Dietary Laws in Medieval Christian-Jewish Polemics: A Survey 1

"7 Christians, however, received the moral instruction but repudiated the dietary restriction upon pork, often eliciting criticism from Jewish polemicists.8 Other Christian writers exploited the figurative sense of the dietary prohibitions. [...]in a common medieval trope, Bruno of Segni (d. 1123) suggests that Christians are themselves the kosher, ruminant animals identified in the Bible because they-and not the Jews-twice "digest" the text of Scripture, locating in it the spiritual and not merely the literal sense.9 This allowed Christians to identify themselves with the clean animals, while at the same time compare Jews generally to unclean animals, and especially to pigs, as obstacles to holiness.10 Such animal images were useful instruments to illustrate the Jews' intellectual and moral shortcomings. John Carpenter's 1419 compilation of London town ordinances includes an entry "Of Jews, Lepers and Swine that are to be removed from the City." Since there had been no Jews in England for more than a century, Carpenter's compilation likely served to reinforce existing notions that associated Jews and swine (and lepers) as sources of filth or impurity.14 Finally, a late fifteenth-century engraving of the ritual murder of Simon of Trent depicts Jews whose garments display the Jews' badge or rota;15 inside the badge is a picture of a pig, likely evoking a link between Jews and the homicidal and infanticidal behavior attributed to pigs.16 The question remained, however: for what purpose were the dietary laws given to the Jews? According to Abravanel, the Jews form a category above the rest of humanity, and that is why they observe a special diet. Tomás rebuffs this explanation, but treats the dietary laws as necessary for Jews because of their natural imperfection, and unnecessary for Christians because of their natural superiority. [...]he alleges, although typically pork increases sexual desire, "Christians because of their humours and perfection change everything to accord with their humours, just as honey changes the bitterness of the orange's peel into sweetness.