Throughout the first half of the Middle Ages, the Christian argumentation against Judaism and the Jews we have delineated remained fairly static. More important, there was no discernible effort to bring these arguments to Jewish attention. This stasis gave way as a result of the invigoration of medieval western Christendom that began during the late tenth and eleventh centuries and ripened during the twelfth. An increasingly confident western Christendom was moved to win over others – primarily the imposing Muslim enemy – by force of arms and by religious suasion. The effort at religious suasion was directed also at the less powerful but older monotheistic rival, the Jews. To be sure, there was more than aggressive self-confidence at work; there was an element of malaise as well in the effort to win over others through polemical argumentation.

The changes that invigorated the societies of western Christendom were both exhilarating and unnerving. Political and ecclesiastical maturation were prominent during the late eleventh and twelfth centuries. This maturation contributed significantly to the broad invigoration of western Christendom; it also proved distressing to many. Especially striking was the perceived disjuncture between the newly powerful and wealthy Roman Catholic Church and the New Testament imagery of an apostolic age of humility and poverty. Likewise, new patterns of thinking were exciting and liberating; they were also unsettling.