Book Series Sermo, vol. 15

Christian, Jewish, and Muslim Preaching in the Mediterranean and Europe

Identities and Interfaith Encounters

Linda G. Jones, Adrienne Dupont-Hamy (eds)

  • Pages: ix + 337 p.
  • Size:156 x 234 mm
  • Illustrations:9 b/w
  • Language(s):English, French, Spanish
  • Publication Year:2019

  • € 100,00 EXCL. VAT RETAIL PRICE
  • ISBN: 978-2-503-58271-9
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  • ISBN: 978-2-503-58272-6
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Offers a fresh cross-cultural approach that explores connections between preaching and transcultural relations in Iberia, the Mediterranean, and northern Europe.

Review(s)

"In ihrer Multiperspektivität, die sowohl unterschiedliche historische Kontexte und Bedingungen wie auch verschiedene geographische Räume, zudem mehrere Religionen unter Einbeziehung verschiedener Quellengattungen berücksichtigt, stellen die versammelten Fallstudien einen wertvollen Beitrag zur Erforschung des mittelalterlichen Predigtwesens dar." (Christoph Galle, in SEHEPUNKTE, 20, 2020)

“All the articles give useful insights into preaching practices mainly of the high Middle Ages and illustrate that interfaith encounters in that time have more facets than disputations or theological treatises. All the articles are important contributions to their respective fields and the volume as a whole deserves close reading.” (GÖRGE K. HASSELHOFF, in Journal of Ecclesiastical History, 72, 2021, p. 863-864)

“By assembling an international team of scholars, the editors have convincingly illustrated how preaching defined interfaith relations and religious identities and facilitated transculturation.” (Jessalynn Lea Bird, in Church History, 3, 2022, p. 137)

Summary

This volume explores the sermons and activities of Christian, Jewish, and Muslim preachers who shaped ideas about religious and gendered identities and alterity throughout the Mediterranean and northern Europe. Preachers of all three traditions played a decisive role in defining the religious identities of their communities, often in response to negative images projected onto religious others. The studies cover a broad spectrum of premodern Europe and the Mediterranean and address the ways that preaching reflects transcultural contacts as well as social, intellectual, and hermeneutical encounters among diverse societies and religious communities.

The essays are divided into three themes. Part One, ‘Religious and Gendered Identities and Alterities,’ examines how religious identity is inflected by the presence or the ‘absent presence’ of religious others and interrogates how gender informs religious identity, piety, and alterity. The chapters in Part Two, ‘Hermeneutical Identities, Alterities, and Transcultural Relations in Christian and Jewish Preaching’, offer contrasting interpretations of the impact of anti-Judaism in Christian preaching and analyse Jewish responses to Christian polemic. Part Three, ‘Muslim and Christian Orators and Inter-faith Encounters,’ explores these encounters from the dual perspectives of Crusade and military conflict and interreligious dialogue, disputation, and proselytization. The volume positions itself at the intellectual crossroads between comparative medieval sermons studies and transcultural Mediterranean and European studies. 

TABLE OF CONTENTS

List of Illustrations

List of Contributors

Acknowledgments

Introduction — LINDA G. JONES

Part One: Religious and Gendered Identities and Alterities

Giving Birth as a Metaphor: Eude de Châteauroux’s Preaching to the Nuns of Orvieto — JUSSI HANSKA AND SARI KATAJALA-PELTOMAA

Penre am gran amor via de penedensa’: la prédication de Hugues de Digne et le mouvement pénitentiel à Hyères dans la première moitié du XIIIe siècle — DAMIEN RUIZ

La predicación aljamiada: en torno a la religiosidad mudéjar y morisca — OLIVIER BRISVILLE-FERTIN

Preaching Passions and Precepts: The Role of Jews and Muslims in East Norse Sermons — JONATHAN ADAMS

Part Two: Hermeneutical Identities, Alterities, and Transcultural Relations in Christian and Jewish Preaching

Anti-Jewish Preaching as Part of an Anti-Jewish Narrative in Late Medieval Spain — ORIOL CATALÁN

El Contra Judaeos de Isidoro de Sevilla en la predicación regular ibérica del final del siglo XII: Entre identidad confesional y estaturia — AMÉLIE DE LAS HERAS

Addressed in Absentia: Meaning and Uses of Jewish Cultural References in Medieval Preaching: The Case of St Vincent Ferrer’s Sermons — CAROLINA LOSADA

Rabbi Isaac Nathan, Vincent Ferrer, Pope Benedict XIII, Thomas Connecte, and the Mendicants: Jewish Homiletics and Preaching as a Reflection of Jewish-Christian Encounters — RAM BEN-SHALOM

Part Three: Muslim and Christian Orators and Interfaith Encounters

Notes on the Speeches at the 1228 Corts in Barcelona to Debate the Conquest of Mallorca — XAVIER RENEDO

St John of Capestrano’s Crusade Preaching and the Ottoman-Italian Encounter — NIRIT BEN-ARYEH DEBBY

Abū Madyan, Shu‘ayb al-Ḥurayfīsh, and the Miraculous Conversion of Ten Monks to Islam: Reflections of Contacts between the Western and Eastern Mediterranean — LINDA G. JONES

La Disputa de la Sagena de Marraqech entre Fray Pedro de Alcántara y el Talbé Abdalá Ordopesa — CÁNDIDA FERRERO HERNÁNDEZ

Index