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burned by the Romans so that its historical content – i.e. the string of Jewish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?
Compelling post, Matt! On the subject of scrolls, we might note that in many medieval images “Old Testament” prophets were portrayed with scrolls, visually connecting their discourse with what was an archaic form of textuality in the European Middle Ages. By contrast, the Evangelists were often shown writing in codices (or books). Thus, the history of media (transition from scroll to codex) comes to be bound up with providential history (transition from “letter” to “spirit,” “Old” to “New” Testaments, etc). I think that paying attention to the materiality of Jewish texts within the Siege of Jerusalem is a promising avenue for further inquiry. After all the “survival” of Jewish texts as part of the Bible is, as I suggested last week, one of the central problematics of Christianity and specifically Christian historical writing. Moreover, as you point out, Josephus, while no prophet or patriarch, does provide part of the content for the very story being recounted by the Siege poet. Josephus, the “good” Jew, the Jew who can be allowed to survive, can be understood as a partial analog to the books of the Hebrew Bible and the prophets and patriarchs responsible for them, albeit in a more secular framework. Josephus’s role as the healer of Titus’s bizarre affliction might again point us to the necessity of the “good Jew” to the imperial body-politic and the corporate body of the Church….
ReplyDeleteA final context we might throw into the mix is that of Roman historiography. The ugly, violent history of Rome asserts itself beginning at line 897, with the atrocities of Nero. (And, as Dan pointed out last week, Roman historical writing is suggested by the first two stanzas of the poem.) How might we place this secular tradition of imperial historiography in relationship to Jewish textuality as it is portrayed in the poem, to Josephus and the historical record he will go on to produce, and to the poet’s own efforts, which in some sense want to construct and reinforce a continuity with Rome?