Communities Of Violence Nirenberg Summary

Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages written by David Nirenberg and published under the Princeton University Press (1996) delves into the violence faced by minorities (the lepers, Muslims, and Jewish people) during the middle ages in France and the Crown of Aragon . Nirenberg is an American Historian who is a professor of Medieval History and Committee on Social Thought at the University of Chicago. In the introduction of his book, Nirenberg acknowledges that minorities have historically been only mentioned to prove a point or draw conclusions elsewhere than towards the tribulations of the disadvantaged. (pg. 3) This draws on the question of “When did Europe go wrong?” and where did “European Intolerance” begin?
He uses counterevidence to his advantage by stating the argument that it supports and explaining why it does not make sense to his larger argument of localized context of events motivated by political or economic gain. For example, on page 4 of the introduction, he begins to describe the implications of Cohn (noted Historian)’s argument and then explains in annotated bibliography on the same page that some Historians believe, “the struggle [of Christianity and Judaism] is not inevitable, necessary, or essential…it is only contingent…thus A. and H. Cutler, whose translation of Blumenkranz was just quoted that he could not agree more with these sentiments but proceed on the same page to argue that Anti-Muslimism was the primary factor in the revival of anti-Semitism during the High Middle Ages “. Nirenberg manages to discredit the argument of A. and H. Cutler hinting that his is likely to be better thought out and supported by greater amounts of evidence. Nirenberg’s argument is very well thought out and he even uses the archives of the Crown of Aragon in order to reconstruct his narrative of localized