifth/eleventh and sixth/twelfth centuries. To achieve that aim, it considers social vocabulary applied to Muslims in five sources written by Amatus of Montecassino, Geoffrey Malaterra, William of Apulia, Alexander of Telese, and Hugo Falcandus. Although recent scholarship has posited that medieval identity was often felt through a “self versus other” or “Christian versus non-Christian” dichotomy, this essay questions the notion that the actual language contained in these sources ever devolved into such simplistic, binary terms. On the contrary, though the perceptions and definitions applied to this group of people were, admittedly, sometimes based on uninformed stereotypes, they were more often deliberately constructed images that were highly dependent on the cultural milieu in which they were created.