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9780805079104

Dark Mirror The Medieval Origins of Anti-Jewish Iconography

by
  • ISBN13:

    9780805079104

  • ISBN10:

    0805079106

  • Format: Hardcover
  • Copyright: 2014-11-04
  • Publisher: Metropolitan Books
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Summary


In Dark Mirror, Sara Lipton offers a fascinating examination of the emergence of anti-Semitic iconography in the Middle Ages

The straggly beard, the hooked nose, the bag of coins, and gaudy apparel—the religious artists of medieval Christendom had no shortage of virulent symbols for identifying Jews. Yet, hateful as these depictions were, the story they tell is not as simple as it first appears.

Drawing on a wide range of primary sources, Lipton argues that these visual stereotypes were neither an inevitable outgrowth of Christian theology nor a simple reflection of medieval prejudices. Instead, she maps out the complex relationship between medieval Christians' religious ideas, social experience, and developing artistic practices that drove their depiction of Jews from benign, if exoticized, figures connoting ancient wisdom to increasingly vicious portrayals inspired by (and designed to provoke) fear and hostility.

At the heart of this lushly illustrated and meticulously researched work are questions that have occupied scholars for ages—why did Jews becomes such powerful and poisonous symbols in medieval art? Why were Jews associated with certain objects, symbols, actions, and deficiencies? And what were the effects of such portrayals—not only in medieval society, but throughout Western history? What we find is that the image of the Jew in medieval art was not a portrait of actual neighbors or even imagined others, but a cloudy glass into which Christendom gazed to find a distorted, phantasmagoric rendering of itself.

Author Biography

Sara Lipton is an Associate Professor of History at SUNY Stony Brook and the author of Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée, which won the Medieval Academy of America’s John Nicholas Brown prize. The recipient of fellowships from the New York Public Library’s Cullman Center and the Metropolitan Museum of Art, her writing has appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, and The Huffington Post.

Table of Contents

Illustrations xiii
 
Introduction
In a Mirror, Darkly 1
 
Chapter One
Mirror of the Fathers:
The Birth of a Jewish Iconography, ca. 1015-1100 13
 
Chapter Two
Blinding Light and Blinkered Witness, ca. 1100-1160 55
 
Chapter Three
Jewish Eyes:
Loveless Looking and the Unlovely Christ, ca. 1160-1220 95
 
Chapter Four
All the World a Picture:
Jews and the Mirror of Society, ca. 1220-1300 129
 
Chapter Five
The Jew's Face:
Flesh, Sight, and Sovereignty, ca. 1230-1350 169
 
Chapter Six
Where Are the Jewish Women? 201
 
Chapter Seven
The Jew in the Crowd:
Surveillance and Civic Vision, ca. 1350-1500 239
 
Conclusion 279
 
Abbreviations 283
Notes 285
Acknowledgments 371
Index 375

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