Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

This manuscript illumination depicts Judith, a beautiful Jewish widow, beheading Holofernes, an Assyrian general who is laying siege to Judith's home, the city of Bethulia. In the picture, there is a depiction of Judith beheading the drunken general with his own sword as well as presenting the severed head to the people of Bethulia. In some depictions of Judith beheading Holofernes, she is seen with her maid assisting in carrying the severed head. This story comes from the Book of Judith which had wide appeal during the medieval period. While Jerome included the book in his Latin translation of the Septuagint, he identified it as apocryphal and outside the biblical canon.

This detail of Judith is the last of four illustrations featured on one of 45 illustrated pages from what is described by scholars as a picture bible or illustrated preface to a psalter. This unfinished manuscript dates to the 1190s and is thought to be from northern France. An illustration of a monk praying in front of St. Bertin suggests that it may have been made for a monk at the Benedictine Abbey of St. Bertin in the diocese of Arras. The manuscript contains scenes from both the Old and New Testaments as well as the lives of the saints. On the page with this illustration of Judith are three others; they are organized in quadrants. The upper left image depicts Saul speaking with the ghost of Samuel, who has been raised by the Witch of Endor, and the decapitation of Saul’s and his sons' corpses by a Philistine. The upper right shows a young David being anointed by Samuel and a grown David being crowned. The bottom left depicts Solomon in prayer in front of the temple, and the bottom right is the illustration of Judith.

This manuscript's depiction of Judith and Holofernes subverts traditional gender roles of the medieval period. She is an active, violent figure, which are qualities usually ascribed to men. In contrast, Holofernes is the passive victim at that moment. Judith, while represented as an attractive young woman, also embodies masculinity when she takes up Holofernes' sword and murders him with it. Swinging the sword above her, she determinedly holds the head for the death blows. Judith also asserts her ownership of Holofernes' death by presenting his head in front of the gates of Bethulia. In the manuscript, Judith's pose before the gate echoes that of David, the boy and king depicted in the second illustration of the page, who slew Goliath. This draws a visual parallel with Judith as a warrior. Like David’s killing of Goliath, Judith was able to be victorious over Holofernes because of her faith in God, and it was through His strength that she wielded the sword.

Judith was also a model for the Christian virtue of chastity. The manuscript depicts Judith as a beautiful young woman with braided, long, curly brunette hair in a pink dress. Though widowed, she does not have her hair covered, but displayed, and her form-fitting dress further enhances her delicate attractiveness. By stressing her sexual appeal and weakness, the manuscript interrogates Judith's femininity and her chastity as sources of power. In Church teachings chastity and celibacy were the next best thing to outright virginity. Judith, the widow (who could not, therefore, actually be a virgin), came to represent virginity's virtues. Thus, even murder could be absorbed into a traditional morality, for, as St Jerome opined, in beheading Holofernes, Judith as Chastity had decapitated the sin of lust.