Jewish Dogs is not a study of "anti-Semitism" or "anti-Judaism." Instead, this book argues that to anchor claims of supersession, Catholics have viewed Jews as metaphoric--and sometimes not so metaphoric--dogs. The dog has for millennia been the focus of impurity, and Catholicism fosters doctrines of physical purity that go hand in hand with those of ritual purity. The purity is that of the "one loaf" spoken of by Paul in Corinthians that is, at once, the Eucharist and the collective Christian Corpus, the body of the faithful. Paul views this "loaf" as physically corruptible, and as...

The "1007 Anonymous," an imaginative if brief text composed in the third or early fourth decade of the thirteenth century, illustrates the proper relations between Jews, their lay rulers, and the pope. The pope, consistent in applying laws that both restricted and protected Jews, is seen as a just ruler. Kings and dukes, by contrast, were inconsistent and capricious, threatening Jewish life.
This message had to be conveyed indirectly, and the "1007's" vehicle for doing so was a fictional story of murderous attack and forced conversion known as "The Terrible Event of the Year 1007." Yet an...