the church and the synagogue: antisemitism and otherization in medieval art
A burning of the Law
I will pour forth tears until like a river they reach
Unto the tombs of your most noble princes,
Moses and Aaron… and I will ask: Is there
A new Torah, that your scrolls may be burned?
… For [the foe] has cut down the Tablets, then doubled his folly
By burning the Law in fire—are these your twofold damages?
So wrote Meir of Rothenburg, the renowned medieval German Rabbi and poet, in reaction to the mass burning of Talmuds in Paris in 1242, the culmination of the humiliating and devastating Disputation of Paris. Despite the terminology, “The disputations,” writes Professor Naomi Seidman, “… did not take the form of arguments that pitted the religions against each other—the Jewish disputants were strictly forbidden from attempting to refute Christian principles. The disputations rather put the Talmud ‘on trial’” (Seidman). When faced with accusations that the Talmud contained blasphemous slanders against Christ and Mary, stemming from a belief that the medieval Jews of Europe had turned away from the sanctified, Christianized form of “Judaism” of the Old Testament, Saint King Louis IX of France authorized the burning of the Talmuds of France—a vast majority of them. A contemporary account from Rabbi Zedekiah bar Abraham describes “twenty-four wagons full of Talmuds, legal and aggadic texts” brought to the Louvre to be publicly burned.
In a pre-Gutenberg age, where individual manuscripts were not printed en masse but rather took years of dedicated work and conservation to maintain, the burnings were devastating to the French Jewish community. “The burning of the Talmud,” writes Professor Susan L. Einbinder, “was thus no less than a burning of the Law itself, a tragedy of unspeakable proportions even in the light of the human losses of those years” (Einbinder). The community never really recovered: the monarchy repeated the official condemnation eight times up until 1321, and scarcely half a century later, the Jews were expelled from France, their property confiscated and their livelihoods robbed.
From the Jewish perspective, this was humiliation on a massive scale. The Jewish secrets of the Talmud, valued immensely highly in the community, “were ‘smoked out,’ paraded before a hostile audience” (Seidman). From the Christian perspective, this was a righteous condemnation of what they viewed as heresy. Such violent altercations between medieval European Christian and Jewish communities happened frequently; they generally did not end well for the Jews.
In a modern and post-WWII era, we tend to think of the Holocaust as the defining example of European antisemitism, rabid anti-Jewish hatred carried out to the utmost extreme. But, although the Holocaust was a tragedy and genocide on an unprecedented scale, we must not forget that European antisemitism fundamentally had at least some of its roots in the long, long history of medieval discrimination and otherization against the Jews. Antisemitism, in other words, is not a purely modern invention. It is visible in some of the most illustrious artifacts and monuments of medieval Europe; it is literally carved in stone.
The art of medieval Europe is not free from representations, and indeed direct endorsements, of such rabid antisemitism. Indeed, medieval art is often riddled with almost casually anti-Jewish motifs, from the Judensau (Jew’s sow) to the illustrations of the blood libel (such as the supposed murder of Simon of Trent at the hands of the Jews of Trent). One almost wonders if these symbols were inserted as visual shorthand, a rote repetition of a singular and forgotten motif. Alas, no: these images served to propagate a directly antisemitic argument, grounded in the medieval Christian notion that Jews had turned away from the true word of God by refusing to accept Christ as the Messiah. Of course, such antisemitism was more often than not based on greed—the expulsion of Jews from entire nations, for instance, often resulted in a ruler being absolved of outstanding debts to Jewish lenders as well as the confiscation of Jewish property—as well as in fear, especially during the Plague years.
The clearest visual motif that forwarded this argument is that of Synagoga et Ecclesia, Synagogue and Church. Popular especially in the sculptural programs of the westworks of Western European churches and cathedrals, the subject of the Synagogue and Church contrasted is also often found in manuscript art. More than anything, this comparison between the Jewish and Christian faiths directly serves the message of a triumphant and spiritually correct church, a viewpoint all too common in medieval Europe.
Blinded and defeated
The subject of Synagoga et Ecclesia is easily spotted among the stone sculptures that adorn the façades of Gothic European cathedrals across Western Europe. The cathedrals of Strasbourg, Bamberg, Rheims, Bordeaux, Rochester, Salisbury, and Winchester, among many more, feature the pair of women, representing the Christian Church and the Jewish Synagogue respectively.
The form of the Church, Ecclesia, can differ across interpretations and depictions. Generally, she holds “the chalice and the cruciferous staff of her standard” (B’nai B’rith 03); she is shown as “erect and triumphant” (Encyclopedia Judaica 08), following the artistic motif of the Ecclesia triumphans, the Church Triumphant. Almost universally across depictions, she wears a crown, symbolizing the glory of the Christian church as well as paralleling the depiction of another female figure, Mary, as the Queen of Heaven. The Church is not only victorious; she stands as superior to the Synagogue, superseding and overriding Judaism. She has triumphed over heresy and sin.
Her contrast with the figure of Synagoga is jarring. The Synagogue is “usually blindfolded and dejected, bearing a broken staff” (Encyclopaedia Judaica 08); her staff is often snapped several times over, and there is often “a fallen crown at her feet” (Kamins 15). The tablets of the Ten Commandments, symbolizing the Mosaic Law—viewed by Christians as the “Old Law” superseded and annulled by Christ—slip perilously from her fingers. The lowered position of the tablets, of course, directly aligns with such supersessionist ideas about the Bible, and we can draw several discomforting parallels between the depiction of the Torah in stone and the simultaneous burnings of the Talmud.
Crucial to the depiction of the Synagogue is her posture. In contrast with the proud, triumphant position of the Church, the Synagogue hunches over, humiliated and defeated. Her slouching stance acts simultaneously as a bow towards the “superiority” of Christianity, acting as a lowering of herself, and a symbolic turn away from the truth of the Messiah. Indeed, in all depictions, she looks “tired and beleaguered” (Petersen 19). This position as inferior and defeated only really “works” when placed next to an adequate comparing image of superiority and spiritual victory, which is part of the reason why the two women “were often paired in painting and sculpture” (Vadnal). Such twinship plays a crucial part in the purpose of the statues themselves—more on that later.
Equally important to the image of the Synagogue, the blindfold, omnipresent in all depictions, further emphasizes the willful “blindness” of Judaism against the truth of Christ as Messiah. That is, the Jews remain continually depicted throughout medieval art as turning away from the Christian truth, blind to the true path to salvation from the Christian perspective. Such religious animosity is sadly all too common from both Christian and Jewish sources. Notably, the blindfold motif in depictions of Synagoga only appears around the end of the 12th century, around the time of the Crusades. Indeed, the image of the Synagogue steadily deteriorated throughout the Middle Ages in Christian depictions; around fifty years after the creation of the statues shown at the beginning of this article as part of the westwork of Strasbourg Cathedral, other statues of the Synagogue and Church were sculpted in the central portal’s tympanum. “These figures,” sadly, “… have a notable difference: the headband is replaced by a snake coiled around the head of the Synagogue, in order to suggest a diabolical origin for her blindness” (B’nai B’rith René Hirschler 03).
This serpentine blindfold became common in cathedral façades throughout Europe, such as in the depiction of the Synagogue on the westwork of Notre Dame de Paris:
It is important to note that depictions of the Church and Synagogue paired together were not initially meant to wholly disparage and condemn Judaism. In the earliest depictions of the two women side by side, such as in the Metz ivories, no signs of hostility exist. However, with the increasingly negative perception of the Jewish faith worsening throughout the centuries, “We witness a progressive degradation of the image of the Synagogue from the beginning to the end of the Middle Ages” (B’nai B’rith René Hirschler 03). Sadly, as time went on, “the intended message of the Christian religion being superior to pre-Christian beliefs was made iconographically clear” (Petersen 19).
Comparison and otherization in twinship
As mentioned before, the most important linchpin in the message of Synagoga et Ecclesia is arguably the very form of twinship. That medieval artists and sculptors placed the two women next to each other almost all the time is not a coincidence; it was a deliberate choice to place the two next to, and therefore in direct comparison with, each other. The form of the Synagogue and Chuch cannot be simplified into a mere disparagement of Judaism, although it certainly was that as well; rather, it is more precisely a means of comparing the two, intentionally portraying a “superior” religion and belief over an “inferior” one, a “winner” over a “loser”. Not only does this depiction humiliate and symbolically defeat Judaism, but it also elevates the Catholic Church as superior, even successive, to the Chosen Peoples.
As Toni L. Kamins writes, “The statues… generally found in juxtaposition… represent the Christian theological concept known as supercessionism [sic], whereby the Church is triumphant and the Synagogue defeated” (Kamins 15). Indeed, supersessionism goes further than that: it asserts that the Catholic Church has not only superseded but taken the role of Judaism, and by extension, the Jews, as the Chosen Peoples of God. As the Torah is incorporated and assimilated into what Christians call the Old Testament, the Jewish tradition and faith are incorporated into a wider narrative and Christian theology.
That’s not to say that the Jews were not depicted as heretics and accomplices of the devil throughout medieval art—they were, frequently and often violently—but a more nuanced view of the function of the Synagoga et Ecclesia motif is necessary. As professor and medieval iconographic expert, Sara Lipton, notes,
… texts and images accusing Jews of attacking Scripture were employing traditional criticism of the Jews’ own relationship to Scripture to express concern about the putative influence among Christians — especially the laity — of literalistic, suspiciously innovative, or simply unauthorized exegesis (all of which are subsumed under the rubric “Jewish”).
… it is the cumulative effect of the piling on, broadening, and deepening of the anti-Jewish themes and their use as signs for new and diverse activities that create the impression of a powerful and innovative anti-Jewish program (Lipton 99).
The sculptural programs of the Synagogue and Church, of course, aimed to damn Jews as heretics blinding themselves to the truth of the Messiah. But they also served to condemn Christians acting like Jews (i.e. doing anything vaguely unauthorized or unorthodox in the eyes of the Church). That these sculptures were most often depicted on the façades of Cathedrals, broadly open spaces where many people would encounter and view the sculptural program, serves to further this fundamentally antisemitic message. The growing anti-Jewish animus was, then, expanded through imagery.
At the heart of this animus was the otherization of Judaism. The medieval Jew, and Judaism as a whole, served as merely a means of comparison to the Christian and the Church throughout Europe in the Middle Ages. By continually depicting the Jews as outsiders and the vilified other, medieval Christians used Jews as a way to identify and categorize themselves. As a locus of comparison and contrast, European Jewry could be lambasted and attacked over and over again, through increasingly violent and deadly means, precisely because they were the other, the antithesis of the Messiah and the Christian faith. And, of course, artistic motifs and programs such as Synagoga et Ecclesia only served to further this divide.
This constant otherization, and therefore persecution, can also be observed in medieval manuscript art. In the image above, the Jews on the far right side of the rondel, identified by their pointed hats, are separated from both the group of monks and the group of Christian believers. Not only are they directly contrasted with Christian Europeans, by the depiction of their physical appearances, but they are also contrasted in the realm of religion and belief; their bodies are turned away from the preaching monks, as if rejecting the word of Christ.
“Illustrations like this,” writes Dr. Nancy Ross, “tried to convince Christian readers that although Jews were once God’s people… medieval Jews had turned away from that role. This kind of anti-semitic message promoted hate and violence toward Jews in the later Middle Ages” (Ross 16).
Such is the case with the depiction of the Synagogue. Her blindfold contrasts directly with the Church’s clear sight of the Christian truth; her posture of defeat with the Church’s triumph; her dropped crown with the self-coronation of Christianity; her slipping tablets with the Christian orthodox books. All of these features serve to differentiate, indeed otherize, the personification of Judaism, broken and blinded, from that of Christianity, triumphant and “correct”.
Truly, otherization is the crux of the Church and Synagogue motif. As Régis Labourdette writes in his treatise on the Strasbourg sculptures,
Now the genius of the Strasbourg sculptor was the making of the gap element of the Church and the Synagogue, between acceptance and denial, the place of manifestation of the power of Grace, as if, intercepted in this interval, it could carry some figure of his immaterial being, suspended between the two, so to speak (Labourdette 94).
A final note on the Synagoga et Ecclesia motif: on October 28, 1965, the Second Vatican Council issued the declaration Nostra Aetate (“In Our Time”), on the relation between the Catholic Church and other religions. It specifically rejected the animosity between the Church and Synagogue so virulently popular in the Middle Ages and reversed, or at least attempted to reverse, centuries of hostility between the two religions. When the Church wrote in this declaration that “Jews should not be presented as rejected or accursed by God” (Pope Paul VI), it represented the formalization of a shift in sentiment towards Judaism and ecumenism overall in a post-WWII and post-Holocaust world.
50 years after that declaration, in 2015, sculptor Joshua Koffman unveiled a new bronze statue on the campus of Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia, titled “Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time”. In his composition, Koffman undoes the traditional depiction of the broken Synagogue as defeated and subordinate to the majestic Church: instead of Synagoga bowing to a triumphant Ecclesia, “it depicts the symbolic feminine figures, shown with dignity and grace, as friends who are studying their respective sacred texts together” (Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations). Finally rehabilitated in a more inclusive, ecumenical art, the Jewish and Christian faiths sit proudly together, two women of equal dignity.
Both women are crowned, wearing sumptuous robes that seem to flow into each other and become the same fabric. Synagoga holds a Torah scroll, while Ecclesia holds an open Bible. Both women study each other’s respective sacred texts, sitting and conversing together not as alienated enemies, but as common friends and equals. Small wonder that, when Pope Francis blessed the statue two days after it was unveiled, embracing his friend Rabbi Abraham Skorka, he said: “They are you and I — Pope and Rabbi learning from one another” (Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations).
The crimes and otherization committed by medieval Christians against Jews cannot be ignored. Neither can modern antisemitism, which still festers in a real and visual sense across far too many spaces. But the subject of Ecclesia et Synagoga, once used to alienate and attack Judaism, can be reversed for the better. Despite the horrors of the past, we can still use art to further a healthy relationship between Christianity and Judaism—not as dominant or subservient, not as triumphant and defeated, but as equals.
Sources cited
Einbinder, Susan L. Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France. Princeton University Press, 2002.
Ross, Nancy. “Bible moralisée (moralized bibles).” Smarthistory, 21 January 2016, https://smarthistory.org/bible-moralisee-moralized-bibles/.
Vadnal, Jane. “Ecclesia and Synagoga.” Glossary of Medieval Art and Architecture, https://sites.pitt.edu/~medart/menuglossary/INDEX.HTM.
Encyclopaedia Judaica. “Ecclesia et Synagoga.” Jewish Virtual Library, 2008, https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/ecclesia-et-synagoga.
Seidman, Naomi. Faithful Renderings: Jewish-Christian Difference and the Politics of Translation. University of Chicago Press, 2010.
Kamins, Toni L. “From Notre Dame to Prague, Europe’s Anti-Semitism is literally carved in stone.” Jewish Telegraphic Agency, 20 March 2015, https://www.jta.org/2015/03/20/archive/from-notre-dame-to-prague-europes-anti-semitism-is-literally-carved-in-stone.
Lipton, Sara. Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée. University of California Press, 1999.
Labourdette, Régis. L’empreinte de la grâce dans l’Église et la Synagogue de Strasbourg. Bulletin de l’Association Guillaume Budé, 1994.
B’nai B’rith René Hirschler. “L’Église et la Synagogue: l’Évolution du Thème.” Les Juifs et le Judaïsme dans l’art Médiéval en Alsace, 4 September 2003, http://judaisme.sdv.fr/histoire/historiq/medieval/egsyn.htm.
Pope Paul VI. “Nostra Aetate.” Vatican Archives, 28 October 1965, https://www.vatican.va/archive/hist_councils/ii_vatican_council/documents/vat-ii_decl_19651028_nostra-aetate_en.html.
Institute for Jewish-Catholic Relations. “Synagoga and Ecclesia in Our Time.” Saint Joseph’s University College of Arts & Sciences, https://www.sju.edu/college-arts-and-sciences/ijcr/synagoga-ecclesia#:~:text=%22Synagoga%20and%20Ecclesia%20in%20Our,experiences%20of%20the%20Holy%20One.
Petersen, J.K. “Synecclesia.” The Voynich Portal, 14 August 2019, https://voynichportal.com/tag/ecclesia-and-synagoga/.
Ivry, Benjamin. “What Jews Might Have Lost In the Fire at Notre-Dame de Paris Cathedral.” Forward, 16 April 2019, https://forward.com/culture/art/422670/what-jews-might-have-lost-in-the-fire-at-notre-dame-de-paris-cathedral/.
