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Medieval Drama as Documentation: “Real Presence” in the Croxton Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  07 July 2009

Extract

In the fifteenth-century East Anglian play, The Conversion of Ser Jonathas the Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament, five Jews desecrate a host to challenge the Christian doctrine of transubstantiation. In the play's image of Jewish characters, fifteenth-century English Christianity constructed an ethnic, religious, and cultural alterity. A Jewish merchant, Jonathas, bribes a Christian merchant, Aristorius, to steal a consecrated host from a local church. Five Jewish characters then stab the host, nail it to a pillar, boil it, and bake it in an oven over a fire. In this last trial, the oven bursts open to reveal the image of Christ as a bloody child. At the sight of the Christ, and upon hearing his reproach, the Jews confess and are baptized into the Christian faith.

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Articles
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Copyright © American Society for Theatre Research 1997

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References

1. The title generally used in anthologies is from the last lines of the manuscript: “Thus endyth the Play of the Blyssyd Sacrament.” However, between the banns and the performance text, the title appears as “the Play of the Conversion of Ser Jonathas The Jewe by the Myracle of the Blissed Sacrament.” The second title, as used in this paper, emphasizes the medieval focus on conversion of non-Christians.

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