Book contents
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City
- PART I IMAGINING JEWS AND JUDAISM IN LIFE AND ART
- PART II ART AND LIFE ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL STAGE – THREE CASE STUDIES
- Introduction to Part II: Nature, Antiquity, and Sculpture in the Early Thirteenth Century
- 3 Reims: “Our Jews” and the Royal Sphere
- 4 Bamberg: The Empire, the Jews, and Earthly Order
- 5 Strasbourg: Clerics, Burghers, and Jews in the Medieval City
- Epilogue: The Afterlife of an Image
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Epilogue: The Afterlife of an Image
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 05 January 2012
- Frontmatter
- Contents
- List of Illustrations
- Acknowledgments
- Abbreviations
- Introduction: The Jew, the Cathedral, and the Medieval City
- PART I IMAGINING JEWS AND JUDAISM IN LIFE AND ART
- PART II ART AND LIFE ON THE ECCLESIASTICAL STAGE – THREE CASE STUDIES
- Introduction to Part II: Nature, Antiquity, and Sculpture in the Early Thirteenth Century
- 3 Reims: “Our Jews” and the Royal Sphere
- 4 Bamberg: The Empire, the Jews, and Earthly Order
- 5 Strasbourg: Clerics, Burghers, and Jews in the Medieval City
- Epilogue: The Afterlife of an Image
- Notes
- Glossary
- Bibliography
- Index
Summary
This book has told the story of the entrance of the Ecclesia-Synagoga motif into the public arena of the medieval city. An iconographic trope rooted in ancient classical conventions early on conveyed personifications of Church and Synagogue as rival queens who vied for authority over the earth, the older Synagoga finally ceding her title to the young Ecclesia. In early theological texts, the paired figures concretized a developing theology based on the notion of Christian supersession over a fundamental but outworn Judaism. The earliest images of the theme envisioned Synagoga as a figure whose time had passed, but who was essential to Christian history. In Carolingian ivories the two personae both appear as exalted, sometimes regal, antique matrons, the Synagogue's exclusion from salvation signaled, if at all, only by her own retreat from the crucified Christ. Such imagery suited a mental landscape where theologians had limited contacts with real Jews and could thus cleave to the Augustinian notion that Jews preserved Old Testament scripture for the good of Christians. As more Jews moved to northern Europe and expanding urban milieux promoted increased contacts between Christians and Jews, clerics came to realize that actual Jews were far from Augustine's ideal. The Jews of twelfth-century northern Europe were intellectually creative, financially successful, and sometimes openly contemptuous of the dominant Christian society.
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- The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval CitySynagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century, pp. 238 - 250Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2011