Adgar's Gracial and Christian images of Jews in twelfth-century vernacular literature

This article concerns the adaptation and translation into the Anglo-Norman vernacular of an existing tradition of Latin miracles of the Virgin by the twelfth-century poet William Adgar. Adgar included many older ideas about Jews in his version of the stories, but also borrowed themes and language from contemporary courtly romance literature in order to suit his intended audience of lay nobles. In doing so, he portrayed Christian characters as the embodiment of loyalty and other courtly values. At the same time, he began to portray Jews according to courtly types of treachery. New implications emerged in his work about the general moral character of Jews, in contrast to previous works that commented mainly upon the nature of Jewish belief. Recent scholarship on Christian-Jewish relations in the twelfth century has begun to pay increasing attention to the movement of new Christian ideas about Jews outside of scholarly and ecclesiastical circles. The study of vernacular literature has an important place in this scholarly debate, since the move to the vernacular broadened the audience among which the new ideas about Jews could be spread.     

Christian Capital: Singapore,Evangelical Flows and Religious Hubs

Recent scholarship has pointed out the ways in which religions are increasingly commodified, primarily through two mechanisms: the monetisation of religious objects and practices, and the materialisation and extension of religious-symbolic power through new technologies and practices. These two mechanisms of monetisation and materialisation provide very concrete ways of understanding religious commodification, but they do not provide a complete picture of how religious capital is created and sustained in the holistic context of society, city and nation considered in relation to international capital flows. “Christian Capital” includes not only the commodity, consumerist and media empires particularly associated with global-reach “megachurches”, but also the less-tangible situational, relational, human-social and influential wealth created between religious agencies and their urban-national contexts. Using the case of Christian agencies in Singapore and their strategic creation of transnational influences, this paper offers a conception of Christian capital that incorporates not only the materialisation of religious influence in terms of finances and commodities, but also its expression in less tangible but significant ways in terms of the creation of an international “brand” of Singapore Christianity.     

Adgar's Gracial and Christian images of Jews in twelfth-century vernacular literature

This article concerns the adaptation and translation into the Anglo-Norman vernacular of an existing tradition of Latin miracles of the Virgin by the twelfth-century poet William Adgar. Adgar included many older ideas about Jews in his version of the stories, but also borrowed themes and language from contemporary courtly romance literature in order to suit his intended audience of lay nobles. In doing so, he portrayed Christian characters as the embodiment of loyalty and other courtly values. At the same time, he began to portray Jews according to courtly types of treachery. New implications emerged in his work about the general moral character of Jews, in contrast to previous works that commented mainly upon the nature of Jewish belief. Recent scholarship on Christian-Jewish relations in the twelfth century has begun to pay increasing attention to the movement of new Christian ideas about Jews outside of scholarly and ecclesiastical circles. The study of vernacular literature has an important place in this scholarly debate, since the move to the vernacular broadened the audience among which the new ideas about Jews could be spread.