Jewish Therapeutic Visits to the Tombs of Christian Martyrs in Late Antiquity

The works of Gregory of Tours attribute to Jews arange of attitudes toward the therapeutic powers that Christian martyrs and their tombs and relics were believed to possessin Late Antiquity.The article offers a successive analysis of several of these hagiographical accounts, set in Syria and in Gaul, in comparison with other extracts from the same Gregory and other Christian writers in which Jews sought and obtained the help of Christian martyrs by visiting their tombs. Despite the stereotypical and polemical nature of these accounts, some original features suggest that Jews living in the eastern provinces, who shared the same beliefs as most inhabitants of the Roman Empirere garding the relationship between the dead and the living, may have considered visiting martyrs to be an acceptable form of healthcare. This is in contrast to their coreligionists who, like other inhabitants of Gaul, were not exposed to the idea that the dead could affect the living until it was introduced by the Christian church in the sixth century.