In the miracle story De l’enfant resuscité qui chantoit Gaude Maria by Gautier de Coinci (1177/78–1236), a Christian boy sings, “Erubescat Judeus infelix qui dicit Cristum ex Josef semine esse natum” (May the unfortunate Jew who says that Christ was born from the seed of Joseph be ashamed; ll. 148–49) in the street of the Jews—referred to in the text as the rue des gaingnons (street of the curs)—before a large impromptu audience of clergymen, knights, lay folk, and Jews.59 This verse so enrages one of the Jewish listeners that he kills the boy. Gautier was not the first to relate this story, although his version is both better known and more elaborate than any of the earlier ones.60 I have argued elsewhere that Gautier based his comments about Jews more on tradition than personal experience, and we must therefore exercise caution in drawing conclusions about Jewish culture in medieval France based on Gautier’s writings.61 We might ask, is the opening premise of De l’enfant resuscité qui chantoit Gaude Maria plausible? Would a Jewish man in Gautier’s time have understood the Latin words sung by the boy? This question is more complicated than it appears. Although I believe that proficiency in reading and writing Latin was rare even among literate Jews living in northern France, it is likely that many Jews learned isolated Latin words and phrases that were current in the surrounding environment, and given repetition, context, and cues such as tone of voice, facial expressions, and audience reactions, the overall intent of the verse sung by the boy might have been clear to nearly any Jew witnessing such a scene.
As evidence that Latin literacy among medieval northern French Jews was not commonplace, we can first cite the general absence of Jewish writings from northern France or England in Latin or Latin script. (The aforementioned Comencement de sapience, translated by Hagin le Juif, but written down by Obert de Montdidier for a Christian patron, is an exception.) Further evidence comes from the fact that legal transactions often required two scribes, one to compose a document in Hebrew, and the other to compose one in Latin, the alternative being one scribe proficient in both. Thus we find English and Norman legal documents written in Latin and accompanied by a full or shorter version of the record in Hebrew, and sometimes only an endorsement or signature.62 Latin literacy was of course also limited among Christians.
The assumption that most Jews of medieval northern France, including those who were relatively well educated, did not learn Latin is further strengthened by the introduction to the thirteenth-century Desputoison du juyf et du crestien with which this introduction began. Let us examine the text here in greater detail. As the debate begins, the Christian is intoning a hymn about one of the mysteries of his faith, the virgin birth, in Latin. Listening is a Jew:
| [christianus] | Omnis credencium letetur populus: Nostra redempcio, natus est parvulus. Carnem induitur in alvo virginis Et carne tegitur maiestas numinis. (ll. 1–4) |
| (The nation of all believers rejoices, Our redemption, a child is born, He puts on flesh in a virgin’s womb, And is clothed with flesh, glory of the God-head.) |
The Jew does not understand. “Speak to me in French,” he says, “and explain your words!” The Jew means this at a basic level: he wants the Christian to explain the sense of the Latin words. But the Christian misunderstands and attributes the Jew’s lack of understanding to his being Jewish. Such a reaction on the part of a Christian might well have been commonplace: Jews were frequently accused of being stupid, unable to understand the Christian mysteries of faith. At around the same time the Desputoison was written, Gautier de Coinci wrote, following a long Christian tradition, that the Jews are “Plus bestial que bestes mues” (Stupider than the speechless beasts) and that “Li dyables leur dort es testes, / Qui bestïaus les fait com bestes” (The devil sleeps in their heads, making them stupid like beasts).63 He complained that Jewish reading of Scripture was akin to chewing on the shell of a nut without realizing what is inside, a well-known Christian image for the Jews’ purported inability to understand Scripture figuratively—an image, moreover, that the Christian uses in the Desputoison itself.64
The dialogue might have ended here, except that the Jew persists. It is not the content that is difficult for him, he explains, but the language, and the Christian should translate all that he has just said into French.
| [judaeus] | Ne t’entent pas, por ce c’oscurement paroles. Parole a moi françois et espon tes paroles! |
| [christianus] | N’est pas gieus a entendre ainsi oscure chose. |
| [judaeus] | Ce que diz en latin, en françois le me glose! (ll. 5–8) |
| ([Jew] | I don’t understand you, because you are speaking in an obscure way. Speak French to me and explain your words! |
| [Christian] | A Jew can’t understand a hidden thing like this. |
| [Jew] | Gloss for me in French what you are saying in Latin!) |
Even if the author of this text had other reasons to switch from Latin to French (namely, to make the work understandable to a broad Christian audience, including the less educated), the specific way in which he frames the switch here suggests that even educated Jews did not typically know Latin well and that Christians were aware of that fact. From this exchange, and from the other evidence, both positive and negative, available to us, we can infer that the typical French-speaking Jew did not know Latin well, whether he or she was literate in Hebrew or not. Although here and there individual medieval French-speaking Jews like Joseph Bekhor Shor studied Latin, on a communal level, Latin remained the language of the Christian other.65
Returning to the debate, the Christian obliges the Jew’s request and begins to explain the mystery in French.
Ge paroil du filz dieu qui ci nasqui en terre;
S’ooille avoit perdu qu’il est venuz requerre.
Il est nez de la virge come d’espine rose.
Issuz est de sa chanbre parmi la porte close:
Si entra et oissi du ventre de la feme
Que sa virginité n’i perdi onc la dame,
N’i ot corrupcïon ne avant ne arriere.
Au concevoir, au nestre et enprés fu entiere.
Si con puet par le voirre et issir et passer
Li soleus, sanz le voirre maumetre et dequasser,
Ensement et encor par plus soutil maniere
Entra diex en la virge et s’en rissi arriere. (ll. 9–20)66
(I speak of the son of God who was born here on earth;
He had lost his flock and came to seek it out.
He was born of the virgin like a rose on its thorn bush.
He emerged from her womb through its closed door:
He entered and emerged from the belly of the woman,
In such a way that the lady never lost her virginity,
Nor was defiled before or after.
During conception, during the birth, and afterward