Historical anachronism—the utilization or application by historians of concepts or key terms that did not exist in the period that they are studying—has long been held to constitute one of the cardinal sins that historians can commit. Accusations of historical anachronism have generated many debates amongst historians and the appropriateness of using the term “antisemitism” to refer to anti-Jewish rhetoric and sentiment expressed in the western world prior to the nineteenth century, and especially in the medieval period, is a salient example. Furthermore, the debate has been complicated considerably by the fact that there is no consensus about the definition of the term “antisemitism” itself or even whether the term should be spelled “antisemitism” or “anti-Semitism.” Whilst “antisemitism” is commonly used as a generic shorthand for a hatred of Jews, such a definition is far too general to be used uncritically by historians seeking to examine the complexities of pre-modern Christian–Jew-ish relations. This chapter sets out to examine the different ways in which historians have used the term “antisemitism” in a medieval context since the late nineteenth century. The existing literature on the history of “antisemitism” and Christian–Jewish relations is vast and this chapter will present only a concise analysis of the heated controversies generated by the use of the term “antisemitism.” As the concept of “race” is considered to be vital to any definition of “antisemitism,” it then endeavours to survey the different perspectives of scholars (both historians and non-historians) on the existence of “race” in Europe during the Middle Ages.

It has been repeatedly and rightly pointed out that the term itself was apparently first used by the German journalist Wilhelm Marr (1819–1904), who founded the League of Antisemites (Antisemiten-Liga) in 1879, and it became popularized by Marr and others in the 1880s. Moreover, for many historians of antisemitism, the concept carries a clear racial component. Marr and other antisemites defined Jews collectively by their supposedly shared ethnicity and “racial identity” as “Semites” rather than their adherence to the religion of Judaism in order to distinguish them from “Aryans.”