The theme of the Jewish attitudes to Latin is partly inscribed in the perspectives on the Jews and the Alphonsine translations. Nevertheless it belongs in an historiographic tradition about attitudes to language and language consciousness. To reconstruct this tradition is the theme of the first part of this paper. To confront the historiography with the evidence – i.e. primary sources from the late middle ages – is the concern of the second part. A third part discusses further possibilities for reconstructing comparatively Jewish attitudes to Latin.