A Window on Hatred and Persecution: Anti-Jewish Images in Medieval Europe

In 1987, while on a trip to Brussels, I ventured into the city’s major cathedral, jointly named for two Catholic figures, St. Michael and St. Gudula. Brussels is a lively city that is known for its modern as well as medieval features. It houses the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) and the European Commission, while attracting travelers with its picturesque Town Hall and other historic landmarks. As I meandered through the church’s Gothic interiors, I noticed a small table that held a stack of flyers. The text of the flyers directed the visitor’s eyes to a particular stained glass window and told the history of the window.

The details of the event are not fully clear, but it appears that some Christians in the late 1300s alleged that local Jews desecrated the Eucharistic Host—the wafer that represents (and, according to Catholic doctrine, is in actuality) the body of Jesus. The window shows an image of several Jewish men surrounding and stabbing the wafers. The Jewish figures are portrayed in demeaning and stereotypical terms with menacing facial expressions and exaggerated noses. Several of the men wield daggers, and the wafers were reported to have shed blood when stabbed. (The image and its history may be found on cathedral’s website at: www.cathedralisbruxellensis.be/en/history). At least six and possibly as many as 20 Jews in Brussels and neighboring Leuven were burned alive in 1370 as punishment for this alleged act of host desecration.

My experience that day in the cathedral played a formative

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role in my decision to study the history of power, prejudice, and persecution. I was surprised to learn that anyone, even in the pre-modern context of the Middle Ages, could possibly believe such an outlandish charge against Jews. Second, I was shocked that a visual marker, which in effect commemorates the brutal murder of Jews, would actually be located within the walls of a church.

It turns out, as I soon learned, that many scholars in recent decades have asked similar questions about the history of anti-Jewish attitudes in the medieval era and the manifestation of those prejudices in visual forms. Indeed, contemporary scholarship on the topic is vast, and interested readers may wish to explore more fully the works of the writers noted in this essay.

Cathedrals, Castles, and Christian Identity: Surveying the Medieval World

In order to examine the scholarship, it may be helpful to highlight a few points about historians’ understanding of the Middle Ages. Historians typically date Europe’s Middle Ages from approximately 500 CE to 1500 CE. After the fall of the Roman Empire in 476 CE, Europe experienced a number of momentous upheavals. Religious change was dramatic. As Christianity spread across the continent and British Isles, Christian beliefs became woven into politics, culture, and daily life, and the European landscape gradually filled with churches.

Castles were another defining feature. Local leaders (including various lords, counts, dukes, princes, and kings) were eager to consolidate their political power, and they constructed castles for the purpose of defense and as symbols of their power. As the medieval centuries progressed, many of these local leaders not only converted to Christianity, but also came to view themselves as ardent defenders of it.

For many medieval people, Christianity offered a message of hope as well as a sense of belonging. However, there was a downside to this sense of Christian community. The creation of an in-group (a majority in-group based largely on religious identity) correlated with the creation of out-groups and marginalized peoples. Secular and ecclesiastic leaders exploited and accelerated this process.

Power, Prejudice, Persecution: “Polluting” Groups as Threats to Social Order

Over the past half century, historians have explored in-depth

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the issue of medieval persecution and have attempted to analyze its various ideological, administrative, and iconographic underpinnings. Some prominent historians on this topic include Edward Peters, David Nirenberg, and Sara Lipton among many others. One influential work is Robert Ian Moore’s The Formation of a Persecuting Society (1986). Moore theorized that the medieval persecution of Jews, lepers, and prostitutes accompanied the process whereby various rulers expanded, consolidated, and centralized their power. In addition, Moore drew on the work of anthropologist Mary Douglas, author of Purity and Danger (1966), to posit that European authorities—from church leaders to princes and kings—harnessed and manipulated notions of purity and pollution to portray targeted groups as moral and even physical threats to the social order. To support this argument, Moore surveyed a range of historical documents to note that the language of pollution was applied in the 11^th, 12^th, and 13^th centuries to groups that were singled out for the purposes of ostracism and punishment.

In addition to portraying targeted groups as dangerous and “polluting,” some medieval leaders also promoted the notion of Jews as the enemies of both Jesus and of the entire living Christian community. Historians have also examined the development of anti-Jewish attitudes in relation to Christian anxieties about core tenets of the faith, especially those doctrines that centered on the meaning of the body of Jesus.

The Crusades (1096–1291) functioned additionally as a watershed moment. On the way to Jerusalem, some crusading Christian groups brutally attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland and elsewhere. Many historians have noted that the Pope’s rhetoric in his 1095 CE call to crusades was significant. The texts of Pope Urban II’s speeches present a stunning case study of how to create the Other (the Muslims in this case) in order to persuade a population to go to war. Upon capturing Jerusalem, it should be noted that Jews, along with Muslims, were slaughtered.

However, there are some scholars today who underscore the positive day-to-day interactions of medieval Jews and Christians. In Living Together, Living Apart: Rethinking Jewish-Christian Relations in the Middle Ages (2007), Jonathan Elukin argues that Christians and Jews largely co-existed and interacted peacefully for most of the Middle Ages, despite the proliferation of anti-Jewish legislation, images, and religious doctrines.

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Anti-Jewish Themes and Imagery: Lipton’s Observations

In recent decades, a number of scholars have examined the history of anti-Jewish iconography. In Dark Mirror: The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography (2014), historian Sara Lipton notes that Jewish figures, such as the Hebrew prophets, became recognizable as Jews in European Christian art in the 11^th century onwards. Some Christian artists, including manuscript illustrators, began to use an image of a “pointed hat” to signify Jewish males. Over the course of subsequent centuries, various Christian artists employed a variety of additional visual markers to identify particular figures as specifically Jewish and to convey negative messages. The repertoire of anti-Jewish iconography was extensive and included, for example, the following: images of devilish figures consorting with Jews (thus identified by pointy hats), drawings of Jews clasping purses, and illustrations of Jewish figures tormenting Jesus on the cross or stabbing the Eucharistic host. Although Lipton argues at one point that she believes that medieval Christian clerics and artists did not consciously aim to “create an anti-Jewish visual repertoire,” an argument that some scholars would dispute, she also acknowledges that this iconography had significant implications in the Middle Ages and early modern eras to stereotype Jews and portray them as enemies of Christian society.

Images as Teaching Tools and as Instruments of Insult

In medieval Europe, images served as a main teaching source. Literacy was the province of a tiny, educated group of elites, and books were relatively rare and expensive items in those centuries before the advent of the printing press (mid-1400s). Thus, the paintings, sculptures, and stained glass windows of Europe’s churches played an important role to impart myriad religious and cultural messages.

For instance, one prevalent anti-Jewish theme is that of the allegorical Ecclesia and Synagoga (“Church and Synagogue”). In this genre of images, Ecclesia is depicted as a regal woman, while a juxtaposed Synagoga is depicted as blindfolded and as, riding on a donkey, a symbol of stupidity, or touching a goat, a symbol of the devil. In one particularly insulting stained glass window that dates from the 1400s and is located in St. John’s Church in Werben, Germany, the hand of God seems to descend from the skies to pat the crowned head of Ecclesia while plunging a dagger into Synagoga. The maker of this window clearly aimed to send a triumphalist message about Christianity and, in so doing, equated Judaism with

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falsehood, defeat, and shame.

Some medieval European churches also contain, either within or outside on the exterior walls, drawings or sculptures of medieval Judensau imagery, wherein Jewish figures, sometimes depicted with pointy hats, are shown as engaged in obscene acts with pigs or pig-like creatures. Such images not only mocked Jewish kosher laws but also relied on viewers’ feelings of disgust to generate antipathy. Although many churches have removed these images in recent decades, Judensau imagery can still be found in some Christian sites. (The theme was used by anti-Semites and Nazi leaders well into the 20^th century.)

The same is true of illustrations depicting alleged blood libel and host desecrations. (Blood libel, a fantasy/allegation which held that Jews kidnapped and murdered gentile children, pivoted on a set of themes analogous to the host desecration fantasy.) Artworks featuring this theme were common in manuscripts and in some churches. Even the celebrated Italian Renaissance artist Paolo Uccello devoted several canvases to this topic in his set of paintings titled the Miracle of the Profaned Host (1467-68). One of these paintings shows a host teeming with bright red blood from the wounds inflicted on it. Depictions of host desecrations were and are particularly problematic for several reasons. One, they gave visual form to, and thereby seemed to substantiate, stories that were pure delusional fantasy. Two, by accusing Jews of such acts, Christian leaders could scapegoat them in times of crisis or achieve other strategic political objectives at the expense—and often the very lives—of those in the Jewish communities. Many incidents involving allegations of host desecration and blood libel led to the torture and execution of innocent Jews in the medieval and early modern eras, including cases where Christian authorities ordered Jews to be killed by fire.

The images themselves, whether painted before or after the execution of the accused Jewish individuals, were pernicious and exerted long-term cultural influence. Such images typically showed Jewish males (women were not generally included in such imagery) as cruel, fearsome, and enemies of Christian society. In times of political or social crisis, medieval elites could draw on such a repository of hateful associations to scapegoat and persecute the local Jewish communities for any number of social problems.

The window in the cathedral is a reminder of the ugly and

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pervasive history of Christian anti-Semitism in the Western world. Since the Second Vatican Council (1962-65), particularly since the 1965 decree titled Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), the Catholic Church has done a doctrinal “about-face” to emphasize the fundamental connections between Jews and Christians. Nostra Aetate formally repudiated the charge of deicide and condemned acts of anti-Semitism and other forms of religious hatred. Under the current pope, Francis, the church’s Commission for Religious Relations with Jews reaffirmed the framework of Nostra Aetate.

Yet the vestiges of the past still linger in parts of the European landscape. The visual evidence found in some medieval manuscripts and churches attests to a disturbing cultural dynamic that endured for centuries, leading to policies highly detrimental to Jewish communities. The stained glass window serves as a jolting reminder of this history. It is also a starting point for peering into the past and grappling with the tragic legacy of medieval prejudice and persecution.

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