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14 - Antisemitism in Medieval Art

from Part II - Medieval Times

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 May 2022

By
Debra Higgs Strickland
Edited by
Steven Katz
Steven Katz
Affiliation:
Boston University
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Summary

Antisemitism in medieval art is explored through selected images that develop the popular pictorial themes of “Christ-killing,” spiritual blindness, demonic allegiance, conspiracy, and animality. The imagery is linked to long-standing Christian theological beliefs and considers the social functions and material consequences for medieval Jews.

Keywords

SynagogaTheophilusApocalypsebestiary
Type
Chapter
Information
The Cambridge Companion to Antisemitism , pp. 248 - 270
Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2022

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References

Further Reading

Bale, A., Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews, and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages (London, 2010). Argues that images of violent Jewish aggressors reinforced medieval Christians’ identities as victims, and thus justified their own violent attitudes towards the Jews living in their midst. Chapters 3 and 4 are especially valuable for art historians.Google Scholar
Camille, M., The Gothic Idol: Ideology and Image-Making in Medieval Art (Cambridge, 1989). This highly influential study was the first to position antisemitic imagery and pejorative representations of other outgroups, including women and Muslims, at the heart of Gothic image-making.Google Scholar
Lipton, S., Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Semitism (New York, 2014). Traces the emergence of medieval antisemitic iconography, tracking the shift in artistic treatment of Jews from benign figures of wisdom to increasingly sinister figures designed to provoke fear and hostility in their Christian viewers.Google Scholar
Lipton, S., Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley, CA, 1999). Analyzes representations of Jews in two Parisian 13th-century copies of the Bible moralisée as figures of sin relevant to changing French social, political, and economic concerns.Google Scholar
Mellinkoff, R., Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Berkeley, CA, 1993). This lavishly illustrated work identifies the negative visual signs of cultural outsiders, especially Jews, in late medieval Christian art produced in Northern Europe.Google Scholar
Patton, P. A., Art of Estrangement: Redefining Jews in Reconquest Spain (University Park, PA, 2012). Analyzes relationships between Northern and Southern European antisemitic traditions through examination of a wide range of medieval Spanish artworks produced from the 12th through the 14th centuries.Google Scholar
Reider, J., “Jews in Medieval Art,” in Essays on Antisemitism, ed. Pinson, K. S. (New York, 1942), 45‒56. Included in a volume on antisemitism published during the Second World War, this study was one of the earliest to argue that antisemitic works of art were constructed by the Church to poison public attitudes towards Jews.Google Scholar
Rowe, N., The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City: Synagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century (Cambridge, 2011). Demonstrates the potency of the Ecclesia and Synagoga motif in the 13th-century North with three case studies of monumental sculptural pairs analyzed in relation to local antisemitic attitudes and policies in their respective cathedral town locations.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
Rubin, M., Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (New Haven, CT, 1999). A historical account of the circulation across late medieval Europe, especially Germany, of antisemitic stories and images that helped shape multiple communities of violence.Google Scholar
Schreckenberg, H., The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History, trans. Bowden, John (London, 1996). A valuable compendium of over 1,000 antisemitic medieval artworks representative of all media, organized by theme and chronology.Google Scholar
Strickland, D. H., Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton, NJ, 2003). Influential study of pejorative representations of Jews, Muslims, Asians, and Black Africans in medieval Christian art that links them conceptually to principles of monstrosity inherited from Classical traditions.Google Scholar

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