Feeling Persecuted: Christians, Jews and Images of Violence in the Middle Ages

"In Feeling Persecuted, Anthony Bale explores the medieval Christian attitude toward Jews, which included a pervasive fear of persecution and an imagined fear of violence enacted against Christians. As a result, Christians retaliated with expulsions, riots, and murders that systematically denied Jews the right to religious freedom and peace. Through close readings of a wide range of sources, Bale exposes the perceived violence enacted by the Jews and how the images of this Christian suffering and persecution were central to medieval ideas of love, community, and home. The images and texts explored by Bale expose a surprising practice of recreational persecution and show that the violence perpetrated against medieval Jews was far from simple anti-Semitism and was in fact a complex part of medieval life and culture. Bale’s comprehensive look at medieval poetry, drama, visual culture, theology, and philosophy makes Feeling Persecuted an important read for anyone interested in the history of Christian-Jewish relations and the impact of this history on modern culture."

The Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms 1350-1500

This interdisciplinary study explores images of Jews and Judaism in late medieval English literature and culture. Using four main categories - history, miracle, cult and Passion - Anthony Bale demonstrates how varied and changing ideas of Judaism coexisted within well-known anti-semitic literary and visual models, depending on context, authorship and audience. He examines the ways in which English writers, artists and readers used and abused the Jewish image in the period following the Jews' expulsion from England in 1290. The texts are analysed in their manuscript and print contexts in order to show local responses and changing meanings. This important work opens up new texts, sources and approaches for understanding medieval anti-semitism and shows how anti-semitic stereotypes came to be such potent images which would endure far beyond the Middle Ages.

John Lydgate's Lives of Ss Edmund and Fremund with the Extra Miracles of St Edmund

Co-edited with A. S. G. Edwards

John Lydgate wrote the Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund at the request of his abbot, William Curteys, to commemorate the stay of the young King Henry VI at the Benedictine abbey of Bury St Edmunds from Christmas Eve 1433 to shortly after Easter 1434 when Henry was received into confraternity.

The work survives in thirteen manuscripts or fragments, and BL MS Harley 2278, on which the present edition of the Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund is based, was the copy of the poem presented to Henry VI, probably before 1444. The Lives consists of a prologue, the Life of St Edmund as books one and two, the Life of St Fremund as book three, a conc1uding prayer to St Edmund, an envoy, and an address to Henry VI. The volume also presents the three texts that make up the Extra Miracles of St Edmund which are found in four of the later manuscripts of the Lives and independently in one manuscript.

This edition of the Lives of Ss Edmund & Fremund is the first to establish the text on the basis of the readings of all the manuscripts, and is also the first to include the Extra Miracles. The edited texts are followed by a commentary, textual notes, a glossary of proper names, and a selective glossary.

Seehttps://www.inniatiff.de/inni/winter/englisch/frame.htm

St Edmund, King and Martyr: Changing Images of a Medieval Saint

Edited collection

St Edmund, king and martyr, supposedly killed by Danes (or `Vikings') in 869, was one of the pre-eminent saints of the middle ages; his cult was favoured and patronised by several English kings and spawned a rich array of visual, literary, musical and political artefacts. Celebrated throughout England, especially at the abbey of Bury St Edmunds, it also inspired separate cults in France, Iceland and Italy. The essays in this collection offer a range of readings from a variety of disciplines - literature, history, music, art history - and of sources - chronicles, poems, theological material - providing an overview of the multi-faceted nature of St Edmund's cult, from the ninth century to the early modern period. They demonstrate the openness and dynamism of a medieval saint's cult, showing how the saint's image could be used in many and changing contexts: Edmund's image was bent to various political and propagandistic ends, often articulating conflicting messages and ideals, negotiating identity, politics and belief. CONTRIBUTORS: ANTHONY BALE, CARL PHELPSTEAD, ALISON FINLAY, PAUL ANTONY HAYWARD, LISA COLTON, REBECCA PINNER, A. S. G. EDWARDS, ALEXANDRA GILLESPIE