"Why praise Jews; History and Satire in the Middle Ages," Journal of Medieval History XII (1986), pp. 291-296.

Why praise Jews: satire and history in the middle ages

 

by Robert Levine

 

Modern readers, including highly sophisticated, professional historians, have not always understood that medieval praise of Jews, in its rare occurrences, never signifies categorical approval of Israelites. Instead, such praise functions as a condemnation, sometimes explicit, sometimes implicit, of Chris­tians whose behavior is not even equal to that of the lowest members of society. The elaborate story told by Richard of Devizes about the murder, to­wards the end of the twelfth century, of a young Christian by a Jew at Winchester provides a clear illustration of the problem.

In attacking groups, medieval writers of his­torical literature often praised another group, in whose praise they had no interest; in fact, the group being praised might be generally despised. Jews are pitied by Wykes, for example (Luard 1869:142-3), during a thir­teenth-century pogrom, not for their own sakes, but to build up a sense of Simon de Montfort's horrible greed; the operative emotion in Richard of Newburgh's descrip­tion of riots against the Jews in London is repugnance towards the mob, not positive feeling for Jews (Howlett 1884:294-5); King Richard is outraged that his ceremony is being spoiled, and when the Jews are attack­ed at Lyme Regis in 1190, Richard of New-burgh is upset, not at the act itself, but at the motivation: greed (Howlett 1884:308). In fairness to Richard, his story contains no admirable characters in these transactions, however, as Cecil Roth has demonstrated, "at no other time in the bloodstained record of the middle ages were the English horrors of 1189-90 surpassed" (1964:90) .

A brief anecdote in Gerald of Wales' Itine­rarium Cambriae, in which a Jew and some Christians exchange bad jokes in poor Latin while traveling together, is all that H.G. Richardson can offer as evidence of "good will and moral sociableness between Jews and Christians" in the middle ages (1960:47). Otherwise, categorical, nearly universal, hatred of Jews characterizes me­dieval literature, particularly among the historians; in the light of the supreme bruta­lity towards Jews displayed by Englishmen of the late twelfth century, the strange anec­dote involving Jews told by Richard of De­vizes, in his chronicle covering September 1189 to October 1192, would seem to be a virtual hapax legoumenon, at least as Antonia Gransden describes it (1964:251)

Richard mentions in a satirical manner the characte­ristics of a number of English towns but is most elo­quent on Winchester, to him the most favored place in England. Richard's choice of a Jew as the vehicle for the panegyric is curious and seems to reflect pro-­Jewish sentiments.

One may only make such a suggestion by suppressing the rest of the anecdote, as well as a number of other passages in Richard's book; Nancy Partner is closer to the truth when she asserts that Richard's text is a parody (1977:177):

It would be a grave mistake to think Richard was concerned to vindicate the Jews, about whom he has nothing good to say; he simply took the occasion of the Winchester case to satirize, in passing, a popular hagiographical book.

His nineteenth-century editor recognized Richard's tone towards Jews, when he de­scribed "the ludicrous account of the alle­ged crucifixion of a boy by the Winchester Jews", as "satire disguised as fact" (How­lett 1884:cxxii), but he does not designate the object of the satire. Clearly, the anec­dote is an involved one, rich in literary allu­sions, and tricked out in a complex literary form that makes determining the tone a task more strenuous than that which normally faces the reader of medieval chronicles. The problem resembles the one solved by B.J. Whiting, when he demonstrated that the Tows of the heron meant exactly the opposite of what everyone had thought it meant.

Ironic praise and blame is, of course, one of the lessons classical rhetoricians took pleasure in teaching. Quintillian illustrates irony by advising the orator to criticize un­der a pretence of praise, or praise under a pretence of blame (Inst. Orat. 8.6.54): laudis adsimulatione detrahere et vituperationis laudare concessum est. Isidore follows suit (Lindsay 1911:2.21.41): ironia ...fit autem cum laudamus cum quern aituperare volumus, aut aituperamus quem laudare volumus. Lucan, who was often considered an historian and not a poet in the middle ages, had composed an enco­mium of Nero, that many medieval com­mentators understood to be ironic (Marti 1956), although not every medieval reader was convinced that Lucan intended the praise as blame.

    English readers are most familiar with praise intended as blame from their read­ings in Chaucer's Canterbury tales when the narrator praises the Monk for his hearty ap­petite, the Friar because, "he was an esy man to yeve penaunce," when he says of the greedy, syphilitic Somnour:

He was a gentil harlot and a kynde;

A bettre felawe sholde men noght fynde,

when he calls the Pardoner, "gentil," when he calls the gold-loving Doctour of Physic, "a verray, parfit praktisour," and when the Clerk praises the attitude of the Wife of Bath, all of this praise is certainly blame, not merely of the pilgrims as individuals, but of the profession, or category to which they belong.

Richard of Devizes' most recent editor, John Appleby, describes the Latin historian in terms that might equally well apply to Chaucer: "mocking, irreverent, witty, and rather cynical" (1963:11). Unlike Chaucer, however, Richard unequivocally despises the French (Appleby 1963:14); his attitude towards the Jews, however, appears to have been more difficult to determine, although he refers to them as "bloodsuckers", and associated them with vomit and excrement in the early pages of his chronicle, signifi­cantly, in the course of ironically praising Winchester for its tolerance of Jews during a time of pogroms throughout England (Appleby 1963:4):

sola tantum suis vermibus pepercit Wintonia. Populus prudens et providus ac civitas semper civili­ter agens. Nichil unquam egit prepopere, nichil plus metuens quam penitere; rerum exitus estimat ante principia. Noluit indigeriem qua premebatur im­parata periculo sui per partes violenter evomere, cavitque visceribus, dissimulans interim modeste (vel physice) molestiam, donec oportuno medendi tcm­pore totam liceat sibi morbi materiam simul et semel egerere.

Winchester alone spared its worms. They were a pru­dent and far-sighted people and a city that always behaved in a civilized manner. They never did any­thing over-hastily, for fear they might repent of it later, and they looked to the end of things rather than to the beginnings. They did not want partially to vomit forth the undigested mass violently and at their peril, even though they were urged to do so, when they were not ready. They hid it in their bowels, mod­estly (or naturally) dissimulating their disgust mean­while, till at an opportune time for remedies they could cast out all the morbid matter at once.

By translating principia as "beginnings," Appleby loses the lexical confusion with "principles" that would underscore the irony of the passage; however, the passage, even in translation, hardly offers unambigu­ous praise, and certainly undermines Gransden's assertions that Winchester was Richard's favorite town, and that he had some sympathy for Jews.

When he tells the story of the boy-martyr, Richard begins by describing a scene in which a Jew advises a young Christian boy in France to leave his native land for what he believes to be greener pastures in Eng­land. Clearly taking advantage of youthful innocence, the Jew envisions the boy as a scapegoat, delivering at the same time Ovi­dian (Fasti 1, 493) advice in the best rhetor­ical tradition (Appleby 1963:65):

Et impositis manibus super capud eius, ac si esset hircus emissarius, post stridores quosdam gutturis et tacitas imprecationes, iam de preda securus, adiecit: 'Forti patria est, ut piscibus equor, ut volucri vacuo quicquid in erbe patet'.

He put his hands on his head, as though he were a scapegoat, and, after several deep groans and silent prayers, certain already of the victim, he said: `Be of stout heart; forget your people and your native land, for every country "is a fatherland to the strong man, as the sea is to the fishes and as whatever appears in the empty sky is to the bird".'

The anonymous Jew goes on to give mock-­fatherly advice to the boy, denouncing Lon­don (in words borrowed from Horace Satire 1.2), as well as a number of other English cities, reserving all his praise, such as it is, for Winchester. The praise he delivers, however, certainly must be taken cum grano salis, as one takes the praise delivered by Erasmus' Mora. According to the Jew, Win­chester is Judeorum Jerosolima, where Jews enjoy tranquility, where bread and wine are not only plentiful, but free, and where everyone behaves ideally, even ecclesiastics and women (Appleby 1963:67):

Surit in ca tante monachi misericordie et mansuetu­dninis, clerus consillii et libertatis, cives cibilitatis et fidei, femine pulcritudinis et pudicitie, quod parum me retinet quin ego vadam illuc cum talibus Christ­ianis fieri Christianus.

Monks are there of such mercifulness and gentleness, clerks of such wisdom and frankness, citizens of such courteousness and good faith, women of such beauty and modesty, that for a little I would go there myself and be a Christian among such Christians.

Virtue in Winchester, then, is great enough to lead to the conversion of the Jews; clearly Richard is playing with commonplaces here, combining the adynaton with the stock­-in-trade of panegyrists, as his crafty Jew fabricates a utopia for the credulous imagi­nation of his intended victim.

However, the Jew qualifies his vision, ad­mitting that people in Winchester have one vice, and only one: they lie. If a competition for liars were held, Richard's Jew contends that the people of Winchester would defeat even scholars and - Jews (Appleby 1963:67):

Unum est vitium et illud solum, cui de consuetudine nimis indulget. Salva pace literratorum dixerim et Judeorum, Wentani mentiuntur ut vigiles. Nusquam cnim sub celo de tam facili tot rumores falsi fabrican­tur ut ibi; alias per omnia sunt veraces.

There is one vice there and one alone, which is by custom greatly indulged in. I would say, with all due respect to the learned men and to the Jews, that the people of Winchester lie like sentries. Indeed, nowhere else under heaven are so many false rumours made up so easily as there; otherwise they are truthful in all things.

Now the plot returns, and the boy goes off to England, to work in Winchester until he is murdered, apparently on the eve of Good Friday, near the Jew's Passover.

When the boy's friend accuses the Jew of murder, crying out to an assembled crowd in the words of Lamentations 1.12, videte si est dolor sicut dolor meus (Appleby 1963:68), the Jew is brought to trial swiftly, but unsuccessfully. A woman who saw the boy go down into the Jew's storeroom, sine regressu, testifies against the Jew, but because she herself had violated canon law by working for Jews, her testimony is declared invalid. In his final burst of invective, Richard adds the charge that the Jew bought his freedom (Appleby 1963:69):

Judeus optulit purgationem conscientiae propter infamiam. Iudicibus aurea placuit. Dedit Phinees et placavit, et cessavit quassatio.

The Jew offered to clear his conscience by oath concerning the infamy. Gold won the judges' favour. Phineas gave it and pleased them, and the matter was dropped.

At this point in his edition (1963:69), Appleby glosses Phineas with a reference to Numbers 25, where one finds a virtuous Jew named Phineas, who is led by his zeal for God to run a spear through an Israelite and the whore with whom he is copulating. Appleby neglected to note the existence of a second Phineas, who was one of the two worthless sons of Eli mentioned in I Samuel, 2.12. The Glosa ordinaria  explicitly articulates the antithetic possibilities in the name "Phineas" (MPL 113:544):

Duos Phinees sacerdotes legimus: alterum justum Eleazari filium, alterum injustum, filium Heli. Sacerdotes qui custodiunt os suum, ne exeat inde aliquod pravum, in filio Eleazari signantur. Qui autem os habent obturam, vel imperitia, vel peccatorutn conscientia, filio Heli figurantur.

The virtuous Phineas founded a family of hereditary priests; the son of Eli is portrayed as a greedy, gluttonous, worthless priest, who abuses his office, and dies through the machinations of a vengeful God. By failing to specify which Phineas he intended to invoke, Richard of Devizes manages to smear all Jewish priests, and Jews in general.

In addition, if Richard associated Phineas with Ovid's Phineus, particularly as the Third Vatican Mythographer inter­preted Ovid's figure, then the gloss on his name and actions might reinforce the con­nection between Jews and greed (Bode 1834:174) : Phineus igitur, a fenerando dictus, in modum aaaritiae ponitur.

Gransden's clear misreading of this elaborately sardonic episode is significant, and, in a sense, understandable; recoiling in justifiable horror at the unrelenting abuse to which medieval Jews were subjected, nineteenth- and twentieth-century historians have searched diligently through chronicles, histories, poems, and miscel­laneous documents, to find some traces of pro-Semitic sentiments expressed within the Christian community. Although the texts that they have offered failed to allay entirely the anxieties even of those who discovered them, nevertheless these rare passages have served as signs of Christian tolerance, how­ever fragile and discontinuous, of Jews in the middle ages. Unfortunately, these passages are far more clearly examples of a rhetorical strategy designed to blame cer­tain groups of Christians, rather than to offer praise to the Jews.

    For example, in his recent edition of twenty-four poems composed in thirteenth-century Arras, Robert Berger expresses puzzlement at finding praise of Jews in a poem whose first 150 lines had been devoted to denouncing rich men: “Cet éloge des Juifs semble tout à fait exceptionnel au Moyen Age. En tout cas je n'en ai pas trouvé d'autre (1981:228­9)”. The lines praising Jews are not an excursus in the middle of the poem, but lead di­rectly to the final moral admonition (Berger 1981:228-9):

Les Juis ne resanlent mie,

Car se il ont ami n'amie

Ki soit kens en povrete,

A celui font mont grant bonte,

K'il le relievent par .111. fois;

A leur parens for huis ne cloent,

Tant de bien for font k'il s'en loent;

Si doivent faire li rice home.

Ci finerai ore me soume;

Or nos doinst Dex se en bien clore

 K'en paradis nos voelle enclore.

Rich men interested in going to Paradise, then, should show the same sense of community that animates the Jews. Since no Jews had settled in Arras, as Berger shows with meticulous documentation, the poet is not likely to have been singing their praise out of personal experience, or in expectation of a reward. The likeliest explanation for the presence of a passage praising Jews is that it was meant to condemn greedy Christians, exactly as the previous 150 lines had done; that the despicable Jews should show more communal spirit than Christians should produce shame, embarassment, guilt, and consequently improved behavior in Jewless Arras.

    Praise of peasants is also likely to be blame of some other group; for example, in the course of his hagiographical verse-biog­raphy of St Thomas of Canterbury, Guernes de Pont-Sainte-Maxence makes what seems to be a remarkably democratic assertion (Walberg 1964:11.2541-5):

Fiz a vilain ne fust en nul lin ordenez

Senz l'asens sun seignur, de qui terre il fust nez,

E Deus a sun servise nus ad tuz apelez!

Mielz valt fiz a vilain qui est prouz a seriez,

Que ne fait genïilz hum failliz a debutez.

Guernes is not offering categorical praise, however, to the third estate, but is objecting to the infringement of ecclesiastical authority by the first estate; that is, the king had promulgated a law requiring seigneurial approval for ordaining peasants.

The rhetorical technique, by means of which a speaker argues for the superiority of an inferior in order to abuse the superior is at the heart of one of Horace's liveliest poems, Satire 2.7, in which Horace speaks in the persona of his slave Davus, who pro­ceeds to castigate his master, proving in the course of the poem that the master is a slave, and that he, Davus, is truly free. A rougher version of this strategy occurs in an historical poem of the fourteenth century:

Guillaume de Saint-André, in the course of praising Bretons at the expense of the French, praises pigs for approximately the same reason the poet of Arras praised Jews: their laudable community spirit (Charrière 1839b:436-7):

Car les Bretons, tres bien le scoy,

S'entre-doivent touz d'un acort

Amer et craindre jucque la mort;

Pour ce sont-il en general

Nommez pourceaulx, non par mal,

Car pourceaulx telle nature ont;

Quant l'un fort crie, les autres vont

Tous ensemble pour l'aider ...

Medieval praise of jews, peasants, and pigs, then, does not signify enthusiastic approval of members of these categories, but rather a condemnation, sometimes explicit, some­times implicit, of Christians whose behavior is not even equal to the lowest forms of animal life. Perhaps, then, Antonia Gransden was prevented by her own, "pro Jewish sen­timents", from recognizing the intentions of Richard of Devizes, and we may say, with the glossator who was annoyed that anyone would take Lucan's encomium of Nero as earnest praise: recte autem intelligentibus hic laus est vituperatio (Marti 1956:8).

 

Literature

 

Appleby, J, 1963. The Chronicle of Richard of Devizes. London.

Berger, R., 1981. Littérature et société arrageoises au XIIIe siècle. Arras.

Bode, G.H., 1834. Scriptores rerum mythicarum. Celle.

Charrière, E., 1839 a and b. Chronique de Bertrand du Guesclin, 2 volumes. Paris.

Gransden, A., 1973. Historical. writing in England. Ithaca, New York.

Howlett, Richard (ed.). 1884. Chronicles of the reigns of Stephen, Henry II, and Richard I, R.S. 82. Lon­don.

296

Lindsay, W.M. (ed.) 1911. Isidore of Seville, Etymologies. Oxford.

Luard, H. 1869. Chronicon vulgo dictum Chronicon Thomae Wykes, R.S. 36.4. London.

Marti, B.M. 1956. Lucan's invocation to Nero in the light of the medieval commentaries. Quadrivium 1:7-18.

Partner, N. 1977. Serious entertainment. Chicago.

Richardson, H.G. 1960. The English Jewry under Angevin kings. London.

Roth, C. 1964. A history of the Jews in England. Ox­ford.

Walberg, E. (ed.) 1964. Guernes de Pont-St.­Maxence, La vie de saint Thomas. Paris.

Whiting, B.J. 1945. The Vows of the heron. Speculum 20:261-8.