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?