The Talmud forbade Jews to handle or derive benefit from wine produced by non-Jews on the chance that it might have been consecrated to a foreign god or used for ritual purposes. The Tosafists distinguished between wine made by Christians and wine made by pagans, arguing that the earlier taboos referred only to the latter, thus allowing Jews to sell

Christian-produced wine. The upshot is that after Rashi made rabbinic literature accessible, the Tosafists made it applicable to their own day. Often, as Haim Soloveitschik noted about two decades ago, the prevalent would not only expand the nor- mative; it would become the normative. Under the religious and intellectual leadership of the Tosafists, Ashkenazic Judaism became an all-encompassing way of life, regulating all aspects of Jewish existence. Emblematic in this regard were the responsa of Meir of Rothenberg, which cover virtually every facet of life, from the sublime to the mundane; and the publication of the Tur, an easily accessible code of Jewish law, which was as user-friendly as Maimonides

Mishneh Torah. To be sure, the Ashkenazic Jewish community was not hermetically sealed from the neighboring non-Jewish world. While most Jews resided in the Jewish quarter of the city or town, the market square was typically an arena for interaction between Jews and non-Jews. Moreover, there were often con- tacts between Jewish and Christian women. In England, for example, less affluent Christian women tended to borrow money from small-scale female Jewish moneylenders. What is more, historian Elisheva Baumgarten discovered in the medieval Ashkenazic world a camaraderie and extensive interaction between Jewish and Christian wet nurses and midwives. This sug- gests that the image of the Ashkenazic Jewish community as insular and isolated may be largely exaggerated. Given the small size of the Jewish

87 JewishChristian relations during the thirteenth century The thirteenth century witnessed a steady deterioration in the condition of Jews at a time of cultural flourishing and communal development. This was due largely to a general rise in Christian piety, from above and from below, and growing influence of the pope and the Christian clergy on Christian sovereigns. From above, the papacy reasserted its influence over