Levi's Vindication is an updated and expanded version of an argument first made by the author in 1984 (The “1007 Anonymous” and Papal Sovereignty). In that earlier work, Stow sought to prove that the text known as the “1007 Anonymous” was not a contemporary account of an anti-Jewish episode that took place in early eleventh-century France, as it purported to be, but rather a work of fiction composed in the thirteenth century. (This argument had first been forwarded in 1906 by Israel Levi—hence the title of the book under review.) Citing several apparently anachronistic elements in the narrative (which claims that King Robert of France martyred dozens of Jews, but that the assault was finally stopped when a heroic rabbi appealed to the pope), Stow argued that the work laid out a sophisticated Jewish theory about papal Jewish policy that reflected thirteenth-century conditions. In Stow's view, the goal of the “1007 Anonymous” was to offer a veiled warning against looking to secular rulers for protection and recommend instead that Jews learn and make use of the nuances of papal theory.

Stow's 1984 publication received a fair amount of pushback, but its redating of the “1007 Anonymous” was persuasive. Strong arguments included the facts that the descriptions of the martyrdoms are clearly influenced by the Hebrew chronicles narrating the 1096 Rhineland massacres; the wording of the declaration issued by the pope repeats practically verbatim the wording of the papal bull Sicut Judaeis, which dates to ca. 1120; the term Lotharingia would not have been used before the thirteenth century to describe the region including Rouen, as it is in the text; the term apiphior, used of the pope, belongs to the thirteenth century; and although the text declares that its Jewish hero and his family went to settle in Flanders, there is no evidence for any Jewish settlements in Flanders before the thirteenth century. Moreover, as Stow argued, the handful of early eleventh-century Latin texts describing various anti-Jewish episodes do little to confirm the historicity of the “1007 Anonymous”—they are either not truly analogous to the alleged 1007 martyrdoms or are of dubious historicity themselves. More fundamentally, in his 1984 work Stow rightly noted that in the early eleventh century popes were far too weak to exercise the kind of power depicted in the text and that there is no record of royal hostility toward Jews in the eleventh century. Less compelling was a rather convoluted argument regarding the currency of R. Jacob's bribe. And it goes too far to call this disjoint fantasy of Jewish suffering and salvation, presumably written to console Jews in uncertain times, “the maturation of a long-developing operative strategy” (48).

Levi's Vindication reiterates and in some cases elaborates or modifies the earlier assertions about the anachronistic or ahistorical aspects of the text, pushes back against various critics of the 1984 publication, and offers an entirely new argument based on literary criteria. Specifically, the new book highlights several passages apparently borrowed from La Quête du Graal, a work composed at some point after 1220, and suggests that the Hebrew narrative was powerfully influenced by this vernacular romance.

The turn to literary analysis, and to reading the text in light of the broader cultural milieu, is eminently sensible and potentially fruitful. The echoes of romance in the narrative do indeed support a compositional date in the mid-to-late twelfth or thirteenth century. Unfortunately, the argument is not pursued in a systematic way. Little of the rich scholarly literature on textual analysis, narrative technique, or chronicle structure and strategy is drawn upon (though Brian Stock is cited). The parallels with the Quête du Graal (and thus the post-1220 dating) are not quite so tight as claimed. The discussion of the magical sword that turns on its wielder would have profited from further reading—there are many magical swords in medieval literature (to cite just a few, a tale called Le Chevalier à l'Epée features a magical sword that leaps off the wall to wound Gauvain when he tries to approach a maiden, thereby saving Gauvain from a trap set by the girl's father; Heinrich von dem Türlin's Diu Crône likewise features a magical sword; and of course there's a magical sword-hilt in Beowulf). It is surprising to see such a confident assertion that no Hebrew text earlier than the twelfth century would employ direct discourse (38), given the prevalence of direct discourse in Hebrew scripture. A survey of the currencies cited in twelfth- or thirteenth-century romance would perhaps have been more enlightening than the extended reconsideration of actual practice (which, in any case, neglects the ample twelfth- and thirteenth-century documentary evidence for coinage use). The argument is not helped by the book's loose organization and considerable repetitions; the confusing writing, sometimes to the point of opacity; and the unnecessarily contentious tone. The book would have been stronger, more useful, and more persuasive had the author spent less time refuting every dissenting opinion ever articulated by other historians, and more time clearly presenting and analyzing the text and locating it in its social and cultural context.

In sum, Levi's Vindication offers an interesting new approach to a fascinating text. And although it does not fully realize the promise of that approach, it does suggest exciting new avenues for further research.