Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée by Lipton, Sara (September 28, 1999) Hardcover

by Sara Lipton

Around the year 1225, an illuminated Bible was made for the king of France. That work and a companion volume, the two earliest surviving manuscripts of the Bible moralisée, are remarkable in a number of they are massive in scope; they combine text and image to an unprecedented extent; and their illustrations, almost unique among medieval images in depicting contemporary figures and situations, comprise a vehement visual polemic against the Jews. In Images of Intolerance, Sara Lipton offers a nuanced and insightful reading of these extraordinary sources.Lipton investigates representations of Jews' economic activities, the depiction of Jews' scriptures in relation to Christian learning, the alleged association of Jews with heretics and other malefactors in Christian society, and their position in Christian eschatology. Jews are portrayed as threatening the purity of the Body of Christ, the integrity of the text of scripture, the faith, mores, and study habits of students, and the spiritual health of Christendom itself. Most interesting, however, is that the menacing themes in the Bible moralisée are represented in text and images as aspects of Jewish "perfidy" that are rampant among Christians as well. This innovative interdisciplinary study brings new understanding to the nature and development of social intolerance, and to the role art can play in that development.

Unknown Binding

About the author

A native New Yorker, Sara Lipton is a medievalist who specializes in Jewish-Christian relations, art, and religious practices. Her first book, Images of Intolerance, won the Medieval Academy of America's John Nicholas Brown Prize for Best First Book. Lipton has also written on more contemporary topics, including gender, anti-Semitism, ethnic caricature, Israeli culture, and religious retreats for The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times, TomDispatch, and The Huffington Post. Lipton teaches at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.