History Commons^™

Sinners On Trial: Jews And Sacrilege After The Reformation, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

My book, Sinners on Trial: Jews and Sacrilege after the Reformation tells a story of the process of affirmation of Catholic dogmas after the Reformation, not necessarily though religious education and propaganda but through the application of criminal law, and the courts' treatment of "the sacred" and, thus, also of the "sacrilege."

"Sinners on Trial" combines political, legal, and cultural historical approaches. In Poland, the contest over the sacredness of the Eucharist, a major Catholic dogma challenged by the Reformation, became manifest in lay courts' adjudication of crimes against property and religious symbols, especially those linked to the Eucharistic rituals. …

Sacrilegi E Spazi Sacri E Profane: Ebrei E Cristiani In Polonia D’Età Moderna, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

As late as the 1926, and perhaps even up to the eve of World War II, on Fridays, in a small church on the Jewish street, a few meters off the main market square in the city of Poznań, the traditional song Kyrie Eleison, God Have Mercy, Christ Have Mercy, was replaced by a song on Jewish desecration of the host in Poznań in 1399. It was a legend, for there is no record of the case; no court room drama, for the trial never took place. The drama was elsewhere: the set was the city, its geography, and its …

Matai Nosad Ha-Defus Ha-`Ivri Be-Qraqov? [Hebrew: When Did Hebrew Printing Begin In Cracow?], Magda Teter, Edward Fram

Magda Teter

The article challenges the common assumption that the first Hebrew book printed in Poland was a Bible printed in 1530. They discuss a book of Selihot (prayers) now in the Ossolinski library in Wroclaw, which was fraudulently dated as published in 1532 but was most certainly published after 1537. The authors carefully establish that the assumption of the 1530 Bible was a result of a bibliographic error that was repeated by scholars over two centuries. They conclude that Hebrew printing was not established in Poland before 1534 when Shaarei Dura was published.

Crime And Sacred Spaces In Early Modern Poland, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

This principle of intersection between action and sacredness was shared by both Jews and Christians. Both Christian and Jewish religious elites highlighted differences between sacred. In Catholicism, validation of space required a consecration by a bishop in preparation for the ritual of the Eucharist. Church vessels were viewed as sacred in relation to the Eucharist. The Eucharist defined levels of sacredness. The controversy over the nature of the Eucharist during the Reformation, challenged the notion of Christian sacred place. After the Reformation, in the minds of the church, and in Poland increasingly also in the minds of the secular courts, …

Out Of The (Historiographic) Ghetto: Jews And The Reformation, Magda Teter, Debra Kaplan

Magda Teter

Existing historiography has created a historiographic ghetto, seldom considering Jewish sources and Jews as relevant to the larger narrative of European history. This has created two parallel, often disconnected areas of study, “European history” and “Jewish history.” Archival materials from across Europe strongly show that Jews and Christians resided side by side and interacted on a daily basis in early modern Europe. Reformation Strasbourg and post-Reformation Poland, two geographically and demographically diverse cases offer new insights about the past by including sources about Jews. In Reformation Strasbourg, cross-confessional collaboration was more frequent than previously imagined, as leaders of different Christian …

Apostasy, Fraud And The Beginnings Of Hebrew Printing In Cracow, Magda Teter, Edward Fram

Magda Teter

The article investigates the mysterious history of three Jewish brothers who began a Jewish press in Cracow in 1534 and who converted to Catholicism in 1537 but continued to print Jewish books after their conversion. Their fate has fascinated scholars, since one of the brothers published a New Testament in Hebrew letter transcription, and proselytized among Jews, another continued to print both Jewish and non-Jewish books, while still another became a business man. One of the brothers returned to Judaism and printed Hebrew books in Constantinople. But scholars have been unable to match their pre- and post- conversion names, and …

The Legend Of Ger Zedek (Righteous Convert) Of Wilno As Polemic And Reassurance, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

The article analyzes the popular legend of a righteous convert to Judaism in eighteenth-century Wilno (now Vilnius) according to which a prominent count, Walentyn Potocki, converted to Judaism and then died a martyr's death at the stake in Wilno. The article traces parts of the legend to Boccaccio's Decameron, discusses the attitudes to converts to Judaism in Jewish law, and explains the historical and cultural context in which the legend emerged.

Social And Cultural Boundaries In Pre-Modern Poland, Magda Teter, Adam Teller, Antony Polonsky

Magda Teter

Boundaries—physical, political, social, religious, and cultural—were a key feature of life in medieval and early modern Poland, and this volume focuses on the ways in which these boundaries were respected, crossed, or otherwise negotiated. It throws new light on the contacts between Jews and Poles, including the vexed question of conversion and the tensions it aroused. The collected articles also discuss relations between the various elements of Jewish society—the wealthy and the poor, the educated and the uneducated, and the religious and the lay elites, considering too contacts between Jews in Poland and those in Germany and elsewhere. Classic studies …

Jews And Catholics In Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church In The Post Reformation Era, Magda Teter

Magda Teter

My first book, Jews and Heretics in Catholic Poland: A Beleaguered Church in the Post Reformation Era (Cambridge University Press, 2006, pbk 2009), introduced Jews into a traditional Polish narrative of post-Reformation Poland that had been grounded in a Catholic-Protestant dichotomy, allowing me to reposition the role of Jews and other non-Catholics in multicultural Poland in a completely new way. My approach has broadened the context of Poland’s religious history and has revealed the superficiality of the re-Catholicization of the ruling elites, whose economic interests triumphed over their religious loyalties, challenging the view of the “triumph of the Counter-Reformation” in …