Cet essai explore les liens entre les discours chrétien sur les Juifs, les idolâtres et les héré­tiques, et l’influence durable de ces différents discours sur l’imaginaire occidental des reli­gions non-chrétiennes. L’idolâtrie, l’hérésie et le judaïsme sont des catégories discursives aux rapports ambigus, qui renvoient à diverses formes d’altérité religieuse. Les hérésiologues chrétiens de l’Antiquité tardive ont eu ten­dance à brouiller les frontières censées séparer Juifs, idolâtres et hérétiques, et ainsi souligner souligner leur erreur commune et leur his­toire partagée. Cette rhétorique hérésiolo­gique passe par une forme de comparaison, dont les effets ne se limitent pas, toutefois, à la seule sphère de la théorie.

Cet essai explore les liens entre les discours chrétien sur les Juifs, les idolâtres et les héré­tiques, et l’influence durable de ces différents discours sur l’imaginaire occidental des reli­gions non-chrétiennes. L’idolâtrie, l’hérésie et le judaïsme sont des catégories discursives aux rapports ambigus, qui renvoient à diverses formes d’altérité religieuse. Les hérésiologues chrétiens de l’Antiquité tardive ont eu ten­dance à brouiller les frontières censées séparer Juifs, idolâtres et hérétiques, et ainsi souligner souligner leur erreur commune et leur his­toire partagée. Cette rhétorique hérésiolo­gique passe par une forme de comparaison, dont les effets ne se limitent pas, toutefois, à la seule sphère de la théorie.

In order to tackle the ongoing Cromohs debate of global history, the author draws on anthropologist Frederik Barth's 'generative model' of the relationship between the general and the particular, art historian Siegfried Kracauer's reflections on history, Sanjay Subrahmanyam's connected histories, Nathan Wachtel's 'histoire régressive,' and his own foundational expertise on micro-history.Image Caption: Pietro Vesconte, Mappa mundi, in Marino Sanudo, Liber secretorum fidelium crucis super Terrae Sanctae recuperatione et conservatione, ed. Johann Bongars (Hanoviae : typis Wechelianis, apud heredes Ioannis Aubrii), via Wikimedia Commons (Public Domain) https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World_Map_of_Johann_Bongars_%26_Pietro_Vesconte_(c._1320,_1611).jpg

This article focuses ont he reception, circulation and transmission of Jewish narratives on Jesus in early modern Italy. The Italian Peninsula witnessed an important revival of Jewish culture in the sixteenth and seventeenth century, due, among other things, to the influx of Jewish refugees from Spain and Portugal. Italy stood at the junction of the Ashkenazi and Sephardi worlds, acquiring a central role in the dissemination, transmission, and renewed development of polemical traditions, including the Jewish stories on Jesus and the origins of Christianiy known as Toledot Yeshu. I argue that Toledot Yeshu in fact constituted the background of many discussions between Christian and Jews in that context. Almost a third of all extant Toledot Yeshu manuscripts in fact originate from Italy, which thus provides a key site for understanding the place and function of this tradition at a particular time and place.

This essay examines the origins of the concept of idolatry in the ancient world. The discourse on idols and idolatry played a central role in the history of Western ideas about religion and religious diversity, framing much of the Christian debates on non-Christian religions, and eventually, on the origins of religion as such (e.g., Hume). It is here argued that idolatry is in fact, from the start, a word for religion, albeit "false religions." Following a comparative discussion on the respective semantics of idolatry in Christianity, Judaism, and Islam, this essay shows how the category emerged at the intersection of ancient Jewish and Greek debates on religion and images, before being appropriated and put to use by early Christian authors. The essay then compares the Jewish and Christian discourse of idolatry in late antiquity. It is here argued that the different narratives developed in this context played a central role in the emergence of an anthropocentric versus a theocentric history of religions in the early modern period.

This paper is concerned with a medieval French translation of Toledoth Yeshu preserved in the manuscript records of an investigation against the Jews and their books held in the city of Trevoux in 1429. Whereas the records of the trial were described by I. Loeb in the late nineteenth century, the bearing of this historical evidence for Toledoth Yeshu research has not yet been taken into consideration. In this paper, we will consider the historical context of the investigation and the place of Toledoth Yeshu in the trial records, as well as compare the text itself with other known versions of Toledoth Yeshu, with a view to discuss the reception, transmission and circulation of the work in the late Middle Ages.