Why read Communities of Violence?

Book cover of Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages

Book description

In the wake of modern genocide, we tend to think of violence against minorities as a sign of intolerance, or, even worse, a prelude to extermination. Violence in the Middle Ages, however, functioned differently, according to David Nirenberg. In this provocative book, he focuses on specific attacks against minorities in…

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European history

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Why read it?

1 author picked Communities of Violence as one of their favorite books. Why do they recommend it?

Hussein Fancy

Author

This is a scholarly book, beautifully written but challenging both in its exposition and argument. Grounded in deep archival research, Nirenberg examines violence against religious minorities—Jews and Muslims—in the lands of the Christian Crown of Aragon in northeastern Spain and southern France. Navigating between rose-tinted and bleak accounts of this past, he makes the surprising argument that the long coexistence between Jews, Christians, and Muslims depended on regular and almost ritualistic violence between them. Violence, he proposes, enabled peace.

From Hussein's list on capturing the paradoxes of medieval Spain.