Anti-Jewish Polemic
Agobard is notorious for his vocal attacks on the local Jewish population. Jewish communities in the Frankish realm (today's France) had been granted considerable freedoms under Louis the Pious son of Charlemagne, including a prohibition on Christian proselytizing. Louis appointed a magister Iudaeorum to ensure Jewish legal protection, and did not force Jews to allow baptism for their slaves. Agobard found this last provision particularly galling, and wrote his first anti-Jewish tract on the matter: De Baptismo Judaicorum Mancipiorum (ca. 823). For the rest of the decade, Agobard campaigned against what he saw as the dangerous growth in power and influence of Jews in the kingdom that was contrary to canon law. It was during this time that he wrote such works as Contra Praeceptum Impium (ca. 826), De Insolentia Judeorum (ca. 827), De Judaicis Superstitionibus (ca. 827), and De Cavendo Convictu et Societate Judaica ( ca. 827). Agobard’s rhetoric, which included describing Jews as “filii diaboli,” – children of the devil – was indicative of the developing anti-Jewish strain of medieval Christian thought. As Jeremy Cohen has claimed, Agobard’s response was paradoxically both stereotypical and knowledgeable (he showed a great knowledge of contemporary Judaism, while maintaining and perpetuating stereotypes).
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