Get The Conversion of Herman the Jew: Autobiography, History, PDF

Sometime towards the center of the 12th century, it truly is meant, an in a different way vague determine, born a Jew in Cologne and later ordained as a clergyman in Cappenberg in Westphalia, wrote a Latin account of his conversion to Christianity. referred to as the Opusculum, this publication purportedly through "Herman, the previous Jew" could be the 1st autobiography to be written within the West after the Confessions of Saint Augustine. it could possibly even be anything else entirely.

In The Conversion of Herman the Jew the eminent French historian Jean-Claude Schmitt examines this singular textual content and the ways that it has divided its readers. the place a few have visible it as an genuine conversion narrative, others have requested if it is no longer a whole fabrication cast by way of Christian clerics. For Schmitt the query is poorly posed. The paintings is instantly precise and fictional, and the hunt for its lone author—whether switched over Jew or not—fruitless. Herman may perhaps have existed and contributed to the writing of his existence, however the Opusculum is a collective paintings, possibly framed to satisfy a selected institutional agenda.

With agility and erudition, Schmitt examines the textual content to discover its which means in the society and tradition of its interval and its participation in either a Christian and Jewish imaginary. What can it let us know approximately autobiography and subjectivity, in regards to the functionality of goals and the legitimacy of spiritual photos, approximately person and collective conversion, and approximately names and identities? In The Conversion of Herman the Jew Schmitt masterfully seizes upon the debates surrounding the Opusculum (the textual content of that is newly translated for this quantity) to consider extra essentially the ways that historians imagine and write.