Shared Saints and Festivals among Jews, Christians, and Muslims in the Medieval Mediterranean

Alexandra Cuffel is Professor of Jewish Religion and History at Ruhr University, Bochum (Germany). Her research interests focus on medieval Jewish, Christian, and Muslim relations.

• AcknowledgementsAbbreviationsIntroductionChapter 1. Holy Spaces and Holy Corpses: Defining Sanctity and Veneration of the Dead from Late Antiquity to the Middle Ages.Chapter 2. The Other as Witness to the Truth: Positive Responses to Shared Religious Veneration among Jewish and Christian Pilgrims to the Middle East from Western EuropeChapter 3. Forceful Saints and Compelling Rituals: Real and Imagined Jewish and Muslim Participation in Christian Rituals and Saint Cults from Byzantium to Western EuropeChapter 4. Praising, Cursing, or Ignoring the Other: Jews, Christians, and Muslims at One Another’s Holy Spaces in the Islamicate MediterraneanChapter 5. Opposition to Shared Saints and Festivals in the Islamicate WorldChapter 6. Upholding the Dignity of the Faith and Separating Believers and Unbelievers in Medieval Christian SocietiesConclusionsBibliographyIndex

Throughout the book, Cuffel weaves a dialogue with and offers her own contributions to relevant historical scholarship of recent decades, including, for example, studies centred on the regulations of religious practices amidst communal strife and studies dealing with intra-religious dynamics in face of religious conver- sion. Concurrently, she utilizes, challenges, and at times offers alternatives to “textbook” and recent efforts to theorize pilgrimage experience and pilgrimage discourse, categorize shared religious spaces, and illustrate the common dynamics of religious tolerance in shared sites. Contribution to extant theoretical discussions and case-based scholarly debates represents only a part of the overall value of this study. Cuffel’s choice to delve into the realm of discourse – carefully uncovering its layers, tracing its vast geographical dissemination, while analysing its diverse patterns and tracing their evolution in changing political and social contexts – contributes greatly to the study of inter-religious relations. It offers an illuminating and thought-provoking path to understanding the roles and meanings which the sharing of sacred sites, saints, and festivals had among medieval Mediterranean societies.