Feminae: Medieval Women and Gender Index

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Record Number: 8987 Author(s)/Creator(s): Despres , Denise L. Contributor(s): Title: Immaculate Flesh and the Social Body: Mary and the Jews Source: Jewish History 12, 1 (Spring 1998): Pages 47 - 69. Description: Article Type: Journal Article Subject (See Also): Antisemitism Books of Hours Carew-Poyntz Hours Eucharist, Sacrament Jews Lay Piety Mary, Virgin, Saint Women in Religion Award Note: Geographic Area: British Isles Century: 14- 15 Primary Evidence: Manuscript; Cambridge, University of Cambridge, Fitzwilliam Museum, Ms. 48. Contains an extended program of anti-Judaic images. Illustrations: Two Figures. Figure One Manuscript page with two illuminations, Carew-Poyntz Book of Hours, f.56v (Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge). In the lower part of the page four Jews stab a host. Figure Two Facing manuscript pages with illustrations at the bottom of the pages, Carew-Poyntz Book of Hours, f.184v (Fitzwilliam Museum, University of Cambridge). In the first illustration a woman sells a host to a Jew. In the second scene, two Jewish men stab the host. Table: Abstract: The evidence of a continuous anti-Judaic iconography in Middle English devotional manuscripts after the general expulsion of 1290 suggests that Jews were not merely symbols of alterity in English religious culture. Rather, Marian devotionalism perpetuated Jewish demonization in illustrative programs of Books of Hours to transmit a popularized or vernacular sacramental theology. The Carew-Poyntz Hours, a model of fifteenth-century reception and devotional trends, offers a cumulative program of anti-Judaic images through figural and literal readings of the Old and New Testaments, meditations on host persecution and ritual murder, and a visual semiology linking Mary's bodily purity with the Christ child as host. Books of Hours did not promote devotion through passive or private memory, but linked private spirituality to larger theological, eschatological, and social schemes. [Reproduced by permission of Jewish History]. Related Resources: Author's Affiliation: University of Puget Sound Conference Info: - , - Year of Publication: 1998. Language: English ISSN/ISBN: 0334701X (print); 15728579 (electronic)

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