A few additional reading questions

Hi everyone! If you'd like to comment this week, feel free to post on Brad's thoughts (below) or in response to any of the following prompts.

* "Litel" is a frequently (almost obsessively) repeated word in the "Prioress's Tale." What are the meanings and effects of "litelnes" in the poem?

* Discuss the "justice" that is meted out to the Jews. What do you make of the verdict of the provost? What is the significance of the community that is reconstituted at the tale's end? How could we productively compare it with either The Siege of Jerusalem or The Croxton Play of the Sacrament?

* What is the significance of song, or music, in the "Prioress's Tale"? How is song defined in relation to language or to poetry or to prayer? What are the specific powers of song in the tale?

* Look over Fradenburg's close reading of the "Prioress's Tale" (pp 91-108 of her essay). Disagree with, or qualify, or expand upon one of her specific interpretive claims about the poem. Ground your point in textual evidence.

HATE:Where did it all begin?

Notions concerning the Jew considered as a singular being versus a whole and the hating of Jews as a standard social convention are both ideas we’ve discussed as a class and the latter is of particular interest to me. In Beckwith’s article, this conventional anti-semitism is challenged by contrasting interpretations of the bleeding of the host: The bleeding host shrines of the late Middle Ages, which ‘usually had their basis in miracles involving hosts which began to bleed’, were often claimed to be the site of ‘a claimed act of profanation or ritual murder by members of Jewish communities’. Among the many questions Fradenburg poses in the article, one asks about the nature of this anti-semitism in the beginning of the Middle Ages since an understanding of the Prioress’s Tale and other texts can only be gained if full knowledge of this hate and its growth can be traced back to its origins.

It’s interesting to consider because the Jews are hated by their fellow man while the Christians are loved by Mary, the mother of Jesus, and consequently Jesus Christ himself. We’ve read text with the foundation of anti-semitism built upon the premise that hate for the Jews is grounded in the religious beliefs. It’s clear through Mary’s actions in the Prioress Tale that a a sort of favoritism for the Christians exists while the bodies of the Jews are literally torn apart and displayed as they hang. “My throte is kut unto my nekke boon,” Seyde this child, “and as by wey of kynde I should have dyed, ye, longe tyme agon. But Jesu Crist, as ye in books fynde, Wil that his glorie laste and be in mynde, And for the worship of his Mooder deere Yet may I synge O Alma loude and cleere. The reference to the mind and the body in the slitting of the throat, allude to an all-encompassing devoutness to Christ and religion. It’s as if

This challenging of the norm can also be extended towards our female protagonist as the characters of women are traditionally characterized by their treachery against man. The contrast of fact and fantasy becomes the primary issue in Fradenburg’s article and begs consideration for the justification of why this fact is fact. In light of the contrasts between the perception of the Jews we’ve encountered in multiple texts, can any be found in the Prioress’s Tale to suggest it isn’t completely dominated by  anti-Semitism? Considering contrasts, what are people’s thoughts on this mother (a woman) and her relationship to the violence in the text (indirectly directed towards her)?

Deal with the devil

In The Play of the Sacrament, economic exchanges bring characters together and spark the main action of the play. Of all the dichotomies in this play, the most interesting to me was the shift that both main characters undergo as they evolve from merchants into Christians. There isn’t much that distinguishes Aristorius from Jonathas. They are both very powerful men who have accumulated massive fortunes and their influence extends over a huge chunk of the world. The one main factor that separates them is that Aristorius is a Christian and Jonathas is a Jew. Even when they’re haggling over the price of the host, their dialogue isn’t very different,

Aristorius: Now sey me, Jonathus, by this light,/ W[h]at payment therefor wollde yow me make?

Jonathas: Forty pound, and pay it ful right,/ Evyn for that Lorde sake.

Aristorius: Nay, nay Jonathas, there-agen/ I w[o]ld not for an hundder pownd! (308-312).

After this economic exchange, the play draws from the events of the Last Supper. Aristorius (in lines 340-344) and Jonathas (lines 340-344, 402-404) participate in reenacting events of the Passion. Neither plays an innocent role and they both serve to jeopardize the sacrament. Historically, this is where the shift between Christianity and Judaism begins, which could explain their similarities up to this point, but Aristorius plays the part of Judas even though he’s a Christian. Jonathas and his companions play the role of converts, ultimately forming a yin-yang in relation to Aristorius.

When his wealth seemed like a blessing or sign of approval from God, he sells the host and becomes the archetypal traitor. Jonathas’ economic success can be attributed to anti-Semitic stereotypes. Their flaws both spark tension in the narrative and calls into question the moral decisions that the characters make.  The audience also has to make a choice in deciding whether or not these characters deserve redemption. 

The sacrament symbolically represents a spiritual unification though Jesus. Aristorius and Jonathas both transgress the holiness of that symbol and they both get forgiven. Which one is more Christian at the end? Aristorius spreads Christianity beyond the physical world of Christendom, but he plays Judas before he decides to live humbly at the conclusion of the play. Jonathas plays the stereotypical, negative Jew but he and his fellows convert and become Christians at the end. They're both demonized but they're both forgiven in the end. This play does a lot to draw a line between a life in a moral grey area and illustrate the meaning of being Christian and how that lifestyle is superior to any other. Is this the best choice for two men who have built their lifestyles on trading and have thrived in a zone ambiguous morality? What does this say about the Christian God (and, for that matter, the world of Christendom) as personified in the Play of the Sacrament? 

Boundaries of the Play

In large part, The Play of the Sacrament offers the form of play as an interesting medium to re-enact the death and resurrection of Christ. With Jonathas the Jew as the ring leader of the perpetrators who desecrate the host, the play considers the boundaries erected by society to be irrelevant in the presence of Christ.  This boundary between symbol and reality is further broken down when the host, which is meant to be a symbol of Christ’s body, literally bleeds when it’s boiled and roasted. Even when they boil the host, in hopes that this will prove the absence of Christ, instead it sticks to the hand: “Out, out, it werketh me wrake!/ I may not avoid it owt of my hond!/ I wille goo drenche me in a lake.” Sarah Beckwith’s article introduces interesting historical context with which to consider this act of boiling the host. “Jews, in the fantasy of some Christians, boiled communion wafers in oil and water and stole and bought hosts to desecrate and profane the body of Christ. The bleeding host shrines of the late Middle Ages, which ‘usually had their basis in miracles involving host s which began to bleed’, were often claimed to be the site of ‘a claimed act of profanation or ritual murder by members of Jewish communities.” Here the bleeding of the host is depicted as both a miracle and a murder. The boundary separating life and death, one Christ crossed when he resurrected.

This trend of defying boundaries continues until the end of the play when the narrator at the end of the play finally addresses Jonathas the Jew as “Ser Jonathas” as if to address a certain transcendence between his former self and his newfound Christian faith.

Jonathas lead his men as they put Christ to a new Passion and despite the atrocities of their torturous acts are referred to as a Passion. According Beckwith, “the work of the play is to convert all its outsiders to insiders” and seamlessly does so.  With “Passion” as a symbol for the torture of the host and the reborn Jonathas into an almost priestly figure, it’s as if the stolen host could never be stolen because to do so is to remove it from where it ‘s meant to be, in the hands of those who truly believe in the miracles of Christ.

The nature of Christ is to reveal the truth to those who doubt because these are the only instances in which we make contact with Christ. Christ’s second miracle is to heal the deformed hand of Jonathas. The dismembered hand was a physical symbol of the Jew’s sin and Christ healed him.

Do these boundaries depicted serve us in our understanding of the nature of sign and symbol? How does it connect with this idea of the Jew as an archetypal outsider?

Jews harming Jews to screw with Christians who believe in a Jew...wtf.

Before I actually start the main meat of my post, I just wanted to comment on my confusion at the Jews in "The Play of the Sacrament," specifically at their worship of "Machomyght" (Mohammed, the Muslim high prophet). Unfortunately, there is no Wikipedia page for this text (DAMN YOU INTERNET), so my research had to be slightly deeper into the internet than I'm used to. For one thing, it wrongly portrays Mohammed as the "god" of the Muslim faith, rather than just their main prophet. Another interesting piece of info that I found linked the transferring of this Mohammed worship to the Jews as simply another way for Medieval Christians to both express anti-Semitism, as well as distance themselves further from the Jews, by essentially bunching them together with the seemingly barbaric Muslims. Anyway, just something that threw me off when I read this the first time. Thanks internet.

Now, for my real post. I will be focusing on Kruger's article, "The Bodies of Jews in the Late Middle Ages." It is understood from Scripture that Jesus' salvation for mankind came from the torture and destruction of his earthly body, i.e., the body of a Jew. What many Christians seem to forget, or at least unfortunately overlook, is that Jesus was himself a Jew. To quote Annie (a Jewish girl) from the show Community, during the first Christmas episode of the show, upon picking up a Baby Jesus figurine, "We know you were one of us!" For one thing, the fact that Jesus was a Jew demonstrates the impossibility of EVER completely separating the two faiths. But that's beside the point. In his article, Kruger focuses on the incredibly physical aspect of late Medieval Christian literature, specifically, the depiction and treatment of bodies. "The Play of the Sacrament" shows us a rich Jew (stereotype) purchasing the Eucharist from a wealthy Christian man, in order to disprove the fact that it is, indeed, the body of Jesus Christ. Kruger makes note of the Jewish practice (or, at least, the literary depiction of this) of "destroying other (Christian) bodies and using body parts (especially blood) to heal their own diseases and perform other magical acts." (Kruger, p. 303) In attempting to destroy the Eucharist, the most Christian body of all (and the foundation on which the whole faith is based), Jonathas and his cronies are definitely guilty of this literary stereotype for Jews: "Yea, yet they saye as fals, I dare laye my hedde: How they that be ded shall com again to Judgement, And owr drefull Judge shal be this same brede, And how life everlasting them shuld be lent." (ll. 433-436) "Now, serys, ye have rehersyd the substaunce of their lawe, But this brede I wold might be put in a prefe, Whethere this be he that in Bosra of us had awe." (ll. 441-443)
Clearly, this is heresy at its finest, especially with agency for this attributed to Aristorye, for selling them the host in the first place. The irony does not stop there, though, and my main question is, how ironic really is this play? We see, in accordance with Kruger's contention of Jewish destruction of Christian bodies, Jonathas healed by the same Christian body he destroyed, which ties into the "healing" described by Kruger. While the play is relatively straightforward, and it seems like quite a bit of propaganda for the Christian faith as one willing to forgive and heal, the amount of ironic scenes where the Jews are, in essence destroying both a Christian as well as a Jewish body, leads me to believe that this is even more anti-Semitic than I originally thought.

Understanding the Spectacle: Drama and the Crossing of Boundaries

The Croxton Play of the Sacrament covers a subject that was familiar to the men and women of the late medieval era. Plays on the Passion of Christ and other Biblical scenes were common and from our modern perspective it is easy to forget that the “special effects” of these plays, like the bleeding oven and the voice of Christ issuing from his image, would have been much more effective than if we were to see them onstage today. But this is not because the men and women of this time were too ignorant to realize that the hand nailed to the Cross was not real; rather, the reactions would have stemmed from seeing something so sacred, i.e. the Host, desecrated, brought low, tortured and made to bleed. Seeing such a thing would have brought on a very visceral reaction from the devout. As the introduction notes, “the audience also perceived an essential symbolic relationship between dramatic presentation and ritual reenactment.” (755) Something of the sacred was brought into this drama performed by secular persons. This mix of sacred and secular, Christian and other, can be seen in the persons of Jonathas and his Jews. As noted by Beckwith in her article ‘Ritual, Church and Theatre: Medieval Dramas of the Sacred Body,’ Jonathas helps to re-enact the Passion of Christ upon the host, at times acting as a priest-like or Christ-like figure. “On these wordys there law growndyd hath he, That he said on Shere-Thursday at his sopere: he brake the brede and said “Accipite,” And gave his disciplys them for to chere. And more he said to them there While they were toegethere all and sum, Sitting at the table soo clere: “Comedite, hoc est corpus meum.”” (lines 397-404) Jonathas practically re-enacts the Mass for his fellow Jews in words eerily reminiscent of what is said during the Consecration of the Mass. Rather than consuming that bread in a sacred act, Jonathas reverts back to profanity, accosting and inflicting a series of tortures on the bread. “When ye have all smityn, my stroke shal be sene: With this same daggere that is so stif and strong In the middys of this print I thinke for to prene! One lashe I shall him lende or it be long.” (lines 465-468) Just as the play cavorts with the boundaries between secular and sacred and makes Jonathas both hated Jew and respected priest, so is the Mass inverted to become a violent spectacle that would have spoken deeply to its medieval audience.

Drawing the Line

Both Van Court and Nicholson’s pieces seem to articulate a perspective which seeks to challenge the popular scholarly treatment of Jews in medieval literature. Both pieces of criticism share the goal of seeking to move past an unsatisfactory, reductive understanding of the portrayal of Jews in medieval literature. Van Court asserts that, “The social pathology of anti- Judaism, inflected as it is with social, cultural, economic, and theological concerns, is complexly pluralistic, and amidst the multilayered anti-Judaisms of medieval narratives we can tease out nuanced exceptions to univocality” (294). This thesis is decidedly a response to the pervasive viewpoint that the Jews simply constitute a moral and physical punching bag on which the normative power of Christian values asserts its superiority. It does seem implausible for the Jews to occupy such a one-dimensional role in the text, however looking at other war-centric narratives in medieval literature such as The Song of Roland, it is clear that the absolute one-sided rejection of a cultural “other” was an accepted narrative technique. Van Court concerns her treatment of the Jews in The Siege of Jerusalem with constructing historical evidence of the “confusion regarding the place of the Jews and Judaism in a well-ordered Christendom” (298).  She argues that instead of simply reducing the Jews to a one-dimensional caricature; Christian attitudes were conflicted between upholding the Jew as a traditional receptacle of ancient Christian virtue and reducing them to the sub-human level observable in The Siege of Jerusalem. Nicholson similarly laments how the tale is “ruined by rank anti-semitism” from a literary point of view (446). He is more concerned with, “the symbolic valency of the Jew” which implies that the text revolves around “political acts of exclusion as much as religious rationalization” (450). Both writers arrive at conclusions which are defined by their consideration of liminality. In The Seige of Jerusalem, Christendom is defining its cultural boarders in violent, decisive fashion after years of ambivalent treatment of the Jews. There is certainly textual evidence to support this reading, but do you agree? Do you see the drawing of a new cultural border in The Seige of Jerusalem or is a staunchly entrenched one merely being reinforced?

Anti-Semitism or Blind Fury

Suggests Jews may have functioned as placeholders for other non-believers so the apparent anti-Semitism is not so steadfastly grounded and celebrated in the piece.  He notes that even by the genre being a romance, the poem is preconditioned to fulfill certain qualities that appear overtly anti-Semitic but in fact serve a greater literary function.  The opposing sides are polarized to Good versus Evil and as much as Vespasian and Titus are valorized for their efforts for the sake of Christendom, so too must the Jewish people undergo the stark dehumanization as enemies of the Church (460).  So in this sense, perhaps the Siege of Jerusalem does present an alternative to blatant hatred of the Jewish people.  Instead of renouncing Judaism, necessitating their violent destruction, there is a greater calling of celebrating the Church in the land of Jerusalem inspiring the justification of the Crusades.  The Jews are simply burdened with the role as adversary, their fates already sealed by the prophetic proclamation of Christ.  The extreme treatment of the Jews serves only in completion of the Christian indoctrination taken as inevitable history.  Thus it does not stem from an inherent cultural hatred.

From within the text itself, beneath the obscene renditions of violence, there is one point where Titus refers to the battle as a sort of hunt.  He suggests “We scholde with hunger hem honte, to hoke out of toun, / Without weme or wounde     or any wo elles” (879-880).  He goes on “For we wol hunten at the hart     this hethes aboute, / And hure racches renne     amonge this rowe bonkes, / Ride to the rever     and rere up the foules, / Se faucouns fle,     fele of the beste” (889-892).  Livingston explains that it is true that besiegers would in fact go hunting and hawking during the siege.  This is reminiscent of chivalric nobility.  However, it’s Titus suggesting first that they hunt the Jewish people with hunger which is most striking.  This reference to both the literal and metaphorical sense of hunting elicits a sense once again of the dehumanizing qualities attributed to the Jews.  However, the nobility of hunting wasnot bound to that which is hunted.  Instead, nobility was found within the act itself – in its aristocratic interaction, its religious parallels, and mimicry of war.  As a textual device, we have mimicry of war within a poetic iteration of war.  Thus we have an internal structural emphasis on the act of war and violence as the precedent by which ends were justified – as long as it existed within the Christian domain.  In addition, once again, what was hunted was secondary at best.  In this instance, the Jews took place of the adversary or what was hunted.  But this does not arise from a stigma, but rather a necessity.  Christendom required an “other” upon which to impose itself in the valorization of God and validation of violent execution.

So, although first impressions certainly denote an extreme anti-Semitic voice to the poem, it would appear as though, priority was at all times given to violence in and of itself.  The point was domination, assertion, an imposition of will.  Given the context and characters to play their roles, God would be pleased... agree?

Books and Scrolls in the _Siege of Jerusalem_

            Roger Nicholson focuses on the ways in which bodies and buildings are destroyed so as to lay the foundation of Christian Europe, but he nearly ignores another crucial object of violence – the scroll from which Caiaphas had read before the first battle between Jews and Romans (l. 481). His article mentions the destruction of this text only in passing: “just so, going into battle, Caiaphas exhorts his host with readings of the national history; once he is captured, the rolls from which he read are taken by the Christian army of the Romans and burnt” (Nicholson 471). The “rolles that they redde on, and alle the riche bokes” (l. 595) appear to be destroyed along with numerous other captured objects after Caiaphas and the “bew-clerkes” (glossed as fine clerks or scholars) are taken into custody. As Livingston notes, the fact that the Siege-poet knows, independent of his sources, what a Torah scroll looks like is an interesting detail and perhaps suggests familiarity with actual Jewish texts (Livingston 98). It is also possible, then, that he knew the significance of this textual object to Jewish faith and practice and sees its destruction here as a crucial element of weakening Jerusalem’s power and the Jews’ claim on history and tradition.

            The destruction of the “rolles that they redde on” is reminiscent of the biblically-noted destruction of a prophetic scroll. This is noted in Jeremiah 36, in a passage with which the Siege-poet would likely have been familiar, especially if, as Van Court suggests, he was an Augustinian canon. Here, the wicked king of Judah, Jehoiakim, is annoyed at the contents of Jeremiah’s prophetic scroll and burns it in the sight of his officials and attendants. The scroll is ritually destroyed so that the prophecies it contains – namely, the prediction of the destruction of Jerusalem by the Babylonians under Nebuchadnezzar II – do not come to pass. Similarly, here, the scroll is burned by the Romans so that its historical content – i.e. the string of Jewish victories Caiaphas had recounted earlier – do not perpetuate into the present. Both the Romans and the biblical personages acknowledge that the text itself has a certain power and that the destruction of the written word can erase the history of a people and/or its future prospects.

            At the end of the poem, it is noted that “Josophus, the gentile clerke, ajorned was to Rome:/ There of this mater and mo he made fayre bokes” (1325-6). The Siege-poet is very aware that the history of this siege has been written by the victors, with whom, as Van Court notes, Josephus is explicitly and forcefully associated throughout the poem. The Jewish writers and readers, however, have all been eliminated; the scribes (“ledes”), for example, were indicted along with Caiaphas in lines 693-700. It is possibly suggested by such details that the poet recognizes how the survival of certain literate individuals could have affected the ways in which this history/romance is now represented. Does this implicit acknowledgment of the bias inherent in “textualizing” history undermine the Siege-poet’s own work or indicate that it is a necessary antidote to pro-Roman histories that have heretofore dominated or, of course, might it do something else entirely?