Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs

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Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs

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Christian Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski

christian memories of the maccabean martyrs Copyright © Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, 2009. All rights reserved. First published in 2009 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN® in the United States—a division of St. Martin’s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY 10010. Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number 785998, of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave® and Macmillan® are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN: 978-0-230-60279-3 Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, Daniel. Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs / Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0-230-60279-7 1. Bible. O.T. Apocrypha. Maccabees—Criticism, interpretation, etc.—History—Early church, ca. 30–600. 2. Maccabees. 3. Christianity and other religions—Judaism. 4. Judaism— Relations—Christianity. 5. Christian literature, Early. I. Title. BS1825.52.J67 2009 229'.70609—dc22

2009006414

A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Scribe Inc. First edition: August 2009 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1 Printed in the United States of America.

In memoriam Donna Lee (Holt) Siemiatkoski and Lance Corporal Gregory E. MacDonald, USMC


Contents List of Abbreviations

ix

Acknowledgments

xi

Introduction: Remembering the Maccabean Martyrs

1

1 2 3 4

The Earliest Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs and Resistance Culture

13

Late Antique Bishops and Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs

29

Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs in the Christian Medieval West

79

Jewish Saints and Christian Cities: Rhineland Traditions of the Maccabean Martyrs

121

Conclusion: Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs and Remembering History Ethically

161

Notes

175

Bibliography

217

Subject Index

239

Index of Biblical Sources

251


Abbreviations ANF

The Ante-Nicene Fathers, 10 vols. Edinburgh, 1886; reprint, Peabody, MA, 1994 BHL Bibliotheca hagiographica latina antique et mediae aetatis, 2 vols. Brussels, 1898–1901, and supplementary vol., Brussels, 1987 BT Babylonian Talmud CCCM Corpus Christianorum, Continuatio mediaevalis. Turnhout, 1971– CCSL Corpus Christianorum, Series latina. Turnhout, 1953– CSEL Corpus scriptorum ecclesiasticorum Latinorum. Vienna, 1866– HT Hebräische Texts aus dem mittelalterlichen Deutschland MGH Monumenta Germaniae Historica PG Patrologia graeca, ed. J. P. Migne. 166 vols. Paris, 1857–66 PL Patrologia latina, ed. J. P. Migne. 221 vols. Paris, 1844–64 QGM Quellen zur Geistesgeschichte des Mittelalters SC Sources chrétiennes. Paris, 1955– SS Series Scriptores


Acknowledgments Completing a work like this is never an individual endeavor. I am deeply indebted to many people whose support, assistance, and encouragement brought this book to fruition. This book began life as a dissertation. While I stand by the work done in my doctoral dissertation, over the past four years I have substantially revised my arguments and added new methodological lenses to examine the topic of Christian veneration of the Maccabean martyrs. Nonetheless, I owe a particular debt of gratitude to my dissertation director, Professor Ruth Langer of Boston College. Without her wise and clear advice, my investigations would have been a much poorer product. I would also like to acknowledge my appreciation to the rest of my dissertation readers for their helpful and insightful comments and suggestions: Beverly Mayne Kienzle of Harvard Divinity School, Catherine Mooney of Weston Jesuit Theological School, and Thomas Head of Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. I could never have completed this book and, in some cases, even known where to turn without the help of other scholars. I would like to thank all those who have assisted me, even in the smallest of ways, especially Elisheva Baumgarten, Marc Bregman, Stephen Brown, Mark Burrows, Mark J. Clark, Christoph Cluse, David Collins, Susan Einbinder, Jonathan Elukin, Christine Feld, Brian P. Flanagan, Ezra Fleischer, David Freidenreich, Robert Galoob, Arie Gelderblom, Katherine J. Gill, Robert Harris, Deeana Copeland Klepper, Paul Kolbet, Ivan Marcus, Eugene McMullan, Carolyn Muessig, Sigrid Petersen, Virginia Reinburg, Michael Resler, Menahem Schmelzer, Devorah Schoenfeld, Michael Signer, Karen B. Stern, Debra Stoudt, Katja Vehlow, Burton Visotzky, and James Michael Weiss. Various archives and research libraries graciously provided me access to their holdings. Three German libraries were especially important for Chapter 4 of this book. I would like to thank the Historische Archiv des Stadts Köln, the Diözesan-und Dombibliothek in Cologne, and the Darmstadt Hessischen Landes-und Hochschulbibliothek for their gracious assistance and hospitality. I would also like to thank the Burns

xii

Acknowledgments

Library of Boston College and the Andover-Harvard Library of Harvard Divinity School for granting me access to their rare book archives. I also owe the Flora Lamson Hewlett Library of the Graduate Theological Union and Clay-Edward Dixon, its head of collection development, a special debt of gratitude. I have been fortunate to have a wonderful job—teaching the history of Christianity at the Church Divinity School of the Pacific, a founding member of the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California. I have been able to grow as a scholar as a result of being here. I want to thank my many colleagues at both institutions who have supported my work, especially Deena Aranoff, Thomas Buckley, Linda Clader, L. William Countryman, Nancy Eswein, David Gortner, Marion Grau, Arthur Holder, John Kater, Lizette Larson-Miller, Rebecca Lyman, Donn Morgan, Christopher Ocker, Naomi Seidman, Sue Singer, and Louis Weil. Special thanks go to Jennifer Robinson, who with good cheer graciously helped me during the final preparations of this book. Several people took the time to read versions of this book. I want to thank Andrea Dickens, Horace Six-Means, Marianne Delaporte, and especially Darleen Pryds, who read almost an entire draft of this book. I am also grateful to the assistance and graciousness of the editorial team at Palgrave Macmillan, especially Christopher Chappell, Samantha Hasey, Erin Ivy, Amanda Moon Johnson, and Brigitte Shull. My thanks also go out for copy editing assistance from Daniel Constantino and indexing by Lisa Kleinholz. All errors are, of course, my own. Of course, completing this book would not have been possible without the support of many friends and family. I especially need to express my deepest gratitude to my wife, Jennifer Joslyn-Siemiatkoski. Her loving support and constant encouragement provided me the energy I needed to stay focused on this book over the years. Without her kindness and patience, this book might not have ever been finished. Finally, I would like to dedicate this book to two people who died during the course of my doctoral studies. First, to my mother, Donna Lee (Holt) Siemiatkoski. She nurtured in me a love of history, especially the history of Christianity. Without her I would not be where I am today. Second, to my best friend, Lance Corporal Gregory E. MacDonald, USMC, who died serving in Iraq. Greg caused me always to ask how what I studied could contribute to the greater good. I think they both would have enjoyed reading this book. Not a day goes by when I do not wonder what they would think of something I read or wrote. Although the Maccabean martyrs are the saints I have studied, Mom and Greg are the saints who inspire me.

INTRODUCTION

Remembering the Maccabean Martyrs Some Jew steps forward and says to us, “How can you reckon these people of ours to be your martyrs? . . . Read their confessions; see whether they confessed Christ.” To whom we reply, “It’s true, you are one of those who did not believe in Christ . . . what are you going to say, being one of those faithless people? They weren’t openly confessing Christ, because the mystery of Christ was still concealed behind a veil.” —Augustine of Hippo, Sermon 300 “On the Maccabean Martyrs,” trans. Edmund Hill

This book is about Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs from the early to late medieval Christian periods, ranging geographically from the eastern Mediterranean to northwestern Europe.1 That Christians commemorated the Maccabean martyrs at all is noteworthy. The Maccabean martyrs were a group of seven Jewish brothers whose story was first recounted in 2 Maccabees 7. In this narrative an anonymous group of seven sons, in accordance with the exhortations of their mother, suffers martyrdom at the hands of the Seleucid king Antiochus IV for refusing to eat pork, a violation of the Jewish dietary laws as set forth in Torah. Both Christian and Jewish traditions about the Maccabean martyrs developed in the first two centuries of the Common Era, during the period of the separation of these communities.2 Among Christians, these traditions spread throughout the Mediterranean world. We have evidence, notably in the form of treatises on martyrdom, festal sermons, and liturgical calendars, for local commemorations of these martyrs in Syriac-, Greek-, and Latin-speaking regions, showing that Christians, from a relatively early period, considered them worthy of veneration.3 Into the Western medieval period, both Jewish and Christian communities continued to honor them as holy figures, with no evidence that each community was aware of the parallel patterns of devotion.4

2


Throughout this long period of time and geographical distance, the Christian construction of memories of the Maccabean martyrs reflects how Jewish traditions were appropriated to serve Christian purposes. The content of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs shifted according to local context and the agenda of the authors, typically bishops or learned clergy who wrote about these Jewish martyrs for their Christian audiences. In certain contexts, such as at the beginning of the period under discussion, episcopal leaders of late antique communities sought to differentiate Christians from rival groups, including Jews, pagans, and heretics. Christian bishops produced narratives of the Maccabean martyrs that established the authentic Christian identity of the Maccabean martyrs while obscuring these martyrs’ Jewishness. The quotation from one of Augustine of Hippo’s sermons on the Maccabean martyrs that begins this book is an example of this process. At other times, such as at the end of the period under discussion in Cologne during the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries, the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was manipulated by promoters of their local cult in order to establish them as a new group of patrons for the city as a means of generating income for the cloister and church of the Maccabean martyrs. A common theme within Christian writings about the Maccabean martyrs was the issue of why Christians should commemorate Jews who died for the Mosaic Law. Among late antique and medieval Christians, the question of the status of the Mosaic Law served as a means to intellectually and culturally emphasize differences between Christian and Jewish religious communities and their practices.5 A useful approach for examining how the Law functioned in Christian discourses as a marker of Jewish-Christian difference lies in late antique and medieval traditions of the Maccabean martyrs. Homilies, biblical commentaries, and liturgical explanations for Christian observance of the feast of the Maccabean martyrs (observed consistently on August 1) all focused on the question of the validity of the Law for which these martyrs died. Examining Christian reinterpretations of the death for this Law by the Maccabean martyrs across the centuries and in differing geographical, ecclesiastical, textual, and intellectual locations reveals how Christian strategies for remembering the Maccabean martyrs evolved.

Remembering the Maccabean Martyrs

3

Memory and Empire The study of collective memory as it operates within religious communities puts in relief the patterns of the reception of late antique traditions of the Maccabean martyrs within a range of medieval Christian contexts. As Elizabeth Castelli has argued, examining the concept of collective memory within religious communities can illustrate “how particular ways of construing the past enable later communities to constitute and sustain themselves.”6 Maurice Halbwachs was a primary architect of the notion of collective memory. Halbwachs argued that memory was defined within social frameworks and that these social frameworks influence how memories are retained. Regarding religious memory, he states that it “obeys the same laws as every collective memory: it does not preserve the past but reconstructs it with the aid of the material traces, rites, texts and traditions left behind by the past.”7 Noting that the past as such is not simply retained but reconstructed, Halbwachs highlights the malleable nature of collective memory to construct meaning for the purposes and needs of the group to achieve cohesiveness and group identity.8 Halbwachs emphasized that at times of change or upheaval in institutions, collective memory was especially pertinent for the creation of a sense of identity that both kept a group connected to its shared past and integrated new practices or concepts.9 This argument means that “historical memory is the representation of a lost past, and its only recollection.”10 In other words, the very remembrance of the past within a group is altered as new concepts and practices are integrated into the group and reframe its collective memory.11 Perceiving the recreation of plural or consecutive pasts dependent on shifting contemporary contexts aids the examination of Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs. Discerning developments in traditions of the Maccabean martyrs requires understanding how particular contexts determined the reception of these traditions. Memory in itself does not possess agency but relies on particular individuals and modes of transmission that inevitably influence how a memory is received. Cultural expressions of memory are not neutral but are formed within larger cultural currents. Often the transmission of cultural memory represents not simply agreed on values but also divergent opinions on the meaning and values of these memories.12 This certainly is the case with the authors who wrote on the Maccabean martyrs that this study will examine. Frequently, these authors moved from a simple recapitulation of the narrative of these martyrs to a discourse on the purpose of their commemoration within their local Christian culture.

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Frequently, these texts reveal the difficulties that Christian authors had in smoothly incorporating the memory of the Maccabean martyrs into their own cultures. Insights from scholars of cultural memory allow us to see that texts by late antique and medieval authors justifying and clarifying the commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs were not value-neutral documents. Rather, these authors, as they explained the purpose of Christian veneration of these Jewish martyrs, were simultaneously engaged in articulating and framing Christian memories of themselves and the Jewish past of Christianity. In other words, Christian texts on the Maccabean martyrs are also texts reflective of Christian identities. At the same time, memories in themselves are unstable sources of identity. They have a way of unraveling over time and requiring rearticulation in order to maintain their power. As Judith Lieu has argued, frequently stories from the past used to reinforce a particular Christian identity have an open-ended and unstable character to them as they are formed to fit changing needs of communities.13 This evolution of memories is part of the process of what Castelli identifies as the creation of a “useable past.”14 Christian authors of texts about the Maccabean martyrs were in search of just such a useable past. Late antique authors on the Maccabean martyrs went about creating useable pasts in the process of creating a Christian imperial culture. Western European medieval authors likewise wrote about these same martyrs within a context of Christendom in which the structures of a Christian empire held sway in political and ideological manifestations. Indeed, the earliest versions of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs were formulated within an imperial context of Hellenistic domination and Jewish resistance. Given the imperial contexts in which the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was shaped by a diverse panoply of authors, recent scholarship on postcolonialism and empire is relevant as a framing device. The literature of postcolonialism is broad, and a suitable definition to encompass all of its disparate elements is difficult. In order to foreground the specific elements that postcolonial studies have to offer an examination of Christian views on the death of the Maccabean martyrs for the Law of Moses, I offer this definition from the postcolonial biblical scholar Fernando F. Segovia: Postcolonial studies is a model that takes the reality of empire—of imperialism and colonialism—as an omnipresent, inescapable, and overwhelming reality of the world: the world of antiquity, the world of the Near


5

East or of the Mediterranean Basin; the world of modernity, the world of Western hegemony and expansionism; and the world of today . . . A first dimension of a postcolonial optic in biblical criticism involves an analysis of the texts of ancient Judaism and early Christianity that takes seriously into consideration their broader sociocultural contexts . . . in the light of an omnipresent, inescapable reality—the reality of empire, of imperialism and colonialism, as variously constituted and exercised in the long period in question.15

Segovia recognizes that Hellenistic and Roman imperial contexts included dynamics of colonization, subjugation, assimilation, and appropriation found also in later modern colonial and imperial contexts. While acknowledging the historical specificity and diversity of every imperial context, Segovia also argues that the colonial experience of the ancient Near East and Mediterranean affected the cultural productions of those zones as much as they did in the India, Congo, or Jamaica of the modern period.16 Looking at the sources to be considered in this book from this perspective, we see how the forces of empire and colonization shaped the production of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs.17 By recognizing that Christian actions and attitudes regarding Jews and Judaism occurred within imperial contexts, one can better perceive the purposes for which Christians employed narratives of the Maccabean martyrs. Situating Christian traditions within contexts of empire and colonization clarifies how this Jewish martyrdom was employed by Christian authors to highlight Jewish-Christian difference through a discussion of the relevance of the Mosaic Law for which these martyrs died. By understanding that imperial and colonial contexts enabled appropriation of past events to perpetuate power, one can perceive how medieval Christian thinkers recycled late antique elements of this tradition. This recycling addressed new realities of Jewish-Christian cultural interactions and internal motivations for commemorating the Maccabean martyrs while also erasing the Jewishness of these martyrs. Postcolonialism as a discipline emerged out of critical reflections on the implementation of and liberations from modern colonial enterprises, but this discipline has grown to include cultural productions of other periods and has been employed by scholars of late antique and European medieval cultural productions.18 These scholars have shown that considering Mediterranean and European late antique and medieval sources and locations as representative of colonial moments illuminates the dynamics of appropriation central to Christian supersessionism and its discourses of difference. In turn, this illuminates how the rhetoric of Jewish-Christian

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difference, seen, for example, in Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs, contributed to discourses of meaning making in the construction of a Christian identity. As Averil Cameron shows, a multiplicity of discourses employed by Christians in the late antique period was a key to the growth of Christianity. While Cameron only studies discourses in explicitly Roman and Greek cultural contexts, this present study illuminates how discourses involving Jewish traditions were employed to transform Christianity into a dominant religion in the late Roman Empire.19 There is a natural hesitation, however, to employ contemporary methods of political and cultural critique to premodern contexts. Despite the allure of critical theory, I concur with Gabrielle Spiegel that the historian must be cautious in employing contemporary intellectual paradigms to past events, peoples, and cultures. As such, I view postcolonial theory not as a “conceptual map” to follow but rather as a “heuristic point of departure . . . a way of gaining deeper insight into the texts or phenomena under investigation.”20 Employed in this way, postcolonial approaches show how Christian appropriations of Jewish traditions, as seen in the example of the Maccabean martyrs, contributed to the consolidation and maintenance of Christian identity in late antique and medieval communities. A particularly useful concept from postcolonial studies for the articulation of how Christians appropriated Jewish narratives and figures like the Maccabean martyr is that of hybridity. Hybridity is often defined, following Homi K. Bhabha, as the adaptation and simultaneous refashioning by the colonized subject of productions of colonial power.21 I argue that Christianity is an example of hybridity despite its ascendance as an imperial power. This is due to its shifting position in the first centuries of the Common Era as first subjected to imperial power and later a wielder of it. Christians refashioned Jewish and Hellenistic cultural elements while subjected to Roman imperial power and continued refashioning these elements as Christianity emerged as an imperial and colonizing power.22 I understand Christianity to work in colonial and imperial terms both in its exercise of power and legislation and in its ideological and theological constructions, especially in regard to Judaism. In other words, Christians first manifested hybridity in the early centuries of the Common Era when they experienced cultural marginalization within the Roman Empire. The hybridity of Christianity is manifested further in the difficulty of even defining when Christianity began, what distinguished early Christians from Jews, and whether others could distinguish Christians from Jews in this period.23 Christianity can be perceived as a hybrid movement in its absorption of Jewish, Greek, and Roman religious, intellectual, and social


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structures. The development and adaptability of Christianity to its surrounding cultures, while maintaining its own distinctiveness, are all indicators of a hybridized, colonial experience. As Christianity emerged into cultural dominance and became enmeshed in the structures of empire, it maintained elements of its hybrid identity. This was manifested in its continued appropriation of Jewish elements to assert its own antiquity and superiority over Judaism. Christian appropriation of the story of the Maccabean martyrs and the reframing and recycling of this story over the centuries illustrates this dynamic. Christian claims to be the true inheritors of God’s covenant with Israel are a clear example of the continued dynamics of hybridity. Christian supersessionism and its critiques of Jewish interpretations of the Mosaic Law were complex rhetorical strategies designed to consolidate Christian social and theological status.24 Such appropriations involved an ideological colonizing of Jews and Judaism. Several scholars recently have drawn attention to how Jews experienced social, ideological, and theological colonization in the medieval period. Following Sylvia Tomasch, I view Anne McClintock’s distinction between colonization and internal colonization as a useful tool that enables us to better perceive how Jews experienced colonialism in premodern Christian cultures. “Colonization involves direct territorial appropriation of another geo-political entity, combined with forthright exploitations of its resources and labors, and systematic interference in the capacity of the appropriated culture (itself not necessarily a homogenous entity) to organize its dispensations of power. Internal colonization occurs where the dominant part of a country treats a group as it might a foreign colony.”25 This definition permits the history of Jews within Christendom to be perceived in part as a colonial history. As a minority in Christian countries, Jews negotiated their relations with Christians and their internal communal lives in ways that mirror other manifestations of colonialism. This mode of negotiation and adaptation to Christian culture also manifested as resistance to Christian culture in the form of mimicry. Chapter 3 of this book will address this dynamic in the context of Ashkenazi Jewish reactions to the crusade massacres of 1096.26 Even when Jews might be geographically or socially absent from Christian cultures, they still could be subjected to intellectual forms of colonization. Kathleen Biddick argues that Christian constructions of Jews unrelated to the actual lives of “real” Jews functioned as a form of colonizing.27 Indeed, Christian supersessionist writings produce not reflections on communities of “real” Jews, but what Sylvia Tomasch identifies

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as “virtual” Jews. “When we examine the virtual Jew, for example, we see that it does not refer directly to any actual Jew, nor present accurate depiction of one, nor even a faulty fiction of one; instead it ‘surrounds’ Jews with a ‘reality’ that displaces and supplants their actuality.”28 For this reason, Tomasch argues that medieval Jews are not the source of Christian discourses about Jews. Instead supersessionist thought is informed by Christian constructions of Jewishness in a move made possible first by an ideological colonization of actual Jews.29 It is not necessarily helpful to simply label Christian attitudes toward Jews in this period as fundamentally antisemitic. I follow Tomasch’s suggestion that Zygmunt Bauman’s term “allosemitism” is more useful as an interpretive label. Bauman defines allosemitism as a profoundly ambivalent attitude toward Jews prior to either positive or negative statements or actions toward them. Allosemitism encompasses Christian uses of Jews as figures to think with and manipulate as abstracted objects for Christian purposes. Antisemitism or philosemitism can only follow from allosemitic practices.30 This book will examine the allosemitic dimensions of Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs. Christian authors displayed allosemitic dispositions in that the Maccabean martyrs emerge as ambivalent figures requiring interpretation in order to fit into a preexisting Christian worldview. Said another way, allosemitic attitudes accompanied Christian supersessionism in Christian traditions of these Jewish martyrs. Christian authors who reframed memories of the Maccabean martyrs for internal Christian purposes articulated a supersessionist theology as part of a colonizing enterprise. While one can see this rhetoric initially as an act of interpretation, it was also part of a wider phenomenon of colonialism that interpreted the significance of Jewish elements of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs to articulate the superiority of Christianity over Judaism. Such actions by late antique and medieval Christian theologians produced a hybridized discourse that, operating in an allosemitic mode, simultaneously embraced and rejected elements of Christianity’s Jewish past in the form of memories of the Maccabean martyrs. Once appropriated into Christian traditions, the originally Jewish narrative from 2 Maccabees 7 had a series of “afterlives.” This study of the Maccabean martyrs will show how late antique traditions that first framed these Jewish figures within the rhetoric of the Law as a site of difference between Christians and Jews required reconfiguration and reinterpretation in medieval traditions. Appropriated narratives, like that of the Maccabean martyrs, shifted and changed according to the social situations and theological concerns of particular authors and contexts. For example,


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Christian discussions of how the Law represented Christian-Jewish difference in narratives of the Maccabean martyrs changed depending on the particular circumstances of compositions and context. This variation in interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs and the Law for which they died illustrates the inherent instability of appropriation and hybridized discourses. Central to this instability was the need to articulate difference between contemporary Christians and Jews, whether actual or virtual. The particular dynamics of localized Christian perceptions of Jews formed the ways in which the Maccabean martyrs and their death for the Law were remembered, imagined, and interpreted. The following chapters will demonstrate how late antique and medieval Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs were malleable products shaped by the needs and issues facing particular authors and communities. Chapter 1 will establish the essential features of the core narrative of the Maccabean martyrs, 2 Maccabees 7. I will argue in this chapter that this initial story of the Maccabean martyrs was a narrative for nationalist Jews that commemorated these martyrs as a means of resisting imperial Hellenistic pressures. Texts on the Maccabean martyrs inspired by 2 Maccabees 7, notably 4 Maccabees, and early Christian writings dating before the fourth century conveyed memories of the Maccabean martyrs as noble martyrs for the Law. Composed within a context of Jewish and Christian resistance to Roman imperial culture, these texts valorized the Maccabean martyrs as exemplars of loyalty to God. Absent from the Christian texts in this chapter was any effort to explain why Christians ought to maintain the memory of the Maccabean martyrs. Chapter 2 shows that authors of late antique Christian texts went to great lengths to explain the purpose of Christian commemorations of the Jewish martyrs. In homilies and treatises, Christian bishops such as John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine of Hippo employed the martyrs’ insistence on dying for the Law as a means of establishing differences between their Christian communities and other communities, whether Jewish, nonorthodox Christian, or pagan. These bishops interpreted the death of the Maccabees as a death not for the Law but for Christ the Lawgiver. In order to assert the superiority of Catholic Christianity, these bishops sought to erase the Jewishness of the Maccabean martyrs from their communities’ memories of them. Doing so simultaneously obscured the hybrid nature of Christianity. Sermons on the Maccabean martyrs served as vehicles to persuade Christian audiences to resist opponents (either real or imagined) that could be Jewish (in the case of Chrysostom and Augustine), Arian (in the case of Ambrose), or Donatist

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(in the case of Augustine). The Maccabean martyrs, who died resisting Seleucid political ambitions, were resurrected in Christian discourse for the support of a new form of empire. Chapter 3 examines medieval memories of the Maccabean martyrs recorded in biblical commentaries, liturgical explanations of the significance of their feast, and histories. For authors such as Rabanus Maurus and Rupert of Deutz, the late antique tradition of interpreting the Maccabean martyrs as martyrs not for the Law but for Christ the Lawgiver continued. Addressing new political, cultural, and theological contexts, the memory of the Maccabees simply as Jewish martyrs for the Law was resisted. Rather, these authors used the Maccabean martyrs as models of fidelity for royalty and rhetorical figures to resist opponents of reform. Thinkers like Anselm of Laon, John Beleth, and Bernard of Clairvaux also sought to explain the purpose of the liturgical commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs. Peter Comestor composed a commentary on 2 Maccabees 7 that moved away from a simply spiritual interpretation of the significance of the death of the Maccabean martyrs. Even in the development of literal exegesis in the medieval period, these martyrs represented an ideal form of Jewish observance of the Law, one in which death for the Law was congruent with the recognition of Jesus Christ. The Maccabean martyrs were absorbed into a Christian historical narrative in which the achievements of the biblical Israel were continuous with the contemporary life of the church. Covering over the hybrid origins of Christianity that the martyrs revealed was not a concern, unlike with the late antique sources. Rather, there existed in the worldview of these works a totalizing view of history in which the righteous members of Israel, such as the Maccabean martyrs, were part of the same fellowship as righteous Christians. But there was no space in this understanding for contemporary Jews who, refusing to recognize Jesus Christ as their messiah, continued their fidelity to the very Law for which the Maccabean martyrs died. Chapter 4 addresses both Jewish and Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs in the Rhineland from the twelfth to sixteenth centuries. Medieval Jewish traditions from the Rhineland concerning the Maccabean martyrs, commonly known as the mother and seven sons in Jewish literature, are a stark contrast to Christian traditions. While Christian literature studiously distinguished between the virtuous death of these martyrs and their obedience to the Mosaic Law, Jewish traditions emphasized fidelity to the covenant of God as the central ideal to emulate in their martyrdom. The memory of the mother and seven sons was employed in crusade chronicles, liturgical poetry, and legal materials as an example of


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how to die well in times of persecution. These texts reflected the colonial conditions in which medieval Jews lived. Authors of the crusade chronicles and liturgical poetry used mimicry of Christian culture as a strategy for encouraging Jewish resistance to Christian efforts to convert Jews or otherwise undermine their faith and communal identities. This section focuses on the story of Mistress Rachel and the slaughter of her children. This narrative was not only a reenactment of the death of the Maccabean martyrs, but it showed Jewish resistance to the totalizing historical narratives employed within Christendom regarding the story of Israel. Although there is no evidence that medieval Jews were aware of the Christian practices of commemorating the Maccabean martyrs, Jewish traditions of the mother and seven sons indicated a desire to resist Christian denigration of Jewish fidelity to the Law. The Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs located in Cologne during the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries is the other point of focus in Chapter 4. This cult represents another iteration of the memory of these martyrs in the Rhineland. Dying for the Jewish Law held a far smaller role in this context. The antiquity and nobleness of the righteous death of the Maccabean martyrs stood at the forefront of Helias Mertz’s promotion of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs. It was because of their antiquity and scriptural heritage that Mertz promoted them as alternatives and rivals to the established cults of Ursula and the Three Kings in Cologne. At the same time these qualities allowed the Maccabean martyrs to be ideal models for a humanist understanding of a reformed cult of the saints. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs in the Cologne cult involved a forgetting of their allegiance to the Law. This repression of memory represented another form of allosemitism in which Jewish narratives were reworked to fit Christian needs at the very moment in which the antiquity of this same narrative was a draw. The book concludes with questions about the ethics of commemorating martyrs and the problem of appropriating Jewish narratives into Christian discourses both past and present. Given the history of marginalization and violence in Christian attitudes and behavior toward Jews, it is argued in this chapter that the historian must drop pretensions to objectivity and seek to give voice to those who cannot speak. I end by arguing that postmodern and postcolonial hermeneutics force the historian both to see patterns of manipulation in supersessionist narratives and to speak against them when they play out in contemporary situations. Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs have always been fluid. These memories of the Maccabean martyrs, as simultaneously Jewish

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and non-Jewish, Christian and non-Christian, are a synecdoche for the hybridity at the foundation of Christianity. The Maccabean martyrs were figures to think with for Christian authors that simultaneously revealed and obscured Christianity’s Jewish past in the interest of creating Christian identity and power structures.

CHAPTER 1

The Earliest Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs and Resistance Culture In the earliest recorded texts about the Maccabean martyrs, authors living and writing within specific historical locations constructed the memory of these martyrs for the Mosaic Law as a means of shaping and reinforcing resistance to dominant imperial cultures. For both Jewish and Christian communities of the eastern Mediterranean from the centuries immediately before and after the beginning of the Common Era, the narrative of Maccabean martyrs served a role in what Edward Said has described as a “resistance culture” to the conformist and assimilationist pressures of imperial policies and domination. Within a resistance culture alternative means of conceiving of history emerge.1 The story of the Maccabean martyrs, as found in 2 Maccabees 7, 4 Maccabees, and early Christian exhortations to martyrdom, presented the memory of these martyrs within the narration of historical events to encourage faithful resistance to imperial persecutions. 2 Maccabees Although the focus of this book is on the iterations of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs, the template for these memories was decidedly Jewish memories, and it is these Jewish memories that occupy our attention here. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs in the earliest Jewish text on them, 2 Maccabees 7, concerns dying for Torah as an act of resistance that delineated in the starkest terms possible the difference between Jewish communities and others. The account of the Maccabean martyrs found in 2 Maccabees is an example of resistance culture in which the violence of imperial domination was reinscribed into internal communal narratives. An abridgement

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of an earlier work composed by Jason of Cyrene, dating sometime from 125 BCE to 63 BCE, 2 Maccabees narrates the Hasmonean revolt against the Seleucids. The anonymous author of this text framed martyrdom as resistance, especially in 2 Maccabees 7, by a focus on the violence of Gentile erasure of the freedom to observe Torah in Judea. Resistance, then, had inseparably religious and nationalist dimensions.2 The confrontation between the cultures of Judaism and Hellenism is pronounced in 2 Maccabees. Indeed, one finds in this work the first use of the Greek term Ioudaïsmos (“Judaism”) as a favorable contrast to Hellênismos (“Hellenism”). The author of 2 Maccabees described Greeks as barbarous (2.21) and the adoption of Hellenistic cultural mores as traitorous (4.13). Indeed, this author deliberately used the phrase Hellênismos in conjunction with Judean collaboration with Seleucids. This usage paralleled the words “Medism” and “to ‘Medize’” to describe those Greeks who collaborated with the Persian Empire in the sixth and fifth centuries BCE. To the author of 2 Maccabees, engagement with Hellenism was treason and the embrace of Judaism indicative of fidelity to God and country.3 Yet one must be careful not to assume that “Judaism” in 2 Maccabees simply referred to some sort of religious belief. Rather, as Shaye J. D. Cohen has shown, Ioudaïsmos incorporated both a political meaning referring to citizenship in Judea and a cultural and religious community of Judeans. In the Hasmonean period, Ioudaïsmos as a concept operated in a similar way to its antonym Hellênismos insofar as both terms originated as terms applicable to discrete political and geographical groups that were opened up to include ethnic outsiders as members.4 The emergence of the concept of Ioudaïsmos as a cultural signifier in opposition to Hellênismos speaks of a broader cultural resistance by Jews to the imperial context of Hellenism in political, cultural, and religious manifestations. Thus, the story of the death of the Maccabean martyrs is a Jewish narrative in both its message of fidelity to Torah and its example of resistance to the Seleucid king Antiochus IV and his Hellenization program. Within the framework of the narration of Seleucid rule over the Jewish nation and of the Jewish resistance to it, the narrative found in 2 Maccabees 5–7 couches in religious terms the assertion of Jewish identity, specifically in fidelity to the Torah and the temple system in Jerusalem, as a key element of resistance. The major themes of Jewish religious identity found in this narrative involve two main foci: a Deuteronomistic view of history and the rhetoric of dying for Torah. In both of these themes, the Torah given by God to Israel is the norm that determines behavior and identity that distinguishes Jew from non-Jew.

The Earliest Memories

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According to 2 Maccabees 5 and 6, Antiochus IV’s introduction of a forced Hellenization program in Jerusalem designed to compel Jews to abandon the Torah sparked Jewish resistance. Among the practices instituted that were offensive to traditional Jewish sensibilities of the period were Antiochus’s dedication of the Temple in Jerusalem to Zeus, sacred prostitution within the Temple, unclean sacrifices, a ban on observing the Sabbath and festivals, and a prohibition on affirming Jewish identity (6.3–5). The author suggests that Antiochus committed such horrible deeds as an instrument of God’s punishment of Israel, though God would later turn these chastisements into benefits (5.17–20).5 This notion that God will deliver his people from punishment of their sins but also punish instruments of chastisement is a particular historical perspective rooted in Deuteronomy 32.6 A Deuteronomistic view of history predicates the Torah as the standard by which to judge the behavior of Israel and the actions of non-Jews against Israel. This view understands righteous suffering to yield redemption, resulting in a redemptive view of suffering. This Deuteronomistic perspective is a fundamental element of a Jewish ideology of martyrdom.7 Thus the author set the scene for the earliest martyrology in the Jewish tradition, culminating in 2 Maccabees 7.8 People were martyred for maintaining observance of laws pertaining to circumcision (6.10), Sabbath observance (6.11), and diet (6.18–7.42). In the presentation of these events, the author again offered a Deuteronomistic interpretation of these events. “Now I urge those who read this book not to be depressed by such calamities, but to recognize that these punishments were designed not to destroy but to discipline our people” (6.12).9 Such punishment was actually a sign of God’s care and desire to distinguish Israel from the other nations (6.11–16). Obedience to Torah and God’s redemption of those who suffered on account of it marked the distinctive relationship between God and Israel. The author of 2 Maccabees 6 and 7 emphasized resistance to Seleucid domination as a means of preserving Jewish identity by recalling two accounts of people martyred for refusing to eat ritually impure food: Eleazar, and the mother and seven sons. These narratives heightened the prominence of Torah as a marker of difference between Jews and nonJews. First, Eleazar the priest was martyred for refusing to eat pork that had been sacrificed (6.18–20). In a speech, Eleazar declared he would not evade death by pretending to eat the pork lest he give the false impression to the young and cause them to willingly eat pork by his example (6.24–27). Eleazar viewed his death as an example to the young of “how

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to die a good death willingly and nobly for the revered and holy laws” (6.28), thus emphasizing that the fundamental difference between Jews and non-Jews rested in fidelity to Torah. The narrative of the martyrdom of seven sons and the death of their mother reinforced the delineation between Jews and non-Jews in regard to the Torah as expressed in ideals of obedience, resurrection, divine judgment and punishment, disciplinary suffering, and atonement. The difficulty of situating this narrative in a clear historical context or geographical location (the debate being over whether the event happened in Judea, Jerusalem, or Antioch) reveals the literary, constructed nature of this text and the rhetorical goals of this text—to emphasize the necessity of preserving commitment to God and Torah at all costs. This message itself was not simply a call to religious fidelity. The preservation of the memory of these martyrs who suffered at the hands of the tyrant who sought to undo the very center of Jewish ethno-religious identity in the sacrificial system of the Jerusalem temple revealed the resistance culture within which the author of this text was situated.10 This text established an inextricable link between fidelity to God represented in obedience to Torah and resistance against unjust imperial powers oppressing Israel. As with Eleazar, this family chose between torture and obedience to Torah over eating impure pork (7.1). The account of the first son’s death (7.4–5) established the framework for all the following martyrdoms: the declamatory refusal to violate Torah; the gruesome torment; and the expression of belief that validates the current suffering and encourages the other brothers. This narrative was also one of the earliest examples of a classic pattern of martyrdom in early Jewish and Christian texts: the issuing of a pagan decree that violated Jewish or Christian fidelity to God, leading to a choice between a death sentence and infidelity, and concluding with the execution of the believer.11 As Antiochus had each son killed (in descending order of age), each rebuked Antiochus and condemned his character, his policies, and his standing before the God of Israel.12 In the seventh son’s speech, the rhetoric of resistance built to a dramatic climax. Antiochus entreated the youngest son to comply with his wishes. The king promised to make the youngest son his “Friend” (an official title for advisors to Seleucid rulers) and offered him riches and an administrative role in the empire (7.24). Meanwhile, the son’s mother urged him to die for God and join his brothers in the resurrection (7.27–29). The seventh son replied, declaring he would not obey the king but “the command of the law that was given to our ancestors through Moses” (7.30),


17

thus choosing obedience to God and Torah over collaboration with the Seleucid ruler and acquisition of temporal goods. The seventh son’s speech emphasized the importance of resistance to foreign domination in the constructed memory of the Maccabean martyrs in this text. Resistance was couched theologically within the theme of disciplinary suffering as a proper atonement for the sins of the whole nation of Israel: “I, like my brothers, give up body and life for the laws of our ancestors, appealing to God to show mercy soon to our nation and by trials and plagues to make you confess that he alone is God, and through me and my brothers to bring to an end the wrath of the Almighty that has justly fallen on our whole nation” (7.37–38). This passage reads as a fulfillment of the prophecy of Deuteronomy 32 that God would deliver his people from the punishment of their sins (Deuteronomy 32.36) and that the enemies of Israel would in turn be punished (Deuteronomy 32.42). The narrative concluded with the death of the seventh son at the hands of Antiochus (2 Maccabees 7.39–40). The mother also died “after her sons,” though the means of her death was not specified.13 Robin Darling Young argues that this passage presents the mother and seven sons as “examples of observant Judaism and fulfillment of prophecy.”14 That the death of these seven sons was grounded in a commitment to religious practice and fidelity between God and the people of Israel should not be understood as a counterpoint to the resistance culture in which this text was located. Rather, the memory of the Maccabean martyrs as symbolic of resistance to outside powers was so powerful because it was grounded in ethnoreligious commitments shared by a wider population of Jews in Judea and the surrounding diasporic communities. The importance of the suffering of these sons for the subsequent historical narrative of 2 Maccabees illustrates Said’s argument that resistance affords an alternative construction of history.15 In the chapters immediately following this passage is found the narration of the successful revolt of Judas Maccabeus against the Seleucids. This portion of 2 Maccabees began with an exhortation to God to remember those who suffered at the hands of Antiochus (8.2–4).16 The rhetorical effect of 2 Maccabees 7 in light of what follows it established the positive results of the obedience, suffering, and deaths of these sons. As a whole, the Deuteronomistic rhetoric of this passage situated fidelity to Torah as a sine qua non of what it meant to be Jewish. More specifically, national resistance against the colonizing efforts of the Seleucids occurred precisely within the textual demarcation between Jews obedient to Torah and non-Jews who undermined Torah observance as a part of larger domination and oppression of Jews.

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4 Maccabees The anonymous author of 4 Maccabees reshaped the death of the Maccabean martyrs within the Jewish Hellenistic Diaspora to illustrate devotion to the God of Israel and Torah as the paragon of reason. Unlike 2 Maccabees, this book framed martyrdom and obedience to Torah within a discussion of the Hellenistic ideals of reason and virtue.17 The memory of resistance to pagan tyrants utilizing the language and discourses of the dominant imperial culture was in itself a critique of imperial powers and an element of resistance culture.18 The use of the language and philosophical terms from the dominant culture in an imperial context as a critique of that culture and its leaders is one manifestation of resistance culture.19 In 4 Maccabees the literary form of an epideictic speech is employed, praising the exemplary behavior of Eleazar and the mother and seven sons.20 In the borrowing of Greek philosophical concepts and literary forms, the author of this work revealed himself to be located halfway between full acculturation to Hellenism and complete rejection of it. By appealing to Torah observance as the paragon of rational behavior, the author addressed those Jews who were tempted to fully assimilate to Hellenistic culture.21 In the critical portrayal of the impious behavior of Antiochus, the representative of Hellenistic culture and empire in this text, the author (as David deSilva argues) revealed the gap between Greek ideals of culture and civilization and the decidedly barbaric behavior of the Hellenistic Seleucid empire. It was only by following Torah that a Jew could best achieve the ideals of Greek philosophy and moral aspirations.22 The memory of the Maccabean martyrs who suffered under Seleucid rule was preserved in 4 Maccabees within a critique of imperial domination of Judea and, by extension, the Jewish people in the context of the Roman Empire. The genre of this work helps us to understand how the memory of these martyrs was preserved. Although some have argued that this work was originally a speech commemorating the martyrs, deSilva argues that no such liturgical celebration is known in the first century of the Common Era but rather might have been delivered on another occasion like the feast of Hanukah, thus emphasizing the importance of these martyrs over the Hasmoneans, whose later rulers were strongly disliked.23 Whether or not the exact occasion for the delivery of this work can be determined, this text circulated widely and influenced the earliest Christian writers.24 As a critique of Antiochus as an unjust tyrant whose Hellenization campaign threatened to destroy traditional Jewish worship


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and culture while employing Hellenistic literary forms and intellectual concepts, 4 Maccabees as a document testified to cultural resistance that revealed a hybrid identity for its author and textual community. Given that 4 Maccabees was composed when Judea was under Roman control, the rhetoric against Antiochus can be understood as a critique of Roman imperial culture. The Roman Empire expressed its power not simply in overtly military or administrative forms but also, and more pervasively, through the mechanism of imperial religion and patronage networks.25 Warren Carter has identified several essential aspects of Roman imperial theology. As a system of thought designed to legitimate Roman control of the Mediterranean world, this theology emphasized that the gods direct history and designated Rome and its elite as the rulers of the world. The emperors enjoyed special relationships with particular gods and reinforced their divinely ordained authority through a variety of media and public expressions including architecture, inscriptions, coinage, rituals, and festivals. Despite the official assertion of a Pax Romana, warfare was a constant factor. Emperors asserted the existence of this state of universal peace as a means of expressing the authority to rule invested in them by the gods. The Pax Romana functioned as part of a broader imperial ideology that both masked and reinforced Roman domination.26 From this perspective, 4 Maccabees reads not just as an effort by a literate Greek Jew to valorize Jewish heroes but as an assertion of the necessity of fidelity to Torah despite Roman imperial claims. Although ostensibly about the spiritual victory of the Maccabean martyrs over the Seleucid tyrant, this text is also a theological counterpoint to Roman imperial religion in which the ultimate ordering of human affairs and cultural standards emanates not from Rome or from the cultures it endorses, but from the power and teaching of God manifested in Israel. Four Maccabees emerged out of a literary context that had turned to a rhetorical ideal of martyrdom as an element of Jewish cultural discourse. During the period of its composition, martyrdom and other forms of noble death had become tropes in texts that emphasized Jewish national identity. A prominent text dealing with this theme is the Assumption of Moses, a purported farewell discourse by Moses to Joshua, enjoining Israel to obey Torah, which is dated from the early part of the first century of the Common Era. In the Assumption of Moses, a faithful Jew, Taxo, and his sons endure suffering and death, which presages the end times and the redemption of Israel.27 This notion of redemptive suffering indicates the theology of this text, and though it does not name the Maccabean martyrs, it emerged in continuity with the ideas found in 2 Maccabees

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7. Around the period of the composition of 4 Maccabees in the mid-first century of the Common Era, the historian Flavius Josephus recorded the siege and mass suicide by Jewish rebels at the fortress of Masada, along with similar actions taken at Jotapata and Jerusalem, in his Jewish War. Josephus’s narrative is not a martyrdom text. Rather it presents these soliders as willing to choose suicide rather than dying at the hands of one’s enemies. While martyrdom appears to have been a relatively rare phenomenon in Josephus’s writings, he adapted elements of 2 Maccabees 7 in his description of the death of a family in Jewish Antiquities XIV.15. Josephus’s adaptation of this passage indicates that the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was a familiar element in Jewish culture despite the relative rarity of martyrdom itself.28 Four Maccabees ostensibly was composed to answer “whether devout reason is sovereign over the emotions” (1.1). The prominence of this question reveals the author to be a Jewish figure engaging in an intellectually elite discourse while also navigating between Jewish and Hellenistic culture. Questions regarding reason and the proper control of emotions were a hallmark of Greek intellectual thought, notably Stoicism, and reflect the Hellenistic provenance of this work.29 However, the use of these Hellenistic concepts is “Judaized” in the sense that in 4 Maccabees “devout reason” appears as a term referring to an intellect properly directed to and ordered by God through Torah observance. The redefinition of this term is an example of hybridity within Second Temple Jewish thought. The author of 4 Maccabees employs reason as tool by which to critique the horrors inflicted on the Judean population by Antiochus’s “civilizing” project of Hellenizing these conquered people and their institutions. Eleazar, the seven sons, and their mother prove through their willingness to die that devout reason indeed controls the emotions (1.8–10). The protagonists attained the classical Hellenistic virtues of prudence, justice, courage, and temperance by wisdom born from education in Torah (1.16–18).30 In them, devout reason commanded the emotions by self-control (1.30–31). Thus the person guided by devout reason can also withstand physical torments (3.17–18) as the rest of the text illustrates. The rational endurance the martyrs exhibited itself as an act of resistance against the oppressive policies of Antiochus. The stand of the martyrs against Antiochus was a stand against what deSilva labels the “arrogant logic of tyranny.”31 The mother’s speech in 4 Maccabees reveals how the author received the memory of the mother’s discourse from 2 Maccabees 7 and recast it to heighten the rhetoric of resistance against political and cultural imperialism. In 2 Maccabees 7 the mother was praised for using reason to


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encourage her sons to accept martyrdom. In that work she was described as “filled with a noble spirit, she reinforced her woman’s reasoning with a man’s courage” (7.21). Utilizing this description, the author in 4 Maccabees 14.11–17.6 expanded on the theme of the mother employing reason to educate her sons and preparing them to suffer for the sake of Torah. One passage favorably compared her to Abraham, because she chose obedience to religion over preserving her own children, just as Abraham was willing to sacrifice Isaac (14.20–15.3, 6–10).32 Commenting on her unfathomable endurance in watching each of her sons being tortured to death, the author wrote, “But devout reason, giving her heart a man’s courage in the very midst of her emotions, strengthened her to disregard, for the time, her parental love” (15.23). By using her divinely given reason and controlling her emotions to encourage her sons’ obedience, she became masculine. She is the “mother of the nation, vindicator of the law and champion of religion” (15.29). Thus in her own willingness to allow the death of her children, she was as an equal to Abraham.33 This ability to withstand the death of her sons for the sake of religion further proved the author’s main argument that “devout reason is sovereign over the emotions” (16.1). The masculinization of the mother served as a shaming device. A woman, along with an old man (the priest Eleazar) and seven children, symbolically defeated Antiochus by rational endurance of suffering.34 Although this was a form of passive resistance, nonetheless, the mother’s words were designed to inspire Judeans not to succumb to the temptations of Hellenistic assimilation and cultural imperialism.35 The account of the martyrdom of the seven brothers memorialized them as resisters of cultural imperialism by expounding on the themes of reason guided by Torah and atonement for the nation (8.1–14.10). As in 2 Maccabees, the youths resisted Antiochus’s demands to eat impure pork sacrificed to the gods, while expanding on the meaning of martyrdom for the Law in their speeches. The text portrayed the sons as protectors of and willing martyrs for the divine law given to guide Israel (9.15; 11.12). Their tortures proved that religious knowledge and reason guided by Torah cannot be defeated by physical suffering meted out by gentile conquerors (11.21; 11.27), and enduring these torments yielded God’s mercy toward Israel (9.24; 12.17). The Maccabean martyrs were portrayed as figures of cultural resistance by a comparison with key figures from Jewish history who symbolize Jewish fidelity to God and the Torah given to Israel. In their speeches, the brothers called on the examples of the three youths in the fiery furnace from Daniel 3 (13.9) and the example of the binding of Isaac in Genesis

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22 (13.12) as models to imitate in their death for the sake of Torah. Living according to divine reason and self-control guaranteed that they would be welcomed upon death by the patriarchs of Israel (13.17; cf. 16.25). The text memorialized the martyrdom of these brothers as continuous with a long tradition of devotion to God and Torah that culminated in death. The comparison of these brothers with Isaac’s willing submission to death and the certainty of welcome by the patriarchs indicated that the author understood their deaths as an assertion of Jewish identity against the threat of the loss of that identity by complete assimilation to Hellenism. In the act of urging his audience to resist the pressure to fully assimilate, the author of 4 Maccabees employed Hellenistic thought and rhetoric by portraying the path of Torah, and death for it, as the paragon of reason. Such argumentation reveals the hybrid thought patterns of the author and presumably the audience he addressed. Hybridity, or the adaptation and simultaneous refashioning by colonized subjects of productions of imperial power, as a concept helps us understand how 4 Maccabees refashioned the memory of the Maccabean martyrs in the first century of the Common Era. The author and his audience existed in a border zone between Judaism and Hellenism. The language and logic of this text in which Greek language, rhetoric, and philosophy were used to defend the Torah, a document written in Hebrew presenting a vision of Jewish national self-determination, makes this text more than just a philosophical treatise. It is a text composed for Jews who negotiated the pressures of living in a Hellenistic context while subject to Roman imperial power. 4 Maccabees provided a template for preserving Jewish identity for a community that lived a hybridized existence. While the resistance enjoined in this text in the memorialization of the Maccabean martyrs was not of the military or physical kind, it nonetheless envisioned a Jewish community that undermined the “arrogant logic of tyranny” found in Greco-Roman patterns of empire, both political and cultural. The Emergence of Christian Supersessionism in the Roman Empire The narrative of the Maccabean martyrs, a narrative about dying for Torah and the preservation of Jewish identity in hostile political and cultural contexts, did not remain restricted to Jewish communities. The narratives of both 2 Maccabees 7 and 4 Maccabees were read and circulated in early Christian communities. The rhetoric of resistance and fidelity to God framed in ethno-religious language in the Maccabean literature was


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appropriated by early Christian authors engaged in the process of creating and maintaining Christian identity in the context of imperial persecution. The Christian reception of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs as a Christian memory is ambiguous. While the Maccabean martyrs died for Torah, Christian authors held up these martyrs as exemplars for their own communities experiencing persecution and martyrdom. Paradoxically, during this same period the value of the Mosaic Law was denied within Christian discourses. The ease with which the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs traveled between Jewish and Christian textual communities is related to the fact that communities of Jews and Christians alike were subjected to imperial conditions in the first centuries of the Common Era. Traditionally, Christianity in the first century of the Common Era has been identified as a movement that distinguished itself from Judaism as much as it sought to cooperate with the Roman authorities. Yet contemporary scholars have problematized this assumption. There is no clear sense of when something we could identify as “Christianity” decisively moved away from something resembling a normative rabbinic version of Judaism in the first century.36 Nonetheless, the relationship between the Law given at Sinai and those who did and did not follow Jesus of Nazareth stood out as a primary means of marking boundaries within New Testament texts. It is difficult to determine exactly when Christianity and Judaism became separate entities, but as the second and third centuries of the Common Era wore on Christian writers began to mark out clear distinctions between Christian and Jewish communities in their rhetoric. In this period the Law of Moses emerged as a site of conflict and articulation of Jewish-Christian difference. Christian discourses on the Mosaic Law were part of a larger project that defined the boundaries between Jews and Christians. Although the Law was initially given to the people of Israel, Christians understood the Law to be both uniquely the possession of Jews and also a body of teaching that only Christians completely grasped. This interpretation of the Law is a classic example of Christian supersessionist thought regarding Jews and Judaism. Based on interpretations of the Law, Christians viewed themselves as the legitimate children of Abraham and the true embodiment of Israel at the expense of Jewish self-understanding of their community as Israel and possessors of a covenantal relationship with the God of Israel. A locus classicus for this perspective was Galatians 4:21–5:1 in which Paul allegorized the story of Hagar and Sarah, the mothers of Abraham’s children Ishmael and Isaac, respectively. Paul interpreted this story to mean that the older child, Ishmael, will serve

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the younger child Isaac, whom Paul identified as followers of Jesus in Galatia. Richard Horsley argues that Paul’s concept of the church (ekklēsia) sought not so much to remove observance of the Law or any sort of Jewish form of religious life from the church, but was designed specifically to counter Roman cultural and religious claims. Paul’s assertion that Jesus fulfilled God’s promises with Abraham in passages such as Romans 9–11 or Galatians 3 was designed to counter Roman imperial claims about its own rule. Instead of Rome fulfilling the destiny of the world, Abraham, Israel, and Jesus were the true agents of human destiny.37 Despite the possibility of reading the New Testament as an effort to articulate visions of communities resisting and outside the Roman imperial order, as Christianity developed it defined itself in distinction to Jewish practices and communities. We see this departure from Paul’s anti-imperial message to the construction of clear distinction between the colonized communities of early Christianity and Judaism with the Epistle of Barnabas (an early secondcentury text from the eastern Mediterranean region). This text understood the Pauline allegory of Sarah and Hagar to mean that the church was a new, spiritual Israel that had replaced the carnal Israel of the Jews.38 In the middle of the second century the Christian apologist Justin Martyr argued extensively in his Dialogue with Trypho that any observance of the sacrificial and ritual of the Mosaic Law was invalidated by the disobedience of Israel. Justin traced this disobedience from the episode of the Israelites’ worship of the golden calf in Exodus 32 up to Jewish complicity in the crucifixion of Jesus. According to Justin, the second giving of the Law to Moses after the incident of the golden calf and the destruction of the first tablets of the Law was interpreted not as divine support for the ritual law but the moment upon which it was imposed as a punishment. The first version of the Law contained the moral law that Christians upheld, while the second version contained all the aspects of the ceremonial law that the Jews were compelled to observe because of their rebellion against God.39 Within this interpretation of the Law, the allegory of Galatians was reread as a message of the futility of the Law for Jews and of Christian freedom from it. The Christian claim to have replaced the Jews as Israel raised the question of the continuing relevance of the Hebrew Scriptures, and particularly the Law, for Christians. A solution to this dilemma by Christian authors was to assert that the story of Israel and the Law given to it spiritually referenced the church and not the Jewish people. Regarding the Law, Christian authors claimed the moral law within it had been


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fulfilled in Jesus Christ while his death had dispensed of the necessity for the ceremonial and ritual law.40 Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs in Early Christianity We can speak of the Maccabean martyrs as an example of patterns of early Christian appropriation from Judaism. Although Christianity emerged from the matrix of Second Temple Judaism, by the end of the third century an examination of Christian sources shows that authors utilized Jewish traditions as means of making distinctions from Jewish communities and establishing superiority over them. The construction of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs is a clear example of this phenomenon. A range of early Christian texts served as conduits for preserving the memory of the Maccabean martyrs. This martyrdom account influenced some New Testament texts, especially Hebrews 11:35, which praised these martyrs who suffered torments. The early second-century epistles of Ignatius of Antioch and the Martyrdom of Polycarp reflect language from 4 Maccabees.41 The Maccabean martyrs were central characters in two third-century treatises on martyrdom, Origen of Alexandria’s An Exhortation to Martyrdom and Cyprian of Carthage’s Letter to Fortunatus.42 Both texts by Origen and Cyprian illustrate that Christian appropriation of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs occurred within experiences of imperial persecution. For these two theologians, writing to encourage others to endure persecution and to stand fast in the face of death by the Roman Empire, the presentation of the relevance of the example of the Maccabean martyrs did not deal with the theme of dying for the Law but rather focused on the virtues of fidelity and obedience. Looking specifically at Cyprian’s work, one sees that Cyprian argued that God’s righteous ones, including Jews, have always suffered, even before the incarnation of Christ. Cyprian used allegory to reveal the importance of the seven brothers for those Christians struggling under the Decian persecution.43 The Maccabean martyrs were “equals alike in their lot of birth and virtue, filling up the number seven in the sacraments of a perfected completion.”44 Cyprian argued that along with their mother, these seven sons symbolize the seven churches of Christ (cf. Revelation 1–3).45 The mother of the martyrs was the universal church, and the sons were the seven churches, born in the context of persecution. Read through the lens of persecution by agents of the Roman Empire, Cyprian found meaning in the activity of each son. The first six sons were exemplars of

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how a martyr ought to behave. The seventh son, the one who according to the narrative of 2 Maccabees 7 required instruction, was a type for how Christians facing martyrdom required encouragement from the church community.46 And the mother, as the universal church, found her fertility actualized in the death of her children. For Cyprian, the message of 2 Maccabees 7 ultimately was one of encouragement. If the present suffering of the church was allegorically found in the past victory of the mother and her seven sons, then the church’s own victory was assured.47 Cyprian’s memorialization of the Maccabean martyrs in this exhortation to endure persecution and martyrdom appropriated Jewish texts and interpreted them with a supersessionist hermeneutic as a means of enduring imperial oppression. Cyprian understood the deeds of these Jewish martyrs to be applicable to the context of his community, but his understanding of that relevance depended on a supersessionist framework. While both Jews and Christians resisted imperial power in the centuries around the turn of the Common Era, Christian authors did not make common cause with Jewish communities in opposing imperial oppression. In the case of Cyprian’s use of the Maccabean martyrs’ narrative, a Jewish ethno-religious interpretation of this story as indicative of the necessity of following Torah was replaced with an allegorical, Christological interpretation. In the act of constructing a memory of the Maccabean martyrs to aid the resistance of the Carthaginian Christian community against imperial persecution, any meaning of the story of the Maccabean martyrs that retains a Jewish valence is erased for a supersessionist interpretation. Cyprian of Carthage explains how his community ought to spiritually understand the story of the Maccabean martyrs. Given the pastoral concern he had for encouraging his community to stand firm amid persecution, he did not deal in detail with the text’s Jewish origins. He did not dwell on how to reconcile the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Jewish Law and their role as exemplars for early Christian communities. It was only as Christianity evolved into a religion sanctioned and supported by the representatives of the empire in the fourth and fifth centuries that the problem of the Maccabean martyrs dying specifically for the Jewish Law emerged in Christian literature. In this new context of imperial power, Christian receptions of these martyrs as exemplars and objects of commemoration reflected an understanding that their devotion to the Law signaled differences between the faithful Christians and the rebellious


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Jews. The specifically “imperial” contexts that heralded the beginning of Christendom will be examined in subsequent chapters of this book. Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs were constructed by late antique and medieval authors within the context of a Christian imperium that affected all cultural expressions of Christian-Jewish difference.


CHAPTER 2

Late Antique Bishops and Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs Introduction Late antique Christian bishops transformed earlier Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs. As inheritors of these earlier traditions of the Maccabean martyrs, a number of bishops, primarily via sermons, sought to reframe their communities’ views of these martyrs. The bishops under consideration here include some of the most prominent figures of late antique Christianity—Gregory of Nazianzus, John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, Augustine of Hippo, Pope Leo I, and Pope Gregory I. Their works on the Maccabean martyrs were written to their local communities and reflect concerns linked to the immediate context of these communities. At the same time, these bishops composed their sermons on the Maccabean martyrs during the period in which Christianity emerged as an imperial religion. All of these authors struggled over how to negotiate Christian identity within this new imperial context. Given that 2 and 4 Maccabees were also about the negotiation of an exclusive identity in an imperial context, these were useful texts for bishops to assert their understandings of Christian identity. But an important contrast must be noted. The earliest narratives of the Maccabean martyrs were explicitly about resisting an imperial culture whose agents sought to assimilate Judaism into Hellenism. However, the bishops considered in this chapter used the figure of the Maccabean martyrs as a means to argue for the triumph of a Catholic form of Christianity over rival forms of religious practice and belief in the late Roman Empire. In constructing their memories of the Maccabean martyrs within their own communal locations these bishops in aggregate created a hybridized image of the

30


Maccabean martyrs, both Christian and still irreducibly Jewish, in the service of an imperial vision of Christianity. I will analyze the construction of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs by these late antique bishops according to three categories. First, I will show how Gregory of Nazianzus in his sermon On the Maccabees and Ambrose of Milan in On Jacob and the Blessed Life utilized the memory of the Maccabean martyrs to develop a narrative of resistance against unjust imperial authority. For Gregory this was occasioned by Emperor Julian II’s hostile policies against Christian teachers in imperial academies for the goal of reviving Hellenistic religious practices. Ambrose composed his work, in part, as a reflection on the actions he took to lead his congregation’s resistance to the seizure of a Milanese basilica by Arian imperial forces. Both bishops interpreted the story of the Maccabean martyrs in light of these events and used them to offer an alternative vision for Christians in the Roman Empire. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs served not just to resist persecution by imperial agents but to appeal to the establishment of an alternative Christian power.1 In sermons by John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo one sees a second function of the creation of late antique Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs. Chrysostom and Augustine transformed the memory of the death of the Maccabean martyrs for Torah into a marker of difference between their Catholic Christian communities and rival groups. Chrysostom used a supersessionist interpretation of this martyrdom to create a discourse in which Judaism was placed in a spiritually and intellectually inferior position to Christianity. Chrysostom utilized this hermeneutic for the purpose of establishing Catholic Christian observance of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs as an alternative to engagement in Jewish rituals by his congregation in Antioch. Augustine of Hippo employed the significance of dying for the Law in the story of the Maccabean martyrs in a similar way. He sought to clarify for his congregation in Hippo that Christian veneration of these martyrs, and by extension Christian interpretation of the Mosaic Law, was superior to Jewish and Manichean perspectives. Augustine also promoted Catholic veneration of the Maccabean martyrs to combat Donatist speech and practices concerning them. Through this, Augustine aimed to establish that the true Israel was located not in the Jewish people or the purified church the Donatists espoused. Rather, Israel was continuous with and identical to the church Augustine labeled as Catholic. In Chrysostom and Augustine we see preaching by bishops on the Maccabean martyrs that employed supersessionist theology within the regular rhythms of Christian life and

Late Antique Bishops and Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs 31

practice. Their use of the Maccabean martyrs in sermons reinforced the hybrid nature of late antique imperial Christianity in its appeals to the Jewish past to establish Christian distinctiveness and superiority at the very moment at which these bishops sought to thoroughly disassociate Christianity from its Jewish moorings. In a third category, other bishops offered domesticated memories of the Maccabean martyrs as figures for teaching about practical Christianity. Chrysostom, Augustine, Pope Leo I, and Pope Gregory I (among others to be discussed) composed sermons that elevated these sons, and especially their mother, as models for ideal Christian virtues and behavior. As these bishops achieved greater civic and ecclesiastical responsibility in the late Roman Empire, they turned to the regulation of household piety, urging their communities to adapt ideals of ascetic behavior to everyday life. These sermons featured bishops exercising their pastoral office to address the everyday needs of Christian congregations. In them the mother of the Maccabean martyrs became domesticated so that her appeal to resistance against tyranny found in 2 and 4 Maccabees was removed from the public sphere to internal battles against vice and the struggle to attain virtue. These sermons were another manifestation of the assimilation and transformation of memories of the Jewish past in the construction of late antique Christian discourses. Through the pervasive influences of supersessionism, a narrative that memorialized dying for the Law against unjust imperialist tyranny was domesticated into an occasion for teaching about everyday Christian virtue and piety in imperial Catholic Christianity. Looking at the texts and authors discussed in this chapter in the context of an emerging Christian imperial structure, the Maccabean martyrs served as one particular example of the employment of Jewish texts and figures to support localized arguments regarding the relationship between Christianity and other cultural and religious forces. Christian texts on the Maccabean martyrs illustrate how such appeals were deployed in diverse local contexts. Whether in Antioch, Milan, Hippo, or Rome, these authors discussed the Maccabean martyrs within a larger context of imperial conditions. An underlying theme in these works on the martyrs was to explain how a self-defined normative version of Christianity was superior to competing pagan, Jewish, and nonnormative Christian options. The prospect of either gaining or maintaining an alliance with the imperial system encouraged the designation of nonnormative Christian groups as others who ought to be marginalized and ideologically, if not culturally, dominated.

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While examining efforts by a culturally and politically ascendant version of Christianity to increase and wield its influence in religious and cultural spheres, the contemporary cultural theorist Homi K. Bhabha provides a useful analysis of power dynamics within colonial contexts. He notes that in colonial situations, a discourse of “otherness” is employed. Wielders of colonial power use stereotyping as a way of fixing the other into an unchangeable and marginalized position. The stereotype is “a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place’, already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated.”2 Yet the stereotype itself is ambivalent and unstable because it is a category that does not represent a people or group as they really are but exists rather to define according to a particular agenda of power and control. The objects of stereotypes, by their very existence and lived reality, can undermine the stereotype itself. Recognizing the stereotype as integral to a discourse of difference designed to strengthen colonial power, one understands the stereotyped other as “at once an object of desire and derision, an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and identity.”3 The colonizer constructs a narrative of the origins and identity of the colonized that affirms their natural inferiority and their need to be controlled by a superior group.4 While Bhabha describes this process in terms of modern colonialism, one sees similar dynamics at work in the deployment of Christian supersessionist theology in the creation of memories of the Maccabean martyrs by late antique bishops. As part of marginalizing and defining Jews in stereotyped ways, Christian writers and leaders refined a discourse in which Jews were denied possession of their Scriptures and their self-identifying markers such as Israel. Although one can trace these Christian moves back to the mid-second century with Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho to illustrate a context in which Christians and Jews operated as competing “others” inside the Roman imperial system, the intent and focus in the fourth and fifth century was different.5 The focus of anti-Jewish stereotyping by these bishops was to ensure that a range of groups, including but not limited to Jews, did not undermine Christian aspirations to religious and cultural power and influence. The construction of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs to further these aspirations meant that Arians, Donatists, Manicheans, and pagans also had to be rendered outside of the Catholic Christian narrative in which the Jews had already been placed. In this sense, Andrew Jacobs is correct in speaking of the need for Christians to constantly “reconquer” and “remaster” Jewish


remnants in the Holy Land in order to hold in check fears of resistance to Catholic Christian claims to power by rival groups.6 Imperial Aspirations and Resistance Culture GREGORY

OF

NAZIANZUS, CHRISTIAN EDUCATION,

AND THE

MACCABEAN MARTYRS

Gregory of Nazianzus (330–90), a prominent fourth-century bishop and theologian counted as one of the “Cappadocian Fathers,” composed the first extant sermon on the Maccabean martyrs in 362 or 363. With the delivery of this sermon, one has the first solid evidence of Christians moving from viewing the Maccabean martyrs as virtuous biblical heroes to objects of veneration within a larger cultic context.7 In this sermon Gregory both wrote against the imperial policies of Julian II (“the Apostate”) and provided a rationale for remembrance of these martyrs by his congregation. Gregory shows himself to have inherited the traditions of the Maccabean martyrs via 4 Maccabees in two respects. First, his sermon emphasized these martyrs, their mother, and the priest Eleazar as paragons of virtue who ought to be imitated by all Christians, including priests, sons, and mothers.8 Second, like the author of 4 Maccabees, Gregory used the figure of the Maccabean martyrs to critique the unjust exercise of imperial authority. Rather than argue that the Torah was the true paragon of reason, as in 4 Maccabees, Gregory presented these martyrs as paragons of Christian virtue that Julian II opposed. This sermon should be read within the context of the Julianic persecution of Christianity and the emperor’s efforts to restore paganism at the expense of an emerging imperial Christianity. This sermon expressed Gregory’s ire over Julian’s edict on the schools banning Christian teachers from using classical literature in the education of their charges. To Gregory such a ban undermined his understanding of a cultural continuity between Christianity and classical culture. By eliminating the voice of Christian teachers in the imperial academies, this ban threatened the social, cultural, and economic standing of Christian intellectual elites in the Roman Empire.9 Martha Vinson has argued persuasively that Gregory’s sermon on the Maccabean martyrs features rhetorical responses to this edict. First, as a protest against Julian’s repressive policies, Gregory employed Homeric language to argue for Christianity’s classical heritage. This militated against Julian’s effort as part of his pagan revival to exclude Christian intellectual voices from the formation of the young men being groomed for leadership roles in imperial society. Second, Gregory praised the Maccabean

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martyrs to circumvent Julian’s attempts to make common cause with Jewish communities as part of his plan to reduce the influence and prominence of Christianity. The most famous example of this was his plan to rebuild the Temple in Jerusalem that had been destroyed by Rome in 70 CE. This action would have been a deliberate reversal of Christian claims to be the inheritors of the covenant with Israel in light of the destruction of the Jewish cultic system. Julian began making these plans in Antioch in the summer of 362 as he prepared for his invasion of Persia, and Gregory delivered this sermon to rebuke this policy.10 Gregory’s sermon thus was not delivered as a simple devotional exercise in praise of the Maccabean martyrs, but as a potent political speech act that wove together the twin cultural heritages of the classical world and the Jewish tradition, claiming both as central to the identity of the church, and defying Julian’s policies.11 In order to achieve his goal of rebuking Julian’s efforts to disenfranchise the Christian intellectual and political elite of which he was a member, Gregory promoted the idea that the Maccabean martyrs were exemplars worth imitating. Gregory refashioned the message of 4 Maccabees that demonstrated the superiority of maintaining Torah as a sign of Jewish identity amid the temptation to assimilate. Gregory promoted these Jewish martyrs as exemplars of virtue to undermine Julian’s claims that Christianity was not congruent with classical values. Instead, to be Christian was to attain the virtuous life the Maccabean martyrs had also reached. Furthermore, Gregory employed these Jewish martyrs as a way of inoculating against the fear that Christianity would lose its force if Jewish temple worship were to be restored by Julian. To accomplish his goals, Gregory had to establish the Maccabean martyrs as figures worthy of commemoration. Despite Gregory’s vigorous claims that the Maccabean martyrs were representatives of Christianity’s Jewish heritage, it is striking that his sermon began with language suggesting his audience was unfamiliar with these martyrs and their significance. Gregory noted that some did not honor this feast because these martyrs died before Christ. He argued they should be honored because of the example their virtuous deaths provide.12 The defensive beginning of this sermon resounds repeatedly in the Christian literature concerning the Maccabean martyrs from the late antique to the medieval period. While Christian authors might have seen the inherent value that these martyrs held for their theological and pastoral agenda, often the connection was lost on their audiences. Gregory’s defensive opening also indicated that a liturgical celebration of the Maccabean martyrs in itself was a new


development in Asia Minor. In order for Gregory to accomplish his goals of rebuking the imperial policies of Julian that would have marginalized Gregory as a leader of his community, he first had to establish the significance of remembering the Maccabean martyrs for his community. THE MACCABEAN MARTYRS AND IMPERIAL RESISTANCE IN AMBROSE OF MILAN’S ON JACOB AND THE BLESSED LIFE

Like Gregory of Nazianzus, Ambrose of Milan (ca. 339–97) in On Jacob and the Blessed Life attempted to construct an image of the Maccabean martyrs so his community would remember them as both an example of virtue and a righteous resistance of unjust imperial power. Ambrose composed On Jacob from sermons delivered to catechumens during Lent and Holy Week as they prepared for baptism on Easter. In this text Ambrose offered an extended meditation on the Maccabean martyrs as an example of the virtue of temperance and endurance that the patriarch Jacob exemplified. While doing this Ambrose drew on his own experience of enduring the threat of persecution during the confrontation between Catholic Christians in Milan and imperial troops seeking to seize the Portian Basilica in Milan on behalf of the Arian emperor Valentinian II during Lent of 386.13 Ambrose’s presentation on the virtues exhibited by these Old Testament figures and his message of orthodox resistance against outside forces was delievered to members of the educated elite in Milan. Like the author of 4 Maccabees, Ambrose encouraged his audience to remember the Maccabean martyrs as exemplars of the congruence between possessing virtues as defined by Greco-Roman classical culture while retaining fidelity to the God of Israel. On Jacob was an exegetical work in a series of treatises that consider the virtues of the Old Testament patriarchs. These treatises ought to be understood as a pedagogical unit designed to educate lay people in Milan about the Christian ethical life. Utilizing classical literature and Aristotelian, Neoplatonic, and Stoic ideas, Ambrose set out an understanding of the ethical life in light of biblical teaching and example that eased educated members of late Roman culture into a Christian worldview. Ambrose addressed catechumens desiring baptism who were designated as competentes. This group stood in distinction to aspirantes who received instruction solely by listening to Bible readings and sermons. The competentes in Milan received twice daily instruction from Ambrose during Lent drawn from the lives of the patriarchs in Genesis. From the content of these sermons, Marcia Colish has argued that

36


these competentes were well-educated adults with the means to engage in intensive catechetical instruction. In guiding these competentes into the Christian faith, Ambrose interpreted the biblical narratives in a way that allowed for classical ideals to be embraced yet always subordinated them to a Christian ethical vision. In the words of Colish, Ambrose intended his catechumens to perceive themselves not only as Romans, but also as Israelites.14 As with the author of 4 Maccabees, Ambrose desired his learned audience to navigate an identity located between a community of distinctive beliefs and practices and the Roman Empire whose current Arian leadership was hostile to them. Ambrose’s confrontation with the forces of the Arian emperor Valentinian II in 386 informed his presentation of On Jacob. This treatise ostensibly was concerned with the example of Jacob as a paradigm for the virtue of temperance. Yet in the two books of this treatise, only the first half of book 2 treated his life.15 Book 1 began with a paraphrase of the first three chapters of 4 Maccabees on the virtue of temperance and the rational control of the passions.16 Ambrose concluded with an extended discussion of how the priest Eleazar, the Maccabean martyrs, and their mother were outstanding exemplars to the Milanese competentes regarding the endurance of suffering and the maintenance of virtues amid persecution.17 The presence of the example of the Maccabean martyrs and the central theme of their resistance against unjust imperial authority provides a clue for the setting and the context for the composition of On Jacob. Unlike Ambrose’s other treatises on the patriarchs, he began his discussion of the martyrdom of the priest Eleazar with a shift to the first person singular.18 Ambrose identified with Eleazar’s opposition to Antiochus IV because, like Eleazar, he also had been forced to stare down an emperor. Whereas Eleazar confronted Antiochus IV and his soldiers in the Maccabean literature, Ambrose confronted imperial troops over possession of the Portian Basilica in 386. Ambrose’s resistance involved the mobilization of his congregations to perform their own version of a sit-in in opposition to these imperial efforts. Ambrose constructed memories of saints, including that of the Maccabean martyrs, as a means of securing the safety of his community after the threat of imperial violence had ebbed. Soon after the conflict over the Portian Basilica had been resolved, Ambrose initiated the invention of the remains of the martyrs Gervasius and Protasius and the translation of these new relics to another basilica built by Ambrose in Milan. Ambrose used the popular acclaim of the relics of these newly found martyrs to


establish Catholic Christianity as the dominant faction in Milan, thus defusing any further conflict with local Arian factions that supported the emperor.19 The invocation of the example of the Maccabean martyrs as Ambrose constructed them in On Jacob reflected the same logic by which he promoted the cult of Gervasius and Protasius. His construction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs affirmed the validity of his actions and reinforced the appeal of Catholic Christianity against the Arian version supported by the emperor. Ambrose introduced the Maccabean martyrs as exemplary models of Christian virtue and resistance to persecution to competentes receiving catechesis immediately after the crisis over the Portian Basilica. Colish persuasively argues that if On Jacob was originally part of sermons for catechumens and if the reference to the Maccabean martyrs was part of Ambrose’s reflections on the events of 386, then the earliest this text could have been first composed was during Lent of 387.20 Detailed instruction on the virtue of temperance and the endurance of suffering would have been seen as a pastoral necessity by Ambrose. Concerned over the reestablishment of Arianism and reprisals, Ambrose sensed the possibility of martyrdom descending on his community and composed this work to prepare his competentes for the consequences of embracing Catholic Christianity.21 The skillful adoption of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs as a way to interpret and explain the crisis of 386 to new members of Ambrose’s church reveals the extent to which this narrative lent itself to catechetical formation in late fourth-century Christian culture. Ambrose employed the figure of the Maccabean martyrs in his sermons to the competentes to ensure that these members of the upper strata of society in Milan would not support Arianism but Catholic orthodoxy. Although at that time the Catholic party did not have the upper hand in imperial politics, Ambrose’s rhetoric worked to ensure that his position enjoyed the support of the soon-to-be Christian leading members of his city. Much as in Gregory Nazianzus’s sermon on the Maccabean martyrs, Ambrose’s concern rested with conflicts with other Christians. His purpose was not to write polemic against Jews, unlike later authors examined in this chapter, but rather to ensure the newest members of his community could successfully navigate religious and civic conflicts with Arians. To establish an anti-Arian orientation in his audience, Ambrose altered the common Christian memory of the Maccabean martyrs received from 4 Maccabees. By an intertextual use of portions of Chapters 3 and 7 of Paul’s letter to the Romans, Ambrose inverted the message of the death of the Maccabean martyrs from a defense of the rationality of the Mosaic

38


Law to a statement on the rational transformation of Christians. Book 1 of On Jacob opened with approving citations of 4 Maccabees in praise of temperance and rational control of the passions. But the rest of the first book undermined the message of 4 Maccabees that it was the Law of God revealed at Sinai that enabled the pursuit of virtues and a godly life. Following Paul’s teaching on the Law from his letter to the Romans, Ambrose asserted that though the commandments of the Law were good, without the grace of Christ they could only yield sin and death because of the frailty of human flesh.22 While 4 Maccabees taught the rationality of the law as the refuge from the passions, Ambrose declared Christians “escape by reason of Christ” from the danger of death that the flesh signified.23 Ambrose taught that it was indeed the spirit of Christ that properly led the virtuous person to victory over the passions of the flesh. Ambrose assigned the Law to the role of restraining the realm of the flesh while the mind awaited perfection in reason by the grace of Christ.24 Ambrose, following Romans 3:19–20, admitted that the Law was useful in indicating the degree to which humans have failed to obey God, but on its own was useless to save. It was rather the blood of Christ poured out for humanity that saved.25 Life and blessedness were secured in the adoption of the believer as an heir with Christ. “You are a joint heir of Christ, if you suffer and die and are buried with Christ.”26 While such a statement could be understood symbolically in terms of the baptism that the competentes would soon receive, Ambrose made it clear that to belong to the family of Christ as a joint heir meant explicitly to endure the sufferings of this world. “But even if any severities threaten us, they ought not at all to separate us from Christ. Why should we not endure hard and bitter sufferings for Christ, when He accepted such indignities for us?”27 To follow Christ was to possess reason and the ability to endure any torment by the possession of wisdom and control over the passions.28 By the example of these martyrs Ambrose meant to reinforce his audience’s commitment to Catholic Christianity over the state-endorsed Arian party. In book 2 of On Jacob, Ambrose continued to Christianize the memory of the Maccabean martyrs to further his efforts to cement an antiArian stance among his competentes. Ambrose portrayed the sufferings of Eleazar and the seven sons as models of the Christian life guided by reason, temperance, and equanimity. Regarding the priest Eleazar’s speech to Antiochus, Ambrose followed 4 Maccabees in portraying death for the sake of dietary laws as directed to a higher purpose: “Moreover, our abstinence is a training in restraint. We learn to curb excess, to overcome the passions, to shut out concupiscence to resist bodily delights. It is an


exercise of fortitude to refuse to give way to punishments in defense of the law, and a mark of justice and prudence, to keep to the course we have chosen out of fear of God, even under threat of death.”29 In this speech the competentes would have heard Ambrose’s own concern that his congregation be willing to endure adversity and even death in support of Catholic Christianity. The events of 386 and the peril of bloodshed by the swords of imperial soldiers were a vivid memory among the Catholic Christians of Milan. The speeches of resistance, bolstered by appeals to steadfastness amid dangers, found in the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs brought home the concrete necessity of the cultivation of the virtues Ambrose praised. He found the example of these sons who maintained their faith even while being torn apart on instruments of torture, who maintained their piety even while losing their bodies, and whose reason remained even while having their tongues torn out, to be paradigms of constancy, courage, and reason for his competentes.30 In the process of ensuring that his catechumens remembered the Maccabean martyrs as models for resisting Arian imperial forces, Ambrose erased traces of the original Jewish identity of these martyrs. Though Ambrose admitted to the fact that these martyrs died for the Mosaic dietary laws, he elided most elements of a distinctly Jewish identity. There was certainly no hint of the themes of Jewish national resistance or defense of the temple system that were found in the accounts from 2 and 4 Maccabees.31 The significance of the death of the Maccabean martyrs rested not in a national redemption, but as a type for the death of Christ and the transition from the limitations of the Law to the freedom of Christ by grace, which Ambrose had presented in book 1. An example of this process of erasing the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs can be found when Ambrose offered a typological interpretation of the scalping of the second son. In this interpretation Ambrose established these martyrs as types for Christ.“‘You are taking the skin away granted, but I have a spiritual helmet that you cannot take away.’ In truth, no one can take away this helmet, just as the Apostle taught later in regard to the Church of the Lord, ‘that the head of the man is Christ and we are his members.’ The young man correctly foresaw that teaching of the Apostle through God’s Spirit.”32 Both 2 Maccabees 7:7 and 4 Maccabees 9:28 recorded the scalping of the second son, but only Ambrose provided this image of a spiritual helmet derived from imagery in Paul’s letters to the churches of Ephesus and Corinth. For Ambrose this son anticipated Paul’s teaching about the nature of the Christian community as a body ruled by Christ as the head.

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Indeed, Ambrose claimed that this son already bore the helmet of Christ before the incarnation. Ambrose argued that the significance of this martyrdom was twofold. On the one hand, these martyrs were ethical exemplars. But they also were preeminent types of Christ. In these interpretive moves, the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs was subsumed into a Christian paradigm, making the Maccabees more Christian than Jewish for Ambrose’s audience. As examples of Christian, particularly Catholic Christian, fortitude, the Maccabean martyrs served as inspirations in the formation of the Christian identity of Ambrose’s elite catechumens. Ambrose composed these particular reflections on the Maccabean martyrs in order to consolidate and order his Catholic community in Milan in the face of religious competition with Arians immediately after the crisis of the Portian Basilica in 386. The use of the Maccabean martyrs as a model in this narrative reinforced his sense of Catholic identity despite the fact that these martyrs originally stood for Jewish national resistance. The seizure of sacred space by an infidel emperor was a bond that united the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs and Ambrose’s Catholic community. While 2 and 4 Maccabees created a rhetoric of national resistance, Ambrose offered a call to unarmed spiritual resistance among the leaders of the city of Milan who were among his competentes.33 Thus at the end of On Jacob Ambrose urged his audience to consider the example of this mother who stood against the tyrant Antiochus, defeating the invincible king not by force of arms but by “weapons of holiness.”34 Earlier Ambrose had admonished his audience to prepare to endure sufferings like Christ’s.35 Although not national in flavor, the spiritual resistance Ambrose found necessary in 386 for his community could emerge only out of the collective cultivation of virtues. The basilica crisis of 386 made the virtues of fortitude, faith, and control of the passions found in 2 and 4 Maccabees necessary for Ambrose’s community in Milan. Ambrose received the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs’ participation in the Jewish revolt against the Seleucid Empire and transformed it to meet the Catholic Christian context of Milan in the late 380s. Ambrose created his own form of resistance culture in his encouragement to cultivate virtues that would enable his community to resist both physical and political temptation to side with the imperially favored Arians. Ambrose did not advocate for armed rebellion but for a spiritual resistance that would lead to growth in virtue and the formation of a Catholic Christian identity. Although Ambrose’s rhetoric was directed at an Arian emperor, Ambrose himself was not opposed to the alliance of Christianity with the Roman Empire. Indeed, he understood the church, rightly ordered


according to Catholic theology, to have a proper role in the administration of the empire. For example, in his oration on the death of Emperor Theodosius I in 395, Ambrose argued that bishops like him were the rightful conscience of Christian emperors and ought to be heeded in all cases.36 In order to further his message of the superiority of Catholic Christianity against Arianism in the life of the Roman Empire, Ambrose elevated the Maccabean martyrs as exemplars. But in the process of pursuing his own imperial dreams, Ambrose also erased the essentially Jewish elements that would have identified the Maccabean martyrs as Jews in the memory of his catechumens. Policing Communal Boundaries with the Law of the Maccabean Martyrs John Chrysostom and Augustine of Hippo, both late antique bishops, constructed memories of the Maccabean martyrs in sermons delivered on their feast day of August 1. Chrysostom and Augustine alike used a supersessionist interpretation of the value of the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law in order to establish a clear Catholic Christian identity against rival groups whose practice might draw in members of each bishop’s community. Chrysostom was most concerned to ensure that members of his community in Antioch understood the Maccabean martyrs as Christian martyrs before Christ, in order that they might not identity them with the feasts and practices of the local Jewish community. Augustine preached on the Maccabean martyrs as part of his efforts to identify his version of Catholic Christianity with the historical Israel. He crafted this message against claims by rival groups that either denigrated the history of Israel, like Manicheans, or groups that identified Israel with their own group, notably local Jews and Donatist Christians. The creation of memories of the Maccabean martyrs was not a oneway process for either Chrysostom or Augustine. Rather they negotiated their messages about the Maccabean martyrs as markers of a distinctive Christian identity with other Christians. For Chrysostom this negotiation occurred with members of his congregation; Augustine engaged in rhetorical polemics with Donatists. Each author sought to undo efforts to synthesize elements of Jewish identity and practice linked to questions about the status of the Mosaic Law that did not conform to their own supersessionist theology and vision of Catholic Christianity. Each bishop hybridized the Maccabean martyrs as simultaneously Jewish and nonJewish, as both under the Law before Christ and Christians before Christ,

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to combat local Christian adaptations of Jewish practices. The creation of Christian understandings of the Law by Chrysostom and Augustine in their sermons on the Maccabean martyrs formed an element of their vision of the role of Christianity in imperial culture. THE CULT

MACCABEAN MARTYRS IN ANTIOCH JOHN CHRYSOSTOM’S COMMUNITY

OF THE

AND

John Chrysostom (ca. 347–407) used supersessionist theology to define the meaning of dying for the Law and as part of his effort to Christianize the Maccabean martyrs in relation to the religious topography of Antioch in the late fourth century. While Chrysostom was bishop of the city there were many active religious groups competing for adherents, including Catholic and Arian Christians, practitioners in various local cults, and Jews.37 Chrysostom molded the memory of the Maccabean martyrs for his Catholic Christian community as part of a process of ensuring that members of his community did not participate in the practices of other groups or adhere to their interpretations of the biblical text. Scholarly debate over the origin of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs reveals the diverse religious context in which Chrysostom operated. This debate was sparked by the question of whether this cult was established originally by Jews or by Christians in Antioch. A group of scholars has argued that a basilica dedicated to the Maccabean martyrs in the Kerateion of Antioch, the Jewish quarter of the city, was built over the site of a synagogue that housed the remains of the Maccabean martyrs. Supporters of this thesis argued for Antioch as the original site of this martyrdom. While Jews initiated the veneration of these martyrs, Christians in the fourth century appropriated the site and its cult.38 Others, notably Martha Vinson, argue that Jewish veneration never occurred within a synagogue because of Jewish purity laws restricting contact with human remains. Rather, Jews honored the Maccabean martyrs in a separate location at “Matrona’s Cave” in the Daphne neighborhood of Antioch near the shrine of Apollo. This shrine was taken over by Christians who built the martyr-chapel of St. Asmunit, a female variant of “Hasmonean,” the title of the dynasty of Judas Maccabeus with which the Maccabean martyrs were often conflated.39 Finally, Leonard V. Rutgers has argued against the scholarly consensus that some form of Jewish devotion to Maccabean martyrs existed in Antioch, asserting there is simply no archeological or literary evidence for such veneration. To him, the basis for Christian attraction to the Maccabean martyrs in Antioch was the appeal of their


antiquity and the perception of Jews and Jewish objects as conduits for the miraculous.40 In my opinion, the question of how the cult of the Maccabean martyrs developed is less interesting than the fact that the evidence marshaled by scholars, despite Rutgers’s objection, indicates rival traditions about these martyrs in Antioch. John Chrysostom’s shaping of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs among his congregation in Antioch was not merely an appropriation of a Jewish tradition for its own sake. Rather, Chrysostom sought to establish his brand of Christianity as the dominant religious group in a multireligious civic context. To do so meant establishing a persuasive memory of the Maccabean martyrs to counter rival ones emanating from Jewish communities in Antioch as part of a larger civic campaign. Utilizing the emerging civic appeal of the cult of saints in the fourth century, as manifested in the construction of shrines and churches dedicated to them in cities, the development of ornate civic liturgies, and the flowering of hagiographical literature, was an obvious move for Chrysostom.41 Combining preexisting Christian interest in biblical heroes, Antioch’s traditional identification as the site of the execution of the Maccabean martyrs under Antiochus IV, and the development of the cult of the saints, it is natural that John Chrysostom chose to support and develop Christian devotion to the Maccabean martyrs in a series of sermons.42 John Chrysostom’s construction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs through a supersessionist interpretation of the meaning of their death for the Law was part of his agenda to establish inviolable boundaries between his community and the local Jewish community. His sermons on the Maccabean martyrs ought to be read in light of his other sermons attacking Christian observance of Jewish rituals and visitations to Jewish holy sites. Such sermons were delivered in the context of competition among Christians, Jews, and pagans in Antioch for adherents and civic prestige.43 Chrysostom’s arguments over the propriety of observing Jewish rites or honoring Jewish figures represented a conflict over what religion in Antioch was the most effective. In this conflict, efficacy was measured by how well rites and practices guaranteed divine presence and power for devotees. The attendance at one holy site over another, the perception of the authenticity of one set of relics over another, and the participation in one set of rituals over another were the means by which the religious communities of Antioch established their authority and legitimacy.44 Chrysostom’s opposition to “Judaizing” Christians who observed Jewish rituals and attended synagogue services or other rites was an effort to establish

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the boundaries of his own church and, by extension, his own authority as its bishop. Chrysostom’s sermons on the Maccabean martyrs reflected his concern over proper Christian devotion to the Maccabean martyrs and improper associations of the cult with the Jews of Antioch. Scholarship indicates, as discussed above, that at this time in Antioch there existed two sites associated with the Maccabean martyrs—the Christian basilica dedicated to the Maccabean martyrs in the Kerateion and the shrine at Matrona’s Cave initially used by Jews. John Chrysostom angrily denounced the easy mingling of Christians with Jews at Matrona’s Cave in his sermons against Judaizing Christians. For Chrysostom, the boundary between Jews and his Christian community had to be patrolled and secured. One tool at his disposal was his sermons on the Maccabean martyrs in which he employed a supersessionist interpretation of dying for the Law. By manipulating the memory of the Maccabean martyrs into Christian exemplars and indeed “Christians before Christ,” Chrysostom attempted to prevent Christians from crossing communal boundaries by visiting Matrona’s Cave. Of the four sermons delivered on the Maccabean martyrs, the one that reveals the greatest concern for establishing the possession of the Maccabean martyrs by Christians is On Eleazar and the Seven Sons.45 While scholars have been divided on whether this sermon was delivered in Constantinople in 399 or at an earlier date in Antioch, we can show that the concerns in it regarding the proper veneration of the Maccabean martyrs in relation to Jewish customs and observance of the Law links it to questions of Jewish-Christian interaction Chrysostom faced when ministering in Antioch.46 In On Eleazar and the Seven Sons Chrysostom employed the memory of the Maccabean martyrs to establish distinct identities between Jewish and Christian communities. This sermon allows us to see how supersessionist understandings of the Jewish Law were presented to urban audiences in late antique Asia Minor. Chrysostom’s manipulation of the memory of these Jewish martyrs’ death for the Law illustrates that he used stereotypes of the Jewish other to create a hybrid understanding of the Maccabean martyrs in order to reduce the appeal of contemporary Judaism. Chrysostom began On Eleazar by ensuring that his congregation knew precisely who the Maccabean martyrs were. Chrysostom condemned those “enemies” who said that the Maccabean martyrs “did not pour out their blood for Christ, but for the Law and for the Writings which are in the Law, for which on account of swine flesh their throats were cut.”47 Chrysostom corrected these “enemies,” arguing that their observance


of this feast was wrong because they did not truly understand who the Maccabean martyrs were.48 Clearly, Chrysostom opposed some element within the church that insisted the Maccabees were Jews who died for the sake of fidelity to Torah. The rest of this sermon illustrated why the Maccabean martyrs may only be remembered and venerated properly as Christian martyrs. Chrysostom hybridized the Maccabean martyrs as Jews who were truly Christians precisely to eliminate Christian attraction to them who reckoned them as Jews who died for the Torah. In this sermon, Chrysostom employed a Pauline hermeneutic in which the Torah gave way to the Gospel. This explanation meant that the spiritual power manifested in the Maccabean martyrs was only properly accessed through a Christian celebration and understanding of their feast. Chrysostom employed this hermeneutic to subvert the Jewishness of the Maccabean martyrs and claim them as an example of holiness for the Christian community. Chrysostom based his argument on the Pauline interpretation of the story from the Pentateuch about the rock in the desert from which the children of Israel drank. To Paul this rock signified Christ who sustained Israel. This reading of Christ’s presence to Israel prior to his physical incarnation formed the foundation for Chrysostom’s argument that the Maccabean martyrs were properly understood as Christian martyrs.49 While acknowledging that the Maccabees died for the sake of the Law of Moses, Chrysostom sought to show that they actually died for Christ. He argued that Christ illuminated all the righteous Old Testament figures from a distance.50 Christ’s proximity to Old Testament figures was most evident in his status as the Lawgiver. To those who argued that the Maccabees suffered for the Law, he responded that “it was Christ who gave the Law.”51 That is, the true end of the Law was not the keeping of its commandments, but the honoring of Christ who gave it. To ensure that Christians remembered the Maccabean martyrs as Christian martyrs, and not Jewish ones, Chrysostom fashioned these martyrs as hybrids. By becoming Jewish in body and Christian in spirit, the Maccabean martyrs served as figures that oriented Christians drawn to Jewish practices and figures back into the Christian community. Chrysostom stereotyped Jews as others who opposed him. “But if the Jew cannot endure these words, come, let’s capture him with his own weapons, engaging him in debate with nothing from Paul or Peter or John, but from the prophets, so that he might learn that while the facts are on his side, the meaning is on ours.”52 The stereotype, following Bhabha, as a form of knowledge that represents what is already known but what must also be “anxiously repeated,” exists in Chrysostom’s sermon in the

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figure of Jews who possessed the truth of Christianity in their own Scriptures but were unwilling to embrace it.53 Chrysostom used this stereotype, originating in second-century texts like the Epistle of Barnabas and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, as part of his agenda to control the behavior of his community. Using the stereotyped figure of the Jew who clings to his Scriptures but does not understand them, Chrysostom identified the prophets as a witness for his Christianizing of these Jewish martyrs. In On Eleazar he turned to Jeremiah 31:31–34 as the key text for his argument. Chrysostom, like other patristic writers, interpreted the prophecy in this passage that God will give a new covenant to Israel as a reference to the new covenant in Christ. Since there was only one Lawgiver, then the one who gave the first covenant is the same as the one who gave the second.54 According to Chrysostom, the new Law to be written in the heart was given at Pentecost, displacing the Law written on tablets and given to Moses at Sinai.55 While the apostolic teaching of Paul regarding the new covenant in Christ was successfully proclaimed to non-Jews, the Jewish nation remained under the old law rather than accepting the new covenant promised in Jeremiah.56 Turning to the example of the man who was struck dead while gathering sticks on the Sabbath, Chrysostom contrasted the Law as punishment of sin and the Spirit given in Christ as life giving. The Law only provided punishment for sinners, while the Spirit provided the possibility of new life on the grace of baptism.57 Drawing his sermon to its conclusion, Chrysostom declared he had proved Christ’s status as the true Lawgiver spoken of in prophets like Jeremiah. Thus the Maccabean martyrs, because they died for the Law, also died for Christ the Lawgiver. In the course of On Eleazar, the Maccabean martyrs have become hybrids, simultaneously Jewish in body and Christian in spirit. By virtue of the identity Chrysostom crafted for them, he urged his congregation to enthusiastically embrace the celebration of these martyrs and see them as examples for men and women, old and young alike.58 In the deployment of supersessionist theology Chrysostom successfully used a stereotyped understanding of Jewish interpretation of Scripture and its Christian corrective to create a hybridized memory of the Maccabean martyrs as part of a process of enforcing the boundaries of Chrysostom’s Christian community. Chrysostom’s use of stereotype in the construction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs for his community in this sermon was part of a larger effort by him to shape Christian understandings of the Law. His


target in this process was Christians who, in the eyes of Chrysostom, blurred the distinctions between Christian and Jewish communities by their participation in Jewish holidays and practices, notably Rosh Hashanah, Yom Kippur, Sukkot, and Passover rituals. Chrysostom preached against these “Judaizing” Christians in sermons delivered in 386–87 in Antioch.59 By reading On Eleazar in light of these sermons against the Judaizing practices of certain Christians in Antioch, we see that these ideas developed in 386–87 were put to use as part of an explanation for Chrysostom’s endorsement of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs. As in On Eleazar, the invalid status of continued Jewish observance of the Law in light of the advent of Christ is a strand running throughout the eight sermons against Judaizing Christians. To neutralize any Christian attraction to the annual Jewish festivals celebrated in Antioch, Chrysostom argued that the Jews perversely refused to observe the Law when they were commanded to. Yet now that the Law was no longer binding with the coming of Christ, the Jews insisted on observing this law instead of taking on the yoke of Christ.60 In framing observance of the Law by Jews in Antioch as a violation of God’s will, Chrysostom employed Paul as a figure of potential Jewish spiritual enlightenment. Drawing on Paul’s direct appeal against circumcision in Chapter 5 of his letter to the Galatians and his discussion of his Jewish heritage and affiliation with Pharisees in his third chapter of the letter to the Philippians, Chrysostom imagined Paul declaring that he opposed Gentile circumcision “not through any hatred nor in ignorance of things Jewish but in full knowledge of the surpassing truth of Christ.”61 Chrysostom explained the relationship between the old Law of the Jews and the new Law of the Christians in the person of Jesus Christ. The old Law was imperfect and appropriate only for a particular historical period; God had never intended for Jews to continue in perpetuity the laws of sacrifices and festivals. Rather, the Law of Moses existed for the sake of preparing the faithful for the perfection of the Law in the Lawgiver himself, Jesus Christ.62 By connecting the old and new dispensations of the Law with the single person of Jesus Christ, Chrysostom argued that there was no contradiction between the two, but rather a perfection of the proper worship due God with the coming of Christ. He declared, “This is the highest panegyric for the Law, namely that it prepared human nature of the Teacher.”63 Chrysostom used alternately Paul and the Maccabean martyrs as Jewish figures who grasped that the Law of Moses found its truest meaning in recognizing the Lawgiver as the person of Christ. In his construction

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of the memory of both Paul and the Maccabean martyrs to explain the proper place of the Law in his Christian community Chrysostom stereotyped Jewish perceptions of the Law. The error of both Jews and Judaizing Christians was their failure to recognize the transition from the period of the old Law to the new Law wrought by the coming of Jesus Christ the Lawgiver. The sermons against Judaizing Christians employed Paul as the model of a Jew who grasped this teaching with Christ’s coming. Chrysostom argued in On Eleazar that even before the coming of Christ, Jews could perceive the Lawgiver who stood behind the Law. The Maccabean martyrs testified to the possibility of Jewish spiritual perception of the truth of the Christian interpretation of the Law. The employment of the Maccabean martyrs as figures who truly observed the Law beyond the letter to its spirit illustrates the role of stereotype and hybridity in Chrysostom’s sermons as a tactic for negotiating with dissenting voices in his community. By his logic, although the Jews were the original recipients of the Law, they cannot claim to possess proper interpretations of it. Their supposed perverse clinging to the Law after the coming of Christ existed to validate Chrysostom’s interpretations of the Law as authoritative over and against interpretations offered by “Judaizing” Christians. Following Jaclyn Maxwell, Chrysostom’s sermons were occasions in which he sought to further the Christianization of Antioch. Chrysostom’s exhortations were not decrees that were received immediately as authoritative by his audience. Rather, his sermons were attempts to persuade and negotiate with Christians who held a wide variety of views on the nature and requirements of the Christian life.64 This interpretation illuminates Chrysostom’s sermons on Judaizing Christians and the Maccabean martyrs. By emphasizing that the Jewish Law no longer applied and that the death for the Law endured by the Maccabean martyrs was actually for Christ the Lawgiver, Chrysostom employed devotion to these martyrs as a means of authorizing a distinctive Christian interpretation of the Old Testament and reinforcing boundaries he imposed between Jewish and Christian communities. The shared concern in both On Eleazar and the discourses against Judaizing Christians regarding a proper Christian understanding of the nature of the Jewish Law reveals the confluence of theological and communal concerns in Chrysostom’s thought. His use of the Pauline hermeneutic of Law yielding to the Gospel to bolster his argument for the essentially Christian identity of the Maccabean martyrs illustrates the central place of theology in his desire to order the Christian community of Antioch. Chrysostom both claimed the Maccabean martyrs as belonging to the


Christian community and subverted opposing claims that these martyrs were truly Jewish. He sought to employ this supersessionist, typological interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs in order to prove that his Christian community established in the new covenant of Christ provided the truest means for accessing God’s power and grace. This rhetoric rested on Chrysostom’s concern with Christian attraction to Jewish practices and his hostility to the Jewish community. Chrysostom, however, engaged in different rhetorical strategies between his sermons on Judaizing Christians and the Maccabean martyrs in one significant way. While Chrysostom in his discourses against Judaizing Christians frequently named Jewish places and practices that Christians engaged in, he never mentions a Jewish rival to the Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs in his sermons on these martyrs. This difference was due to the fact that the Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs was relatively new. To ensure that his audience thought of them exclusively as Christians, Chrysostom avoided references to any potential Jewish rival. This strategy is most noticeable in the presence of references to Matrona’s Cave in his discourses against Judaizing Christians and the absence of such references in his sermons on the Maccabean martyrs. As discussed above, there was a site in Antioch, Matrona’s Cave, that had been associated with a Jewish practice of memorializing the Maccabean martyrs. In the first discourse against Judaizers, Chrysostom declared, “If any of you, whether you are here present or not, shall go to the spectacle of the Trumpets, or rush off to the synagogue, or go up to the shrine of Matrona . . . I shall call heaven and earth as my witnesses that I am guiltless of the blood of all of you.”65 This attack indicated Christian attraction to Jewish practices memorializing the Maccabean martyrs. But when Chrysostom exhorted Christians to run not to the synagogues but to the shrines of the martyrs, he did not mention the Maccabean martyrs or a rival site where they could be honored.66 Further, the Maccabean martyrs as a subject were conspicuously absent in a long excursus on the suffering of the Jewish people under Antiochus IV that Chrysostom presented in the fifth discourse against Judaizing Christians. Even when he argued that the purpose of this suffering was the purification of the Jewish people, a strong theme in 2 Maccabees 7, Chrysostom did not refer to the Maccabean martyrs.67 This silence, in light of the later sermons on the Maccabean martyrs that Chrysostom delivered, is conspicuous. In his sermons on the Maccabean martyrs, no mention is made of Matrona’s Cave or rival Jewish practices and traditions. This studied avoidance of direct comparisons

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with Jewish practices concerning the Maccabean martyrs suggests the challenges in the early development of this cult. Recognizing the strategies Chrysostom employed in these two different series of sermons shows that he promoted the Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs in Antioch through a process of negotiation of Christian attraction to Jewish practices and denial of Jewish traditions. We possess tantalizing hints of Jewish commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs. For example, 4 Maccabees is often understood as public discourse delivered in Antioch. Four Maccabees 17:8 suggests a tomb that people could view. The cave of Matrona has been identified as a Jewish site associated with these martyrs. Yet these traces of Jewish memorialization are all that remains. Chrysostom’s strategy of Christianizing the Maccabean martyrs meant a denial and erasure of a parallel Jewish practice. The Jewish people became not people who honor martyrs, but with the charge of deicide leveled against them, they became those who make martyrs.68 Indeed, Chrysostom argued that observing the feast of these martyrs was unique to the Christian community.69 Through Chrysostom’s stereotypical rhetoric, Jews were incapable of perceiving the true meaning of the Law and Jesus Christ the Lawgiver; they could not recognize those who died as martyrs, either Christian martyrs who died for Christ or for the Maccabean martyrs who dying for the Law died for the Lawgiver.70 The cumulative effect of the rhetoric in these texts both removed the Maccabean martyrs as an object of commemoration for the Jewish community and rendered Jews incapable of properly venerating these martyrs or perceiving the true meaning of their death. Chrysostom’s refashioning of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs in his Catholic Christian community did not occur simply because of a reflexive supersessionist impulse. Rather, it reflected Chrysostom’s deliberate transformation of civic piety within Antioch and its multiple religious constituencies. His reinterpretation of dying for the Law as dying for Christ the Lawgiver revealed Chrysostom’s conscious effort to neutralize the appeal of Jewish religious life to his Catholic Christian community. The themes of stereotype and hybridity within his supersessionist theology reinforced his perceived boundaries of the Christian community. The transformation of Maccabean martyrs into Christian subjects and their rhetorical exclusion from Jewish life in Antioch illustrated how the appropriation of Jewish memories into Christian ones lay at the center of the creation of a civic Christian identity within the late Roman Empire.


Augustine of Hippo and Contested Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs AUGUSTINE

OF

HIPPO’S TRANSFORMATION

OF

DYING

FOR THE

LAW

Augustine of Hippo (354–430) composed his sermons on the Maccabean martyrs and the meaning of their death for the Law as a response to Jewish, Manichean, and Donatist opponents in Roman North Africa in the late fourth and early fifth centuries. A shaper of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs in North Africa, it is likely that Augustine was a recipient of Ambrose of Milan’s teaching on these same martyrs in Milan. Augustine was one of the competentes in Milan in 386 during the conflict over the Portian Basilica. Indeed, Augustine’s mother Monica was one of the members of Ambrose’s congregation who were besieged by imperial troops. Augustine’s instruction by Ambrose and his famed conversion occurred during the same period in which Ambrose drew on the example of the Maccabean martyrs in his instruction to those preparing for baptism that was later composed as On Jacob.71 Despite having his understanding of the Maccabean martyrs shaped by Ambrose, Augustine formed memories of the Maccabean martyrs in sermons and other writings for his Christian community according to the needs and issues Augustine confronted as the bishop of Hippo in Roman North Africa. Like John Chrysostom, Augustine used his writings on the Maccabean martyrs and the meaning of their death for the Law to place his opponents as outside his definition of Christian belief for his community. For Augustine, preaching on the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law became an occasion for employing stereotype and hybridity to define Jewish and Manichean views of the Law and Hebrew Scriptures as unacceptable options for Catholic Christians in Roman North Africa. In the subsequent section of this chapter, we will show Augustine’s interpretation of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs’ resistance to unjust imperial powers as reflected in his own conflicts with Donatist Christians. In Sermon 300, Augustine constructed the memory of the Maccabean martyrs as martyrs for the Law in the context of competing interpretations of the significance of the Law, and the Hebrew Scriptures in general, that Augustine attributed to Jews and Manicheans.72 Augustine began this undated sermon in celebration of the feast of these martyrs by establishing their Christian identity. Augustine argued against the notion that God did not have a people before Christians, observing that the Maccabean martyrs belonged to the same “first people” who produced the prophets who predicted the coming of Christ. Regarding Israel, he declared that

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“the people of that time too [were] Christian.”73 Although Christ had not yet died, he “made them martyrs, witnesses to himself.”74 Augustine’s task was not to convince his audience to venerate these martyrs, but rather to prove that they were Christian martyrs, lest his audience think they were venerating Jewish figures. These clarifying statements about the identity of the Maccabean martyrs at the beginning of this sermon reveals both the martyrs’ appeal to Christians in this region of North Africa and that members of the North African church wondered to what degree figures from the history of Israel before Christ ought to be venerated. This question about the relationship between the church and Israel was a theme found in Augustine’s polemical writings about Manicheans, Jews, and Donatists. Augustine intended his audience to remember the Maccabean martyrs according to his own interpretation of the Old Testament in the light of Christian salvation history. For Augustine, the history of Israel contained in the Old Testament (here including the books of the Maccabees) was continuous with the life of the church. This insistence developed out of his confrontation with his former Manichean coreligionists who denied the relevance and divine inspiration of these writings. Augustine illustrated his understanding of the continuity between the history of Israel recorded in the Old Testament and the current life of the church when he declared in Sermon 300 that suffering for the Law of Moses as the Maccabees did was equivalent to suffering for the name of Christ: “So the first thing I must impress upon your graces is that when you are admiring these martyrs, you shouldn’t think they weren’t Christians. They were Christians; but with their deeds they anticipated the name Christian that was publicized much later on.”75 Comparing the suffering of these Jewish martyrs to later Christian martyrs, Augustine argued for an equivalency in suffering and glory:“So these more recent martyrs . . . were being commanded and told by the persecutors ‘Deny Christ.’ When they didn’t do it, they suffered the same sort of things as these did. These though were being told, ‘Deny the Law of Moses.’ They didn’t; they suffered for the Law of Moses. Those for the name of Christ, these for the law of Moses.”76 This argument for continuity between the events under the Law and the deeds committed after the coming of Christ in this sermon illustrated Augustine’s conviction, contra his Manichean opponents, that the narrative of Israel was significant for contemporary Christians. The liturgical remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs was an occasion to return to the theme of the meaning of the Old Testament for Christians that occupied a significant part of his arguments. In the development of


his polemical arguments against Manicheans, Augustine articulated a theology of Jews and Judaism. Crucial to the development of his theology, as Paula Fredriksen has shown, was an explanation of how the Law related to Christian belief in Jesus Christ.77 Thus in his anti-Manichean treatise, Against Faustus, Augustine argued that the Law as given by God to Israel in itself was good, and the Israelites were right to observe it according to the letter. Yet the Law itself was fulfilled in Christ. Augustine explained that, “The same law that was given by Moses became grace and truth in Jesus Christ.”78 The error then regarding observation of the Law rested not in the Israelites doing what God commanded, but the insistence by Jews (in Augustine’s view) that they still were obligated to keep the Law even after Christ had fulfilled it.79 Guilty of killing Christ and of other sins known by God alone, the Jews now functioned as servants of the church. As servants, their preservation of the Law provided a useful function for Christianity by attesting to the truth of the prophetic witness of the Old Testament.80 Though normally Jews might be seen as Augustine’s opponents, they were useful foils in his arguments against Manicheans. In the opening of Sermon 300, Jewish martyrs performed the same function as contemporary Jews for Augustine—examples to illustrate flawed Manichean interpretation of the biblical narrative. Sermon 300 was also an occasion for a polemic against Jews. In creating a memory of the Maccabean martyrs as truly Christian martyrs, Augustine also encouraged his audience to remember Jews as hostile to Christian belief and worship. Augustine asked his congregation to imagine a Jew in their midst who objected to their celebrations: “Some Jew steps forward and says to us, ‘How can you reckon these people of ours to be your martyrs? How can you be so unwise as to celebrate their memory? Read their confession; see whether they confess Christ.’”81 In the context of the contested status of the Maccabean martyrs in late antiquity, the introduction of this Jewish objection by Augustine was significant. Although it is not clear to what extent Augustine had sustained contact with the local Jewish population of Hippo, his introduction of a hypothetical Jewish interrogator of Christian practice indicated that his audience was at least familiar with Jewish counternarratives to the Christian interpretations of the history of Israel.82 Augustine’s rhetorical move in this sermon implied an antagonistic relationship between Jews and Christians that current research on the material culture of Jewish life in Roman North Africa does not support. Contrary to the polemical perspective of African Christian writers like Augustine, the information gleaned from archeology and inscriptions

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reveals Jewish communities that were well integrated into their North African context. At times, Jewish material remains are indistinguishable from those of their non-Jewish neighbors. Frequently, identifiably Jewish objects, naming patterns, and devotional cultures were executed within a distinctively North African cultural framework.83 Augustine stereotyped the presence of Jews in his culture, concealing the fact that ordinary Jews and Christian intermingled in places like Hippo and other North African cities, in order to establish his Christian interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs. The material culture evidence of Jewish integration into late antique North African culture makes it possible that it was not only Catholic Christians who attended sermons by Christian bishops. As public events, Jews might have been present at their delivery. But Augustine’s introduction of a hostile question from an imaginary (or virtual to use Tomasch’s term) Jew moves Jews from a potentially neutral social category for Augustine’s audience into a hostile social category.84 Although it is unlikely that Jews actually interrupted celebrations of the feast of the Maccabean martyrs, Augustine’s rhetorical ploy revealed that he perceived an uncertain memory about the Maccabean martyrs in the Christian community of Hippo that required explanation of their significance through his teaching office as a bishop. This hypothetical Jewish disputant had a valid point obvious to the congregation—how can these Jewish brothers be Christian martyrs if they did not openly confess Christ? Augustine provided an answer that would enable his congregation to understand the Maccabean martyrs as Christian figures through an interpretation of the Old Testament in the light of the New. Following the objection of the Jew in Sermon 300, Augustine employed a Pauline image, that of the veil of the Law, to explain the problem of Jewish unbelief.85 Augustine derived this image from 2 Corinthians 3:14–16, which reads, in part, “But their minds were hardened. Indeed to this very day, when they hear the reading of the old covenant, that same veil is still there, since only in Christ is it set aside.” This verse was a frequent hermeneutical device by which Augustine interpreted Jewish unbelief. Although Augustine followed Paul in ascribing an initial righteousness by Jews in keeping the Law, its continued observance marked the fundamental difference between Jews and Christians. According to this logic, Augustine’s contemporary Jews still did not penetrate the veil of the Law of Moses that Christ revealed in his passion. In Sermon 300, Augustine crafted a Roman North African Christian memory of the Maccabean martyrs as Christian martyrs by distinguishing them from contemporary Jews through the metaphor of the veil of


the Law. “So the veil is being made void, in order that what was obscure might be understood. This, of course, was still shut away, a closed book, because the key of the cross was not yet available.”86 According to this interpretation, the Jews of Roman Africa that Augustine’s congregants knew had a veil over their understanding of the Law but Christ had removed it for those who believed. Yet Jews living before Christ could not have been expected to pierce the veil. This is what made the Maccabean martyrs so praiseworthy. Although they openly died for the Law, they confessed Christ in a hidden way. They were able to pierce the veil of the Law without possessing the key in the form of the cross that would unlock the closed book contained within the Law.“The [Christian] martyrs confessed plainly the same one as the Maccabees at that earlier time confessed in a hidden manner; the former died for Christ unveiled in the gospel, while the latter died for the name of Christ veiled in the Law. Christ possesses both, Christ came to the aid of both as they fought, Christ crowned both.”87 The Maccabean martyrs were pivotal figures for Augustine’s theology of the Law. On the one hand, they attained salvation by dying for it. On the other hand, they were a rare example of Jews who were able to perceive that the Law was not an end in itself, but was meant to be fulfilled in the person of Jesus Christ. The figures of the Maccabean martyrs in this sermon not only served as an illustration of Augustine’s theology of the Law but they were figures by which Augustine could establish the boundary between Judaism and Christianity for his congregation. Only Christians could properly grasp the true purpose of the Law, and only Christians could understand the Maccabean martyrs’ true identity. Jews still living under the veil of the Law, like Augustine’s imagined Jewish dissenter in Sermon 300, did not perceive the true status of the Maccabean martyrs. Rather, they falsely claimed these martyrs for their own community. In the process of establishing this argument, Augustine noted the existence of the Christian basilica dedicated to the Maccabees in Antioch. The possession of their relics and tomb further proved that these were truly Christian, and not Jewish, martyrs.88 The fidelity of the Maccabean martyrs did not reveal the virtue of Torah obedience but the power of fidelity to the truth of Christ for his congregation. In Sermon 300 Augustine employed supersessionist interpretation of the Law and a stereotypical reading of Jewish belief to make the practice of memorializing the Maccabean martyrs comprehensible to his congregation in Hippo. At the same time, his defense of the Maccabean martyrs

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as martyrs for Christ the Lawgiver countered Manichean and Jewish interpretations of the Old Testament. This sermon served the purpose of explaining to his audience why these martyrs were worthy of veneration and provided them with an answer to use against Jewish and Manichean challenges over the identity of the Maccabean martyrs. The defense of the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law as envisioned by Augustine reinforced the Catholic Christian position that the Old Testament was fully inspired by God and could be profitably read as prophetic testimony to Christ. Guided by his theological and polemical agenda, Augustine did not simply bestow a quasi-Christian or proto-Christian identity on the Maccabean martyrs as Chrysostom and Ambrose did. Rather he fully claimed them as Christian through the logical extension of the hermeneutic of Law giving way to Gospel. In this way he deepened the hybridity of these martyrs with simultaneous Jewish and Christian identities by submerging the “Jewishness” of the Maccabean martyrs and revealing their true Christian identity. THE TRUE ISRAEL OF THE MACCABEAN MARTYRS IN AUGUSTINE AND DONATIST LITERATURE

Augustine’s struggle against the Donatist church, a rigorist expression of North African Christianity, deepens our understanding of the polemical usefulness of the Maccabean martyrs for Augustine. From the early fourth century until the Islamic invasion of the seventh century, the Catholic and Donatist churches were rival institutions in Roman North Africa, each seeking to identify itself as the authentic and original expression of Christianity in that region. Augustine was at the center of the confrontation between these churches during his episcopate in Hippo.89 Donatist writers identified the holiness of their church with the keeping of God’s Law and claimed to be the authentic and sole embodiment of Israel. Donatist literature used the memory of the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law along with their own experience of martyrdom at the hands of the state (often encouraged by Catholic leaders) to reinforce their self-understanding as Israel. Donatists embraced the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs’ resistance to empire as a template and vindication for the resistance culture of the Donatist church.90 Augustine’s writings on the Maccabean martyrs were a means by which he challenged Donatist claims to be the Christian body that had received the title of Israel. He denied that Donatist martyrs reenacted the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law or represented Israel. By spiritualizing the meaning of dying


for the Law in the story of the Maccabean martyrs, Augustine identified them with the Catholic church. By extension, it was the Catholic church that rightly claimed the title of Israel. By challenging the Donatist interpretation of dying for the Law Augustine also dampened the themes of resistance against imperial power found in the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs that the Donatists exploited to such effect. Augustine’s spiritual reading of the death of the Maccabean martyrs for the Law domesticated these martyrs into models for the ideal Catholic citizen of the late Roman Empire. The Donatist construction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs represented one episode in a broader contest with Catholics over the figure of the esteemed bishop of Carthage, Cyprian. He was regarded as the spiritual father of Latin African Christianity and his vision of the nature of the church was hotly debated among Donatists and Catholics. Cyprian’s writing on the Maccabean martyrs in his Letter to Fortunatus, which was discussed in the previous chapter, was a factor in the esteem with which Donatists held the Maccabean martyrs. Cyprian’s explicit use of the Maccabean martyrs as models for contemporary African Christians experiencing persecution was at the root of Donatist literature on these martyrs. The Donatists, who endured periodic persecution and martyrdom, saw the Maccabean martyrs as literal role models unlike Catholic Christians like Augustine who established figurative importance to their memory. The Maccabean martyrs had enormous appeal for Donatist authors because of Donatist identification with Israel that involved a higher esteem for the Law and a greater sense of incongruity between ecclesiastical and imperial powers. The Donatist church defined itself as a church born out of persecution and the physical and spiritual refusal to submit to unjust imperial decrees. The Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs, an account of the Diocletian persecution in 304, offered an early expression of these ideals.91 This narrative identified the suffering of the martyrs with fidelity to the Law of God and exemplary heroism evocative of the Maccabean martyrs. The imperial decree in 303 to hand over Christian Scriptures, to register church properties, and to perform a symbolic ritual act in support of the imperial cult led to varying reactions in North Africa. While some clergy, bishops, and laity complied with these decrees, a notable number refused. It was from the example of these resisters that eventually the Donatist church drew inspiration and separated itself from Catholic bishops and churches suspected of accommodating the imperial decrees.92 In the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs, the martyrs make clear that to surrender

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their Scriptures would be to deny the Law of God. In response to the judge’s declaration that he ought to obey the imperial decree of Diocletian, the martyr Tazelita declared, “I respect only the Law of God which I have learned. That is what I obey. I die for it. I am consumed by it, by the Law of God. There is no other” (Deuteronomy 4:35).93 The martyrs did not identify the Law of God simply with Old Testament commandments. Rather, the Law also comprised the commands to keep the Lord’s Supper, as the martyr Saturninus declared.94 For the Donatists, there was continuity in the Law between the Old and New Testaments. Citing 2 Corinthians 3:3 (which itself alluded to Jeremiah 31:33), the martyr Emeritus described the Law as written not on tablets of stone but within the human heart. Upon his death, the text praised Emeritus as a “diligent custodian of the sacred Law.”95 The rhetoric attributed to the Abitinian martyrs envisioned them as defenders of the Law of God. As part of this rhetoric, comparisons and allusions to the persecution of Eleazar and the Maccabean martyrs ran throughout the narrative.96 In summarizing the suffering of these martyrs, the text declared, “They all upheld the Law of the Lord and steadfastly and bravely celebrated the assembly of the Lord. They saved the Scriptures of the Lord and the divine testaments from flames and burning. For the sake of the divine Law, they offered their very selves to menacing fires and diverse tortures in the manner of the Maccabees.”97 A range of characters in the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs resembled the Maccabean martyrs. The senator Dativus, and putative leader of this band of martyrs, was compared to Eleazar the priest in terms of dignity (2 Maccabees 6:23).98 At two points in the narrative, sons of the martyr and presbyter Saturninus, identified as Saturninus the younger and Hilarianus, endured persecution in imitation of the example of their father.99 In both accounts the sons were modeled on the Maccabean martyrs who both imitated the example of the priest Eleazar and were inspired by their parent.100 The importance of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs for validating Donatist suffering and their understanding of the Bible primarily as the Law of God and the explicit identification of Donatist also appeared in later decades. While Donatists did not endure such extreme suffering under injunctions from Christian emperors as they did under Diocletian, official repression did encourage the cultivation of the identity of the Donatist church as a persecuted one, even when it became the majority church in Roman North Africa.101 During this period, accommodation to imperial insistence on ecclesiastical uniformity amounted to Donatist


contentions that reconciliation and acquiescence to imperial Catholic authorities and their church would be apostasy.102 In this context, identification with the Law of God and the example of the Maccabean martyrs remained vital. Donatist leaders used the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs to frame their conflict with Catholic bishops in terms of a resistance culture. Maureen Tilley has shown that Donatists expressed the view that they were like the Maccabean martyrs, resisters of foreign imperial powers, and Catholics were apostatizing accommodationists.103 In Augustine’s account of the events at the Council of Carthage in 411, he recounted that the Donatists there read the letter of Secundus of Tigisis, the primate of Numidia and first leader of the Donatist church, in which he described himself as being like Eleazar the priest. Just as Eleazar refused to eat pork or act as if he had done so, Secundus refused to hand over either the Scriptures or any other books to imperial authorities. Secundus’s declaration of himself as an authentic bishop and Christian drew both on the positive example of Eleazar and on the negative example of the compliance of other bishops.104 Writing to refute the Donatist bishop Petilianus, Augustine recorded Petilianus’s comparison of the suffering of his fellow church members to that of the Maccabean martyrs.105 Petilianus deepened the identification of Donatists with the Maccabean martyrs by describing Matthias’s elevation to the position formerly held by Judas as the rightful transferal of the apostolic office from Judas to Matthias. Judas symbolized Catholic bishops willing to hand over books to imperial authorities. Matthias’s reception of the apostolic office indicated that any traditor, whether he handed over Christ or books, lost the right to his episcopal office. Petilianus urged Catholics to act more like the Maccabean martyrs and less like Judas. They should refuse to hand over what is precious to God and keep the divine Law, regardless of the demands of tyrants.106 These rhetorical uses of the Maccabean martyrs in Donatist literature placed the Maccabees as exemplars of their ideology while Catholics were unfavorably compared to the Jews who cooperated with Antiochus or, worse, like Judas, who betrayed Christ himself.107 The example of the Maccabean martyrs was vital to Donatist defenses of their resistance to the two-pronged pressure applied by ecclesiastical and imperial authorities to impose a uniform Christian polity. The Maccabean martyrs were significant figures in Donatist understanding of themselves as having received the title of Israel by virtue of their fidelity to the Law of God and endurance of suffering. Their rejection of the imperial and Catholic institutional structures reinforced this

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identity. Donatist ecclesiology emphasized itself as a perfect, holy, and pure church. It presented the members of the church as faithful Israelites, persecuted by Catholics, whom they likened to those in ancient Israel who had succumbed to worship of Baal.108 Donatist literature described their church as the assembly, or collecta, of Israel.109 This identification as the collecta of Israel spoke to the Donatist sense that at once they were like the Israelites liberated from Egypt, yet also dwelling in a land in which they were tempted to idolatry and apostasy. For them, Catholic Christians were paradigmatic of the unfaithful Israelites who succumbed to the enticements of the Canaanites.110 To be the collecta of Israel was to resist “assimilation in the face of daily social and financial pressure” imposed by Roman imperial authorities who sided with the Catholic church.111 Donatism rejected imperial and ecclesiastical pressures to submit to uniformity.112 The singularity of their church enabled their identity as Israel. Church and empire were incongruous partners, and the history of Israel taught that when tyrants persecuted the faithful they must be opposed. The story of the Maccabean martyrs exemplified this insight. This opposition was spiritual in nature but had real world effects, such as the schism that rendered apart the church and the violence between Donatists and Catholics in the deployment of the circumcellions and imperial soldiers. Unlike modern movements of national liberation, the Donatist target was not a system of imperial domination, but particular representatives of empire, whether emperors, judges, or Catholic bishops. Thus Petilianus could claim that no Christian deserved the title of bishop if he insisted on persecuting the Donatist church.113 Donatism questioned precisely the Catholic church’s accommodation with empire. Experiencing persecution at the hands of pagans and Christians, the Donatists found refuge in the example of the heroes of Israel. In the figures of Eleazar and the Maccabean martyrs, the Donatists carried forward their critique of the close relationship between imperial agents and Catholic authorities. Claiming allegiance to the Law of God alone, Donatism fostered a resistance culture that rebuked imperial claims to have the right to legislate on the nature and composition of the church. Several of Augustine’s sermons offered a competing memory of the Maccabean martyrs. When Augustine preached on the Maccabean martyrs, he was not concerned only with explaining why Christians honored martyrs that were Jews. He engaged in an intra-Christian debate over who could claim the memory of these martyrs. His interpretation offered a rival interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs to one presented by the Donatists. Augustine’s interpretation in these sermons on the meaning


of the Law, the nature of Israel, and the relationship between church and empire provided a rival Christian interpretation of the meaning of dying for the Law. In Sermon 301A on the Maccabean martyrs, from 399, Augustine argued against Donatist claims that they were a persecuted church whose martyrs died in defense of the Law. Augustine stated that there were no longer occasions in which Christians were martyred or suffered for their faith. Rather, Augustine defined Christian discipleship for his congregation not in the realm of enduring persecution, as the Donatists did, but in terms of discipline, self-denial, and the control of passions by the virtues.114 In contrast with Donatist rhetoric, Augustine argued that dying for the literal meaning of the Law was no longer valid. Rather, ongoing value of the Law existed within the realm of the spiritual. While Augustine’s argument about the spiritual nature of the Law was consistent with the patristic tradition, his arrival at this view of the Law was informed by reading Tyconius’s Liber regularum around 394–95.115 Tyconius’s work explicated a biblical hermeneutic that attempted to explain the existence of the righteous and the wicked in the church. A Donatist, he was excommunicated and composed this work around 382 after that event.116 Augustine derived from Tyconius his understanding of salvation history as an event that ran continuously through both the Old and New Testaments. Further, Augustine adopted Tyconius’s view that salvation was gained not by the works of the Law but through faith.117 Both Augustine and Tyconius conceived of the Maccabean martyrs as witnesses to the promises of Christ contained within the Law. Tyconius explained that righteousness was not attained by performing the requirements of the Law, but rather depended on God’s mercy by way of the example of the mother of the Maccabees. “And the martyrs’ mother said this to her son: ‘so that in his mercy I may receive you back again with your brother’ (2 Maccabees 7:29). However the just did accomplish God’s will in the desire and the striving with which they tried and longed to serve God.”118 For both Augustine and Tyconius, this view of the Law militated against a traditional Donatist understanding of it. The Maccabean martyrs themselves demonstrated this. The Law itself was not worth dying for, but rather the promises of faith contained within it demand all of one’s self. Donatist uses of the Maccabean martyrs to establish their self-identification as the people of Israel informed how Augustine shaped his own interpretation of these martyrs. In Donatist literature, the church, identified as Israel, was clearly theirs alone and did not include Catholics. Thus

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the Abitinian martyrs were identified with the assembly of Israel and the Maccabean martyrs. At church councils Donatist bishops described themselves as faithful Israelites and Catholics as worshippers of Baal. Moreover, Donatists held that God had ordained in Scripture that only their church would be his people. The Donatists took the Song of Songs to speak not of the relation between God and Israel, as was common in Jewish interpretation, but rather specifically to their North African church. Donatists interpreted the reference in Song of Songs 1:6 to the beloved pasturing his flocks in the south as a reference to Africa specifically.119 The Donatists insisted that they alone were the people of Israel and that this identification could not extend past Africa.120 Augustine argued against the narrowness of Donatist understanding of their ecclesiology. When Augustine proclaimed in Sermon 300 that the Maccabean martyrs were martyrs of Christ and that the Law ultimately concerned Christ, he undermined not only Jewish but also Donatist claims to the title of Israel. Augustine, in his sermons on the Maccabean martyrs and in other writings, spiritualized the meaning of the title “Israel” for the Catholic church. Just as the Law itself was concerned with spiritual reality over physical deeds, so too was belonging to Israel a spiritual matter. The images and metaphors of the Old Testament, including the title of Israel, could not be limited to a geographically or temporally limited group. If the church was Israel, it must be understood as such as a transhistorical reality. The church may only be considered Israel because the righteous Israelites who lived by faith were always members of the church in a spiritual manner. Augustine counseled that Christians should use carefully the title “Israel.” “Nor do we deny that we are spiritual children of Israel . . . But we do not give ourselves these names in an improper way, and we confine them within the understanding of the mysteries, not bandying them about in insolent language.”121 This spiritualized identification of the church with Israel operated in two directions, both resulting in hybridized identities. Contemporary Christians could be spiritual Jews and Jews, like the Maccabean martyrs, could be spiritual Christians. Augustine’s interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs affirmed a Catholic position that contended against both Donatist and Jewish self-identification with the people of Israel. To Augustine, these rival claims were illegitimate because of their narrowness of scope. Jews could claim to be Israel, but their beliefs and actions belied their claim on the title Israel. Donatists were correct in confessing Christ, but erred in their confining definition of the church and its life. Israel was not the pure, persecuted church of Africa, standing guard against apostate Catholic oppressors.


Nor was it an assembly of the righteous defined by an unflagging devotion to God’s commands.122 Rather it was a body of faithful believers saved by their faith in the promise of Christ gathered from all places. It could even include the righteous of ancient Israel. Augustine used the story of the Maccabean martyrs as a rhetorical weapon for attacking the Donatist claim that their suffering proved their church was holy and righteous in comparison with the Catholic church. In Donatist ideology, power and authority exercised outside the realm of their African church was suspect and carried a constant threat of danger. The Maccabean martyrs were exemplars for Donatist resistance against imperial persecutions and pressure to conform by emperors and bishops alike. As a counterpoint to this use of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs, Augustine framed their narrative in terms of spiritual conflict that rejected Donatist critiques of Catholic cooperation with imperial authorities. Augustine domesticated the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs, neutralizing its hostile stance toward imperial authority. Although Augustine was not unfamiliar with the challenges posed by the alliance between Roman authorities and the Catholic leadership, he did not see it as a threat to Christian integrity.123 Augustine’s writings on the Maccabean martyrs revealed his diverse theological and polemical agenda. These works showed his efforts to create a Catholic culture that could withstand the arguments and alternatives posed by Manicheans, Donatists, and Jews alike. By identifying the Maccabean martyrs as Jews who were actually Christians before Christ, as martyrs for a Law that held importance in its promise of Christ as much as in its literal commands, and as martyrs who exemplify the attainment of virtues rather than resistance to repressive authorities, Augustine interpreted these martyrs in ways that reinforced the worldview he tried to instill as bishop and teacher. Augustine’s hybridizing interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs as both Jews and Christians and as representatives of the authentic Israel to which Christians belong undermined both Donatist and Jewish claims to be Israel and the true and original heirs of God’s promises. Augustine delivered to the Catholic Christian community of Roman North Africa a hybrid memory of these Jewish martyrs and their Jewish Law that was Christianized and domesticated for a church seeking to find its way in the making of a new Christian empire.

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Domesticating the Memory of the Maccabean Martyrs In sermons on the Maccabean martyrs late antique bishops used memories of them to teach Christian virtues to those assembled before the bishop. Here one sees an effort to apply the message of the suffering of these seven sons, and even more so their mother, to congregations who did not face the possibility of martyrdom yet still had the challenges of living a virtuous life. The successful hybridization of the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law through stereotyping in supersessionist theology allowed bishops to use this narrative to address practical Christianity. These pastoral interpretations of the Maccabean martyrs manifested the assimilation of narratives of the Jewish past into the construction of late antique Christian discourses and practices. Episcopal sermons on the virtues of martyrs reflected the efforts of late antique bishops to fully Christianize Roman imperial society. Celebrations of the feast of martyrs were a particularly important occasion when bishops could deliver messages about their vision of a distinctive Christian communal identity.124 The origins of this vision involved the growth of Catholic Christian imperial leadership in the fourth and fifth centuries and an accompanying consolidation and exercise of episcopal power, especially in the Latin West. As bishops consolidated their new roles, they turned to rhetorical tropes and stylized narrative forms, such as sermons, as aids for the exercise of their authority.125 These practical sermons on the Maccabean martyrs fall into three categories. The first category was Augustine of Hippo’s pastoral message about the value of enduring suffering without the glory of martyrdom. Augustine delivered this message as both a means to reassure his congregation and to extend his critique of Donatist messages about the Maccabean martyrs. Second were sermons by John Chrysostom, Pope Leo I, and Valerianus of Cemele that emphasized household piety. These bishops especially praised the mother of the Maccabean martyrs as a role model for Christian women who oversaw the daily affairs of the Christian family. This literal domestication of the narrative of Maccabean martyrs was important since women represented an audience whom bishops sought to reach not only by establishing their authority over the public functioning of the church but for Christian life within the household. The third category concerns the transformation of the mother of the Maccabean martyrs by Peter Chrysologus and Pope Gregory I. These bishops preached on a narrative strikingly similar to that of the Maccabean martyrs except they


rendered the mother into the Christian figure Felicitas, the mother of seven martyred Christian sons. The thorough domestication of the Maccabean martyrs into models of exemplary virtue led to the creation of a hybrid family of martyrs, bearing new Christian identities but with the same unmistaken Jewish narrative in the background. AUGUSTINE

ON

ENDURING SUFFERING

Alongside his use of the Maccabean martyrs for polemical purposes, Augustine understood the Maccabean martyrs to have a pastoral usefulness. Augustine interpreted this troubling narrative of a family slaughtered for its refusal to comply with unjust imperial commands and domesticated it to explain how his congregation could deal with the hard parts of everyday life. For Augustine, the story of the Maccabean martyrs was not a narrative of resistance inspired by the Law of God, contra Donatist interpretations, but a message of subsistence on the power of God alone. In several sermons on the feast of the Maccabean martyrs, Augustine compared the three youths rescued from the fiery furnace in Daniel 3 to the Maccabean martyrs.126 For example, in Sermon 301 on the Maccabean martyrs, Augustine inquired why God delivered the three youths but not the Maccabees, even though both confessed and praised God during their torments. He established that both groups confessed their sins, an indication of their righteousness, as it is the just who confess their sins. Augustine argued that God was present with both. God openly saved the three youths in Daniel, yet secretly crowned the Maccabean martyrs.127 In turn, Augustine urged his audience not to assume that the fate of the righteous is uncertain. Some receive an open deliverance, like the three youths, while others experience a hidden deliverance, like the Maccabees, who received their reward in heaven. He urged his audience to be confident in God’s deliverance that awaits them in heaven.128 In a sermon on Psalm 33, Augustine again introduced this pair who suffered for God. Augustine entertained the objection of an imaginary audience member—why did God not rescue me from my distress when I cried out?—and argued that when Christians cry to God, God rescues them spiritually, if not physically. He then offered the example of the Maccabean martyrs, who demanded God’s deliverance and received it in the form of a celestial reward.129 Augustine’s interpretation both conveyed a pastoral concern for Augustine’s audience, and also continued his construction of an alternative definition of righteousness and signs of election than that proposed by

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Donatists. God delivers the righteous, but humans cannot ascertain the victory promised by God. That is reserved for God’s power alone. Rather than conveying a message of the glory of suffering, Augustine addressed elements of Christian life that were troubling to his audience. Perhaps he sensed that his audience wondered why God responded to martyrs but not to them in their ordinary lives. The three youths were the example of what could go right in times of trouble, that God would provide open and obvious deliverance. But to Augustine, the Maccabean martyrs served as a better model for most Christians. The reality was that often God’s deliverance was not imminent. Yet the endurance of the Maccabean martyrs and their heavenly reward indicated that God was ultimately present to Christians in a spiritual, if not a physical, way. Augustine used the Maccabean martyrs as pastoral models for his own congregation in dealing with quotidian struggles and difficulties. The utility of this narrative did not lie in fostering a resistance culture, as Donatist narratives of the Maccabean martyrs did. Augustine domesticated the Maccabean martyrs into exemplars of Christian reliance on God’s providential care in the midst of the turmoil of daily life. EXEMPLARY VIRTUES

AND THE

MOTHER

OF THE

MACCABEAN MARTYRS

Sermons on the Maccabean martyrs by three late antique bishops—John Chrysostom, Pope Leo I, and Valerianus of Cemele—treated the story of these martyrs, and especially the mother of the martyrs, as exemplars of Christian virtue as practiced in the household. The delivering of sermons memorializing the Maccabean martyrs was occasion for the extension of ascetic ideals to the domestic sphere. That bishops were the ones who advocated for this extension reveals episcopal interest in extending their own authority beyond the ecclesiastical sphere to the household. John Chrysostom’s sermons in Homily 1 and Homily 2 on the Maccabean martyrs illustrate his understanding of a spiritual obedience to the Law as part of a larger concern for the moral life of his community.130 In these two sermons Chrysostom expressed his concern to instill a Christian system of household virtue that would alter Christian activity and lead to the establishment of Antioch as a Christian city.131 Chrysostom’s emphasis on Christ as the Lawgiver in his sermons on the Maccabean martyrs revealed his concern not just for Christians to avoid Jewish practices but also to conceive of their fidelity to Christ as encompassing all aspects of their daily life. Chrysostom used the sermons that marked these feasts as a catechetical opportunity to illustrate how the virtues displayed


by these saints ought to be adopted by all the members of the community. At the same time, these Christian gatherings reinforced the distinctive identity of Catholic Christians in Antioch from Jews, pagans, and Arian Christians. Chrysostom desired that the memory of the Maccabean martyrs inspire virtues of equanimity and self-control to his congregation. In particular, the mother of the martyrs becomes a focus for him as he addressed the virtues Christians should adopt. At the end of Homily 2, Chrysostom urged his audience to overcome and tame their bodies in imitation of this mother. “Let us conquer the perturbations which are in us, let us restrain disordered insults of the flesh, let us beat and lead the body into servitude.”132 The example of the mother showed Christians the benefits of taming their bodily passions through a rational disciplining of a mind oriented to Christ. In this theme of taming the passions with reason enlightened by Christ, Chrysostom successfully Christianized themes found in 4 Maccabees. The transformation of the Maccabean martyrs into Christians did not cease for him with a discourse on a proper understanding of the Law for which they died but continued with a discourse on the virtues displayed in their lives. These virtues were continuous with the virtues that defined Christian behavior and attitudes. His congregation could aspire to lives of virtue like the Maccabean martyrs, because they were dedicated to Christ in the Gospel as these martyrs were dedicated to Christ in the Law. Chrysostom focused specifically on the mother of the Maccabean martyrs as a role model to the entire Christian community. This focus was a transformation of the memory of the Maccabean mother in 2 and 4 Maccabees as a voice for resistance to cultural and political domination. For Chrysostom, the mother was a figure he used to express his own episcopal authority within the Christian household. For example, in his first homily on the Maccabees, he instructed mothers to observe the Maccabean mother so that they might “imitate the strength of the woman, and the love of her children, so they may raise their sons in this way. For it is not for a woman to give birth, that is for nature, but it is for a mother to educate.”133 In his second homily on the Maccabean martyrs, Chrysostom counseled that all people ought to strive to imitate this mother. She deserved praise because while she watched her children burned, by grace she resisted the natural urge to rescue her children and instead allowed them to die. She proved that like her sons, reason guided her in obedience to God and the control of her natural passions.134 Because of her great

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example, all Christians should imitate her—fathers and mothers, men and women, virgins and ascetics.135 Chrysostom’s exhortation to follow the example of the Maccabean martyrs reflected his understanding of the role of the bishop in ordering every stratum of Christian civic life. The memory of the Maccabean mother could be used in positive and negative ways by Chrysostom. She could be an example for women as they instilled Christian virtues in their children in the context of the Christian household. Chrysostom envisioned that women would order Christian households so well that their husbands would be able to properly focus on the creation and maintenance of a well-regulated Christian city. Thus mothers were essential for ensuring that virtues were secured domestically so men could maintain their focus on civic matters. Chrysostom injected himself as an authority figure then, not only when Christians assembled to hear his sermons but also a as a voice to be recalled during the daily routines of the family. But female biblical subjects like the Maccabean mother could be used negatively by Chrysostom as “shaming devices” in order to encourage virtue among men in the congregation.136 The exhortation for even men to look to the example of this heroic mother challenged men to measure up to the full qualities of virtuous masculinity inherited from the classical tradition encoded in 4 Maccabees and Christianized by Chrysostom. The themes of episcopal authority, Christian virtue, and household piety found in Chrysostom’s sermons were also present in sermons from fifth-century Latin bishops. Pope Leo I (d. 461) constructed the memory of the Maccabean martyrs as a model for Christian behavior to reinforce his episcopal authority. In multiple sermons, Leo appealed to the spiritual authority vested in him as successor to the chair of Peter. As illustrated in his sermon on the Maccabean martyrs, within the context of this Petrine office Leo understood himself to be under the obligation of this office to provide for the well-being of the church.137 Leo’s sermon on the Maccabean martyrs linked the remembrance of their deeds to his own pastoral exhortations and the authority of his office.138 Leo interpreted the death of the Maccabean martyrs as a spiritual martyrdom for his audience. All Christians could engage in this martyrdom not by the destruction of senses, but by the death of vices.139 Martyrdom was imitable in a spiritual way; indeed Leo argued that by resisting sin and temptation one worthily celebrated this feast.140 Leo followed Augustine in placing the Maccabean martyrs not as martyrs at the hands of violent emperors, but rather models of self-sacrifice. Firmly ensconced within the late imperial system, Leo spiritualized the nature


of the Maccabean martyrs to an inner state of Christian conflict and victory. The Jewish heritage of the Maccabean martyrs did not present a problem for Leo nor did he dwell on the fact that the Maccabean martyrs died in defense of the Jewish Law. Rather, memorializing the Maccabean martyrs in this sermon was one of a series of opportunities that Leo took to encourage his audience to strengthen their commitment to a moral program of Christian behavior. This moral persuasion by Leo to have his audience attend to their spiritual lives further reinforced his own episcopal authority. Valerianus (d. 460), bishop of Cemele in south Gaul, delivered a sermon on the Maccabean martyrs that emphasized the mother of the Maccabean martyrs as a model for men and women.141 Like Chrysostom, Valerianus used the memory of the rational, courageous Maccabean mother who gave her children up to death to goad Christian men to lives of virtue. On one level, the mother served as an example for Christian men pursuing virtue. Following 4 Maccabees, Valerianus explained that the mother exceeded the virtue of Abraham because the seven sons, and then she herself, died in obedience to God’s commandment. She became “an example of outstanding virtue” and “the teacher of so many brave men by encouraging them towards heavenly glory.”142 Valerianus used the memory of the Maccabean mothers to publicly teach, and shame, Christian men regarding the virtues they ought to pursue and to order the behavior of his congregation. Valerianus further reflected this desire for ordering behavior by emphasizing that Christian mothers ought to emulate the Maccabean mother as they nurtured ascetic piety within the Christian household. Valerianus urged all the mothers in his audience to both imitate this mother and ensure their children were able to endure such martyrdom. He declared that mothers should train their children to be willing martyrs, to offer “those dear ones whom she was every day to immolate,” and men should in turn imitate these sons.143 Yet Valerianus did not exhort his audience to actual martyrdom. Instead he concluded his sermon with a call to virtue and renunciation of the cares of the world.144 A Christian family may best imitate the Maccabean martyrs by a rejection of worldly comforts and pleasures as a first step to a life in pursuit of Christian virtue. Like these martyrs, Valerianus wanted his own congregation also to struggle against iniquity and grow in virtue. This mode of self-sacrifice ought not to be cultivated as an individual endeavor. Rather, mothers should engage in this and teach it to their children. Likewise, adult men ought to imitate the virtues evident in these children.

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Valerianus elevated the Maccabean martyrs as a pedagogic model of how families could cultivate a moral life of resisting sin and developing Christian virtues. This sermon reflected a domesticated presentation of the Maccabean martyrs, designed with the pastoral impulse to address the household piety of fifth-century Christianity in the western Latin world. The puzzle of dying for the Law so pronounced in earlier works by Chrysostom and Augustine faded away when the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was placed within the domestic sphere. The conflict and struggle with competing religious visions that this narrative stirred in previous generations had ebbed for authors like Valerianus and Leo. This narrative was no longer a story of a Jewish family dying for the Law of Moses in defiance of an unjust and idolatrous imperial system. It was rather a biblical story, part of a Christian narrative of the triumph of God’s righteous in which a distinction between the Israel of the Old Testament and the spiritual Israel of the Christian church was unnecessary. The narrative of the Maccabean martyrs had become the story of the death of a family that was undeniably Christian in spirit if not in name. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs was domesticated to show how Christians living in the late western Roman Empire could go about their daily business of cultivating virtues, not resisting domination.

THE

FELICITAS AND HER SEVEN SONS: ERASURE AND PERSISTENCE OF THE MACCABEAN MARTYRS

The domestication of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs resulted in a near erasure of their Jewish identity in the cult of Felicitas and her seven sons. In the narrative of this late antique cult a Christian, rather than Jewish, family resisted the demands of an unjust king. The cult of Felicitas and her seven sons in the Roman church effectively transformed the prominence and significance of the anonymous Jewish mother and her seven sons.145 The cult of Felicitas and her seven sons emerged around the fourth century in Rome, during the same period when the cult of the Maccabean martyrs arrived in the west from Antioch.146 Although strong narrative parallels existed between the Maccabean martyrs and Felicitas and her sons, the actual language of this martyrdom does not strongly resemble 2 or 4 Maccabees.147 Despite this, sermons on Felicitas and her sons hint that these martyrs were Christian replacements for the veneration of these Jewish martyrs. Felicitas and her sons were hybridized manifestations of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs. Though


bearing Christian names and narratives, the Jewish origins of the story could not be fully obscured. In a sermon on Felicitas by Peter Chrysologus (ca. 400–50), bishop of Ravenna, the Jewish underpinning of the story appears. Chrysologus repeated many Christian motifs common to sermons on the Maccabean martyrs throughout his own discourse on Felicitas. He praised Felicitas for encouraging her sons to embrace martyrdom, much as the Maccabean mother did.148 Her sons were brilliant lights and candelabra, like the Maccabean sons in Christian literature.149 Chrysologus rendered Felicitas as a woman possessing masculine virtues, similar to texts on the Maccabean mother. Felicitas had a masculine nature, like the Maccabean mother. She was a woman who “gives birth again and again, until weakness is turned into power, that flesh may pass over to spirit, and earth may pass to heaven.”150 Chrysologus, however, was unable to completely erase the hybrid underpinnings of the cult of Felicitas and her sons when he declared, “[Felicitas] is blessed because she was honored to bear these pledges of virtue, as though she bore the holy scrolls of the commandments in that ark.”151 In this passage, Peter had praised the virtue of Felicitas for teaching her sons the Christian faith and encouraging them to the point of death. At that very moment he vividly connected their deaths with the Law of Moses. Chrysologus compared Felicitas to the Ark of the Covenant and her seven sons to the commandments carried in the Ark. Tellingly, Chrysologus compared the sons to Torah scrolls. This strongly identified these Christian brothers with the Law of Moses and with an essential symbol of (rabbinic) Judaism. This reference betrayed Chrysologus’s awareness of the Jewish origins of this story, suggesting that the Jewish roots of the story of Felicitas were obvious at least to Peter Chrysologus, if not to his audience.152 Pope Gregory I (ca. 540–604), in his homily in praise of Felicitas presented on her feast at the basilica in Rome dedicated to her, rendered Felicitas and her sons as liminal figures whose celebrations provided opportunities to reaffirm distinctions between Jews and Christians.153 In this sermon Felicitas is a hybridized figure, passing as Christian but derived from a Jewish narrative, used by Gregory to distinguish Law from Gospel. Taking his text from Matthew 12:50, “Whoever does the will of my father who is in heaven is my brother and sister and mother,” Gregory established the distinction between flesh and spirit, Jew and Christian, through the hybrid figure of Felicitas. According to Gregory, Christ

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declared his mother and brothers were not related to him via a “physical relationship” but by “spiritual affinity.”154 Gregory compared the mother of Jesus, standing outside and asking to see him, to the synagogue, that is, those who cling to the observance of the Law but do not have the corresponding spiritual understanding.155 Those who believe in Christ are his siblings and those who preach Christ are his true mothers, for they pour Christ into the hearts of those who listen.156 For Gregory, Felicitas illustrated how one became a spiritual mother to Christ. By her faith she became a follower of Christ, but by the faith she instilled in her sons, she became the mother of Christ.157 Gregory employed the theme of the distinction between spirit and flesh or Law and Gospel in this sermon. This was also a theme found in sermons by both Chrysostom and Augustine on the Maccabean martyrs. While Chrysostom and Augustine used this distinction to explain how Christians could venerate Jewish martyrs, Gregory focused on how spirit and flesh distinguished Jews from Christians. Jesus’s mother’s demand represented Judaism, or the synagogue, and its continued attraction to the Law and the flesh. Felicitas, the mother who instilled faith in her martyred sons, represented Christianity, or the church, and the life of the spirit. Gregory employed the narrative of Felicitas, as a hybrid figure derived from a Jewish narrative but portrayed as a Christian martyr, to do the work of establishing Jewish-Christian difference. The domestication of Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs in the fourth and fifth centuries witnessed a loss of the Maccabean martyrs as figures of a resistance culture as recounted in 2 and 4 Maccabees. Instead they became associated with a pastoral message of endurance, the cultivation of virtue and household piety, and the intrusion of episcopal authority into the Christian home. The creation of new memories of the Maccabean martyrs by late antique Christian bishops culminated in the attempted erasure of their memory in the cult of Felicitas and her seven sons. But the sermons of Chrysologus and Gregory testify that even in its most hybridized form, the foundational Jewish elements of this narrative abided. Conclusion Taken as a whole, late antique traditions of the Maccabean martyrs show how Jewish narratives and concepts were appropriated to proclaim a Christian gospel as the Catholic church became increasingly entrenched within imperial structures. Andrew Jacobs has shown that with the rise


of imperial Christianity in the fourth century there was an ideological need to assert authority over Jewish people, texts, and places as a means of legitimating Christian power. Discussing Christian acquisition of sites associated with Jewish figures in the Holy Land and the dissemination of relics from there throughout the Roman Empire, Jacobs describes this as a process in which Christians could both “conjur” and “absorb” the Jewish “other” as a way of strengthening imperial power rooted in Constantinople by coupling it with the more discrete and diffuse religious power associated with the Holy Land.158 Looking at the texts and authors discussed in this chapter in the context of an emerging Christian empire, the Maccabean martyrs served as one particular example of how Jewish texts and figures were employed to support localized arguments for the relationship between Christianity and other cultural and religious forces. As Catholic Christianity ascended culturally in this period, it sought to articulate its relevance to non-Catholic and non-Christian strata of society. Averil Cameron has shown that some Christian authors deployed rhetorical genres and styles to appeal to Hellenistic and Roman cultural contexts. The appropriation of Jewish narratives and figures, like the Maccabean martyrs, ought to be read alongside the rhetorical moves Cameron analyzed as another way that Christian authors attempted to widen the appeal of imperial Catholic Christianity. Appropriating the heritage, history, and identity of Israel enabled the church to lay claim to a greater degree of antiquity in a period when novelty and innovation were disdained. For many Christian thinkers, like Augustine, the witness of the prophets to Jesus Christ verified and validated the veracity of the Gospel. At the same time, there existed lingering questions about the purpose and place of the Old Testament narrative within Christian culture. The arguments of Manicheans that Augustine so opposed and the existence of thriving Jewish communities each in their own way undermined Christian identification with the Scriptures of Israel. A Christian apologist could argue either with the Manicheans that the Old Testament was a scandalous collection of books for any respectable religion to be associated with or argue with Jews against their contention that Christians badly interpreted and understood the content of these books. Either way, Christians who employed and appropriated originally Jewish narratives were aware that an exclusively Christian interpretation could be contested. The very reality of contestation raised the stakes on the act of appropriation. If successfully carried out, an appropriated Jewish narrative could further reinforce the cultural appeal of ascendant Catholic Christianity.

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Christian texts on the Maccabean martyrs illustrate how such appeals were deployed in diverse local contexts. Whether in Antioch, Milan, Hippo, or Rome, authors discussed the Maccabean martyrs within a larger context of imperial conditions. An underlying theme in these works on the martyrs is to explain how a self-defined normative version of Christianity was superior to competing pagan, Jewish, and non-normative Christian options. The prospect of either gaining or maintaining an alliance with the imperial system encouraged the designation of nonnormative Christian groups as others who ought to be marginalized and ideologically, if not culturally, dominated. Examining how a culturally and politically ascendant version of Christianity sought to increase and wield its influence in religious and cultural spheres, Homi Bhabha’s analysis of power dynamics within colonial contexts is useful. He notes that in such situations, a discourse of “otherness” is employed. Wielders of colonial power use stereotyping as a way of fixing the other into an unchangeable and marginalized position. The stereotype is “a form of knowledge and identification that vacillates between what is always ‘in place’, already known, and something that must be anxiously repeated.”159 Yet the stereotype itself is ambivalent and unstable because it is a category that does not represent a people or group as they really are but exists rather to define according to a particular agenda of power and control. The objects of stereotypes, by their very existence and lived reality, can undermine the stereotype itself. Recognizing the stereotype as integral to a discourse of difference designed to strengthen colonial power, one understands the stereotyped other as “at once an object of desire and derision, an articulation of difference contained within the fantasy of origin and identity.”160 The colonizer constructs a narrative of the origins and identity of the colonized that affirms their natural inferiority and their need to be controlled by a superior group.161 While Bhabha describes the process of stereotyping in terms of modern colonialism, one sees similar dynamics at work in the development of Christian supersessionist theology. Jewish counterclaims to Christian possession of the ancient Hebrew Scriptures and identification as the people of Israel threatened fourth- and fifth-century aspirations for an alliance between church and empire endorsed by leading Christians. As part of marginalizing and defining Jews in stereotyped ways, Christians refined a discourse in which Jews were denied possession of their Scriptures and their self-identifying markers such as Israel. While one can trace these Christian moves back to the mid-second century with Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho, in which one could argue that Christians and Jews


operated as competing “others” within the Roman imperial system, the intent and focus in the fourth and fifth century was different. Here, Catholic Christian bishops actively sought to consolidate ecclesiastical power and strengthening imperial alliances. Thus the focus of anti-Jewish stereotyping was not to differentiate Jews from Christians but to ensure that Jews did not undermine Christian aspirations to religious and cultural power and influence. In this sense, Jacobs is correct in speaking of the need for Christians to constantly “reconquer” and “remaster” Jewish remnants in the Holy Land in order to hold in check fears of Jewish resistance to Christian claims to power.162 For the Catholic Christian bishops examined in this chapter, the Maccabean martyrs functioned as figures that were simultaneously Jewish and Christian who could justify the spiritual, theological, and cultural domination that Christians claimed over Jews. The Maccabean martyrs were hybrids, liminal figures. Hybridity as a concept in postcolonial studies normally designates the appropriation of imposed colonial culture by the colonized in a way that repudiates the colonizer.163 Christian use of the Maccabean martyrs obviously was not hybrid in this sense. Rather the Maccabean martyrs were an example of the use of the culture of the colonized to reinforce domination. Hybridity was a malleable concept, depending on the context in which it is deployed. It could be used as a means of resistance, as Homi Bhabha identifies in nineteenth-century India, or as a device for asserting superiority over another, as certain Christian bishops did in late antiquity.164 By acknowledging the Jewish origins of the Maccabean martyrs and explaining that their story revealed that all righteous Jews were actually Christians, contemporary late antique Judaism, which by definition in this argument was not Christian, could be identified as an inauthentic form of Judaism. The effort to identify Jews and Judaism as inauthentic and Christianity as the authentic manifestation of Israel involved a wide range of authors, texts, and discourses. Late antique sermons and tracts treating the Maccabean martyrs were one discrete example that demonstrated one mode in which this argument was made. Depending on the local context, the presentation of the Maccabean martyrs varied. John Chrysostom in Antioch used the hybrid identity of the Maccabean martyrs as both martyrs for the Law and martyrs for Christ as part of a larger effort to dissuade his congregation from associating with Jews. The Maccabean martyrs also figured into his effort to create a culture of civic Christianity in which the virtues exercised by Christians would lead to the consolidation of Christian identity in Antioch. In

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Milan, Ambrose saw the example of the steadfast courage, constancy, and fidelity of these Jewish martyrs as both virtues that recent converts could emulate and as a touchstone for Ambrose’s own resistance to unjust imperial authority. Here Ambrose employed this Jewish narrative as part of his own reflection on when and how Christians could resist imperial authority for the purpose of not just opposing power but asserting their own power and aspirations to empire. For Augustine, claiming and proving the church to be the full manifestation of Israel undermined Manichean and Jewish criticism of Christian possession of the Hebrew Scriptures. Augustine promotes the hybrid identity of the Maccabean martyrs as Christians before Christ as a tactic to deny Jewish reassertions of their original identity as Israel and rightful heirs to the promises found in the Hebrew Scriptures. Augustine also employed these martyrs as part of a campaign to neutralize Donatist identification with them as the collecta of Israel. Augustine’s wider polemic against Donatism, of which his reflections on the Maccabean martyrs were only one part, signaled Catholic Christianity’s growing comfort with its alliance with the Roman Empire. The emphasis placed by Chrysostom, Ambrose, and Augustine on the Maccabean martyrs as moral exemplars contributed to their domestication as Christian figures and gradually drained them of their original Jewish identity. This process continued in sermons from a variety of bishops in the fifth and sixth centuries in which the Jewish origins of these martyrs are only incidental to Christian veneration of them. This ebbing of Jewish identity was fully manifested in the growth of the cult of Felicitas and her sons in this period. The hybridized identity of the Maccabean martyrs continued to have a ghostly presence in sermons on Felicitas. She was portrayed as a Christian matriarch and martyr, a paragon of virtue and piety, yet her presence stimulated references to the Jewish law and distinctions between church and synagogue. At a period in the mid-fifth and early sixth centuries in which Catholic Christians had consolidated imperial power and oversaw the eclipse of religious rivals, the potency of the Maccabean martyrs as hybrid figures also ebbed. From Chrysostom to Gregory the Great one can trace the use of hybridity as an expression of a fear of syncretism to its diffusion as Catholic Christianity became more secure in its identity and ecclesiastical and political positions. The hybridity engendered by Christian appropriation of Jewish narratives reinforced Christian power. The hybridized ideology of supersessionism articulated by these authors denied a continued Jewish life for these figures by rejecting the validity of certain aspects of the Mosaic Law. This supersessionist interpretation relegated contemporary Judaism to a


secondary status while contributing to the rise in Christian status in the Roman Empire. Late antique Christian devotion to the Maccabean martyrs as reflected in texts produced in Antioch, Milan, Hippo, and Rome should be understood as part of a process that marginalized Judaism. Significantly, this process also served to oppose the power and appeal of other competing religious groups, notably Arianism and Donatism. Christian articulation of its essential difference from and superiority to Judaism was expressed through revised memories of the Maccabean martyrs that were fundamentally rooted in arguments over the significance and status of the Law for Jews and Christians.


CHAPTER 3

Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs in the Christian Medieval West Introduction In the previous chapter, it was shown that late antique Christian appropriations of the Maccabean martyrs turned them into hybridized figures that represented the place of Jewish figures in rhetoric accompanying the Christianization of the late Roman Empire and the transformation of its cultural discourses. By attending to the reception of these late antique traditions of the Maccabean martyrs into the medieval period, it is possible to observe continuities and discontinuities in the use of these hybridized martyrs in new cultural contexts. As with late antique sermons, in medieval texts on the Maccabean martyrs one finds questions about the purpose of honoring Jewish martyrs for the Mosaic Law and the relevance of their witness for Christian life. Christian remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs was highly malleable and shaped according to specific contexts. At the same time, medieval Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs were ambivalent about their subjects. These qualities signify the allosemitic view of these Jewish figures by Christian authors.1 That is, the Maccabean martyrs were figures whose Jewish identity was neither unambiguously negative nor positive. Rather, the Maccabean martyrs’ status as Jews was a means by which Christian authors could articulate a totalizing identity for their own Christian communities while also ideologically colonizing Jewish narratives. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs in medieval Latin western Europe was formed through learned texts and commemorative liturgies that were organized within the structure of the institutional church. Scholars and religious leaders maintained and situated the memory of

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the Maccabean martyrs within a culturally given matrix of practices and beliefs. In the realm of Christian memory, martyrs were an especially charged vehicle for communal memory and in their person could evoke a range of remembered associations.2 A key conduit for the transmission of late antique traditions of the Maccabean martyrs was through homiliaries, or sermon collections. Homiliaries established cultural memories of the Maccabean martyrs that were formative and organizational. Many early medieval homiliaries consisted of sermons from a variety of patristic authors designed for reading throughout the liturgical cycle. Compilers diffused homiliaries throughout early medieval Latin Christendom. Ecclesiastical professionals used them in the context of the liturgies of the monastic office, as resources in popular preaching, and as texts for personal use.3 An examination of three homiliaries illustrates how late antique sermons like the ones described in the previous chapter circulated in early medieval western Europe. The ninth-century homiliary contained in the manuscript Vatican Latin 3828 contains sermons by Augustine, Chrysostom, and a range of other African authors. Chapter 82 of this work, a sermon attributed to Augustine, is actually a copy of the second version of the Pseudo-Leo sermon On the Maccabees.4 A two-volume homiliary from the beginning of the eighth century composed in Rome, the homiliary of Agimond, is connected with earlier Roman homiliaries that have African origins.5 The second volume of this homiliary (MS Vatican Latin 3836) begins with four sermons on the Maccabean martyrs, all ascribed to Augustine. However, only one of these four sermons is by Augustine (Sermon 301). Another one is by Leo the Great (Sermon 84B), and the other two are from the pseudo-Leonine corpus (On the Maccabees I and II).6 Finally, an eleventh-century collection from Weissenberg in Lower Saxony (MS Wolfenbüttel 4096) is textually related to several Italian homiliaries that ultimately have African roots. Caesarius of Arles (468–542) was the original compiler of the sermons found in the present homiliary. Chapter 68 of this work contains two sermons on the Maccabean martyrs, Sermons 300 and 301 by Augustine.7 The limited example of these three homiliaries demonstrates that late antique interpretations of the Maccabean martyrs were received into early medieval European Christian culture. These sermons helped to form memories of the Maccabean martyrs in early medieval Europe and organized the memory of these martyrs within the context of liturgical commemorations, preaching, and personal reading. The received late antique traditions of the Maccabean martyrs gave rise to discussions of the relevance of the Mosaic Law for Christians and a continued appropriation

Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs

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and colonization of Jewish subjects for Christian purposes within new geographic and cultural contexts. Besides homiliaries, a common vehicle for medieval discussion of the Maccabean martyrs was within Bible commentaries. Neither 2 nor 4 Maccabees occupied a prominent place in the medieval commentary tradition in comparison to other biblical books like Genesis, Psalms, or Isaiah. Hugh of Saint-Victor (1096–1141) quoted Jerome in the Didascalion about the canonical status of the books of the Maccabees: “Therefore, just as the Church reads, to be sure, the Books of Judith and Tobias and of the Maccabees, but does not adopt them into the canonical Scriptures, so let her read [1 and 2 Maccabees] to edify the people, but not to confirm the truth of ecclesiastical dogmas.”8 This quote indicates in part why there was not an extensive commentary tradition on 2 Maccabees 7. While early Christian authorities certainly found the contents of 2 Maccabees edifying, along with other deutero-canonical books, it was not used to determine church teaching. Although part of the Vulgate Bible, 2 Maccabees was not regarded as fully authoritative for doctrinal purposes. 2 Maccabees, and other deutero-canonical books, eventually received commentaries, but exegetes and other medieval writers did not give as much attention to them.9 Yet examining those commentaries that do exist allows insights into the understanding of the hybridized figure of the Maccabean martyrs in a range of medieval Christian contexts. This chapter will chronologically trace medieval Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs as they appeared in three broad categories. First are writings by two authors, Rabanus Maurus in his commentary on 2 Maccabees and Rupert of Deutz in On the Victory of the Word of God. These authors utilized the memory of the Maccabean martyrs to alternately support and critique the imperial aspirations of Christian rulers. Second is a group of texts from twelfth-century France justifying Christian commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs. Anselm of Laon in the Liber Pancrisis, John Beleth writing in the Summa on the Offices of the Church, and Bernard of Clairvaux in Letter 98 each utilized and altered late antique explanations for the presence of the Maccabean martyrs on the Christian calendar of saints. The liturgical memory of the hybridized figures of the Maccabean martyrs was ambiguous and signaled a continuation of efforts by late antique bishops to ideologically colonize Jewish subjects. A third type of memory of the Maccabean martyrs was preserved in the tradition of literal exegesis on 2 Maccabees 7 as represented by the scholar Peter Comestor. In his exegesis, the Maccabean martyrs

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signaled both a historical continuity between Israel and the church while reinscribing these Jewish martyrs as Christians. The Maccabean Martyrs For and Against Medieval Imperial Aspirations RABANUS MAURUS

IN

SUPPORT

OF

LOUIS

THE

GERMAN

In composing the most significant early medieval commentary on 2 Maccabees 7, Rabanus Maurus (780–856) wrote in support of the imperial aspirations of the Carolingian king Louis the German. Leaving aside scattered references to the Maccabean martyrs in works by Isidore of Seville, the Venerable Bede, and Aelfric of Eynsham, Rabanus wrote the most widely read early medieval work on these martyrs.10 A student of Alcuin and heir to the Anglo-Saxon tradition represented by Bede,11 Rabanus Maurus, as abbot of Fulda (from 822) and then archbishop of Mainz from 847 until his death in 856, instructed clergy in the teaching of late antique Latin theologians and adapted this tradition to contemporary needs. The primary vehicle through which Rabanus communicated this late antique inheritance to Carolingian Christians was through the commentaries he produced on most books of the Bible. As a preserver of Latin Christian cultural memory, Rabanus Maurus also shaped these memories for his audience in the very act of preservation This is seen most clearly in works dedicated to Carolingian rulers, such as in his commentary on 2 Maccabees. When writing to his royal patrons, Rabanus frequently emphasized the function of the Hebrew Scriptures as an ethical guide for Christian rulers. In this way, both Jews and Franks were in the eyes of Rabanus a people “ruled by the written law.”12 Rabanus presented the history of the kings and leaders of Israel, from Joshua, Saul, and David to Judas Maccabeus and his family, as figures of particular interest for Carolingian kings and their ecclesiastical supporters. Rabanus utilized the inherited cultural memory of the kings of ancient Israel enshrined within the Bible to promote the dynastic rule of the Carolingian kings in terms of their leadership of the people of God and their necessary role in maintaining the order and unity of Christian society.13 At the same time, the use of originally Jewish narratives reflected a continued supersessionist ideological colonization of Jewish discourses for imperial purposes. As abbot of Fulda, the center of learning in the Carolingian Empire, Rabanus Maurus produced biblical commentaries dealing with the history of Israel for the royal court. These works show Rabanus’s role in promoting the connection between Israelite kingship and Carolingian imperial


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rule. These commentaries were also the means by which Rabanus could insinuate himself into imperial favor. For example, he wrote commentaries on the four books of Kings for Louis the Pious, son and successor of Charlemagne. The gift of the commentaries mirrored the support Rabanus offered to Louis the Pious when his sons rebelled against him.14 In the early years of the 840s Rabanus supported the claim of Louis’s son Lothar as successor to the whole empire upon Louis’s death despite the objections of his other sons Charles the Bald and Louis the German. In 845 Rabanus was finally reconciled to Louis the German, who ruled territory east of the Rhine including Fulda where Rabanus’s abbey was located. In the same year Rabanus dedicated a revised commentary on the books of the Maccabees to him (an earlier version had been provided to the archdeacon Gerolt who served Louis the Pious).15 The dedication of this revised commentary by Rabanus to Louis the German was both an act of supporting the imperial aspirations of Louis and of reconciliation with him. The selection by Rabanus of a commentary on the books of the Maccabees in support of Louis was apt. The narrative of 1 and 2 Maccabees concerning the restoration of national unity was especially relevant to Louis the German in his efforts to establish authority in his kingdom in the aftermath of civil war and continuing internal divisions. In this work Rabanus focused especially on models of righteous kingship. For Rabanus, the function of the empire was continuous with the sacred activity of the church; the sacred roles of priests and bishops and the secular roles of kings and emperors intersected for securing the righteousness of the people of God.16 By recalling the memory of the events of the revolt preserved in the books of the Maccabees, Rabanus Maurus deployed Jewish figures in an allosemitic mode to positively reinforce the legitimacy of Louis’s reign. Rabanus’s commentary on the story of the Maccabean martyrs within this larger narrative illustrated the importance of true worship of God on the part of rulers to ensure the health and safety of Christian subjects just recovering from rebellion and war. Rabanus’s allosemitic memory of Jewish figures did not result only in positive representations of Jews. His commentary on the four books of Kings, for example, followed an Augustinian representation of contemporary Jews as having lost the title of Israel to the church. Rabanus assigned culpability to the Jews of the time of Jesus for his death, and this guilt also was assigned to contemporary Jews.17 In practical affairs, Rabanus sought to limit Jewish-Christian interactions. In two different penitentials (books of church discipline) that he composed, he set forth

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bans on clerics eating food with Jews and intermarriage between Jews and Christians.18 Much as in Augustine’s thought, for Rabanus the allosemitic memory of Jewish figures was divided between faithful Jews living before Christ and faithless Jews afterward. The ambivalent status of Jewish figures in Rabanus’s work reflected a wider tension regarding Jews in Carolingian ecclesiastical and civil circles. A contemporary of Rabanus, the bishop Agobard of Lyon (769–840) sought to regulate the presence of Jews within Carolingian culture out of concern for the polluting influence of Jews on Christian people. Agobard attempted to reverse a generally tolerant royal Carolingian policy toward Jews. Thus he argued for regulations that would reduce Jewish contact with Christians and restrict their roles within civil administration. His campaign garnered support among some in ecclesiastical circles, but Carolingian rulers were not swayed by his efforts and continued to cultivate relations with Jews in civil and business affairs.19 Rabanus’s own ambivalent stance toward Jews as both a high-ranking cleric and a supporter of Carolingian rulers was a microcosm of the ambivalence toward Jews and Judaism in ninth-century Carolingian culture. This ambivalence in turn reflected the ideological uses that Jews held for Christians and the inherent colonization of their narratives in Carolingian discourses. An expression of this ambivalence and ideological colonization in Carolingian culture can be found in the high degree of concern with ritual purity expressed by its members. Evidence of this was reflected especially in a wide range of purity regulations preserved in collections of canon law. Due to this cultural concern with purity, the purity laws recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures retained an attraction, making the question of whether Christians ought to observe the Mosaic Law especially pressing.20 Operating within this cultural milieu, Rabanus Maurus retained the counterpoising late antique understandings of the Law at Sinai as given by Christ the Lawgiver but, on the other hand, spoke of the passing of the Mosaic Law with the coming of Christ.21 In Rabanus’s commentary on 2 Maccabees, the theme of dying for the Law was especially important. Rabanus altered the memory of the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Mosaic Law to address Louis the German’s concerns over maintaining authority within his kingdom. Rabanus accomplished this by emphasizing the importance of observing the Law of God for preserving the people of God. This emphasis on the importance of the Law was a means for Rabanus to express support for Louis. In the dedicatory prologue to this commentary Rabanus informed Louis that the contents of his commentary accorded with the Catholic faith and


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conveyed the message that following the Law of God revealed in Jesus Christ yielded blessing and salvation.22 In his commentary on 2 Maccabees 7, Rabanus offered an allegorical reading of this narrative as a type for the church’s struggle against external enemies. Rabanus prominently employed Cyprian of Carthage’s discussion of the Maccabean martyrs in his Letter to Fortunatus, revealing that this text was a central means by which the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was formed in the Carolingian world.23 Following Cyprian, Rabanus compared the mother of the martyrs to the church, also personified as a mother. Taking up his own exegesis after repeating Cyprian’s insights, Rabanus queried, “Who is designated by this mother of seven sons, if not the fertility of the mother Church, who by the seven-fold Spirit bears sons adopted by God the Father?”24 Following Paul’s first letter to the church in Corinth, Rabanus argued that the sons prefigured those Christians who bear the seven gifts of the Spirit, indicative of their status as children of God. Despite all of Antiochus’s persecutions, the mother and sons did not commit blasphemy, a sign of the fruits they bore. Their endurance of present torments for future rewards was itself a fulfillment of the prophecy of Isaiah 54:1–14 that the barren women of Israel would again experience fruitfulness after exile from the land of Israel.25 The very experience of this fulfillment typologically signaled that those who suffered for Christ will receive their own victory and enter the heavenly kingdom. “And after the sons and mother were destroyed, it is demonstrated that after the victory of each son of the Church, by which they defeated the enemy, they will enter with free souls to eternal rest.”26 Like the mother victorious amid her martyred sons, the Mother Church, with the coming of the kingdom of heaven, will claim “glorious trophies from all the enemies and she will possess the eternal kingdom.”27 The promise of the victory of the sons and their mother served as a sign for Rabanus that the Carolingians could be victorious over any enemies attacking the contemporary people of God, the Frankish Christians. Rabanus’s emphasis on the righteous death of the Maccabean martyrs as a sign of victory indicated his concern for fidelity to God expressed through pure worship as a means of preserving safety for the Carolingian Empire. This exegetical strategy addressed two different political contexts. First, promoting the Franks as an elect people of God was used especially to create an identity over against other Christian polities like the Lombards, Bavarians, or Greeks and was a prominent motif in the development of royal propaganda of Frankish kings as the most devout of Christian rulers.28 Second, Rabanus used this commentary to express

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his own hopes for Louis’s reign. Rabanus dedicated this commentary on the books of the Maccabees to Louis shortly after the Treaty of Verdun in 843, which established peace between him and his brothers Lothar and Charles the Bald. The story of the Maccabean martyrs, though firmly located within the history of the Jewish people, was read by Rabanus Maurus through the reception of late antique traditions and the religious and political assumptions and concerns of his Carolingian culture. This story became an instructive narrative of fidelity to true worship of God as a means of securing the health and safety of the kingdom and subjects of Louis the German after the division of the Carolingian Empire in 840. The Carolingian Empire might have had an uncertain future, but this commentary conveyed the message that fidelity to God would preserve its people. Rabanus’s exegesis of 2 Maccabees 7 also reinterpreted the meaning of the Law. It ceased to be the law of temple sacrifices and ritual purity for which, according to the historical reading, these martyrs died. Rabanus was not concerned with preserving the historical meaning of this text for its own sake but rather that it might yield its spiritual teaching for the edification and instruction of King Louis. The memory of these Jewish martyrs served the purpose of strengthening Louis’s self-understanding as a godly ruler, like Judas Maccabaeus, ensuring the purity of the kingdom and mindful of the example of the martyrs for the Law. Rabanus Maurus employed an allosemitic memory of the Maccabean martyrs to reinforce the continuity between church and empire that was central to the ideology of the Carolingian court. Placing this text in service to the ideals of empire, especially at the very moment in history in which the Carolingian Empire was threatened with fragmentation, meant the continued colonization of these Jewish figures. As subjects that could be deployed either positively or negatively, biblical Jews like the Maccabean martyrs functioned as “virtual Jews” who were useful instruments in the construction of Christian imperial discourses.29 Rabanus’s positive portrayal here of the Jews in 2 Maccabees 7 was nonetheless an act of ideological colonization that continued the appropriation of this narrative for Christian purposes, here for the sake of the imperial aspirations of Louis. Rabanus’s commentary on 2 Maccabees was the basis for the commentary on the same book in the Glossa Ordinaria, and as such a colonizing interpretation of the mother and seven sons in an ambivalent, allosemitic register received a privileged place in later medieval readings.

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RUPERT

OF

DEUTZ: THE MACCABEAN MARTYRS

IN THE

SERVICE

OF

REFORM

The Benedictine abbot Rupert of Deutz (ca. 1075–1129) wrote about the Maccabean martyrs as figures who represented the difference between true and false Jews in service of his support for ecclesiastical reform within the German Empire of the early twelfth century. As a supporter of the reform program of the papacy, Rupert frequently used the figure of Jews in both positive and negative ways to critique the need for reform within the Roman Church as it was situated in the German imperial context. Working within the school of symbolic exegesis, Rupert’s approach to the Maccabean martyrs reveals the malleability of cultural memory in medieval Christian thought as it was manifested in varying social contexts. In his scriptural commentaries, most notably On the Victory of the Word of God and On the Holy Trinity and Its Works, and in his Jewish-Christian dialogue, the Anulus (or The Ring), Rupert depicted Jews as representatives of the problem of medieval Christendom not having been fully reformed as the people of God. For Rupert the Maccabean martyrs represented true or spiritual Jews who properly fulfilled the Law of God in contrast to false or carnal Jews whose inability to obey the Law resulted in further punishment by means of the Law. This contrast between categories of true and false Jews in Rupert’s thought served as a symbolic gloss on the problem of reforming Christendom in the context of the conflicts between supporters of the papacy and the German Empire in the early twelfth century. Apocalypticism colored Rupert’s analysis of this conflict and informed his exegesis of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs in 2 Maccabees 7. In turn, Rupert’s reframing of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs as a story of spiritual distinctions among Jews and among Christians informed his own theological understanding of neighboring Jewish communities in the German Rhineland. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs as transmitted to Rupert in Scripture and patristic tradition served as a vehicle to express his own contemporary concerns for reform within church and society. The Maccabean martyrs were hybrid figures for Rupert, reflecting an authentic Jewish fidelity to the God who gave the Law to Israel at Sinai while also representing the integrity of Christians who resist the unjust power of Antichrist. While he was supersessionist in his theology, Rupert can be best described as allosemitic. Jews were an other, preserved both within scriptural memory and as contemporary neighbors, by which Rupert could both positively and negatively assess and reflect on his own Christian context.

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Rupert of Deutz was a reformer in two senses. First, he sought to reform Benedictine monasticism and carried this out with special focus during his period as abbot of the monastery at Deutz (across the Rhine River from Cologne) from 1120 to 1129. Rupert was also a reformer in the sense that he was deeply involved with the politics around the so-called investiture controversy that pitted popes and German emperors against one another over the role of secular rulers investing bishops with the sign of their spiritual authority (normally a staff and ring).30 Rupert sided with the papacy in its struggles against the German Empire. Rupert wrote, in effect, as a papal propagandist residing in the German Empire against the usurpation of papal prerogatives by German rulers. His critiques of the German Empire focused on the corruption of the church by practices of simony, particularly as deployed by the German emperor Henry V. Rupert’s reforming rhetoric was profoundly anti-imperial. Although Rupert submitted to secular authority, his commentaries, especially On the Victory of the Word of God, did not view empires as having any positive role within God’s providential plan of salvation.31 For Rupert, empires functioned as instruments of God’s judgment for the chastisement of the people of God in order to compel repentance.32 While Rupert envisioned the German emperors as a latter-day manifestation of the dragon of Revelation 12 corrupting the clergy,33 he viewed the Roman Church and its papacy as an institutional alternative to empire. The reform of the church by supporters of the papacy in the eleventh and twelfth centuries entailed a rejection of the role of secular authority in the governance of the church (as expressed in the investiture controversy) in favor of the authority of the papal office alone. Rupert promoted this ideal of reform in distinction to the claims that German imperial rhetoric made on the church. In this rhetoric, the marks of the German Empire had four elements: the use of the term “empire” was the expression of the legal authority of its rulers; as an empire it was the defender of the church against its enemies in the capacity of the “temporal sword”; the German Empire was a disciplinarian of other nations; and the German Empire was the territorial and historical successor of the Roman Empire.34 Just as German emperors expressed a totalizing vision for their place in Christendom, so too in contradistinction did church reformers like Rupert have a totalizing vision of the place of the church in society. Lifting up their purifying vision of the church, reformers pushed to the side those clerics and secular figures who stood in their way. Once the authority of the papacy was secured against imperial claims in the investiture controversy, the reform agenda required continued maintenance.


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Rupert served as a guardian of church reform, especially in his instructions as abbot at Deutz and in the composition of his biblical commentaries emphasizing the necessity of continued preaching and teaching of the ideas of reform to ensure the purity of the church from those who would corrupt it through simony and greed. To maintain its sweeping claims to authority, the church, as expressed through the papacy and its allies, needed to constantly be on guard against the corrupting influences of imperial agents.35 Rupert, then, engaged in a counterimperial discourse that supplied its own totalizing vision as a response. In Rupert’s rhetoric of reform he employed a bifurcated, symbolic figure of the Jews to distinguish between supporters and opponents of reform within Christendom. Operating within an allosemitic framework, Rupert offered differing categories of Jews. As David Timmer explains, on the one hand there were true Jews, who represented those in the church who supported the reform agenda. On the other hand were false Jews whom he identified as both contemporary Jews and opponents of reform within the church.36 Anna Sapir Abulafia offers a similar schematic, drawn from Rupert’s commentary on the Gospel of John, for a typology of good and wicked Jews that also postulated a neutral third category. Explaining the meaning of the word “Jew,” Rupert offered a neutral definition for those who simply can trace their ancestry back to the tribes of Judah and Benjamin. The truer, or spiritual, meaning of the word “Jew” refers to those who confessed the truth and recognized Christ as king of the Jews. While these could be physical Jews, the word also referred to Christians. In contrast, the negative meaning of the word “Jew” referred to those who killed Christ. Such Jews were not authentic Jews, yet deceitfully called themselves by this name.37 For Rupert, then, contemporary Jews were, like opponents of reform, an internal enemy to combat while true Jews were the faithful Christians found in the church. The contrast Rupert made between true and false Jews in his reforming rhetoric was especially fraught since Jews living in the imperial territory sided with the German emperors, thus pitting them as enemies of church reform.38 Christian opponents of reform were collapsed into both a rhetorical category of “Jew” by Rupert and symbolically linked to contemporary Jews. This rhetoric of enemies within the church, Christians who really were spiritual Jews, was a piece of the apocalyptic thought that permeated Rupert’s work. Friedrich Ohly has argued that in the period historians have labeled the “middle ages,” there was a sense of the imminent climax of history.39 In other words, for reformers like Rupert, their period was not a middle space between the glory of the ancient past and the dawning

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of a future renaissance, renewal, or enlightenment.40 Within Rupert’s biblical commentaries, there was certainly this sense of the imminent resolution of history with an assured victory of God over the forces of evil represented alternately as the devil, the ten-headed dragon of Revelation, and the Antichrist. The Jewish people were arrayed on both sides of this battle, but it was only true Jews, both in the biblical narrative and in the contemporary church, who received the promises of God’s covenant. It was within the context of guarding reform and promoting the purity of the church that Rupert embraces the example of the Maccabean martyrs as true Jews martyred for the sake of true religion. Much as when Ambrose of Milan confronted imperial forces over possession of the basilica in Milan and turned to the example of the Maccabean martyrs, so when Rupert of Deutz reflected on the forces that opposed God’s plan of salvation-history, the Maccabean martyrs emerged as exemplars to contemplate. In On the Victory of the Word of God, completed in 1124, Rupert explained the history of God’s salvation as the Word of God’s historical victories over the devil. Rupert employed the prophet Daniel’s vision of the four beasts in Daniel 7 and the image of the seven-headed dragon in Revelation 12 to establish a symbolic interpretation of salvation history.41 The monastic liturgical practice of reading the books of the Maccabees was a spur for the composition of this work. Rupert explained at the beginning of On the Victory that he wrote it as the result of a discussion with Abbot Cuno of Siegburg over the meaning of the vision of the four animals. Rupert taught that in the vision these animals represented the four kingdoms that fought against the people of God before the coming of God’s kingdom in Jesus Christ. In response, Cuno inquired why Christians continue to read about the battles the Hasmoneans fought against the Greek kingdom (the leopard that appears in this vision) if God’s kingdom had since arrived. This question reflected the contemporary practice of reading the books of the Maccabees during the monastic office in the month of October.42 Cuno’s questions about the events in Israel’s history as recorded in these books gave rise to Rupert’s extended reflection on God’s actions in history prior to the advent of Christ. On the Victory represented a theology of history in which the Bible was the template for understanding God’s actions in the world. Rupert explained that the wars and conflicts found in history were part of divine providence. The Bible was a text that related wars God had waged, whether as played out in the history of Israel or in the spiritual triumphs over death set forth in the New Testament. Citing Numbers 21:13–14, the Bible was a “book of the wars of the Lord” in which the offspring of


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Eve defeated the serpent, the ancient enemy of God (cf. Genesis 3:15).43 This conflict played out in history between those who accepted the testimony of God, that is, his Word, and those who rebelled against it. Out of pride and envy, these rebels aligned themselves with Satan. For Rupert, Jews could represent both rejection and acceptance of the Word of God. Jews who had not received the testimony of the Word of God (cf. John 15:24) symbolized those who rebelled against the Word of God.44 Recycling a motif from patristic literature, faithless Jews were a type of Cain slaying Abel, representing Christ, and the church was the earth that received Abel’s blood and cried out for justice. Rejection of the Word of God leads to violence against the Word of God and those who keep it.45 While Jews who rejected the testimony of Jesus Christ were a type for unbelief against which the godly must struggle, other Jews were models of fidelity to this same Word of God. Rupert declared that in the past the serpent was defeated by the patriarchs and matriarchs of Israel, but this defeat was also a type for Christ’s future victory over the serpent.46 When Jeremiah 31:15–16 prophesied the weeping of Rachel over her dead children, this was a type for the weeping of the mother church over her faithful children. These children were the martyrs who did not give in to the flesh of this world and will receive the reward of the resurrection on the last day.47 Rupert’s interpretations of God’s actions in history were an allosemitic interpretation of Jews as ambiguous figures. Jews bore a hybrid identity for Rupert, capable of being either heroic exemplars of valiant struggles against Satan or the paragon of the murderous rage of the devil’s henchmen. History, as related within the narrative of Israel, was itself ambiguous when read through a Christian perspective. While the righteous of Israel fought on behalf of the Word of God and prepared his way, there was a recalcitrant core in Israel that attempted to sabotage this advent. Rupert interpreted the story of the Maccabean martyrs, as with Jeremiah’s prophecy of Rachel’s lament, as a story of the victory of the Word of God both among righteous Jews and in the church universal. At the same time, the Maccabean martyrs were vehicles for the relief of God’s just punishment of a wayward Israel. In the ninth book of On the Victory, Rupert explained that the assaults of the Seleucids under Antiochus on Israel in the second century BCE represented both the fifth head of the seven-headed dragon that threatened the woman who signifies the church in Revelation 12:1–6 and the third beast from Daniel 7.48 This dragon, the ancient foe of God also known as the devil or Satan, constantly appears in history to oppose the faith that this woman birthed.

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This woman, imagined as Mother Church, has borne faith in the hearts of those who belong to her, from Abraham to Rupert’s present age, and she and her children must constantly contend with demonic opposition.49 Events in the spiritual and earthly realms are intertwined; the struggle Rupert recounted is both physical and spiritual. Following Daniel 10, Rupert explained that the people of God are guided by a prince in the angel Michael who contends against evil angelic princes. These evil princes prevail only when the people of God sin. The captivities of Israel by the Assyrians and Babylonians were examples of such historical moments that revealed the spiritual state of the people of God. The good angels constantly offered intercessions to God on behalf of the people, and priests on earth also offered the prayers of the church to God. But the prayers of the church are heard by God only because of the intercessions of the angels.50 Citing the prophets Zechariah and Hosea, Rupert explained that while such intercessions are generally effective, there are times when the people of God have abandoned God in such a way that God must punish them. Gentile nations are used as God’s agents of judgment and instruments of punishment.51 In Rupert’s analysis, God’s control of history directly concerns the history of Israel and extends beyond it to all nations. Empires exist as a function of God’s control of history and temporal events to alternately discipline and redeem the people of God. The identity of the people of God, however, remains ambiguous in On the Victory. Jews are identified both with Israel and with the church, and both deserve punishment and require redemption. The people of God, whom Rupert identified with the spiritual children of the mother who face the dragon, existed before and after the establishment of the temporal church. The church to Rupert is a transhistorical reality that comprises both Jews and Christians. The mother and her children who defeat the dragon engage in godly combat that occurs in both a spiritual and a historical mode. The dragon is allowed to work through the means of empires that serve as God’s agents of punishment and redemption. The imperial conquest of Israel by Alexander the Great and their subsequent subjection under the Seleucids was an example of God’s chastisement of Israel’s sin. Considering the persecutions perpetrated by Antiochus IV Epiphanes when he came to the Seleucid throne, Rupert identified him with the “little horn” from Daniel 8:9–11 that fought against the heavens and took away “the regular burnt offering and overturned the place of the sanctuary.”52 Rupert interpreted the apocalyptic elements of Daniel in reference to the events of Antiochus’s assaults against the Jerusalem


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temple as recounted in 1 and 2 Maccabees. Rupert used Zechariah 1:15 to illustrate that although God was only “a little angry,” Israel’s behavior under Antiochus increased the divine wrath and made their sufferings worse. In particular, the efforts of Jews to remove the marks of circumcision as participants in the gymnasium built in Jerusalem showed their abandonment of their covenant with God. Jewish participation in pagan rites that were compelled by Antiochus also increased God’s wrath against Israel.53 This abandonment of God’s covenant, especially by the priestly leadership, increased Israel’s punishments. Rupert turned to the Maccabean martyrs as the instruments by which God’s wrath against the people (executed through the imperial Seleucid agents) was allayed. For people living under either Law or grace, that is, Israel before Christ or the church after him, God’s wrath can be placated. But there are those before Christ, like the Maccabean martyrs, who “living above the Law in grace” offered themselves as witnesses to God. The obedience of the Maccabean martyrs was not evidence of their fidelity to the letter of the Law but rather their fidelity to God. They kept God’s Law not for the sake of the Law, but for the sake of God. The Maccabean martyrs fit into Rupert’s scheme of authentic Jews who perceived the true Word of God. Following the text of 2 Maccabees 7, Rupert explained that the evidence for the effectiveness of the witness of the Maccabean martyrs was that immediately after their deaths Judas Maccabeus won victories over Antiochus.54 Rupert’s interpretation of the death of the Maccabean martyrs also considered the significance of their mother. As previously noted, he followed a tradition found in Cyprian that the mother is a type for the feminine personification of the church, Ecclesia.55 As the mother grieved while urging her children on to martyrdom, she represented the church, which found vitality in bearing and nurturing spiritual children who became martyrs. In the mother, one saw “the mystery of the many headed dragon standing before the women” from Revelation 12.56 Just as the dragon attacked the woman (the church) in order to shake her faith in the coming of Christ, so Antiochus attacked the woman and her children to shake their faith. Just as the Maccabean martyrs triumphed over Antiochus, so will the church triumph over the devil. This connection of the mother of the Maccabean martyrs with the mother of Revelation and the church echoed Rupert’s discussion of Rachel as a type for the church birthing martyrs. Within this rich intertextuality, the Jewish identity of the mother of the Maccabean martyrs and her exhortation to die for a Jewish law is irrelevant for Rupert. His symbolic interpretation of this narrative, framed

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by his theology of history, collapsed distinctions between Jew and Christian. Fidelity to God, as defined within Rupert’s supersessionist reading of Israel’s history, allowed for continuity between the story of Israel and the story of the church. The collapsing of distinctions between Jew and Christian allowed Rupert to interpret the Maccabean martyrs’ death for the Law as a reflection of his own concern for reform. Conscious that 2 Maccabees 7 presented the Maccabees as martyrs for the Law, Rupert reframed the reason for their death. Rupert cautioned Cuno not to “consider there was little reason for their passion.” Noting that they died for refusing to eat pork, Rupert explained that “this meat was not just pork, it was also a burnt sacrifice; that is, it was sacrificed to demons.”57 By this clarification Rupert changed the reason for their martyrdom from a scrupulous observance of Jewish dietary laws to an avoidance of idolatry. “Therefore, when you hear ‘pork meat,’ understand ‘burnt offerings.’ Certainly there are two causes, namely because both the Law considers pork meat among the unclean things and it was prohibited to eat it, and ‘what gentiles sacrifice,’ said the apostle, ‘they sacrifice to demons and not to God’ (1 Corinthians 10:20).”58 To Rupert, the Maccabean martyrs had two reasons for refusing to eat pork. On the one hand, a literal observance of dietary laws that God gave to Israel precipitated their martyrdom. On the other hand, Rupert used a supersessionist hermeneutic to show that the pork in question was sacrificed to idols and demons. To Rupert the first cause for this martyrdom had little significance. Rather, according to a Pauline interpretation, anyone may eat anything. The deeper issue was idolatry. “Furthermore, about the first cause, namely that the letter of the Law considers [pork] among the impure things, the life-giving Spirit through the grace of the gospel frees us saying by the apostle: ‘Everything that comes from the meat markets, eat. If anyone should say: This was sacrificed to the idols, do not eat it’ (1 Corinthians 10:25, 28).”59 Referring to 1 Corinthians 10, Rupert distinguished between an Old Testament focus on exterior and carnal observances of the Law of God and a Pauline focus on interior attitudes and dispositions. For Rupert, the observance of the letter of Law might be apt, but the life-giving Spirit guided one to commit deeds for the sake of the gospel. Rupert further introduced a distinction between types of law given by God to Israel. This distinction established two types of Jews, who in turn represented two types of Christian. Rupert explained that God did not permit conflicting interpretations of dietary laws out of “fickleness or mutability, but from judgment and reason.”60 Within his discussion of


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the death of the Maccabean martyrs, Rupert presented his understanding of the Law given at Sinai as both a conditional set of commands and a latent vessel holding great riches awaiting discovery. Rupert turned to Ezekiel 20 and its ambiguous depiction of the giving of the Law to Israel. According to Rupert Ezekiel 20:20 positively presented God’s granting of the Law: “I led them out from the land of Egypt and brought them into the desert and I gave to them my Law and showed them my ordinances, which everyone should do and live by them.” But this same passage also blamed the Israelites for not keeping the Law, resulting in a body of punishing laws. “Therefore, I also gave to them precepts that were not good and ordinances by which they could not live, and I defiled them through their gifts, when they all offered their first born” (Ezekiel 20:25–26). God gave good precepts to Moses on Sinai in which the Israelites were to find life, yet the Israelites created and worshipped an idol in the form of a golden calf (Exodus 32). As a result of such a serious sin, God gave to the Israelites corresponding precepts that were not good. Until now Moses had not veiled his face to the people when he gave the good and life giving precepts of God; thence returning to the crime of the calf it was necessary for him to veil his face, when he would speak to the people, and when he gave the precepts which then were precepts which were not good, by which they would not live, as they are about clean and unclean animals, about leprosy of the body, about leprosy of clothes, and about leprosy of the house and other similar things, in which manner the letter kills, and the Spirit gives life, which is now revealed in the face of Moses.61

Precepts regarding dietary laws, for which the Maccabean martyrs died, were among those that are “not good” and did not give life. In his analysis, Rupert established the Maccabean martyrs as true Jews who followed the laws by which the Israelites were meant to live. Reflecting Augustine’s rhetoric about the Maccabees’ death for the Law discussed in the previous chapter, Rupert took the image of the veiled Moses from 2 Corinthians 3:12–18 as a sign of the hidden spiritual nature (or “good” nature) of the Law that was revealed in Christ. Following the Pauline hermeneutic of the Law killing and the Spirit giving life (2 Corinthians 3:6), Rupert used the narrative of this martyrdom to establish that the external observance of the Law was not the essential issue. The true meaning of the death of the Maccabean martyrs rested not in observance of those laws that were “not good.” Rather it was in keeping those parts of the Law by which the Spirit vivifies, namely what was revealed in the

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initial giving of the Law. “They had come to Mount Horeb and indeed [God] spoke the good precepts through Moses: ‘You shall not have other gods before me’” (Exodus 20:3), and so forth up to “‘You shall not make a covenant with the nations or with their gods’” (Exodus 23:32).”62 Rupert took the initial giving of the commandments as the life-giving precepts of the Spirit, while all precepts given to Israel after the incident of the golden calf were punishment of their sins and inherently “not good.” Thus the death of the Maccabean martyrs for the Law was not out of observance of dietary laws, which were “not good,” but rather out of a refusal to participate in idolatry, here the eating of meat sacrificed to the gods of Antiochus (cf. 2 Maccabees 6:5, 7).63 The Maccabean martyrs were true Jews who died for what was good in the Law, those precepts by which the Israelites were meant to live. In Rupert’s interpretation of the golden calf episode, the righteousness of the Maccabean martyrs stood in contrast to those inauthentic Jews who throughout the history of Israel merited God’s punishment. Rupert interpreted the golden calf to represent the second head, bearing the likeness of a calf, on the seven-headed dragon in Daniel 7 that threatens the people of God. This second head Rupert took to refer not just to the golden calf but also to the disobedience of Israel as narrated in Exodus 32. According to this passage, the Israelites worshipped this idol at the very moment that Moses received the Ten Commandments. Angered, God intended to utterly destroy Israel yet relented due to Moses’s intercession. Instead the golden calf was destroyed and thousands of Israelites were slain by the tribe of Levi as punishment. According to Rupert, although the Word of God triumphed over this second head of the dragon, this second head of idolatry returned throughout the history of Israel. For example, Israelites committed idolatry during the period of the judges (Judges 2–3), and King Jeroboam centuries later sets up two calves for worship (1 Kings 12). Such incidents signaled that the Word of God engaged in constant struggle against diabolical enticements of the people of Israel toward idolatry. Moreover, the people of Israel were not only enticed; they too easily gave in to the temptation to commit idolatry.64 Rupert’s distinction between authentic and inauthentic Jewish obedience to God in the form of idolatry in the history of Israel, with the positive example of the Maccabean martyrs and the negative example of the golden calf episode, mirrored his own understanding of authentic and inauthentic Christians in the context of his reform efforts. One sees this in Rupert’s articulation of a difference between conditional and eternal


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aspects of the Law and the hidden meanings of the Law. Moses’s destruction of the first tablets of the Law, which held only the Ten Commandments, and God’s deliverance to him of a second set of laws, which held also the ceremonial laws, indicated to Rupert the conditional nature of the Law given at Sinai to Israel.65 Compared to the certainty of the promises of faith in the covenant God made with Abraham, the Mosaic Law lacked an eternal character. The entire law is conditional under the conditions when it was first given on Mount Sinai in the third month of Israel’s exodus from Egypt. This was declared: “You have seen what I did to the Egyptians when I bore you upon eagle’s wings” (Exodus 19:4). Then he immediately gave them the commandments and the law: “If therefore you obey my voice and keep my covenant, you will be my possession from all the peoples. Indeed all the earth is mine and you will be to me a royal priesthood and a holy nation” (Exodus 19:5). Under the tenor of this condition the whole law proceeds.66

Rupert located the conditional nature of the Law specifically within the ceremonial law, while the moral law has an eternal quality embraced by Christians. Rupert’s understanding of the proper interpretation of the ceremonial law is reflected in his exposition of the New Testament parable comparing the kingdom of heaven to a pearl hidden in a field (Matthew 13:44). Rupert began this analogy with a consideration of the depiction in Ezekiel 16:8–13 of Israel as a bride bedecked with jewels and fine clothes given by God her bridegroom as a sign of their covenant. Rupert asked, “What should we think is signified by the description of these splendid riches but the heavenly sacraments that are beneath these sacred scriptures in dull clothes?” Considering the parable of the pearl hidden in the field, Rupert explained that the words of the Law are like the field, waiting only to be excavated to reveal their true meaning. Speaking of Christian past and present, and especially monks like him, Rupert noted that “all sell what they have and buy this field that being unburdened from worldly duties they are free to study and meditate on the law of the Lord.” Monastic reformers like him, who had dedicated themselves to a pure worship of the Lord, truly follow the Law of God. Yet the historical people of Israel, and many Christians, have proven incapable of grasping the hidden sense of these words.67 This inability to understand properly, and thus fulfill, the Law was at the core of Rupert’s critique of Jews. In his presentation of the death of

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the Maccabean martyrs, he established a distinction between authentic Jews, who have not rebelled against God, here these martyrs, and those false Jews who have rebelled, the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf. As authentic Jews, the Maccabean martyrs were compelled only to follow the parts of the Law that give life. They lived by the Spirit and not according to the letter of the Law. By contrast there are the many false Jews who in their disobedience are compelled to obey those parts of the Law that are not good, that do not give life but rather kill. This bifurcation of the Jewish people between a select body that remained faithful to the true meaning of God’s establishment of the Law and those who ignore it only to receive punishment in the form of further laws and even death was an element of Rupert’s exegesis of the history of Israel. This bifurcation was applied to distinctions he made not only about Jews living in his own period, but Rupert also applied this distinction to Christians who either supported or opposed his vision of reforming Christendom. This doubled distinction was another manifestation of the hybridized aspects of Christian discourses and an extension of the ideological colonization of Jewish elements by Christian authors. The image of pearls featured prominently in another example that Rupert made distinguishing Jews. While the hidden meaning of the ceremonial law buried in the outer letters of the commandments was akin to the pearl hidden in a field, so Rupert argued that the Word of God taught that pearls should not be cast before swine lest they be trampled (Matthew 7:6) and the solid food of wisdom should not be offered to spiritual infants (Hebrews 5:12–13). In the history of Israel there have been those who have acted swinishly, trampling the pearls of the Word of God contained in the Law, such as when Korah, Dathan, and Abiram led a revolt against Moses for leading the Israelites into the wilderness and not the promised land of milk and honey (Numbers 16). Rupert argued that by thinking in a swinish manner such rebels misunderstood the meaning and nature of God’s laws and kingdom and trampled the pearls of God beneath them, leading to their destruction. Given that “the entire purposes of the holy scriptures is directed to the kingdom of heaven,” Israel should have understood the Promised Land was “about that future world of eternal life and rest in paradise, which in earthly terms is understood to be about the flowing of milk and honey, which is meant for infants, to whom is given milk since they despise solid food, just as the insolent swine trample pearls.”68 The people of Israel were a mixed community to Rupert. Some, like Dothan and his band of rebels, were capable of behaving like pigs and like them unthinkingly disregarded God’s most precious


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words. Others, like the Maccabean martyrs, upheld God’s word; this was not simply a blind fulfillment of the Law but was due to a deeper spiritual perception of its true meaning. Rupert’s critique of Israelites who rebelled against God was connected to his criticism of opponents of reform in twelfth-century Christendom. Like Dothan and his band they will be destroyed. Those contemporary Christians who sought out God’s plan for humanity behaved like authentic Jews, much as the Maccabean martyrs did. Rupert’s work of distinguishing between types of Jews in the history of Israel served to symbolically distinguish true and false Christians in his own time. This doubled distinction illustrated the complex function of Christian remembrance of the Jewish past. Rupert created a hybridized remembrance of the history of Israel so that it spoke to both Jewish and Christian realities. Rupert ideologically colonized Israel’s past and, in the process, created a double image of it, one that expressed simultaneously Jewish and Christian realities past and present. Rupert’s views on contemporary Jews illustrated the effect of the creation of this doubled memory of the Maccabean martyrs and the broader history of Israel. As he engaged in critique of Jews living among him in the Rhineland, his reformist agenda was also manifested. Rupert spent the last decade of his life as the abbot of Deutz, from 1119 to 1129, across the Rhine from Cologne and its considerable Jewish population.69 It was at this time that Rupert composed On the Victory of the Word of God. Also while at Deutz, Rupert composed three other works that dealt extensively with the question of Jewish beliefs and practices: the theological exposition On the Holy Trinity and Its Words; a scriptural commentary, On the Twelve Minor Prophets; and the polemical Jewish-Christian dialogue the Anulus.70 These works, dealing with themes such as circumcision, the Law, and the Sabbath, revealed an acquaintance with contemporary Jewish practices. Rupert’s contact with Judaism extended even to participating in debates with local Jews, including a debate with the famous twelfth-century convert to Christianity, Herman the Jew.71 In his treatises, Jews stood for the vices of carnality, pride, and envy, traits he criticized as a reformist abbot in evaluating secular Christian institutions and people.72 Rupert’s critique of Judaism in the Anulus illustrated his contrast between spiritual and authentic Jews, like the Maccabean martyrs, and contemporary Jews, whom he regarded as thoroughly carnal and thus inauthentic. This distinction was established by Rupert through a strong condemnation of keeping the Law literally. Rupert argued that observing the Law was unnecessary; the Law itself had only a very limited and

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merely material value. By clinging to the external observances of the Law in an ethnocentric manner, Jews lost their claim to being the true Israel. Following a traditional supersessionist interpretation, Rupert declared that the loss of this title became definitive when the Jews committed the crime of deicide in the crucifixion of Jesus Christ.73 In On the Holy Trinity, Rupert went so far as to describe Christ divorcing the synagogue because of its failure to recognize him.74 The title “Israel” and its corresponding covenant shifted to the universal church that in theory welcomed all nations. Contemporary Jews in the Rhineland then were not truly Jews in terms of being members of Israel. Rupert’s disassociation of the Maccabean martyrs’ refusal to eat pork from a positive observance of Jewish dietary law in favor of associating them with the supersessionist faith of the church was rooted in a deep distaste for contemporary Judaism. Unlike the Jews he knew, whom he viewed with their concern for observing all the commandments of the Law as carnal and concerned only with exterior observances, the Holy Spirit guided the Maccabean martyrs. They perceived the true meaning of the Law and thus died out of obedience to those commands that, as Ezekiel prophesied, promised life. Indeed, Rupert highlighted the hope the Maccabean martyrs and their mother had in the life of the resurrection as the very reason why Christians ought to honor them. They prophetically spoke of the hope of the resurrection to new life made available by Christ for all Christians. Their hope and endurance was an example of the victory of the Word of God, or Christ.75 The contrast between Rupert’s evaluation of contemporary Rhineland Jews and the Maccabean martyrs shows his establishment of types of authentic and inauthentic Jews. Authentic Jews, like the Maccabean martyrs, belong to the true Israel, which itself Rupert identified with the church. Rupert complemented the double category of Jews with a double category of the church itself. Rupert understood the universal church to consist of two groups: Israelites (or Jews; Rupert uses these terms interchangeably) who lived before Christ and Gentiles who believed in Christ after his death and resurrection. Following the ascension of Christ, the church contained both Jews, as represented by the apostles, and Gentiles.76 The church, though derived from these two groups, was a stable entity. Its composition shifted and changed over the ages, but as the earthly instrument of God’s grace, it has always existed in some form. While at earlier points in history Jews constituted a greater proportion of its members, in his own period Rupert perceived that Jews potentially could be members of the church but were not due to their own obstinate


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lack of faith. Rupert’s engagement in debates with Jews, real and imagined, revealed not only his belief that their errors should be corrected but that some could even be convinced to turn to Christ. Examining Rupert’s writing on the Maccabean martyrs and Judaism, one sees that he created double categories of Jews and Christians that were ambiguous and hybrid in nature, indicating his complex use of supersessionist thought to convey Christian memory of the biblical past as a means of conveying his reform agenda. It is useful to remember Susan Crane’s assertion (following Maurice Halbwachs) that “historical memory is the representation of a lost past, and its only recollection.”77 In other words, Rupert’s construction of the cultural memory of the Maccabean martyrs within his twelfth-century context, living as a Benedictine abbot in a milieu containing both Jews and Christians who represented impediments to his reform agenda, meant that his recollection of the Maccabean martyrs did not approximate the memories of them conveyed by Cyprian, Augustine, or Rabanus. Rather, his reconstruction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs and the history of Israel conveyed a compelling narration of assumptions he and his Christian audience held about Judaism and the nature of the Mosaic Law. Rupert’s reconstruction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was an allosemitic recollection. Jews in Rupert’s thought were an empty category conveying both negative and positive associations as seen in his positive regard for the Maccabean martyrs and his negative esteem for the Israelites who worshipped the golden calf or rebelled against Moses. The judgment Rupert rendered about particular Jews or events in the history of Israel depended on the degree to which they conformed to his Christian theology of history. The figure of the Jew had only a latent meaning until weighed against Rupert’s theology. Anna Sapir Abulafia has argued that “Rupert leaves for Jews no identity of their own. They are completely alienated within the framework of universal Christendom.”78 While in one sense it is true that Rupert rendered Jews as the ultimate outsider in his vision of Christendom, the ambiguity of his views of Jews and Judaism also made it possible for Jews to be intimate insiders. Within Rupert’s reconstructed memory of the Jewish people there existed both intimate insiders to true faith, such as the Maccabean martyrs, and opponents to it. Similarly, in his own present time there were Jews, like the convert Herman the Jew, who proved to be true Jews by confessing their faith in Christ, while there existed many who continued to remain as inauthentic Jews and outsiders to Christendom by clinging to the letter of the Law. This allosemitic dimension of Rupert’s thought showed that Jews were

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not simply the ultimate outsider but figures whose very identity could be manipulated for a Christian ideological agenda. Jews were that group whose presence, voice, and memory could be manipulated and rhetorically colonized to fit Rupert’s own ideological construction of a universal Christendom. The inherent ambiguity of this construction of ideology and reconstruction of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs and the broader history of Israel in Rupert’s work reflected colonial and imperial dimensions of Rupert’s context. The use of the Jews to further Rupert’s reforming vision constituted an ideological colonization of Jews, creating “virtual Jews” at the expense of the lived experience of actual Jews. Rupert’s creation of virtual Jews, whether they possessed positive or negative associations, reflected his own concerns as a church reformer living in an imperial context. Rupert’s portrayal of Jews who either properly or improperly perceived the right relationship between keeping the Law and possessing faith reflected his own esteem for those who either supported or impeded his vision of ecclesiastical reform within the German Empire. Thus Rupert’s critique or esteem regarding Jews and Judaism, ancient and contemporary, serves as a proxy for his evaluations of those who supported or opposed his reform agenda. Rupert’s comparison of Jews who cast pearls before swine to those who found the pearls hidden in the field of the Law introduced an internal division into categories such as “Jew” or “Israel.” Those concerned with exterior interpretations of the Law and with earthly rewards, such as a literal land of Canaan flowing with milk and honey, were relegated to the category of carnal Israel. Meanwhile those who pursued the higher meanings of God’s word contained in the Law, like the Maccabean martyrs, represented the true spiritual Israel. The ambiguous definition of categories like “Jew” or “Israel” in Rupert’s writings meant that it was not only Jews who could be classified as carnal or spiritual. Within Rupert’s concern for reform of the church, the internal divisions he posited in the reconstructed memory of the history of Israel mirrored his own division of contemporary Christians between those who righteously pursued a purified church and those ungodly ones who manipulated the church for their own purposes and personal gain. The use of Jews both positively and negatively functioned to level praise and approbation in Rupert’s reform agenda. This reform agenda, though anti-imperial, still conveyed a totalizing vision of society. The memory of Jews like the Maccabean martyrs was deployed to create the Jewish people as ideologically colonized subjects who served as figures to critique


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opponents of reform, many of whom were supporters or representatives of the German Empire. Rabanus Maurus composed his commentary on 2 Maccabees as a sign of support for the reign of Louis the German and his imperial aspirations. Rupert of Deutz situated his interpretation of the Maccabean martyrs within his critique of the German Empire for opposing the church reforms he endorsed. In both cases, the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was manipulated and placed within an ideological discourse that marginalized their Jewish identity to serve Christian purposes. Medieval Explanations for Liturgically Commemorating the Maccabean Martyrs This section will examine how three authors—Anselm of Laon, John Beleth, and Bernard of Clairvaux—explained why contemporary Christians ought to commemorate the Maccabean martyrs in the liturgy. The practice of honoring these martyrs in prayer was an inheritance from late antique Christianity. While at times the explanations of these authors recapitulated late antique arguments for the propriety of such commemoration, the texts considered here reveal an abiding uncertainty about the late antique inheritance of memorializing the Maccabean martyrs. To recall the memory of the Maccabean martyrs in worship was to remember the hybrid identity of Christianity and recall the Jewish roots of medieval faith, an act that summoned ambivalence and ambiguity into medieval Christian cultural memory. The feast of the Maccabean martyrs was observed on August 1 in most western medieval ecclesiastical calendars. However, the primary feast for this day was Peter in Chains with the result that the office for this feast received the majority of attention on this day. Nonetheless, many medieval liturgical calendars have a commemoration of both feasts, indicating Christians continued to commemorate the Maccabean martyrs on this date.79 Accompanying liturgical readings relating the martyrdom as recorded in 2 Maccabees 7 (or occasionally 4 Maccabees) there would have been antiphons sung about the martyrs during the commemoration.80 A number of hymns to the Maccabean martyrs that accompanied their feast also have been preserved.81 Thus the Maccabean martyrs, while not a major cult in the medieval period, did have a presence in the liturgical patterns of the western medieval church. To a significant degree, the compilers and regulators of medieval liturgies and church calendars preserved the memory of the Maccabean martyrs.

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ANSELM

OF

LAON

Anselm of Laon (d. 1117), one of the innovators of the scholastic quaestio method and a key figure in the development of scholasticism, addressed the question of the liturgical remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs.82 Much of Anselm’s work, in the form of glosses or sentences on theological and exegetical questions, was collected in the Liber Pancrisis.83 While addressing two questions on the commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs and other figures from the history of Israel, Anselm, like his contemporary Rupert of Deutz, formulated a bifurcated vision of Jews that reflected the hybrid status of the Maccabean martyrs, whose relevance for Christians meant marginalizing their Jewish identity. Two entries from the Liber Pancrisis dealt with the joint questions of why Christians observed the feast of the Maccabean martyrs and why no other Old Testament figures were venerated in the west. Within a larger section of questions about various feasts in the liturgical year, a question under the heading “On the Seven Maccabees” begins, “It is customary to ask: who were these seven Maccabees about whom there is mention made only once a year in church?”84 The question reveals that while the Maccabean martyrs were honored annually, their presence on the church calendar required explanation. Anselm’s answer concerning the identity of these martyrs is revealing: “They were sons of the widowed mother, who suffered temporal persecution under Antiochus in the time of Matthathias, because they refused to eat pork. Having been executed, they were exposed to wild animals and birds, so that they might not be able to rise again in the resurrection about which they preached.”85 Anselm offered a simple narrative of the martyrs that could have been gleaned from a cursory reading of 2 Maccabees 7. Indeed, the putative questioner presumably would already know this information if he was at all familiar with the observance of the feast of the Maccabean martyrs, since a reading of either 2 Maccabees 7 or a passion closely similar to it likely would have been read on their feast.86 Anselm did not even offer the standard typological interpretation of the meaning of the Maccabean martyrs for Christians. Their martyrdom was significant for Christians in that it was a witness to the core Christian belief in the resurrection of the dead. Anselm made no mention of their Jewish identity in his answer to this question; their value rested in the edifying nature of their deeds, not their identity. Under the heading that follows, “On the Feasts of Old Testament Saints,” Anselm addressed the broader question of “why there are not feasts of the men of the Old Testament who were steadfast in holiness,


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like the blessed Abraham, Isaac and others.”87 Anselm answers that Christian saints were remembered on the day of their death, when they went to Christ. But those who died before Christ descended to hell. If the church were to honor Old Testament figures, “it would not be on the day of their death, but they would be celebrated when they were brought back in the resurrection of the Lord.”88 By inference, all the righteous of the Old Testament implicitly received commemoration in the celebration of Easter. Anselm conceded that the Byzantine church honored Old Testament figures with feast days and church dedications. As well, “others accept feasts of ancient saints, like the seven brothers” and the observation of feasts dedicated to John the Baptist, who was commemorated despite dying before the resurrection of Christ.89 After both acknowledging that it was not customary to venerate those who died before Christ and allowing that some ancient feasts were observed in the Latin church that did just this, Anselm expanded on the question of observing the feast of the Maccabean martyrs. Although they were Jewish and died before Christ, their feast was of such ancient origin that the church continued to commemorate them. Anselm offered a technical explanation for observing their feast, but it lacked a clear theological rationale, making it hard to determine exactly what Anselm thought of the Maccabean martyrs. Anselm’s answer shows that the late antique practice of commemorating the Maccabean martyrs endured in western Christian cultural memory. Anselm’s answer had two dimensions—excluding the significance of Jewish life and culture in Christian self-understanding and including the commemoration of these Jewish martyrs. The Maccabean martyrs were uncommon figures for veneration, but the true purposes of their veneration stood outside their Jewish identity. The Maccabean martyrs were hybrid figures for Anselm, remembered as Jews living before Christ but only exemplary for their proto-Christian virtue of hope in the bodily resurrection. JOHN BELETH

John Beleth, a theologian from the mid-twelfth century, has had only one of his works survive, the Summa on the Offices of the Church, composed around 1165.90 In it he commented on elements of the liturgy, sacraments, prayers, and feast days. In Chapter 142 of this work Beleth explained the purpose of observing the feast of the Maccabean martyrs.91 He employed a typological interpretation of the death of the Maccabean martyrs that rendered this a feast with completely allegorical significance.

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Beleth’s interpretation of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was a response to confusion over the identity of the Maccabean martyrs and ambivalence over their liturgical commemoration. Beleth began his entry on the Maccabean martyrs by addressing contemporary confusion over who was honored on their feast. Some appeared to have thought that the seven Maccabees honored on August 1 referred to Judas Maccabeus and his brothers who led the revolt against the Seleucids, not the seven sons whom Antiochus martyred. Others confused the Maccabean martyrs and their mother with Felicitas and her seven sons.92 Beleth’s efforts to clarify the identity of the Maccabean martyrs reflected an issue dating back to late antique authors like Gregory who conflated Felicitas with the mother of the Maccabean martyrs (as seen in Chapter 2).93 The continuing confusion over the identity of the Maccabean martyrs and their mother pointed to their ambivalent status in the liturgical practices of the twelfth century. Given this confusion over the identity of the subjects of this commemoration, Beleth clarified the purpose of commemorating the Maccabean martyrs. The cumulative effect of these reasons was to treat the Maccabean martyrs allegorically. This shift had the effect of reinforcing the hybrid nature of medieval western Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs. In the first place, Beleth drew on Anselm of Laon’s work and affirmed that the western church only observed these saints among all the righteous found in the Old Testament, while the Byzantine church remembered many more. Beleth went on to explain that “the church celebrates these and not the others, because they suffered for the observation of the Law, for they would not eat swine flesh.”94 Here Beleth, unlike Anselm, identified the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs and their fidelity to the Law as admirable elements of their commemoration. Beleth next turned to a symbolic interpretation, noting that the number seven signified universality. “Therefore in them are signified all the martyrs of the Old and New Testament, that just as they suffered for their Law, so we would suffer for ours, if it was necessary. And so the feast is celebrated because of what is signified, rather than because of the sign itself.”95 The hybridized understanding of the Maccabean martyrs as Jews but objects of Christian concern meant their significance for Christians transcended their identity as Jewish martyrs for the Law of God. Instead, they served as signs that reinforced Christian notions of fidelity to God. Beleth collapsed the distinction between the Jewish identities of the martyrs with contemporary Christians by speaking of “our Law,” that is, the Christian gospel. For Beleth the purpose of commemorating the Maccabean martyrs


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was not to remember them specifically. Rather it was a liturgical occasion for reflecting on the allegorical meanings of the deeds of Old Testament figures. As they acted according to the flesh and the Law, so Christians ought to act according to the spirit and the gospel. Beleth’s description of the feast of the Maccabean martyrs as essentially a celebration of Christian allegorical interpretation continued late antique supersessionist interpretations of the significance of the Maccabean martyrs. Beleth viewed the Jewish past of Christianity as found in the history of Israel, including that recorded in the books of the Maccabees, to be meaningful for Christians only in an allegorical way. Here Beleth worked in an allosemitic fashion. His language did not degrade the value of the Jewish Law, but rather framed its interest in terms of how dying for it expressed relevance for Beleth’s understanding of contemporary and eschatological dimensions of the Christian life. Beleth portrayed the Maccabean martyrs as a continued representation of Judaism in Christian culture. But his interest in these martyrs rested only in how they could be reinscribed via allegorical exegesis to reveal Christian valorization of Christian law in the gospel. Although writing with different concerns and questions than Rupert of Deutz, Beleth too engaged in ideological colonization by continuing the appropriation of this Jewish narrative for the consumption and concerns of Christians exclusively. While admitting to the Jewish origins of these martyrs, for Beleth Jews and the Jewish experience were only objects to be allegorized and transformed for Christian devotional consumption. BERNARD

OF

CLAIRVAUX

Bernard of Clairvaux (1090–1153) offered a third explanation by a twelfth-century figure concerning the place of the feast of the Maccabean martyrs in the Christian liturgical calendar.96 The occasion for Bernard’s reflections on the Maccabean martyrs was his reply to a letter querying why Christians revere only the Maccabean martyrs and not other worthy Old Testament figures. Although the text of the letter Bernard responded to is no longer extant, one can imagine it came from a Christian cleric of some sort. The answer Bernard offered fell within the same parameters of Rupert of Deutz’s reflections on the Maccabean martyrs. Bernard’s explanation of the purpose of celebrating the Maccabean martyrs revealed a bifurcated understanding of carnal and spiritual Jews that reinforced the hybrid identity of these martyrs for the purpose of affirming the value of Christian martyrdom.

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Bernard’s answer focused on the unique aspects of the death of the Maccabean martyrs. Other Old Testament figures, like Isaiah or Zechariah, suffered death out of adherence to religion, or right practice. The Maccabean martyrs, Bernard argued, died for the truth, which ultimately is Jesus Christ.97 That is, they suffered exactly like Christian martyrs, refusing to pour out libations to idols. Echoing Rupert of Deutz, Bernard emphasized that their martyrdom was concerned with internal, spiritual truths rather than external deeds.98 He wrote, “the martyrs of the New Law laid down their lives because they were righteous, while those of the Old Law [laid down their lives] because they denounced those who were not [righteous].”99 Bernard counted the Maccabees among the martyrs of the New Law because they died for righteousness by actively opposing idolatry in favor of the eternal truth who is Christ. Martyrs of the Old Law, like Zechariah or Isaiah, died as a result of their words or denunciations, not by positive deeds. Bernard’s use of the commemoration of Maccabean martyrs to distinguish between death for the truth of Christ by Christian martyrs and death for external matters by Jewish martyrs reinforced both the hybrid identity of the Maccabean martyrs in Christian memories of them and continued supersessionist bifurcations of spiritual and carnal Jews. As with the sermons of Augustine and Leo discussed in the previous chapter and Rupert in this chapter, Bernard viewed the Maccabees as exemplary models for future martyrs precisely because they actively opposed idolatry, not because of their fidelity to the Jewish Law. This letter was one example of Bernard’s ambivalent view of Jews. In other works, Bernard negatively portrayed the Jews as a people concerned with the external, literal meaning of Scripture and unable to see deeper spiritual meanings.100 More positively, Jewish adherence to the Law ensured that the word of God reached Christians who interpreted it spiritually.101 Like Augustine, Bernard held that in light of the fact that the Jews transmitted the revelations of God that enabled Christian salvation, they ought not to be destroyed but only subjugated within Christendom.102 The Jews always remained scriptural figures, never able to exist as Jews on their own actual, historical terms. The figures of the Maccabean martyrs were hybrids in Bernard’s thought, located between Christians, who as members of the church were also members of Israel, and Jews, who in their carnal reading of the Law rejected Christ and were no longer Israel. Like Rupert, for Bernard the Jew represented an image of mistaken faithfulness, allowed to exist only as far as he served to form a Christian self-identity. Bernard argued that the


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failure of Jews in continuing their observance of a carnal Law led to the church becoming the true Israel.103 In the eyes of Bernard, it was Christianity that had continued to develop spiritually and it was Judaism that always preserved witnesses to the Law before Christ, and was destined to remain in that place until the eschaton.104 Only once in Bernard’s career did he at all engage with the question of contemporary Judaism. Recognizing that on the eve of the Second Crusade the Jewish communities of his region faced a repeat of the devastation brought on Ashkenazi Judaism during the First Crusade in 1096, Bernard intervened. He reproved those preachers, such as a certain monk named Radulph, not to raise arms against the Jewish communities, for God deigned for them to be dispersed to serve as living witnesses to the truth of Christianity.105 Even when seeking to preserve Jewish life, Bernard perceived Jews as deserving to live despite their stubborn clinging to the Law.106 Bernard’s defense of the observance of the feast of the mother and her seven sons illustrated his attitudes toward Jews and Judaism. The Jewish Maccabean martyrs were hybrids who represented true observance of interior spiritual truth over typical Jewish adherence to literalism. The mother and her sons were for Bernard Jewish examples of holiness that reinforced his theological bifurcation of spiritual and carnal Jews. The liturgical remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs recalled the hybrid status of these martyrs as interpreted by Christians and the hybrid identity of Christianity itself. In order to overcome the ambivalence of this memory, Anselm of Laon, John Beleth, and Bernard of Clairvaux each claimed the memory of these martyrs as exclusively Christian through the means of symbolic interpretations. Their interpretations colonized the history and literature of Judaism in order to reinforce Christian claims to superiority over Jews and sole possessors of the title Israel. All of these authors operated within an allosemitic framework that allowed the Maccabean martyrs to represent an idealized Judaism, one where Jews were spiritually capable of recognizing Christ even within the context of following the Law. As hybrid figures, the Maccabean martyrs were also spiritually Christian and in their deaths illustrated the supersessionist claim that the true Israel was located in the church. In this way, these theologians manipulated the collective memory of these hybridized martyrs to reinforce Christian claims of superiority over Judaism. By creating distinctions between spiritual and carnal Jews, these authors separated the Maccabean martyrs from the expressions of the devotion to God consistently expressed in the historical Israel and maintained as essential for Jewish identity within the Jewish communities of medieval western Europe. A

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figure like Bernard maintained a spiritual connection between these Jewish martyrs and the church but denied any historical continuity between historical expressions of Jewish identity and Christianity. By extension, the church was only connected to biblical Israel spiritually and disconnected from the perceived empty rituals of Jewish faithlessness expressed in both the past and the present. The church, as expressed in its connection to the Maccabean martyrs, stood both as spiritually continuous and as historically discontinuous with Israel. Here one sees the implications of the ideological colonization of the Maccabean martyrs. The Maccabean Martyrs in Medieval Scriptural Cultures LITERAL EXEGESIS

AND THE

MACCABEAN MARTYRS

In the twelfth and thirteenth centuries there developed new modes of interpreting and presenting biblical texts. This section will examine the transformation of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs as recorded in 2 Maccabees 7 in the development of literal exegesis by Peter Comestor and his circle. This exegetical approach featured an allosemitic memory of the Maccabean martyrs that attested to an understanding of historical continuity between Israel and the church. While emphasizing continuity between Jewish and Christian history, the Maccabean martyrs nonetheless remained hybrid figures bridging Jewish-Christian difference. Biblical commentaries on 2 Maccabees 7 represented an important means by which the memory of the Maccabean martyrs was preserved and maintained in western medieval Christian culture. An important feature in the biblical scholarship of this period was the development of literal forms of exegesis that complemented earlier emphases on symbolic exegesis.107 This form of exegesis was especially prominent among Christian scholastics; their work reflected what M.-D. Chenu identified as a dialectical view of the Old Testament. On the one hand, the Old Testament provided models, or exempla, for human behavior. Scholastic commentators gave detailed attention to the words and deeds recorded in the Old Testament. On the other hand, biblical history was understood to move in progressive stages, the meaning of which culminated in the birth, death, and resurrection of Christ. Thus, the importance and meaning of these exempla changed as the plan of God’s salvation unfolded. This twofold approach created a dialectical view in which the events and persons of the Old Testament were scrutinized according to their specificity, while attempts were made to determine how these events were meaningful to


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the new dispensation revealed in Jesus Christ as recorded in the New Testament and understood by the church. In this way, the past became “mystically present” as the meaning of the personages and events of Israel was interpreted for the church.108 In other words, commentators on the Hebrew Scriptures in this period expressed an implicit concern over the same questions that Anselm of Laon, John Beleth, and Bernard Clairvaux grappled with: what was the significance of Christian remembrance of the biblical history of Israel, such as found in the preservation of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs, that was both integral to Christian selfunderstanding and maintained Jewish-Christian difference? An important witness to the development of medieval exegesis was the Glossa Ordinaria. Although the Glossa Ordinaria is typically heralded as an important factor in the development of medieval literal exegesis, this was not the case in the gloss on 2 Maccabees 7. The beginning of the scholastic study of Scripture occurred in the development of the Glossa Ordinaria by a multilayered process in which scholastics created glosses on specific words and phrases of biblical books. These glosses, both marginal and interlinear, provided detailed exegesis of discrete units of a given biblical passage. The glossing of separate books of the Bible emerged in various schools in northern France in the first three decades of the twelfth century. One of the major centers for the production of glossed biblical books was Laon, where Anselm of Laon (and possibly his brother Ralph) assembled glosses on the Psalms, the Song of Songs, the Gospels of Matthew and John, and the Pauline epistles.109 Another significant figure in the production of biblical glosses was Gilbert of Auxerre, who composed glosses on Lamentations and probably also on the Pentateuch and the Major Prophets. These glosses contained commentaries from patristic authors, like Augustine and Jerome, down to contributions by contemporary scholars of the twelfth century. Libraries collected discrete glossed books of the Bible and used them as individual reference works bound either singly or into units (i.e., Pentateuch, Minor Prophets). Emerging as a definitive corpus utilized as a reference for biblical exegesis by 1150, the Glossa Ordinaria was a vital element in the study of the Bible well into the early modern period.110 While the Glossa Ordinaria represented the beginning of a turn to the literal mode in medieval biblical commentaries, this is not the case with its commentary on 2 Maccabees. Those in the schools who produced these glosses did not compile a gloss for either 1 or 2 Maccabees but simply adopted Rabanus Maurus’s commentary. Thus, the discussion in the Glossa Ordinaria on 2 Maccabees 7 entirely repeats what Rabanus

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Maurus wrote in his own commentary on this passage.111 Since Rabanus’s commentary was largely an adaptation of what Cyprian of Carthage wrote about the Maccabean martyrs, the Glossa Ordinaria transmitted a patristic perspective on these martyrs to those generations of scholars who consulted it. This patristic perspective presented a strongly allegorical interpretation on the Maccabean martyrs that paid little attention either to the Jewish identity of these martyrs or the literary or historical meanings of this text. Peter Comestor was a significant figure in the major turn in biblical scholarship in the twelfth century toward a detailed attention to the literal (including historical) meaning of the Old Testament.112 As mentioned previously, despite the fact that 2 Maccabees 7 was composed in Greek and not Hebrew, and despite its deutero-canonical status, exegetes still commented on it as part of the narrative of the history of Israel. As shown in this chapter, a typological or figurative form of exegesis was generally characteristic of earlier commentators on this text, like Rabanus Maurus and Rupert of Deutz. This method, in its tendency to associate the Maccabean martyrs as quasi-Christians, distinguished them from other types of Jews who followed the Law. Such a method implied a distinction between the Maccabean martyrs’ spiritualized obedience to God and their historically Jewish context. This distinction reinforced the belief that the church alone rightly claimed the title of “Israel.” In contrast, the use of literal exegesis of 2 Maccabees 7 presented the history of Israel and its people as temporally continuous with the church and Christians. Through this treatment of the Maccabean martyrs there was not a strong discontinuity between the experiences of the historical Israel and the contemporary church. In other words, the Maccabean martyrs were understood allosemitically. While on the surface this allosemitic stance in literal exegesis might ostensibly indicate a more positive evaluation of Judaism in its totality, one discovers the ambiguities of supersessionist thought upon further investigation in the work of Comestor. Comestor positively commented on the Maccabean martyrs and the value of the Mosaic Law for Israel, but his general theological perspective on Jews and Judaism, especially as his focus shifted to the New Testament period and his own context, is negative. This tension reveals the ambiguous status of Judaism in Comestor’s thought. The positive continuities expressed between the people and institutions of biblical Israel and the church in actuality is part of an ideological colonization of these narratives on Comestor’s part.113


PETER COMESTOR

AND

HIS CIRCLE

ON

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2 MACCABEES 7

Allosemitism in a Literal Register Peter Comestor (d. 1178/79) was a significant figure in the major turn in biblical scholarship in the twelfth century toward a detailed attention to the literal (including historical) meaning of the Old Testament. As shown in this chapter, a typological or symbolic form of exegesis was generally characteristic of earlier commentators on this text, like Rabanus Maurus and Rupert of Deutz. Symbolic exegesis, in its tendency to associate the Maccabean martyrs as quasi-Christians, distinguished them from other types of Jews who followed the Law. Such a method implied a distinction between the Maccabean martyrs’ spiritualized obedience to God and their historically Jewish context. This distinction reinforced the belief that the church alone rightly claims the title of “Israel.” Unlike Rabanus Maurus or Rupert of Deutz, Comestor did not focus on the question of the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs. Rather, Comestor encountered the memory of these martyrs as part of a larger narrative structure and framed this memory in terms of continuity between biblical Judaism and the church. As a result, his commentary focused less on the question of the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs, in contrast to the way this issue vexed previous late antique and medieval theologians. Comestor’s application of literal exegesis to the interpretation of 2 Maccabees 7 presented the history of Israel and its people as temporally continuous with the church and Christians. This treatment of the Maccabean martyrs did not posit a strong discontinuity between the experiences of the historical Israel and the contemporary church. While on the surface this might ostensibly indicate a more positive evaluation of Judaism in its totality, one discovers an allosemitic perspective that reinforced the ambiguities of Christian supersessionist thought. Comestor did posit a positive meaning for the Maccabean martyrs and the Law but viewed post-biblical forms of Judaism negatively. This tension reveals the ambiguous, allosemitic status of Judaism in Comestor’s thought. The positive continuities expressed between the people and institutions of biblical Israel and the church in actuality was part of an ideological colonization of these narratives on Comestor’s part. In his magnum opus, the Scholastic History, Peter Comestor contributed greatly toward a turn to the literal and historical exegesis of the Old Testament. An inheritor of the traditions of both the schools of Laon and Saint-Victor, Peter Comestor composed the Scholastic History, a handbook surveying biblical scholarship, while living at the abbey of Saint-Victor

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after he retired from teaching at the cathedral school of Notre Dame.114 Comestor employed a unique method and structure in his narrative presentation of sacred history in that the History did not follow previous commentaries in explicating specific words, phrases, or sentences. Rather, Comestor framed his literal commentary within the composition of a historical narrative for each biblical book.115 The History emerged out of the context of scholasticism and was a formative influence on those in the medieval schools. The majority of the History was developed as lectures Comestor gave on the Bible, and they were later edited by him and those in his circle into its finished form. Adopted as a major part of the standard university curriculum (along with Gratian’s Decretals, Hugh of Saint-Victor’s Didascalion, and Peter Lombard’s Sentences), the History became a foundational text for later exegetes.116 Because of the wide readership and importance of the History in scholastic culture, it is all the more important to examine Comestor’s exegesis of 2 Maccabees. Comestor included 2 Maccabees as part of the essential narrative of sacred history he set out to recount. Beginning with his commentary on Daniel and with all the works following it, including 2 Maccabees, Comestor’s exegesis included a historical summary of events in the GrecoRoman world and included extra-biblical elements from Greek and Roman historical sources. The commentary on the books of the Maccabees relied heavily on Josephus’s Jewish Wars and Jewish Antiquities.117 Josephus was a useful source for Comestor because he provided crucial historical materials, especially political and military sources, which were important as background to the biblical text.118 Although Comestor was knowledgeable of rabbinic traditions and perhaps consulted with Jewish scholars, there is no presentation of Jewish sources concerning the narrative of the mother and seven sons.119 One can posit two factors for this absence. First, 2 Maccabees was a Greek work and not considered canonical within rabbinic Judaism, thus there would not have been any rabbinic Jewish exegesis for Comestor to consult. Second, Comestor might have been unaware that there existed a tradition about the mother and seven sons within rabbinic Judaism. This tradition in fact had been revived in the wake of the crusade massacres in Jewish Rhineland communities in 1096 and was current in twelfth-century Jewish culture in French and German territories.120 Comestor’s commentary on 2 Maccabees 7 emphasized continuity between the history of Israel and the church. Comestor crafted an allosemitic memory of the Maccabean martyrs that integrated earlier traditions about them but did not include a discussion over the question of


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Christian veneration of Jewish martyrs.121 Comestor’s praise of the mother for her “masculine” and noble exhortations to her youngest son indicated familiarity with the praise that Gregory Nazianzus and Gregory the Great offered for the masculine virtues of the mother in their sermons on the Maccabean martyrs.122 Comestor’s literal commentary offered a straightforward account of the death of these brothers. He asserted that the cause of their death was a refusal to eat swine flesh out of obedience to the Law. Significantly, he did not follow a Christian interpretive strategy to explain the difficulty of Christian commemoration of Jewish martyrs for a Jewish Law. Rather, Comestor asserted that the honorable death of obedience to the Law was reason enough to honor the Maccabean martyrs. This stance revealed an allosemitic vision of continuity between the dispensation of the Law in Israel and the contemporary life of the church as manifested in Christian commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs. Comestor’s commentary does not reveal either specifically positive or negative views of Jews and Judaism; the continuity between Israel and the church was a fact whose full meaning is latent in this commentary. At the end of Comestor’s recapitulation of 2 Maccabees 7, the Patrologia Latina edition of the History provided two additions that maintained the theme of continuity between Israel and the church. Here the allosemitic presentation of the Maccabean martyrs shifted to an overtly positive depiction of these Jewish martyrs. It is difficult to determine the degree to which these additions found throughout the manuscript tradition ought to be attributed to Comestor. Joannes Arguelles, an editor of the Patrologia Latina edition, informs in a preface to the History that while some of these additions are authentic to Comestor, not all are, so they have been placed at the end of each chapter so the reader would not be distracted by them.123 Recently, Maria Sherwood-Smith has argued that these additions were early features in a wide range of manuscripts of the History. Many of them have the tone of further additions to a lecture, which reflected the origin of this work as a course of lectures on the Bible. If not all of the additions were original to Comestor, they reflect an early oral teaching tradition claiming his authority.124 These additions then can be considered reflective of either Peter Comestor himself or a circle of scholars active around him. The author of the first addition provided a detailed explanation of why the church celebrated the mother and seven sons as martyrs. Seeking to clarify why Christians venerated Jewish martyrs, the author defined who might be considered a martyr by providing biblical examples from both the Old and New Testaments.“There are four types of martyrs. One is

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called a martyr who dies for the preservation of the laws of God, like the Maccabees. Also one is called a martyr who dies for the truth of preaching, like Jeremiah, and other prophets. One is called a martyr who dies in place of Christ, like the [Holy Innocents]. And one is called a martyr who dies for the confession of faith, and the passion of Christ, like Peter and Paul. And these people are rightly called martyrs, that is, they are witnesses to the passion of Christ.”125 The author of this addition presented these four types of martyrdom in a way that mirrored Comestor’s understanding of the unfolding of God’s salvific activity. In this addition the Maccabean martyrs represented the first type of martyr, one who dies for the Law of God rather than violate it. Dying for the Law as the Law was a positive category for this author and went beyond Comestor’s basic allosemitic assertion of continuity between Israel and the church in interpreting 2 Maccabees 7 to an at least notionally philosemitic view of the Law before Christ. Noticeably, neither Comestor in the body of the commentary on 2 Maccabees 7 nor the author of this addition argued that the Law given at Sinai was invalid. Nor does one find the argument that the Maccabean martyrs died for only certain elements of the Law, as Rupert of Deutz explained. As an example of dying for the Law of God, Comestor identified the Maccabean martyrs with a specifically Jewish heritage in his historical summary in the commentary, and the author of the addition assumed Jewish martyrs were just as exemplary as Christian ones in the biblical witness. The meaning of the death of the Maccabean martyrs within the commentary tradition of Peter Comestor, though positively viewing their defense of the Law, nonetheless redefined their heroism within a specifically Christian context. This small piece of the history of Israel was meaningful only insofar as it was interpreted allosemitically within Christian terms. Comestor and the Limits of Continuity A Christian allosemitic remembrance of the relationship between Judaism and Christianity is potentially neutral. But at the same time it is a remembrance constructed by Christians to regulate Jewish presence in Christian terms. The memory of Jews in an allosemitic construction can lead to either a positive or a negative view later. One sees the shift from an allosemitic view in Comestor, whose view of continuity between Israel and the church in his commentary on 2 Maccabees 7 led to a philosemitic stance in the addition to that commentary. In his works on the New


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Testament and in sermons, however, Comestor negatively emphasized Jewish-Christian differences, leading to anti-Jewish statements. Comestor’s emphasis on historical continuity between Israel and the church dissipated when he considered Jews as portrayed in the New Testament. Commenting on the trial and crucifixion of Jesus, Comestor ascribed to the Jewish people blood guilt and portrayed Jewish authorities as the instigators of his mocking by the Roman soldiers. To Comestor, the behavior of the Jews at this moment in the Gospel narrative, as he interpreted it, revealed their true identity as the enemies of Jesus.126 When Paul was accused of blasphemy for speaking against the Law in the Acts of the Apostles, Comestor explained that it was actually those Jewish authorities who taught the Law but did not see the truth of Jesus out of jealousy who were truly blind. Moreover, when Paul avowed that the priesthood must not be spoken against during his trial before the temple priests, Comestor interjected that Paul here referred not to priests serving in the temple, but to true priests, presumably Christian ones.127 In his sermons, Comestor’s allosemitic stance toward Israel that appeared in his commentary on 2 Maccabees was further eroded by the harsh distinctions he posited between Christianity and Judaism concerning the Law of Moses. Comestor’s sermons have been hailed as exemplars of the genre of the “school sermon,” and copies were used to train students in the composition of sermons.128 In several sermons Comestor explained that the Law, while it could provide the means for purification from physical ailments like leprosy and other impurities, it could not provide the purification necessary for salvation. Comestor compared the Law of Moses to a cloud of hail that batters the Jews who bear its harsh and punishing yoke, so much that some madly might say that the Law was given not by God but by the prince of darkness. According to Comestor, the Law was limited in its efficacy during the period of its dispensation, only able to show forth sin but not able to bring forth perfection. Now with the coming of Christ it ought to be set aside.129 The effect of Comestor’s teaching emphasizing Jewish-Christian difference in explicitly anti-Jewish terms in the context of school sermons situated his sermons as the opposite number of the History that in part held forth a positive continuity between Israel and the church. When it came to treating the Jews and the institutions of Judaism, such as the Law or temple priesthood, in the time of Jesus and up to his era, Comestor emphasized discontinuity between Judaism and Christianity. Curiously, Comestor was formed by the Victorine exegetical tradition, which expressed a more positive view of the worth of the rituals and

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ceremonies performed in Israel prior to the advent of Jesus Christ. Richard Schenk has argued that authors like Comestor who shifted from an inclusivist or positive vision of Judaism to an exclusivist and anti-Jewish one did so out of a commitment to “Christological continuity,” or the preservation of the uniquely salvific person of Christ in the larger scope of salvation history.130 There is a clear pattern in Comestor’s work as he shifted from reflecting on the worth of the Law prior to the coming of Christ in an episode like the martyrdom of the Maccabean martyrs to his negative view of the status of the Law, especially after the salvific death of Christ and the preaching of the apostles. Peter Comestor’s allosemitic stances toward Jews and Judaism as revealed in his commentaries on 2 Maccabees 7 and New Testament texts and in his school sermons illustrate that he viewed Jewish narratives as objects that could be appropriated and ideologically colonized for Christian purposes. This movement from continuity of the Law and Judaism with the purpose of God’s salvific plan to its discontinuity in light of the incarnation of Jesus Christ reveals the ambivalence of Christian identity regarding its hybrid Jewish origins in the project of literal exegesis. Comestor placed the origin of the church in the Jewish past but also overwrote this past to assert the primacy of Christian belief. Comestor, ambivalent over these Jewish roots, treated them as territory to claim. He recognized biblical Israel as something Christianity was intimately linked to, but this linkage ultimately served to proclaim the seizure of the textual territory of the Hebrew Scriptures. Comestor employed Jewish narratives from Josephus to midrash, but this was not out of a simple proto-philosemitism but to chart out in the new techniques of literal exegesis the ideological map of Christendom that included Israel. Comestor’s preservation of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs worked in similar ways to Rupert of Deutz’s use of figurative exegesis regarding these martyrs. To remember the Maccabean martyrs as Jews who died for the Law required the reinscription of their identity into a thoroughly Christianized topography. Conclusion Examining medieval writings about the Maccabean martyrs reveals the malleability of medieval Christian commemoration. Rabanus Maurus and Rupert of Deutz used the memory of the Maccabean martyrs to both support and contend against imperial aspirations. Rabanus commented on 2 Maccabees 7 to convey his support of Louis the German and to


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reinforce the continuity between church and empire that was central to the ideology of the Carolingian court. Rupert of Deutz, like Ambrose of Milan before him, found the narrative of resistance the Maccabean martyrs embodied a fitting exemplar for his reformist rhetoric. Using the Maccabean martyrs as representatives of authentic Jews, Rupert constructed a doubled vision of Jews and Christians as alternately authentic and inauthentic that revealed the hybrid status of both the Maccabean martyrs and Christianity itself. The explanations for the commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs in twelfth-century scholars from Anselm of Laon to Bernard of Clairvaux offered explanations that differed from their late antique predecessors. There was a vision in these authors of an idealized form of Judaism, one in which the Maccabean martyrs stood in for Jews who, faithful to the Law, saw in it the truth of Christ to whom the Law points. Within twelfth-century western Europe, where the question of why contemporary Jews still had not turned to Christianity led to a wide range of polemical works, the Maccabean martyrs represented a Christian view of proper Jewish fidelity to the Law. Peter Comestor’s literal exegesis of 2 Maccabees 7 and additions to it indicated an allosemitic view of these martyrs that emphasized continuity between Israel and the church. But any philosemitism that could be established from this was disrupted by Comestor’s anti-Jewish views in other works. Comestor’s work shows that the allosemitic stance is not an intrinsically neutral category but one that can lead to an objectification of Jews and Judaism. Medieval Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs were allosemitic. They represented the Christian desire to use Jewish traditions for the self-aggrandizement of Christendom. The anti-Jewishness of many of the authors surveyed in this chapter rarely appeared in their actual reflections on the Maccabean martyrs but within their other works. The ambiguity within medieval remembrances of the Maccabean martyrs was a result of these authors’ desire to capitalize on the Jewish past of Christianity as part of the construction of a totalizing historical narrative in which the contemporary church represented the summit of history and a concomitant aversion to contemporary Jews and Judaism. Medieval Christian authors produced texts that perpetuated the late antique hybridized vision of the Maccabean martyrs as simultaneously Jewish and not Jewish, Christian and not Christian, crafting the memory of these martyrs to reflect their own shifting cultural, political, and theological contexts.


CHAPTER 4

Jewish Saints and Christian Cities Rhineland Traditions of the Maccabean Martyrs Introduction Jewish and Christian communities in the Rhineland between the eleventh and sixteenth centuries developed separate traditions about the Maccabean martyrs that transformed received cultural memories of them. In the wake of the First Crusade assaults of 1096, medieval Jewish authors utilized the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs to justify and commemorate the actions of women who martyred their own children. In fifteenthand sixteenth-century Cologne, Helias Mertz, the priest in charge of the cloister and church of the Maccabean martyrs in that city, promoted the cult of these martyrs to raise funds and civic support for the institutions he oversaw. These two different examples of communal traditions about the Maccabean martyrs represent the reshaping of cultural memory by factors pertaining to local contexts. The first part of this chapter will examine the transformation of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs within Ashkenazi Judaism (the Jewish culture of northwestern medieval Europe) by authors of crusade chronicles, midrashim (narrative exegesis), piyyutim (liturgical poetry), and responsa (legal opinions). These authors used rabbinic narratives of the Maccabean martyrs, know in Jewish literature as the mother and seven sons, as a device for justifying the slaughter of children by mothers in the First Crusade massacres of 1096.1 It was as an act of resistance against physical and ideological violence visited on their communities by Christians that the authors of these texts crafted the memory of the mother

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and seven sons. The epitome of this transformation was in the narration in crusade chronicles of the story of Mistress Rachel of Mainz and her determined sacrifice of her four children as crusaders massed outside the locked door of her living quarters. The recycling and alteration of the story of the mother and seven sons both justified and made explainable the horror of mothers killing their children. The story that appeared in crusade chronicles and subsequent midrashic, liturgical, and legal writings asserted the value of dying for the Law and resisting Christian pressures to convert. At the same time, these writings reflected influences from and responses to the surrounding Christian culture, revealing a heightened expression of Jewish cultural negotiation that resulted in ambivalent and hybrid productions. In late medieval and early modern Cologne, there existed the only well-documented cult of the Maccabean martyrs.2 The evidence from the shrine of the Maccabean martyrs and literature associated with their cult shows that the disparate memories of the Maccabean martyrs derived from late antique and earlier medieval sources were synthesized for two purposes. The first was to promote the cloister of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne to establish the reputation of the cloister and draw patronage for it. The second was to promote the Maccabean martyrs as patron saints of a city that already had prominent patrons in Saint Ursula and the Three Kings. The promotion of the Maccabean martyrs as saints for Cologne took on different forms. Mertz’s work deemphasized the Jewish identity of these martyrs. Other liturgical material understood them as martyrs for the Jewish law but still effective intercessors for Christians. Finally, humanists, like Desiderius Erasmus, viewed the Maccabean martyrs as an attractive example of a reformed cult of saints that could inspire Christians to lives of virtue. Those involved in the Cologne cult of the Maccabean martyrs reshaped the memory of these martyrs received from late antique and medieval sources. Mertz and other promoters of the cult of the martyrs in Cologne were heirs not only of earlier Christian sources but also received and reshaped patterns of hybridity and ideological colonization that informed these traditions. Despite the fact that traditions about the Maccabean martyrs flourished in both Jewish and Christian communities of the Rhineland in the medieval period, there is no clear evidence that members of either community knew about the specific traditions of the other. However, recent scholarship has established that medieval Ashkenazi Jews were aware of and had internalized Christian concepts and cultural practices. Examples ranged from polemical responses to Christian teachings and scriptures

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designed for internal Jewish usage to the development of Jewish rituals and ceremonies that included elements apparently appropriated from Christian sources in a process Israel Yuval has identified as “Judaizing.”3 In short, Ashkenazi Judaism was not hermetically sealed from the surrounding Christian culture. Despite retaining a distinctive identity, Jews had become acculturated to the dominant culture and in the process created hybridized narratives and rituals. In contrast, the work of Helias Mertz and other texts concerning the Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne does not indicate awareness of an existing Jewish tradition in the Rhineland. But the promotion of this cult dedicated to Jewish martyrs ought to be considered in the context of the aftermath of the expulsion of Jews from the city of Cologne in 1424. Christians preserved the memory of the Maccabean martyrs in the context of the erasure and removal of the Jewish community of Cologne, while Jews in the Rhineland revived and transformed their memories of the mother and seven sons in response to Christian efforts to destroy their presence in Christendom. In each instance, the reality of Christian colonization and manipulation of Jewish life and culture informed the culturally determined production of localized memories of the Maccabean martyrs. Medieval Ashkenazi Jewish Traditions of the Mother and Seven Sons in the Rhineland A LATE ANTIQUE INHERITANCE

When medieval Ashkenazi Jews heard, told, or wrote about the mother and seven sons, the origins of their discourses were not drawn from 2 Maccabees 7 or 4 Maccabees, unlike the Christian texts examined previously in this book. The Maccabean books, originally composed in Greek, were not deemed canonical in traditional Judaism. Rather, traditions about the Maccabean martyrs entered into Ashkenazi Judaism by two avenues. The first was through the Sefer Josippon, a tenth-century south Italian chronicle. The Sefer Josippon was a Hebrew adaptation of works by Flavius Josephus that also incorporated portions of the Latin Christian Bible, the Vulgate, concerning the history of Israel’s conflicts with Rome. In Sefer Josippon there was a narrative of the Maccabean martyrs.4 While Ashkenazi Jews read this work, rabbinic midrash about the mother and seven sons was the primary conduit for medieval Jewish knowledge about the Maccabean martyrs. Several different versions of this story existed in midrashic literature, particularly in sections dealing with episodes of martyrdom during the period of the Jewish revolt against Rome in the 130s

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CE, and the persecutions that followed.5 Indicative of its origins as an oral tradition, the story of the mother and seven sons was accordingly transposed from a Hellenistic, Seleucid context to a Latin, Hadrianic one.6 Ashkenazi Jews would have known two different versions of this story, taken either from Midrash Lamentations 1.16 or Gittin 57b from the Babylonian Talmud.7 The stories of martyrdom from these portions of rabbinic literature reflected the context of resistance against and persecution by the Roman Empire during the period of the Bar Kokhba revolt, when these stories initially circulated. But between these events and their redaction into written collections, Christianity, with its own stories of brave martyrs resisting unjust rulers, became the favored religion of the rulers of the Roman world.8 As narratives that were oral in their origins, rabbinic martyrdom accounts were folk stories that concerned issues of competing religious and cultural identities and communities.9 Late antique Jewish communities like those located in Palestine experienced the hardship of imperial Roman oppression and also faced an emerging Christian culture that appropriated Jewish stories to bolster its own appeal. Martyrdom stories found in rabbinic literature were artifacts produced by late antique Jews in the eastern Mediterranean who resisted both of these external pressures.10 This two-pronged element in the rabbinic martyrdom narratives is evident in the texts under discussion here. These narratives differed from those found in the Greek Maccabean literature by virtue of featuring an extended dialogue not with the Seleucid tyrant Antiochus IV Epiphanes who oversaw the execution of the seven sons but with an unnamed Roman emperor. The conflict rested not on the refusal to eat pork, but rather on Jewish refusal to participate in the imperial cult and engage in idolatry. This refusal to engage in idolatry was tied explicitly to each son’s endorsement of absolute fidelity to Torah, reflecting the development in rabbinic thought during this period of the concept of kiddush ha-Shem (“sanctification of the name [of God]”). Kiddush ha-Shem became the equivalent term in rabbinic Judaism that “martyrdom” was in Christian culture. To sanctify God’s name in a willing death was to testify to the Torah that God gave to Israel and the covenant loyalty that bound Israel to God.11 The attack on Jewish observance of the Law by Christian authors in the late antique period informs our reading of these texts. Midrash Lamentations and Gittin 57b were textual responses rooted in earlier martyrdom folklore that expressed a resistance culture against the ideology of


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Christian supersessionist theology as it was preached and openly promulgated.12 The Jewish argument that the narrative of the mother and seven sons rightly represented the values of their own community directly related to Jewish assertions of the positive value and nature of the covenant made between God and Israel. If the Torah and the covenant given at Sinai were still in force for Israel, then the story of the mother and seven sons dying for Torah was not an argument for a Pauline vision of Christianity, as represented by Chrysostom, or a type for the martyrs of the mother church, as Cyprian wrote. Rather, it was a narrative about steadfast fidelity to a body of norms and behaviors that had not changed in its essential meaning. The death of the mother and seven sons was about fidelity to Torah, not to Christ veiled within the Law. As a document of a resistance culture, the story of the mother and seven sons prominently featured the refusal of pagan imperial commands to idolatry. But the narrative also resisted the imperial aspirations of late antique Christian culture that delegitimated God’s covenant with the Jewish people. As a document composed for Jews and by Jews, this story did not support the colonizing ideology of Christianity but explicitly undermined it. A specific example of this is the prominent linking in these rabbinic narratives of the mother, here named Miriam, with Abraham.13 Both Lamentations Rabbah and Gittin associated the deaths of Miriam’s sons with Abraham’s binding of Isaac in Genesis 22, an episode known as the Aqedah (“the binding”) in rabbinic literature. Lamentations Rabbah portrays this comparison in this way: The mother threw herself upon her child and embraced and kissed him. She said to him, “My son, go to the patriarch Abraham and tell him, “Thus said my mother, ‘Do not preen yourself [on your righteousness] saying I built an altar and offered up my son, Isaac.’ Behold our mother built seven altars and offered up seven sons in one day. Yours was only a test, but mine was in earnest.”14

In early Christian literature and art the binding of Isaac was linked typologically with the crucifixion of Jesus.15 In contrast to Genesis 22, where by the intervention of an angel Isaac was not sacrificed, in both the Gospel accounts and in these midrashim, these latter-day bindings result in death. Within both traditions, the parent figure present at the death of these children was a woman identified as Miriam/Mary. We can only speculate about what factors led to the midrashic identification of this previously anonymous mother as Miriam and whether there was an attempt to deliberately draw parallels with the Mary (Miriam) of the Gospels.16 The

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effect of this story was to undercut the Christian supersessionist argument that the death of Jesus the son of Mary/Miriam abrogated the Law God gave Israel at Sinai. It also responded to Christian claims that Jewish culpability in the death of Jesus rendered an exclusive covenant between God and Israel null and void. Rather, the death of the sons of Miriam who refused to engage in idolatry showed the continuing validity of Torah and the firm covenant between God and Israel. THE RHINELAND MASSACRES

OF

1096

AND

RACHEL

OF

MAINZ

In the spring of 1096, Christian groups, inspired by the calling of the First Crusade by Pope Urban II, attacked Jewish communities in the Rhineland, including Cologne, Mainz, Worms, and Speyer.17 Although these assaults were not officially sanctioned by the papacy or local secular or ecclesiastical authorities, the Christians who attacked these Jewish communities viewed their attacks as equivalent to fighting the Muslims who controlled the holy places in Jerusalem.18 The Hebrew chronicle of the events of the First Crusade by Solomon ben Simson recorded this sentiment: “Behold we journey a long way to seek the idolatrous shrine and to take vengeance upon the Muslims. But here are the Jews dwelling among us, whose ancestors killed him and crucified him groundlessly. Let us take vengeance first upon them.”19 The Jewish response to this violence was both a defense of their faith and a mimicry of crusading ideology.20 The Hebrew crusade chronicles preserved memories of the response of the Jewish communities of the Rhineland to these attacks.21 During the course of the violence visited on their communities, and after efforts at calling on Christian allies like bishops or offering large sums of money to stop the violence failed, Jews were often faced with the choice of forcible baptism by Christians or death. There were four Jewish responses to this choice. Some fled the violence. Others accepted baptism. Still others chose to be martyrs at the hands of Christians. But others made the startling choice to articulate a new mode of martyrdom, active martyrdom, rather than become Christians or have their families and friends, and especially children, be forcibly converted. This was manifested in actions that included committing suicide, slaughtering other adults, and the killing of children.22 Despite serving as a record of responses to the events of 1096, the Hebrew crusade chronicles should not be regarded as purely eyewitness reports of these events. Rather, they are highly rhetorical texts designed to offer a defense of the actions of Jews during these assaults and to preserve their memory for succeeding Ashkenazi communities.23


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The active martyrdoms of 1096 were an aberration according to the standards of the rabbinic legal tradition (or halakhah) that presented a challenge for portraying a positive and heroic memory of these particular Jews who died during the crusade assaults. According to halakhah, there were clear standards that defined martyrdom and the conditions under which one should and should not avoid it. But the active form of martyrdom that occurred in 1096 was new and at face value violated the halakhic norms current in Ashkenazi Judaism.24 Because of the lack of halakhic warrant for these actions, the chroniclers appealed to narratives found in midrash to defend the actions of these Jews and to ensure the preservation of their memory as martyrs.25 In the story of Rachel of Mainz, recorded in the chronicle of Solomon bar Simson and the Mainz Anonymous, the chroniclers refashioned the midrashic narrative of the mother and seven sons to justify the actions of those mothers who made the horrifying choice of killing their children rather than have them forcibly baptized as Christians.26 The story of Rachel of Mainz told the story of a mother who killed her four children while armed Christians threatened outside the door of her chambers. Both authors drew on themes from the midrashic story of the mother and seven sons but recycled these elements of Jewish cultural memory both to make sense of the horror of mothers killing children and to valorize resistance against Christian violence. Elements of these chronicles mimicked the ideology of crusades, especially the theme of the restoration of Jerusalem and the righteous death of the faithful.27 Concerted Jewish resistance to Christian domination, whether ideological or violent, included the incorporation of imagery common to Judaism and Christianity, such as the Temple or martyrdom, to diffuse and undermine Christian polemics and to enable the assertion of a continued Jewish identity in the midst of Christendom. In the chronicles, the story of this mother who killed her children began by identifying Rachel of Mainz as the daughter of Rabbi Isaac ben Asher and remembering her as righteous and pious. The chronicle of Solomon bar Simson signaled her identification with stories from rabbinic literature about the mother and seven sons by calling her the “mother of the sons.” In the words of this chronicle, Rachel declared to a friend with her, “Four children have I. Have no mercy on them, lest those uncircumcised ones come and seize them alive and raise them in their way of error. In my children, too, you shall sanctify the name of God.”28 Both chroniclers explained that Rachel’s four children were sacrificed to God “who commanded us not to depart from His pure doctrine.”29 Rachel’s

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eldest son was killed by her friend and Rachel, according to Solomon bar Simson, “spread her sleeves to receive the blood; she received the blood in her sleeves instead of in the [Temple] vessel for blood.”30 Both chronicles depicted Rachel, with three of her children dead, seeking out her youngest son, Aaron, who had begged her not to kill him and had hidden in fear. Rachel calls, “‘Aaron, Aaron where are you? I will not spare you either, or have mercy on you.’ She drew him out by his feet out from under the box where he had hidden and slaughtered him before the Lofty and Exalted God.”31 The mother then arranged her four dead children on her lap, mourning over them. When the Christian attackers burst into the room they demanded money they thought was hidden in her sleeves. Rachel spread her sleeves, revealing not gold but her slaughtered children, and was slain herself. Both chronicles ended with a quotation from Psalm 113:9 that also ended all the rabbinic midrashim on the mother and the seven sons: “Thus she died together with her four children, just as did that other righteous woman with her seven sons; and about them it is written: ‘The mother of the sons rejoices.’”32 The horrific story of Rachel of Mainz both retold the rabbinic story of the mother and seven sons and also heightened the confrontation between Jews and Christians found in it. The rabbinic midrash on the mother and seven sons as a narrative resisted both imperial Roman persecution and rivalry with contemporary Christian communities. The story of Rachel of Mainz, however, retold this story to witness to explicitly Christian violence. The theme of maintaining fidelity to the Torah found in rabbinic literature remained, however. In the rabbinic narrative, refusing to engage in the idolatry ordered by the emperor ensured the sons’ loyalty to the covenant. Here, the stakes were even higher in choosing to obey Torah. The attackers at the door were described as “uncircumcised,” that is, they did not live by Torah. The desire of these Christians was to seize Rachel’s children and “raise them in their way of error.” Rachel chose to kill her children not only so that they would not commit idolatry just once, as in the rabbinic stories, but also so they would not be raised as idolaters. In the memory of the events of 1096, Rachel killing her children was the ultimate fulfillment of God’s command to keep Torah and the ultimate act of resistance against a hostile Christian culture. The story of Rachel placed obedience to Torah as the focus point for difference between Christians and Jews. As a result of not following Torah, Christians were not only marked by lacking circumcision but they were identified with following a false way of life. Here the preoccupation with the issue of Jewish observance of the Law found in Christian literature


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on the Maccabean martyrs was inverted. Where Christian retellings of the story of the Maccabean martyrs explained away the Jewish elements of their fidelity to the Law, in the story of Rachel of Mainz and her children, faithfulness to Torah was what defined them against their Christian attackers. This attention to Jewish fidelity and Christian ignorance concerning the Torah occurred in a context in which Jews were exposed to Christian polemics about the abrogation of the Law of Moses by the coming of Jesus Christ. Jews living in the urban Christian context of the Rhineland would have been aware of these views. Both Christian and Jewish accounts of disputations from the twelfth century included debates over the meaning of the Law of Moses after the coming of Christ. The story of Rachel of Mainz was a vivid message to the Jewish community living in the wake of 1096 to remember that the Torah was indeed worth dying for and retained all the value that Christian opponents wished to impugn.33 The authors of this narrative employed two motifs, prominent throughout the crusade chronicles, that both legitimated the actions of Rachel of Mainz and mimicked, thus resisting and inverting, Christian crusading ideology in Ashkenazi memory. The first was imagery associated with sacrifices in the Jerusalem Temple. A central motif of the crusade chronicles was the figurative reconstruction of the Temple in the Rhineland by Jews engaging in the ritual killing of other Jews. While the crusaders boasted in having captured the holy places in Jerusalem, the crusade chroniclers argued that the Temple had actually been symbolically reestablished in the Rhineland.34 When Rachel caught the blood of her children in her sleeves like a temple priest catching the blood of the sacrifices in a basin, the horror of the fact that she had killed her own children was overshadowed by the textual reporting of symbolic cultic ritual she performed. While in earlier rabbinic literature the mother encouraged her sons on to martyrdom, here Rachel became the agent of their martyrdom and acted like a priest offered up a sacrifice to God. Rachel’s actions mimicked crusading ideology about the capture of Jerusalem by acting like a priest. While she succeeded in rebuilding the Temple, something the crusaders did not do, the price she paid to do this was her own children. Crusading ideology spoke of the virtue of death in the service of the liberation of Jerusalem. The notion of a righteous death in the story of Rachel of Mainz was manifested in the motif of the binding of Isaac. This image was prominent both in earlier rabbinic narratives of the mother and seven sons and in other portions of the crusade chronicles. In the rabbinic narratives, the mother bade her youngest son before he

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was martyred to tell Abraham not to boast about his almost-sacrifice of Isaac. She had built seven altars and seen all her children slaughtered by persecutors, unlike Abraham whose son was spared. But in the crusade chronicles it was Rachel, not the unbelievers, who killed her sons. Rachel not only acted as a priest, she also stood in the place of Abraham, going so far as offering the sacrifice that Abraham did not four times over. This refashioning of the memory of the mother of the seven sons as a parent who killed her children in the figure of Rachel of Mainz was part of a shift in the telling of the story of the binding of Isaac among Rhineland Jews in this period, which related that Abraham had actually killed Isaac but received him back.35 This image of the mother presiding over the death of her children as a ritual sacrifice and gathering them in her lap was highly charged. It not only conveyed layers of association in a Jewish context but also spoke to Christian imageries of mothers, dead children, and sacrifices. Other scholars have argued that the ritual killing of children as sacrifices in these chronicles served as Jewish polemical arguments countering Christian claims that Christ’s atoning death replaced the Mosaic Law. Rachel mourning over her dead children also served as a counterpoint to Mary’s mourning over her son Jesus or that of the Mother Church mourning over her martyred children. Indeed, Rachel mourned over not one, but four children, suggesting that sorrows of Jewish mothers in 1096 were greater than that of Mary.36 The countercrusading ideology was a powerful form of mimicry that unsettled Christian supersessionist rhetoric of domination over Jewish communities. The story of Rachel of Mainz contributed to a resistance culture that spoke against Christian claims to an exclusive interpretation of the Law and arrogation of the title of Israel to themselves. The mimicry of this story, with the interweaving of these associations both Christian and Jewish, helps us see that the story of Rachel of Mainz represented a hybridized refashioning of memory. The Ashkenazi Jewish communities of the Rhineland lived within a colonized context in the sense that they were subject to Christian authority, sacred and secular, in their daily affairs. While possessing a degree of autonomy in their selfgovernment, Jewish communities were ultimately subject to a Christian authority figure, commonly the local bishop or ruler. They were also subject to ideological colonization in that Jews were exposed to Christian supersessionism in words and imagery, as recent scholarship has established.37 Jews living in the midst of Christian cities were exposed to a wide range of popular Christian ideas, including notions of redeeming death


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and heavenly rewards for martyrs.38 Jewish incorporation and inversion of Christian motifs was a form of mimicry in this context. The chroniclers under consideration here presented Rachel not only like Mary but better than her. Her children’s deaths were not only like Jesus’s but they were better because her children remained faithful to the Torah. The reshaping of the memory of the mother and seven sons in the story of Rachel of Mainz not only defended the actions of parents who killed children during the events of 1096, but also were an exhortation to continue to resist Christian claims that the Law was of little value with the coming of Jesus Christ. Rachel of Mainz and her children were symbols produced by a resistance culture opposed to Christian ideological colonization in the form of supersessionism. One must remember, however, that the mimicry engendered in the story of Rachel of Mainz was also ambivalent, sounding an off-key note amid this theme of resistance. Rachel’s youngest son resisted her efforts to martyr him. He hid from her and she had to drag him out from under furniture in order to kill him. Aaron’s resistance alluded to the fact that not all Jews during the attacks of 1096 bravely opposed Christians. Some did choose life and received baptism and a Christian identity, however briefly, rather than die. It has been argued that the inclusion of such resistance to the deeds of family members and coreligionists was a deliberate act by these chroniclers to express the ambivalence and guilt of the survivors of these events, many of whom converted under duress to avoid death and then returned to their communities.39 The twelfth century, the century during which these crusade chronicles were composed, saw a significant pattern of Jewish conversion to Christianity.40 The acknowledgment of another option to martyrdom in the story of Rachel of Mainz was meant to render this option as moot. In other words, the chroniclers introduced ambivalence to the actions of Rachel and the mimicry it represented while also refuting this ambivalence. Rachel sacrificed even the son who was unwilling to die but would rather live as a Christian, and she was praised for it. Martyrdom, the message was, fulfilled Torah; conversion overturned it. The memory of the transformed mother of the seven sons in the story of Rachel of Mainz embodied this message. THE MEMORY

OF THE

MARTYRS

OF

1096

The revival of the story of the mother and seven sons in the Hebrew crusade chronicles led to its appearance in other forms of medieval Ashkenazi literature as an example of the importance of resisting Christian efforts

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to undermine Jewish faith. Christian activity that targeted Jewish fidelity to Torah, including physical violence, prompted responses in the form of medieval midrash, liturgical poetry, and legal rulings that incorporated the memory of the mother and seven sons as it had been reinterpreted through the lens of the events of 1096. The authors of these texts used the story of the mother and seven sons to explicitly encourage spiritual resilience in the face of Christian activity that attempted to subjugate the Jewish community physically and ideologically. Medieval Midrash Other midrashim containing the story of the mother and seven sons in medieval Ashkenazi Judaism explicitly countered Christian supersessionist ideology in the interest of maintaining Jewish fidelity to Torah. These stories, found in a version of the Midrash on the Ten Commandments (specifically in the section concerning the second commandment against idolatry) and the collection known as the Book of Deeds, incorporated narratives found in the Babylonian Talmud, Midrash Lamentations, and Sefer Josippon.41 Both of these midrashim contained an epilogue that spoke directly to a hostile Christian context. At the end of both texts the audience was urged to choose martyrdom, as the family in these stories did, rather than convert to Christianity. The epilogue to the Midrash on the Ten Commandments captured this argument well: Thanks to God the children of Israel are placed before the other nations. Therefore, I scattered you among the nations that do not know me so that you will tell of my miracles and teach that there is no other besides me . . . [D]o not exchange me for idolatry because if you follow my Torah, and do my desires, I will answer your requests and I will be compassionate with you, because I am compassionate. And if you reject my Torah and follow your desires, I will be angry with you. I am compassionate and no one except me, the divine reward is good and I will give it to you if you do not bow down to the dead one. Instead bow down to the One who gives life and takes life—and it is everlasting life.42

This passage explicitly rejected two key ideas of Christian supersessionism: that observance of Torah must be replaced with worship of Christ (the “dead one” in this text) and that the exile of the Jews was a sign of God’s punishment and a vindication of the Christian church as the true Israel. Rather, Jews were obligated to keep Torah as the means of attaining divine recompense. Their presence in Christian Europe was not a sign of


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divine punishment, but an act of witnessing to God’s continuing care for the people of Israel.43 This text was composed to ensure that members of the Jewish community did not give in to the pressure of conversion to Christianity. Susan Einbinder has demonstrated that conversion to Christianity, especially by the very young men who were groomed to assume leadership roles in the Jewish community as scholars and rabbis, was a central concern in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.44 The desire to escape the efforts, which were episodically violent, by Christians to convert Jews was real. Christendom surrounded Jewish communities, and Christian social and intellectual leaders engaged in efforts to mentally colonize Jews to such an extent that they ceased to be Jews at all. Conversion was not experienced only in terms of negative pressure; some Jews, especially male young adults, converted out of familial rebellion or a desire for a better material position in life.45 Whether conversion occurred out of a response to explicit Christian proselytizing or self-interest, it happened in the context of Jewish life in a Christian culture that theologically was hostile to Jewish beliefs. The conclusion to the Midrash on the Ten Commandments addressed the more general problem of Jewish conversion just as the image of Rachel’s son Aaron hiding to escape martyrdom spoke to the fact that not all Jews behaved heroically in the face of Christian persecution. The memory of the mother and seven sons was presented in the Midrash on the Ten Commandments not simply as a story of resisting the efforts of some past Roman emperor to have a family engage in idolatry. It was a story that spoke of the necessity of medieval Jewish families to resist a contemporary form of cultural imperialism. Liturgical Poetry The retold story of the mother and seven sons in the person of Rachel of Mainz was kept alive in piyyutim (liturgical poetry) that commemorated the victims of the assaults of 1096. One example among several is a poem in the lament, or qinah, form titled, “I said, ‘Look away from me,’” by Rabbi Kalonymos bar Judah. In this poem, Kalonymos, a witness of the events of 1096 in Mainz, recalled the memory of this mother while calling on God’s vengeance against the Christian enemies of the Jewish community.46 As the subject of this poem Kalonymos wrote about the various members of the Jewish community who were slaughtered. Speaking of mothers who killed children, he wrote, “Israel acknowledged the justice (of God’s sentence) when she offered her young ones, and instead of dashing the blood (on the altar), she received it in the hem of her

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garment, wringing her hands (and) sobbing.”47 Here Kalonymos repeated the imagery from the crusade chronicles of Rachel offering her children as a sacrifice and receiving their blood like a priest. Another important poem was the piyyut for the yotser48 of the first Shabbat of Hanukkah, “I will give thanks to you for you were angry at me and you relented” by Rabbi Joseph bar Solomon of Carcassonne. This poem included a recapitulation of the martyrdom of the mother and seven sons.49 The section of the poem dealing with this episode concluded by recounting the death of the mother’s youngest son. Witnessing the death of her children, the mother also died. Both poems concluded with cries for vengeance on the behalf of God for the sake of the righteous who suffered for his sake. Rabbi Kalonymos wrote, “Make known in our sight the avenging of the blood of thy servants; O Lord, God of vengeance, shine forth, O God of vengeance!”50 Rabbi Joseph declared, “My anger is too great to pass, remember these pious ones and their slaying.”51 The liturgical remembrance of these martyrs, either in the figure of the mother and seven sons or in the memory of the deeds of Rachel of Mainz and other contemporary women like her, included a call for vengeance against the perpetrators of violence. It was primarily in liturgical services through the form of piyyutim that Ashkenazi Jews were reminded of and taught about the events and victims of 1096.52 The repetition of these poems validated the deeds of these martyrs, even the women who offered their children as a sacrifice rather than have them survive their parents and be raised as Christians. Poems like these repeated the message to resist pressures to convert in terms similar to the messages conveyed in crusade chronicles and medieval midrash. The memory of the mother and her sons was not only transformed into a story of women who kill their children but, as these poems bore witness, also expressed a desire by a Jewish resistance culture for vengeance against Christian perpetrators of violence. The memory of martyrdom yielded not a quietist stance but was designed to stir the community to antagonism and resistance, if only verbally and spiritually. This desire for vengeance was expressed in the context of the Ashkenazi experience of Christian cultural imperialism and conversion efforts. Authors of liturgical poems used the motif of the wish for divine revenge on Christian enemies as a further check against the erosion of the Jewish community. Conversion was designed to look less attractive if it constituted not simply an allegiance to another group but to the enemies of God and the objects of God’s impending wrath.


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Legal Literature While medieval Ashkenazi Jews maintained the memory of the martyrs of 1096, and even participated in a resistance culture against Christian supersessionist ideology, there existed ambiguity over the continued validity of parents killing children in periods of persecution. The most prominent halakhic ruling, or responsum, on this issue came from Rabbi Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg (d. 1293). He was asked by an unknown person to respond to the case of a man who killed his wife and children in Koblenz on April 2, 1265, in order to save them from the possibility of forced conversion.53 In attempting to answer this inquiry, Meir began by observing that one was allowed to commit suicide as an act of martyrdom, citing among other midrashic examples the suicide of the mother in BT Gittin 57b.54 However, he noted that it was not obvious that one was required to kill others, even in the context of martyrdom; thus this question required further investigation to find proof that this was permitted. Yet Meir noted that permission for this practice had been widespread, and many prominent sages had killed their children in similar situations. One example he offered as proof of the permissibility of this practice was Kalonymos’s poem and its praise of parents who killed their children. Indeed, he concluded by observing that no one should condemn this particular father from Koblenz, or even to rule that this act required atonement, for to do so would be to condemn the martyrs of 1096. Meir ended with a call for God’s vengeance: “May the rock of Israel avenge our plight and the plight of his Torah and the plight of the blood of his servants swiftly in our days.”55 This ruling revealed that the memory of the martyrs of 1096 not only shaped liturgical experiences of Jewish communities but also informed its intellectual culture. The story of the mother and seven sons, as recorded in rabbinic literature and retold in the story of Rachel of Mainz, served as a legitimate legal resource for Meir of Rothenburg. His ruling in turn was commented on by other halakhic scholars of the period.56 Even within the more measured rhetoric of this legal text there still existed the desire for God’s revenge against the Jewish community. Meir explicitly portrayed the suffering of the Jewish people to also encompass the “plight of [God’s] Torah.” The bloodshed the Ashkenazi community experienced on the part of Christians was intertwined with its adherence to Torah and refusal to abandon it for Christian observances. The memory of the mother and seven sons and the martyrs of 1096 was also the memory of Israel’s call to Torah obedience and the need to resist the pressures of living within Christendom. The deployment of

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these stories (one among several narratives derived from rabbinic culture) helped create a counternarrative for a Jewish resistance culture framed in opposition to the supersessionist narrative Jews would have received living in western medieval Europe. The story of the mother and seven sons illustrated that to the Jewish people belong exemplary martyrs who can inform pious behavior.57 The various iterations of this narrative mimicked Christian crusading rhetoric as an act of resistance against ideological and physical colonization in the starkest of moments. The mother who oversaw the death of her children for the sake of God’s Torah attested to its permanence and continuing validity despite the derision with which Christians held Jewish observance of Torah. Remembering Rachel of Mainz and her children, and other families like them, as righteous victims whose blood will be avenged by God ennobled the continuation of the Jewish community. The memory of the mother and her sons, in short, supported the ongoing vitality of medieval Ashkenazi Judaism in the wake of 1096. The Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs in Late Medieval and Early Modern Cologne The cult of the Maccabean martyrs found in Cologne in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries was a second example of the local construction of the memory of these saints in the Rhineland. In this case, promoters of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs in the city of Cologne used their memory as part of a public relations initiative to garner material support for a local women’s Benedictine cloister and its attached church dedicated to these martyrs. This campaign, which had the priest Helias Mertz at its center, explicitly elevated the Maccabean martyrs as key saints for the city, joining (and rivaling) the two preeminent groups of saints in the city—Ursula and the 11,000 Virgins and the Three Kings. Support for the cloister of the Maccabean martyrs and the cult depended on the construction of a historical memory of the martyrs as a cult native to Cologne. As part of the reshaping of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs, their Jewish identity was markedly deemphasized so that it was a palimpsest on which Mertz reinscribed a new identity for these Jewish martyrs. The shaping of the memory of the Maccabean martyrs, while specific to the context of Cologne, nonetheless perpetuated patterns of hybridity and ideological colonization of symbolically Jewish territory found in earlier texts and traditions.

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CRAFTING

THE

MEMORY

OF THE

MACCABEAN MARTYRS: THE WORK

OF

HELIAS MERTZ

Any investigation into the cult of the Maccabean martyrs depends on an examination of the work of the priest Helias Mertz (d. 1527), who revitalized the cult of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne. Mertz (also known as Helias Marcaeus and Helias de Luna) capitalized on earlier Christian traditions to create a narrative designed to aid in the promotion of the cult.58 In 1491, as the confessor of the female Benedictine cloister of the Maccabees, Mertz guided a reconstruction of the cloister, which was destroyed in a fire in 1462.59 It is possible that he was appointed to this position as a result of his work on behalf of Archbishop Herman of Hesse’s reform of religious houses in the region. The cloister of the Maccabees was part of a reform movement among monasteries associated with Herman known as the Bursfeld Confederation.60 Mertz’s appointment to this post indicated some sort of charge to revitalize and reform this particular religious community. At the same time, the fact that the cloister community itself was reorganized after the destruction of 1462 meant that Mertz was free to construct new memories of the community for itself and the city of Cologne. Mertz’s promotion of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs was in the service of promoting and securing a future for the cloister of the Maccabean martyrs. As Ursula Rautenberg has shown, part of Mertz’s mission in rebuilding the cloister was a focus on increasing the popularity of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs and their relics that the cloister possessed. This focus was meant to draw both pilgrims and patrons for support in maintaining this community.61 In the service of this goal, Mertz both oversaw the production of literary works on the martyrs and renovated the church of the Maccabees. In both his written works and in the visual objects he commissioned, Mertz utilized imagery that would appeal to his target audiences. For example, Mertz tried to ensure the appeal of the cult by depicting the Maccabean martyrs in a manner that coincided with late medieval patterns of devotion to the passion of Jesus and to the sufferings of Mary. Beginning in 1504, Mertz guided the interior restoration of the church of the Maccabean martyrs attached to the cloister. Notably, Mertz commissioned murals and inscriptions relating primarily to the cults of both the Maccabean martyrs and Ursula and her companions. The content of these inscriptions conveyed a theological message of the place of the Maccabean martyrs in Christianity and their importance to Cologne.62 Accompanying the renovation of the church, Mertz also commissioned

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a gold reliquary in 1504 (built from 1506–27) to house the remains of the Maccabean martyrs, notably their skulls, which the cloister possessed. This shrine deployed a typological comparison between the martyrdom of the Maccabean martyrs and the passion of Jesus and Mary’s sorrows.63 Mertz’s literary works on the Maccabean martyrs extended over two decades. The first significant text on the Maccabean martyrs from Mertz was a vernacular poem he composed in 1507, titled “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen und afflaes tzo Mauyren bynnen Colen.”64 In 1517 he published another poem, “Das Leiden der heiligen Makkabäer” with content similar to the 1507 work.65 In 1525 Helias Mertz gathered together a definitive anthology on the Maccabean martyrs, the Chronik des Benediktinerklosters SS. Machabaeorum in a lavish manuscript drawing on patristic sources and contributions from humanist colleagues, most notably Desiderius Erasmus.66 This work was a sort of summa of the Christian tradition of the Maccabean martyrs and indicated the range of texts Mertz had at his disposal. It included 2 Maccabees 7, a Latin abridgement of 4 Maccabees by Erasmus, and excerpts from John Chrysostom, Jerome, Rabanus Maurus, Cyprian, Leo, Bernard of Clairvaux, Peter Comestor, Hugh of St. Cher, and John Beleth. Erasmus and fellow humanists Jacob Magdalius, Ortwinus Gratius, and Johannes Cincinnius composed works praising the martyrs and detailing their history and cult in Cologne, which were also included in this document. Mertz’s devotion to composing works and commissioning art dedicated to the Maccabean martyrs was in order to promote their cult both to the inhabitants of Cologne and to those making pilgrimages there.67 In his promotion of the cult, particularly in the renovations of the church, Mertz connected the Maccabean martyrs to the two leading cults of Cologne, those of Ursula and the Three Kings, in order to appeal to pilgrims and patrons alike. In a similar vein, drawing on traditional typology that Christianized the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz compared the death of the sons to the suffering of Christ and the sorrows of the mother Salomona to that of the Virgin Mary. While the comparison between the sons and Christ had a long history in Christian reflections on the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz utilized the comparison between the mother, here called Salomona, and Mary in a way that made this cult more appealing to the spiritual sensibilities of the period.68 Constructing the History of the Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs in Cologne As part of his efforts to revive the cult of the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz presented a history of this cult in Cologne that encouraged local support.


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In his writings, especially in the Chronik des Benediktinerklosters SS. Machabaeorum, Mertz constructed an early history of the cloister and associated cult of the Maccabean martyrs. By comparing this invented narrative with a critical examination of the available historical sources and witnesses, one can both arrive at a clear picture of the history of the cloister of the Maccabees and better understand Mertz’s agenda in crafting a particular memory of the local history of the cloister of the Maccabees. Examining the history as portrayed in the Chronik, one finds a murky account of origins filtered through a desire to expand the popularity of the cult in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. The central historical narrative that Mertz presented in the chronicle of the foundation of the cloister of the Maccabees was in a letter composed by a Cologne humanist, Ortwinus Gratius (d. 1542).69 Composed in 1524 and addressed to the women of the cloister of the Maccabees, this letter narrated the establishment and development of the church and cloister of the Maccabees in Cologne.70 This text is historically problematic and indicates an invented history of this cloister. As such, it merits close attention. Gratius claimed that the cloister of the Maccabees was of ancient origins. Drawing from material that Mertz discovered during the replacement of the high altar in the church of the Maccabees, Gratius revealed that on the site of the cloister there had been a chapel dedicated to Mary Magdalene where a community of virgins lived many centuries earlier. One of these virgins was the English princess Sigillindis, one of the martyred companions of Ursula, a popular saint in Cologne in the late medieval period. According to this letter, the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions (the “eleven thousand virgins”) occurred on the grounds of the Magdalene church sometime in the fourth century. The victims were buried in the field surrounding the church, known as the Ursula ager, or “the field of Ursula.”71 According to Gratius, Archbishop Solinus expanded the church in 463 CE. Over the centuries, though it is not clear when, locals established the church of St. Ursula nearby in the Greesberg area. This created tension with the Magdalene church as both institutions laid claim to the relics and patronage of Ursula’s companions, the eleven thousand virgins.72 In the twelfth century, Archbishop Rainald von Dassel, the imperial chancellor of the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick I, tried to settle this dispute while Rainald’s sister Gepa was abbess of the cloister associated with the Ursula church. When in 1164 Rainald brought back the relics of the Three Kings from Milan, he also donated the relics of the Maccabean martyrs to the cloister of Mary Magdalene, which then took

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on the name of the Maccabees as their patrons.73 Gratius noted that Rainald’s successor, Philip von Heinsberg, placed the cloister of the Maccabees under the protection of the nearby St. Kunibert cloister in 1178. Philip also built a chapel on the ager Ursula dedicated to the eleven thousand virgins.74 Gratius’s letter concluded with a recapitulation of Mertz’s care for the cloister, his discovery of documents about the history of the cult, and the renovations he ordered for the church. One finds in the letter by Gratius that a crucial element in the construction of the local memory of the Maccabean martyrs was the claim that in 1164 Rainald von Dassel not only translated the relics of the Three Kings to the Cologne cathedral from Milan, but also the relics of the Maccabean martyrs to the cloister. Besides the prominence of this claim in Gratius’s letter, the same claim also appeared in Helias Mertz’s 1507 poem on the Maccabean martyrs.75 In the Chronik, Mertz included two other references to this alleged translation, one in a short notice and another in a poem by the Dominican Jacobus Magdalius.76 This tradition was preserved in later accounts concerning relics in Cologne, including the works of Gelenius and Crombach.77 The documents Gratius relied on to promote the story of Rainald’s translation of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs were spurious. The claim that from 1164 to 1178 Rainald von Dassel and Philip von Heinsberg were instrumental in renaming the Magdalene cloister and reorganizing it as the cloister of the Maccabees was false.78 A church dedicated to the Maccabees already existed in the same area of Cologne during the period of archbishop Anno II (1056–75), a full century prior to Gratius’s claim. This church was established by Count Herman of Saffenberg and its holdings were donated to Anno II.79 As further proof that a church dedicated to the Maccabees had been established before the period from 1164, the area around this church was referred to in a variety of documents from between 1150 and 1168 as the platea Machabeorum.80 Thus a church associated with the Maccabean martyrs existed in this area since at least the end of the eleventh century. This church was attached to a cloister for Benedictine women, functioning as a daughter cloister under the male St. Kunibert cloister nearby, a relationship that existed until the cloister of the Maccabees burned down in 1462.81 If the church, and presumably the cult, of the Maccabees existed before the third quarter of the twelfth century, the period during which Rainald von Dassel supposedly translated the relics of the Maccabean martyrs to Cologne from Milan, what motivated Mertz and Gratius to promote an alternate narrative? Thomas Ilgen posits that they produced


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this particular history in order to attract nuns from the burgher class of the city to this foundation. By claiming both great antiquity and an intimate connection to the preeminent cult of Ursula and her companions, the authors hoped to draw both candidates and patrons away from rival religious foundations.82 Manfred Gröten holds that while the cloister of the Maccabees was not founded in the twelfth century, a great deal of evidence points to renewed interest and activity around the cloister between 1170 and 1192. While Mertz and Gratius certainly fabricated elements of their narrative concerning the ancient foundation of the church and its connection to the martyred companions of Ursula, they might not have been greatly mistaken in viewing the period from 1164 to 1178 as pivotal for the history of the cloister since during this time the cloister did receive the daughters of many local families.83 Mertz’s and Gratius’s assertion that the relics of the Maccabean martyrs were translated by Rainald von Dassel in 1164 thus was not an outright fabrication. Rather they were working with preexisting local traditions of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs and utilizing these to elicit support for the revival of the community with which Mertz had been charged. This tradition though was a relatively recent development from the fourteenth century and first found in a version of the Cologne chronicle known as the Cronica presulum printed in Hamburg.84 No twelfth-century accounts of Rainald von Dassel’s translation of the relics of the Three Kings to Cologne from Milan in 1164 contained any reference to relics of the Maccabean martyrs.85 Not all editions of the Cronica presulum contained this account either; most versions related that Rainald translated only the relics of the Three Kings and Felix and Nabor. Only a minority of versions of the Cronica conveyed this story.86 But this variant appeared in other late medieval chronicles as well, most notably in one attributed to Johan Koelhoff in 1499 that stated, “Rainald brought to Cologne the Jewish saints of the Old Testament, the men named the Maccabees, with their mother, into the church of the Maccabees.”87 This same work also listed the “Maccabean martyrs of the Old Testament” as belonging to the group of saints venerated in Cologne.88 In a similar vein, the church of the Maccabees was mentioned as a site for pilgrims to visit for indulgences while in Cologne, according to a description of shrines published by Johann Koelhoff in 1492.89 As further evidence of the paucity of evidence for such a translation, the Cologne chronicle from 1515 by Conrad Jsernhoyfft and various diplomata do not mention a translation of the Maccabean relics by Rainald.90

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This evidence suggests that the spurious account of Rainald von Dassel’s translation of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs first developed at some point in the fourteenth century and was a known tradition in Cologne by the time Helias Mertz took on the task of revitalizing the cult of the Maccabees in 1491. Any relevant documents about how the cloister came into possession of these relics likely had been destroyed by the fire in 1462. Thus, Mertz was free to invent a narrative of the presence of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne that best connected it to the wider narratives of the city.91 As a part of reestablishing the memory of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne and increasing their appeal to its citizens, Mertz actively worked to connect their cult to the cult of the Three Kings and Ursula. The cult of the Three Kings had enjoyed considerable popularity around Cologne since the 1360s, and their relics had come to rest in the cathedral.92 Connecting the translation account of the Maccabean martyrs to the Three Kings served to tie the church of the Maccabees closer to the wider traditions about Cologne and the preexisting devotional practices of its citizens.93 In a similar way, Mertz connected the story of the arrival of the Maccabean martyrs to the popular Cologne cult of Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins in the renovations of the cloister.94 In Mertz’s restorations of the building, inscriptions were created that claimed the cloister was on the site of the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions. He also restored a reliquary in the church containing bones of Ursula’s companions. The refurbished church featured murals on each side of the choir, one featuring the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions, the other the Maccabean martyrdom.95 By drawing on connections to the cults of Ursula and the Three Kings and producing documents and objects unique to the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz sought to increase the popularity of the church of the Maccabees as a pilgrimage site and gain patrons for the propagation of the cult. An example of the success of these efforts is the publication in 1520 of a missal (independent of Mertz’s efforts) the title page of which featured block prints representing Ursula, the Three Kings, and the Maccabean martyrs as the preeminent saints of Cologne.96 Examining the history of the cloister of the Maccabees in Cologne reveals the dynamic collaboration between Helias Mertz and Ortwinus Gratius as found in the Chronik. Mertz and Gratius created a narrative of the presence of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne that tried to establish these martyrs as rivals to the venerable cults of the Three Kings and Ursula. These connections were designed to appeal to contemporary pilgrims and


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patrons who could financially support the cloister of the Maccabean martyrs as it emerged from the aftereffects of a devastating fire. The Maccabean Martyrs as Patron Saints of Cologne: The Work of Mertz Mertz’s promotion of Jewish martyrs as Christian saints to the people of Cologne involved a reframing of the cultural memory of the Maccabean martyrs that deemphasized their Jewish identity. Mertz did not broach the historically thorny issues of the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs in his promotion of them as saints for Cologne. Unlike the late antique texts Mertz compiled in his Chronik that dwelt at length on the issue of the Jewishness of these martyrs, Mertz continued the dynamic found in scholastic texts of the twelfth century that deemphasized this aspect of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs. Texts and materials produced by Mertz concerning the Maccabean martyrs emphasized their status as symbolic types, or forerunners, of the suffering of Christ and Mary. The identity of the Maccabean martyrs as Jews was irrelevant to Mertz’s agenda. The absence of their Jewish identity in Mertz’s work mirrored, as we shall see, the physical absence of Jews from the city of Cologne in this period. Although Mertz’s stance toward the Maccabean martyrs was not specifically allosemitic, his disinclination to treat their Jewish identity meant a reiteration of the Christian practice of appropriating and colonizing Jewish texts for Christian purposes. In keeping with previous Christian traditions about the Maccabean martyrs, the primary feature of the Cologne cult of the Maccabean martyrs was an interpretation of their martyrdom as an allegorical type for the passion of Christ. Mertz emphasized this interpretation to form the primary basis of the appeal for this cult. The lack of interest in the Jewishness of these martyrs was a counterpoint to other patterns of perceptions of Jews in medieval devotional literature. Beginning in the eleventh century and continuing through the fifteenth century, Jews were increasingly seen as a threat to the social order and security of Christendom. Such impulses were reflected in devotional literature and liturgical texts.97 Mertz’s representation of the Maccabean martyrs ought to be understood within the context of patterns of Jewish settlement and expulsion in and around the city of Cologne. Cologne was one of the oldest centers of Ashkenazi Judaism. The Cologne Jewish community experienced significant losses during the attacks of 1096, but the community recovered its vitality in the following years. In 1349 a pogrom fueled by accusation of Jewish complicity in the Black Death completely wiped out the community in Cologne. Nonetheless, a Jewish community returned to the

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Jewish quarter in Cologne in 1372. In 1424 the city council of Cologne expelled the Jewish community from the city after repeated mob attacks on Jews. Between 1372 and 1424 the Jewish population in the city was never greater than two hundred.98 Although the Jewish community was expelled from the city of Cologne proper, most did not go far, settling either across the Rhine in Deutz or in the outlying villages and towns and continuing their economic and social activities (there would not be a Jewish community within the city limits of Cologne again until 1801, when the city came under French control). This pattern of expulsion and resettlement nearby was common throughout the western German regions.99 Mertz’s deemphasis of the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs then occurred within the context of the absence of Jews from within the city of Cologne. Mertz’s disengagement with the Jewishness of these martyrs mirrored official disengagement of the Christian citizens of Cologne from Jewish life. Despite these expulsions, some Jews remained nearby, in the city of Deutz across the Rhine or in other suburbs, in order to pursue their livelihoods. Nonetheless, officially Jews were not permitted to live within the city of Cologne. Jewish populations and centers of learning around Cologne were relatively small in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries.100 Mertz engaged in a form of ideological colonization of the Maccabean martyrs, but it was a form of colonization that pushed the Jewishness of the Maccabean martyrs to the margins of his representations just as the residences of actual Jews were pushed beyond the boundaries of the city of Cologne. The Maccabean Martyrs and Salomona as Types for Christ and Mary Mertz’s poem “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen und afflaes tzo Mauyren bynnen Colen” illustrates his shaping of the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs for maximum appeal to his constituency in Cologne. Drawing on traditional typology that Christianized the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz compared the sons to the suffering of Christ and the sorrow of the mother Salomona to that of the Virgin Mary. While the comparison between the sons and Jesus had a long history in Christian reflection on the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz utilized the comparison between the mother, here called Salomona, and Mary to make this cult more appealing to the spiritual sensibilities of the period.101 In this poem, composed in the local German vernacular, Mertz explicitly cited late antique and medieval authors who wrote on the Maccabean martyrs, including Chrysostom, Cyprian, Bernard, Augustine, Leo the Great, and John Beleth, signaling his indebtedness to previous Christian traditions about these martyrs.102 But unlike


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many of these authors, Mertz did not deal with the Jewish heritage of the Maccabean martyrs, an issue that had occupied several of the theologians he mentioned. Rather, continuing the patterns established by Peter Comestor, Mertz presented this story as a Christian one and drew on established sources from patristic authors and medieval commentaries to establish this. Mertz further expressed the notion of the Maccabean narrative as a Christian story by presenting the martyrs as figures of the passion of Christ. He made this point explicit in his chapter titled “The death of the Maccabees was the figure of the suffering of Christ.”103 Mertz gave a detailed analysis of how the various abuses, sufferings, and torments endured by the Maccabean martyrs mirrored and prefigured what Christ experienced during the passion. Thus, as Christ was scourged, so were the brothers’ bodies disfigured. As Christ received the crown of thorns, so the brothers were scalped. As Christ’s feet and hands were nailed to the cross, so the brothers’ hands and feet were cut off.104 But Mertz also established a new trajectory in the cultural memory of the Maccabean martyrs through an extended comparison of the mothers in each narrative, Mary and Salomona. Mertz focused on how each mother stood, watching the torture and execution of her sons, steadfast witnesses to the faith of their children. “Christ himself stood before the eyes of his dear mother, said to her the words . . . that were the seven swords Simeon spoke of before: under the bitter cross the prophecy itself was fulfilled. O tender Mary, favor me, keep me with your seven swords, you are the virgin. Salomona is the mother of the seven. She also stands . . . with the seven martyrs in their childlike mortal death. I say it was an unmotherly sight, especially for such a noble, gentle, elder feminine lady, who abided, standing immovable the whole long hot day.”105 Mertz applied the popular late medieval image of the Virgin Mary with her heart pierced by seven swords while standing before the cross, a reference to the seven last words Christ spoke from the cross and the prophecy of Simeon in the Gospel of Luke that a sword would pierce Mary’s heart (Luke 2:35).106 Salomona prefigured the sorrows that Mary experienced, standing by as each son was tormented and killed. In the process of constructing a localized memory of the Maccabean martyrs, Mertz employed recent developments in Marian piety. Although devotion to Mary had been a consistent feature of medieval piety since the twelfth century, during the late medieval period a significant element of this devotion was a focus on the sorrows of Mary during the passion of her son. Because of their close physical connection, Mary frequently

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was portrayed as suffering with Jesus in a profound way.107 This focus on Mary’s emotional suffering, or “compassion,” developed into devotional prayers and reflections on Mary’s thoughts, feelings, and sentiments, including the theme of the Seven Sorrows of Mary. In Cologne, devotion to her Compassion was employed as part of a campaign against Hussites when in 1423 archbishop Thierry de Meurs initiated a Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows.108 Mertz’s comparison between Salomona and Mary was also relatively new. Previously, only Hugh of St.-Cher in his commentary on 2 Maccabees 7 had compared the mother of these martyrs with Mary, eschewing the typical comparison between the mother and the church.109 Mertz emphasized the connection between Mary and Salomona in an inscription in the renovated church of the Maccabean martyrs found in the choir of the church beneath a mural depicting the martyrdom of the Maccabean martyrs. This inscription, recounting the similarities of Mary and Salomona as they witnessed the death of their sons, concluded by asserting that by virtue of this typology the name of Salomona “has a great worthiness in the region.”110 Marian piety in the hands of Mertz amplified the status of Salomona to the pilgrims and patrons in Cologne. Mertz also shaped the local memory of the Maccabean martyrs by establishing parallels between the seven sons and their mother and Jesus Christ and Mary. The reliquary of the Maccabean martyrs, commissioned by Mertz in 1504, illustrated the typological comparison between these two families that Mertz used in the creation of this localized memory. The inscription on the reliquary asserted the legend of the translation that Mertz propagated: “Archbishop Rainald transferred to the Ursula ager the holy bodies of the seven Maccabean brothers and their holy mother Salomona who are types for the suffering of our Savior and blessed Mary.”111 The iconographic program of the reliquary ran on both sides in a double row with the story of the passion of Jesus appearing below that of the Maccabean martyrs.112 The torments executed on the Maccabean martyrs were arranged to mirror the events of the passion of Jesus. For example, the capture of the Maccabean martyrs was contrasted to the arrest of Jesus, and their scalping paralleled the crowning of Jesus with thorns. On the other side of the reliquary were two sets of comparisons. One contrasted the suffering of the mother Salomona with the emotional torments of Mary. The other was a comparison between the resurrection appearances of Jesus and the history of the relic translations of the Maccabean martyrs that Mertz popularized.113 This reliquary established the church of the Maccabean martyrs as the site where their memory, interwoven with Christian memories of Jesus and Mary, would be viewed, remembered,


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and taken away to be retold in new locations by local visitors and pilgrims from other places. Mertz also reframed the memory of Salomona as a type for Mary in his poetry as a means of increasing the appeal of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs. In “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen,” Mertz emphasized qualities that Salomona shared with Mary. Salomona was not only similar to Mary in the way in which she lovingly watched over her children as they died, but she also had virtues like Mary. Like Mary, she became childless. Also like Mary, she was pure, clean, noble, and praised as an example of a “God-fearing wife.”114 Salomona also was a protector of the pregnant and a comforter of mothers. Indeed, women were advised to “always read her holy passion when you are in need while pregnant. Contemplate the Maccabean deaths and their martyred lives.”115 Salomona becomes not only a model for how mothers ought to live, an echo of late antique sermons discussed in Chapter 2, but she was also presented as an effective intercessor for mothers and for the pregnant. She, a mother who knew what it meant to worry for the life of her children, was offered as a figure to which all mothers and expectant mothers could turn either for aid in their concern for their children or for comfort in the loss of their children. The Jewish heritage of Salomona was not at issue. She was like Mary, also a Jewish mother, one who was significant for Christians by virtue of who her children were. As her children were forerunners of Christ in their suffering, so Salomona was a forerunner of Mary in her empathic suffering. By virtue of being like Mary, Salomona could care for all women who came to her. Mertz’s reshaping of the memory of Salomona meant a displacement of Ursula from her traditional association with Mary in the devotional culture of Cologne in this period. For example, the end panel of the reliquary portrayed the assumption of Mary and the crowning of Salomona by an angel while she protected her sons beneath her mantle. In paintings and other objects from Cologne, the protective mantle was often applied as a dual image of both Mary protecting Christian souls and Ursula shielding her companions. In the iconography of the reliquary, Salomona replaced Ursula. Previous scholars have argued that this appropriation of the mantle imagery encouraged viewers to identify both Salomona and Mary as feminine representatives of the church, faithful mothers who could shield the faithful. Salomona’s appeal was increased by becoming a type for the saving and protective mother Mary in Mertz’s representations.116 According to the iconography of this shrine, three sets of powerful intercessors existed for the faithful of Cologne: Jesus and Mary, Ursula

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and her companions, and Salomona and her sons.117 The iconographic program Mertz commissioned for this reliquary indicated his knowledge of existing traditions of the Maccabean martyrs (along with other cults in Cologne) and his willingness to alter and manipulate this in order to strengthen the popularity of their cult and shrine. The depiction of Salomona with a protective mantle at the end panel of the reliquary of the Maccabean martyrs did not just strengthen her association with the Virgin Mary. It also decoupled the association of Ursula with Mary, replacing Ursula with Salomona. The substitution of the common image of the protective Ursula with Salomona was a competitive move in which Mertz sought to siphon away devotion from the popular cult of Ursula to the Maccabees. The Church of the Maccabean Martyrs as a Place of Memory The renovated church of the Maccabean martyrs in which the reliquary was housed represented in its physical totality a place of memory. By “place of memory” I mean what Pierre Nora has described as a place that is “mixed, hybrid, mutant, bound intimately with life and death, with time and eternity.”118 An examination of the inscriptions that accompanied these murals in the church helps us to understand how Mertz reshaped the memory of the Maccabean martyrs in the renovation of the church in ways that both boosted their prominence in Cologne and recreated the church as a specific site for remembering the Maccabean martyrs in a hybrid, transhistorical mode.119 The inscriptions within the church testified to its status as a pilgrimage location. Not only were there inscriptions for images concerning the cults of the Maccabean martyrs and Ursula and her companions, but there were also inscriptions for other saints.120 The inscriptions under consideration here are ones that explicitly linked these martyrs with Ursula and her companions. The message of these inscriptions was that the Maccabean martyrs could be as effective intercessors as this more established and popular group of saints. In the late medieval period, when martyrdom was a relatively rare phenomenon, the commemoration of martyrs relied on their effectiveness as intercessors.121 The evidence of these inscriptions testified to Mertz’s efforts to establish the church of the Maccabean martyrs as a site where the powers of intercession were present to visitors who came seeking aid. Mertz established an entire program of inscriptions linking the martyrs to Ursula and her companions, making the church itself a place where the narratives of these two groups of saints intersected. An inscription over


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the door leading from the Machabärplätzchen (the area outside the cloister) into the cloister precincts read, “This is Ursula’s field of the virgins’ blood / Solinus encircled the holy burial ground of the noble women / The monarch Philip dedicated the sanctuary.” 122 At the first entrance to the cloister, Mertz intended this inscription to remind visitors that the cloister itself was the alleged site of the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions. Further, the inscription claimed antiquity for the foundation, having been established by Solinus in the seventh century. The inscription over the main entrance to the cloister church amplified the claim for the church’s status as a holy place: “In this place Ursula was slaughtered.” As nuns, burghers, or pilgrims entered the church, Mertz planned for them to understand this place as the site of both the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions and the place where the intercessory power of the Maccabean martyrs could be accessed. An inscription near the doorway heightened the connection between Salomona and Ursula. Salomona was summoned to the roasting pan / With the children she was brought as an offering with a sprinkling of fire / representing the image of the most sorrowful bearer of God / Swords made the water of the Rhine ruddy with the moisture of blood / The virgins’ bodies stand there. / By his word the Praesul Reinald dedicated the temple to the Maccabees.”123

The mother Salomona was martyred like her children, an embellishment of the narrative in 2 Maccabees 7. As a witness to this death, she was an “image of the most sorrowful bearer of God,” that is, Mary. Her death also foreshadowed the bloody martyrdom of Ursula’s companions. The presence of their relics in the church emphasized Salomona’s connection to these martyrs. The manner of Salomona’s death linked her with Ursula and the eleven thousand virgins and with Mary by virtue of giving witness to the death of her children. An inscription on the inner door of the church continued the link between the church as the location of the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions and as the site of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs. “This altar first held the virgin’s blood / Now it contains the holy bodies of the Maccabees.”124 An inscription in one corner of the church accompanied a monument indicating the site of a well that allegedly contained the blood of some of Ursula’s companions.125 Over an apse an inscription stated that while the virgins were slaughtered here, the Maccabees were “brought from the distant parts of the earth to here.”126 On the walls around the

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reliquary an inscription solidified the link between the Maccabees and Ursula. Christ the Victor approaches Ursula the virgin and victoress / and the Maccabees with a palm . . . Those who formerly fell down in this grass alone / They have power in heaven, in earth, in the sea, and in the air / And they are united with the most high God. / Therefore there is no such treasure in the whole world, / surpassing even that of Croesus and the riches of Midas.127

The inscriptions portrayed both the Maccabean martyrs and Ursula as effective intercessors with God. Christ had bestowed the palm of martyrdom on both of them with the result that now they could intercede for those who called on them. The church of the Maccabean martyrs was a hybrid, transhistorical site where pilgrims could call different groups of martyrs who died in different times and places for intercession and aid. By creating this place of memory that linked the Maccabean martyrs to the cult of Ursula in the form of inscriptions and reliquary, Mertz made the Maccabees another set of local Cologne saints. Mertz grafted the Maccabean martyrs into the larger narrative of Cologne by creating a hybrid identity for the cloister as both the site of the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions and the resting place of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs. The hybrid identification of the memory encoded in the church of the Maccabean martyrs intersected with the hybridity of the Maccabean martyrs as simultaneously Jewish and Christian. The inscriptions and reliquary found in the church did not mention the Jewish heritage of the Maccabean martyrs at all, yet its fact was inescapable in the typological presentations of their narrative in relationship to Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary. For the purpose of the creation of a local memory of the Maccabean martyrs, their Jewishness was immaterial. If one was not aware that the Maccabean martyrs had lived before Christ, one would have assumed by the language of these inscriptions that they had been martyred as Christians. Mertz’s emphasis on the connections to the Ursula cult reveals that one dimension of the appeal of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne did not lie in their story itself, but in their physical proximity to the sites associated with the martyrdom of Ursula and her companions. In other words, the Maccabean martyrs “passed” as Christian because that was most convenient for Mertz’s publicity campaign on behalf of the cloister. Mertz acted as both an inheritor and a sculptor of memories of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne. Mertz crafted the story of the Maccabean


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martyrs to be intelligible only as a Christian narrative, one in which their relics were brought to Cologne and their cult integrated into a larger civic devotion to Mary and Ursula. By appealing to a strong current of late medieval piety centered on the twin sufferings of Jesus and Mary, Mertz’s presentation of the Maccabean martyrs maximized their appeal for his intended audience—the pilgrims and patrons he needed to sustain the community for which he was responsible. As part of Mertz’s desire to craft a narrative of the Maccabean martyrs that attracted support of the cult, he lessened the Jewish dimensions of their narrative. Notably, Mertz did not treat the Law for which the Maccabean martyrs died. By focusing on the typology of the death of the sons and mothers as it related to devotion to the passion of Christ and the sorrows of Mary, Mertz found a way to heighten the appeal of a seemingly “foreign” group of saints (as Ursula Rautenberg labeled them) to become comprehensible for a Cologne citizenry focused on these forms of piety.128 This relatively obscure set of Jewish martyrs necessitated a presentation of their narrative that was as familiar as possible. For this reason there was little explicit discussion of the Jewish heritage of the Maccabean martyrs. The Maccabean martyrs retained their roles as types for the suffering of Christ, as seen earlier in late antique and medieval sources. But distinct from the anti-Jewish rhetoric in other Christian presentations of the passion of Christ, Mertz obscured the Jewishness of these martyrs. In Mertz’s presentation of these texts he transcended the Jewish origins of these martyrs. They were not like the faithless Jews of the passion narrative, but rather, like Christ and Mary. Significantly, these Jewish martyrs were also not like those Jews expelled from Cologne and other cities along the Rhine in the fifteenth century. Just as Mertz did not portray Jesus and Mary as Jewish figures, so too Mertz did not recognize the Maccabean martyrs as fully Jewish. Both of these Jewish families “passed” as Christian in early sixteenth-century Cologne. The Maccabees as Martyrs for the Law Liturgical materials from Cologne dating from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries attested to alternate forms of local memory of the Maccabean martyrs from that promoted by Helias Mertz. These texts manifested a hybrid remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs by acknowledging their death as Jews for the Law while presenting them as effective Christian intercessors for contemporaries.

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In a Cistercian sanctoral from the 1460s one finds an office for the Maccabean martyrs on their feast day of August 1 that remembered them as both Jewish martyrs and intercessors.129 The interplay between Jewish and Christian identities in the opening prayer of the office revealed the continued tradition of providing language and images that simultaneously affirmed the Jewishness of the Maccabean martyrs and asserted their true Christian identity. The prayer of the office declared, “These are the seven brothers who were handed over in their souls and bodies on account of the ancestral laws and they were tormented with pain under the covenant.” Here the reason for the death of the Maccabean martyrs was made plain. The Maccabean martyrs died on account of their “ancestral laws” and suffered torture for the Mosaic covenant. The language clearly referred to death for the sake of the Law but did not view the Jewish heritage of the martyrs as problematic. Even though they died as Jews for the Law, they were martyrs worthy of veneration. This is clear in a subsequent prayer from the sanctoral addressed to the martyrs and their mother. The prayer praised the family for enduring these torments for the sake of the Law, but envisioned them as now standing before the throne of Christ and receiving crowns of martyrdom from him, an image that clearly situated them as Christian saints. This prayer further praised the martyrs on account of the torments they endured. They were likened to gold refined in a furnace and to a burnt sacrifice found pleasing to God.130 Although the Maccabees were identified as martyrs for the Law of God, they were also identified with Christian images and themes. This prayer reflected many of the dynamics of late antique sermons on the Maccabean martyrs and medieval commentaries on 2 Maccabees 7 in which the hybrid identity of these martyrs was perpetuated so that they suffered death as Jews but were remembered as Christian saints. A vernacular prayer book from Cologne from the second half of the fifteenth century, which probably belonged to the cloister of the Maccabean martyrs, contained a series of prayers to the Maccabean martyrs that provide a significant example of how the Maccabean martyrs were understood as hybrid figures remembered as both Jewish victims of violence and Christian saints131 These prayers began with an invocation praising the love and goodness of the brothers, in contrast to the “senseless rage of King Antiochus.”132 This manuscript favorably contrasted the brothers to their gentile persecutor. Indeed, the brothers “despised Antiochus’ orders and they coveted martyrdom as a hart for the stream of water.”133 The Christian supplicant would identify with the Jewish brothers who confronted the forces of oppression signified by Antiochus. The mother


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also appears as an opponent of these oppressive forces, presented as a woman who during the martyrdom of her sons “learned to despise the joy of her present life.”134 This established the brothers as victors whose belief neither “the word nor the beatings of the sinful king conquered.”135 Antiochus was not only a gentile persecutor but a sinful figure tormenting the brothers so that they might abandon their belief. Christians using this prayer would further identify with these martyrs as paragons of fidelity and right belief. The subsequent prayer made explicit the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs in which they aided Christians in attaining the fullness of Christian life. The prayer reads, “O you holy Maccabees, you who were the first martyrs in strict Judaism who lived a just righteousness, you men of great hope and wonderful patience, obtain for us the grace and favor of God.”136 The present community knew the identity of the Maccabean martyrs as Jews and the reason for their death, as would be expected for members of the cloister of the Maccabees. They were known as martyrs for the sake of the Law, but their identity as Jews did not prevent supplicants from perceiving their righteousness. They exhibited the virtues of hope and patience and could intercede with God on behalf of the supplicant. A following versicle requested, “O you holy Maccabean martyrs of God, pray for us that we may become worthy of the promises of Christ.”137 These Jewish martyrs not only acted as effective intercessors, they explicitly were an aid in obtaining Christ’s promises for Christians. While their Jewish heritage was obvious, the prayer identified the Maccabean martyrs with the whole realm of otherwise Christian saints. As hybrid figures, the Maccabean martyrs were righteous Jews with intercessory powers considered as efficacious as those of other Christian saints, such as the Virgin Mary, the apostles, and the eleven thousand virgins, all of whom the concluding prayers invoked.138 An early printed missal from 1520 from the region around Cologne contained an important office of the Maccabean martyrs that also illustrated their hybrid identity.139 Most significant to this office was the liturgical sequence that contrasted the deeds of the Maccabean martyrs as Jews to other Jews. The sequence began in praise of the martyrs and then acknowledged the cause of their death. “While they gave themselves for the Law, they gloriously obtain / a victorious title. / The threats of the king condemn / keeping the commands of the Law concerning the flesh of swine.”140 These verses explicitly identified the Maccabean martyrs as Jews who not only died for the sake of the Law, but they died for the sake of dietary laws. By emphasizing this, the author drew attention

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precisely to those laws that publicly distinguished Jews from non-Jews. After recounting their martyrdom, the sequence discussed their tortured naked bodies as a further sign of their identity. So deformed and despised / now they are made conformed / to the heavenly image. / And if they are circumcised in the flesh / they did not confide in the flesh with the spirit of the Jews. / On account of their cast aside clothes / they direct their sight to the form of the Law.141

According to the text, the martyrs’ hybrid bodies, although Jewish and circumcised, were transformed into the heavenly image, referring to Christ. Thus their hybrid bodies and their circumcision were taken to be spiritual, as opposed to other Jews, whose circumcision and life were according to the flesh. These brothers thus perceived “the form of the Law,” which the Christian tradition held to be found in the revelation of Christ. This placed the Maccabean martyrs in opposition to the Jew who “does not yet see / but laughs / He does not yet believe / but withdraws / with the synagogue muttering.”142 As hybrid figures, simultaneously Jewish and Christian, the allosemitic view of these martyrs shifted quickly to an anti-Jewish stance regarding other Jews. The Maccabean martyrs were viewed positively as Jews but only in contrast to the vast majority of Torahobservant Jews who did not embrace Christ veiled within the Law. This sequence used ideas about the spiritual significance of the Maccabean martyrs found in earlier late antique and medieval sources to present these martyrs as ideal Jews. As in the writings of Augustine and Bernard of Clairvaux, this sequence depicted the Maccabean martyrs as Jews who were actually Christians before the incarnation of Christ. In contrast, those Jews who did not perceive the true form of the Law as revealed in Jesus Christ, but rather clung to external observance of it, became enemies of the Maccabean martyrs. By not perceiving the spiritual meaning of the Law and the true meaning of what the Maccabean martyrs did, these Jews considered their martyrdom with laughter and disbelief. The Jew remained in the synagogue, while the Maccabean martyrs lived within the church. This liturgical portrayal of the Maccabean martyrs as ideal representatives of Judaism, in contrast with contemporary rabbinic Judaism that continued to observe the letter of the Law, was continuous with patterns of remembrance found in twelfth-century texts on the Maccabean martyrs, such as the works of Rupert of Deutz and the sermons of Peter Comestor.


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The presentation of the Maccabean martyrs in these liturgical texts and prayers shows a use of cultural memories of the Maccabean martyrs in which they became ideal Jews precisely because they were interpreted as spiritually Christian. They died out of obedience to the Law, but this was not obedience motivated by a simple carnal love for the deeds commanded by the Law, but as a result of a perception of the true spiritual nature of the Law revealed in Jesus Christ. These liturgical texts presented a hybrid vision of the Maccabean martyrs inherited from late antique and earlier medieval traditions. These martyrs were presented as ideal Jews in contrast to actual Jews who obeyed the Law given at Sinai. Thus, the Maccabean martyrs who died for the Law prior to Christ were valorized while Jews who clung to the same Law, and even died for it, as the crusade assaults in the Rhineland in 1096 attested, were vilified. These liturgical texts revealed a continued process of ideological colonization of contemporary Jews. Just as Jews had been physically expelled from Cologne in 1424, Rhineland texts from the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries expelled Jews who kept the Law from the company of those in covenant with God. Humanists and the Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs Another body of material concerning the Maccabean martyrs originated from humanists. For humanist authors writing on the Maccabean martyrs, these saints were praiseworthy because of the virtues they displayed. Much as certain late antique bishops praised the Maccabean martyrs to their communities because of the virtues they embodied, so some humanists saw in them exemplary patterns of life, which the citizenry of Cologne could imitate. JOHANNES CINCINNIUS

The humanist Johannes Cincinnius in 1518 wrote about the significance of the Law for the Maccabean martyrs in Divorum Septem Fratrum Macabaeorum Hebraeorum Martyrum & matris eorum Solomonae, agones stupendi, a work included in Mertz’s Chronik. 143 Cincinnius was a Cologne humanist deeply indebted to the ideals exemplified by Erasmus of retrieving and privileging Christian antiquity for the benefit of the contemporary life of church and society.144 That Cincinnius’s work was incorporated by Mertz into his Chronik illustrates how local promoters of cults in Germany in this period frequently turned to humanist authors

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to assist them in publicizing their subjects. Humanists like Cincinnius, in turn, were eager to write on a local cult of saints as part of their own movement’s burgeoning interests in regional history.145 In Divorum Septem Fratrum Cincinnius discussed the history of the Maccabean martyrs and the authenticity of the relics now in Cologne. In the context of this discourse, he, like others before him, compared the Maccabean martyrs to Jesus in their sufferings. For Cincinnius the martyrs were an example of true belief. Their death testified to their obedience to the divine Law, which revealed a love for righteousness and truth. Thus they were forerunners of Christian martyrs who died for the truth of the Gospel and the Christian faith.146 Above all, the example of these Jewish martyrs ought to impel contemporary Christians to lives of virtue. Cincinnius focused on the fact that these Jews died for the Law of God. He followed closely the narratives of 2 Maccabees 7 and 4 Maccabees, observing that these martyrs died “for the Law and cult of God and with zealous righteousness while enduring most painful punishments beyond human strength.”147 With this language, Cincinnius embraced the Jewishness of his subjects. They were righteous and zealous for the defense of both God’s Law and temple worship. That is, what the martyrs died for was legitimate in itself. But Cincinnius also applied the same typology already seen in the work of Mertz. The suffering of the brothers prefigured that of Christ and the witnessing of the mother of the death of the seven sons was a type for the seven sorrows of Mary.148 This typology established the connection necessary to make them objects of veneration for Christians in Cologne. The suffering of the mother and the sons, both emotional and physical, signaled to contemporary believers the connection between the Maccabean martyrs and Jesus. Furthermore, this willingness to suffer was rooted in the hope of the resurrection that Jesus Christ offered.149 The martyrs’ hope, although expressed by Jews, became a Christian reality in the text that contemporary Christians could imitate. Cincinnius did not situate the meaning of the death of the Maccabean martyrs primarily in either their suffering parallel to Jesus’s own or to their devotion to the Law and worship of God. Rather these details indicated the brothers’ interior orientation to God, expressed as a hope for the resurrection of the body and eternal divine fellowship. While the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs was an acknowledged detail of Cincinnius’s work, it was insignificant to his larger goal. For him, the importance of the observance of the Law in this narrative served as a


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departure point for reflections on the meaning of the resurrection and its importance in the life of Christians. DESIDERIUS ERASMUS

Desiderius Erasmus (1466–1536) himself contributed to Mertz’s Chronik in the form of a letter from 1518. This letter accompanied his Latin translation of 4 Maccabees that appeared in the Chronik. Erasmus’s attitude toward the Christian cult of the saints focused on the idea that veneration of the saints was only appropriate if their virtue could be imitated.150 In this letter Erasmus praised the virtue of the Maccabean martyrs and compared it favorably to the virtue of the Three Kings and Ursula and her companions.151 The city of Cologne, he wrote, would be rightly happy with the possession of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs if it would model itself after their virtues.“Undoubtedly, if the piety of the Three Kings would be imitated with religious sincerity, if the pure honor of the 11,000 virgins would be emulated with a temperate life, if the most brave Maccabean youths and the heroic woman unconquered by sinners, would be reproduced with constancy in weakened souls, then indeed this happiness could be distributed and doubled for them in proportion.”152 Erasmus concluded his letter by urging Mertz to continue proclaiming the glory of the Maccabean martyrs and commending their virtues to the citizens of Cologne. The appeal of the martyrs for Erasmus was their role as teachers of virtues, especially those of courage and steadfastness in the face of temptations and oppression. This view of the Maccabean martyrs was a return to their use as examples of virtue in late antique sermons, similar to the stance taken by Cincinnius. Consistent with his humanist perspective, Erasmus did not place particular emphasis in appeals to popular devotion by comparing Salomona to Mary or Ursula or emphasizing Salomona’s ability to intercede on the behalf of women, especially mothers. Rather, Erasmus aided Mertz in his promotion of this cult by favorably comparing the virtue of the Maccabean martyrs to the virtues of Ursula and the Three Kings. Humanist authors on the Maccabean martyrs understood the appeal of these Cologne saints differently from Mertz or existing liturgical sources from the city. The Maccabean martyrs were to be commemorated not for the efficacy of their intercessions or their similarity to other civic cults. Rather, their appeal was rooted in universal ideas related to virtue and right belief. The antiquity of the Maccabean martyrs and the fact that their narrative could be found in Scripture also appealed to a figure like

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Erasmus, who was keen to reform the cult of saints and its accretions of legends. While citizens of Cologne and pilgrims might not expect to endure martyrdom, they could take inspiration from the Maccabean martyrs to increase courage and steadfastness to live moral, upright lives. In this emphasis on these martyrs as moral models and spiritual intercessors, one finds little mention of their Jewish identity. Their Jewishness mattered little in these martyrs, insofar as their background was not a prominent issue in these texts. Rather, the authors of these texts reflected on what the Maccabean martyrs offered to contemporary Christians, not on what Jewish martyrs had to do with Christianity. By mirroring earlier traditions of the Maccabean martyrs from the late antique period that focused on their pastoral utility, Erasmus and Cincinnius too saw the Jewishness of the Maccabean martyrs as an immaterial element of their narrative. The Maccabean martyrs were exemplars to the citizenry of Cologne. The Jewish elements of their narrative were subsumed into the Christian agenda they were made to serve.153 Conclusion The Cologne cult of the Maccabean martyrs, as reflected in the works of Helias Mertz, contemporaneous liturgical texts, and humanist writings, incorporated both the continuation of late antique and medieval conceptions of the Maccabean martyrs and new articulations about them. As the promoter of this revitalized cult, Mertz was an inheritor of Christian traditions about these martyrs as well as an inventor of new narratives about them. Mertz was clearly an inheritor of typological interpretations of the Maccabean martyrs from Cyprian, Chrysostom, Augustine, Rabanus Maurus, the Glossa Ordinaria, Rupert of Deutz, and Bernard of Clairvaux. At the same time, Mertz took this typological motif and invented new dimensions of it. Mertz forged typological connections between Salomona and Mary that fit into contemporary patterns of devotional culture and deepened the appeal of the Maccabean martyrs. Accompanying the reconfiguration of the typological significance of the Maccabean martyrs was the articulation by Mertz and Ortwinus Gratius of a narrative tradition about the founding of the cloister of the Maccabees and the translation of the Maccabean relics in a manner designed to have the maximum appeal to potential patrons and pilgrims. In a similar way, the pastoral tradition of viewing the Maccabean martyrs as models for Christian behavior was reconfigured to show them as equals to the dominant


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Cologne cults of the Three Kings and Ursula in terms of prestige and virtue. These multiple presentations of the Maccabean martyrs in fifteenthand sixteenth-century Cologne indicate the persistent plurality of traditions about the Maccabean martyrs from late antiquity to the early modern period. Similarly, considering the traditions of the mother and seven sons and Rachel of Mainz in the medieval Jewish communities of the Rhineland shows the malleability of Jewish memories of these martyrs. In traditions from both communities, representations of the Maccabean martyrs were caught up in dynamics of colonization and hybridity. Jewish communities during and after the attacks of 1096 experienced colonization both physically and ideologically. Their lives and property were seized physically just as their scriptural traditions and self-identification as Israel were ideologically appropriated by Christians. The construction of Jewish memories about martyred families, whether in the figure of the mother and seven sons or Rachel of Mainz, were exercised in distinction to the Christian narrative of the crucified and risen son of Mary. This was one element of a communal resistance culture in the form of narratives that countered Christian cultural appropriations and violence. In other words, the story of the mother and seven sons was a story of Ashkenazi Jews refusing to pass as Christians and embrace the worship of Jesus the son of Mary in periods of persecution for the sake of fidelity to Torah. Cologne traditions of the Maccabean martyrs featured the shaping of traditions about them for the purpose of promoting their cult in a city that already had powerfully established saintly patrons in the figures of Ursula and the Three Kings. In Cologne, the Maccabean martyrs passed as Christians, just as the originally Jewish Jesus Christ and the Virgin Mary did. While Ashkenazi Jewish communities molded memories of the mother and seven sons to resist Christian culture and violence, Christians in fifteenth- and sixteenth-century Cologne shaped these memories largely for the sake of institutional advancement of the church and cloister of the Maccabean martyrs. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs was a thread in the cultural and devotional patterns of both Christian and Jewish communities of the Rhineland. The shifting and specific cultural dynamics of these communities determined the patterns and forms of narratives and memories of the Maccabean martyrs.


CONCLUSION

Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs and Remembering History Ethically Late Antique and Medieval Memories of the Maccabean Martyrs This book has examined late antique and medieval traditions of the Maccabean martyrs, covering in detail traditions ranging from the fourth to sixteenth centuries and moving from the writings of authors located in the eastern Mediterranean and Asia Minor to North Africa to northwestern Europe. The memories of the Maccabean martyrs preserved in these traditions were malleable products shaped by the needs and issues facing religious leaders and their communities within specific contexts. While a core narrative derived from 2 Maccabees 7 remained foundational for Christian traditions concerning these martyrs, their memory was perpetuated for different purposes over time. Christian authors contended with the fact that these martyrs were appropriated from Judaism and bore witness to an undying devotion to the Mosaic Law, which Christianity taught had been superseded with the coming of Christ. In the afterlife of the appropriation of this Jewish narrative, Christians sought to explain why the memory of these martyrs retained significance within their own cultural context. As I have defined it, these memories were both allosemitic and deeply hybridized. These memories were allosemitic in the sense that their purpose was not aimed primarily at either positively or negatively portraying Jews. Rather, these Jews were objects employed in the course of assertions of Christian concerns and historical remembrances. These memories were hybrid in that the Maccabean martyrs became

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simultaneously Jewish and Christian figures. They were a synecdoche for the hybrid origins of Christianity itself. Late antique and medieval traditions of the Maccabean martyrs supported imperial ambitions of Christendom but also revealed the hybrid nature of Christianity. In the fourth and fifth centuries, Christian bishops, such as John Chrysostom, Ambrose of Milan, and Augustine of Hippo, used the martyrs’ insistence on dying for the Law to establish differentiation between their Christian communities and other communities, whether Jewish, non-orthodox Christian, or pagan. Primarily within sermons these bishops interpreted the death of the Maccabees as a death not for the Law but for Christ the Lawgiver. Though dying as Jews for the Law, the Maccabean martyrs died as true Jews, ones who perceived the truth of Christ before Christ. The very identity of the Maccabean martyrs as Jewish was deeply problematic to these bishops. To assert the superiority of Catholic Christendom meant asserting its original purity. To embrace the Jewish identity of the Maccabean martyrs would be to undermine claims to the original purity of the Christian faith and reveal the hybrid nature of Christianity. To obscure this hybridity, the Maccabean martyrs were not memorialized as martyrs for the Jewish Law but for Christ the Lawgiver. Nonetheless, the ambiguity of their identity required a constant attention to the reason for their martyrdom lest their true Jewish nature result in a slippage of Christian claims to the title of Israel. This presentation of the Maccabean martyrs typified an overarching program among episcopal champions of Catholic Christianity who sought to mold the church to the emerging Christian empire of late antiquity. Rivals who threatened the rise of imperial Christianity (whether Arian, Donatist, Jewish, or pagan) were marginalized. Sermons on the Maccabean martyrs were vehicles to persuade Christian audiences to resist pagan (in the case of Gregory Nazianzus), Jewish (in the case of Chrysostom and Augustine), Arian (in the case of Ambrose), or Donatist (in the case of Augustine) opponents. The Maccabean martyrs, who died resisting Seleucid political ambitions, were resurrected in late antique Christian discourses for the support of a new form of empire. In medieval authors such as Rabanus Maurus and Rupert of Deutz the late antique tradition of interpreting the Maccabean martyrs as martyrs not for the Law but for Christ the Lawgiver continued. Addressing new political, cultural, and theological contexts, Rabanus and Rupert repressed the memory of the Maccabees simply as Jewish martyrs for the Law. Rabanus Maurus used the Maccabean martyrs allosemitically in support

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of King Louis the German and his efforts to maintain the Carolingian Empire. Rabanus’s positive treatment of the story of these Jewish martyrs belied the continued Christian ideological colonization of Jewish texts and figures for the sake of imperial aspirations. To Rupert of Deutz, the Maccabean martyrs represented one half of the double vision of Jews he introduced into his reformist rhetoric and critique aimed at the German Empire and other opponents of papal and monastic reform. Jews and Christians were both potentially authentic and inauthentic in Rupert’s understanding; the Maccabean martyrs could be true Christians just as wayward Christians could be labeled Jewish. Rupert’s doubled vision of Judaism and Christianity as revealed in this treatment of the Maccabean martyrs reveals the hybrid dimensions of each group in his work. A vision of the people of God identified with the entity of the church from the beginning of time was necessary for the writings of both Rabanus, in his support of Frankish dynasties, and Rupert, in his critique of the German Empire and opponents of reform. Medieval thinkers like Anselm of Laon, John Beleth, and Bernard of Clairvaux explained the significance of remembering the Maccabean martyrs in modes different from late antique writers. For these twelfthcentury writers, the Maccabean martyrs were hybrid figures representing the ideal Jew who spiritually was Christian. Peter Comestor contributed a biblical commentary on 2 Maccabees 7 that moved away from a simply spiritual interpretation of the significance of the death of the Maccabean martyrs. He held an allosemitic view of the Maccabean martyrs as righteously suffering for the sake of fidelity to God. Nonetheless, these martyrs represented an ideal form of Jewish observance of the Law, one in which death for the Law was congruent with the recognition of Jesus Christ. Comestor perpetuated negative interpretations of Jewish leadership and practices from the time of Jesus’s life through to Comestor’s own era, while positively evaluating the Maccabean martyrs as righteous exemplars. The remembrance of the Maccabean martyrs in medieval liturgical and biblical writings dealt less with the enforcement of Christian unity against internal or external enemies and more with the preservation of this memory of these martyrs as it had been received into practices of commemoration. The Maccabean martyrs were absorbed as hybrid figures into a Christian historical narrative in which the achievements of the biblical Israel were continuous with the contemporary life of the church. Covering over the hybrid origins of Christianity that these martyrs could potentially reveal was not a concern for these medieval writers, unlike the

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late antique bishops examined here. Rather, there existed in the worldview of these scholars a totalizing view of history in which the righteous members of Israel, such as the Maccabean martyrs, were part of the same fellowship as righteous Christians. But there was no space in this narrative for contemporary Jews who, refusing to recognize Jesus Christ as their Messiah, continued their fidelity to the very Law for which the Maccabean martyrs died. Even allosemitic remembrances of the Maccabean martyrs in medieval sources perpetuated Christian ideological colonization of Jewish narratives and figures. Medieval Jewish traditions from the Rhineland concerning the Maccabean martyrs, commonly known as the story of the mother and seven sons in Jewish literature, were a stark contrast to these Christian traditions. While Christian literature studiously distinguished between the virtuous death of these martyrs and their obedience to the Mosaic Law, Jewish traditions emphasized fidelity to the covenant of God as the central ideal to emulate in their martyrdom. The story of the mother and seven sons did not represent the establishment of a future spiritual reality, as in the Christian literature that identified the death of the Maccabean martyrs as an anticipation of Christ. Rather, the mother and seven sons modeled how to die well when fidelity to the Law was threatened. These Jewish texts were composed in the wake of the Rhineland massacres associated with the First Crusade and its ambitions to purify Christendom and reestablish Jerusalem as a Christian city. Rhineland Jewish communities experienced forms of ideological colonization in that they were forced to contend with anti-Jewish, supersessionist rhetoric and imagery as part of their cultural milieu. These supersessionist discourses, reinforced by crusading ideology, asserted that the texts and historical narratives foundational to medieval Ashkenazi Jews did not belong to them but to the Christians in whose land they were permitted to dwell. Forced to accommodate to a Christian culture that relentlessly appropriated their cultural inheritance, Jewish authors of crusade chronicles, liturgical poetry, midrash, and legal rulings responded with counternarratives of resistance to Christian ideological and physical repression. The story of Mistress Rachel and the slaughter of her children especially represented a strategy emanating from a resistance culture to undermine Christian claims to Jewish stories by appropriating Christian narratives and reshaping them for Jewish purposes. Jewish traditions of the mother and seven sons indicated a desire to resist Christian denigration of Jewish fidelity to the Law. The Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs located in Cologne represented yet another iteration of the memory of these martyrs in the


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Rhineland. Dying for the Jewish Law played a far smaller role in this context. The antiquity and nobility of the righteous death of the Maccabean martyrs stood at the forefront of Helias Mertz’s promotion of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs. It was because of their antiquity and scriptural heritage that Mertz promoted them as rivals to the established cults of Ursula and the Three Kings in Cologne. Parallel to Mertz’s efforts, other liturgical texts imagined the Maccabean martyrs as hybrid figures who were righteous martyrs for the Law and effective Christian intercessors. At the same time, these qualities allowed the Maccabean martyrs to be ideal models for a humanist understanding of a reformed cult of the saints. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs in the Cologne cult, especially as manifested in Mertz’s efforts, involved an erasure of their allegiance to the Law, which allowed them to pass as Christians in a city in which actual Jews had been expelled. This repression of memory represented another form of allosemitism in which a Jewish narrative was reworked to fit Christian needs at the very moment the antiquity of this same narrative was a draw for the promotion of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs. The Malleability of Memory in Supersessionist Thought The historian studying Christian traditions about the Maccabean martyrs is confronted by the role of supersessionism in the creation of remembrances of the past. The memory of the Maccabean martyrs was constructed differently according to context, depending, for example, on whether it was Ambrose of Milan facing Arian imperial opponents or Helias Mertz striving to create a revived cult in Cologne. For many of the authors examined in this work, the fact that the Maccabean martyrs died for the Jewish Law required a great deal of explanation to make these martyrs fit the authors’ larger supersessionist framework. For other authors, this fact was passed over with little commentary or explanation. A stable narrative of the Maccabean martyrs functioned at the core of these traditions, one that basically hewed to the story as recorded in 2 Maccabees 7. But the importance of these martyrs and the reasons for commemorating them was interpreted through a supersessionist lens that changed focus depending on social contexts, theological presuppositions, and genre. For the historian, the malleability of Christian remembrances of the Maccabean martyrs and the supersessionist interpretations of their death for the Mosaic Law points to the role of the fluidity of cultural memories in the creation of identity-forming narratives. As Judith Lieu has argued,

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the use of stories of the past that are integral to the creation of early Christian identity frequently had an open-ended and unstable character to them as they were formed to fit changing communal needs.1 This evolution of memories was part of what Elizabeth Castelli identifies as a strategy of creating a “useable past.”2 John Chrysostom used the Maccabean martyrs to create a useable past in which Jewish stories bolstered his claim that his brand of orthodox Christianity was the heir to the title of Israel. His writings further undermined the appeal that the contemporary Jewish community might have held for the Catholic Christian citizens of Antioch. For Rabanus Maurus the useable past the Maccabean martyrs provided was an example of righteous fidelity to the laws of God by the descendants of a tribe elected by God, which his Frankish royal patrons could emulate and identify with as part of their own religious and ethnic self-understanding. The revival of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs in Cologne by Helias Mertz spoke to efforts to use ancient and venerable scriptural narratives as a positive foil to create a revival of devotion to these martyrs in his city for the benefit of a female Benedictine cloister dedicated to these Jewish martyrs. The reconstruction of memory is not a neutral or necessarily benign process. The very malleability of cultural memories can mean their manipulation for ideological and political purposes that have ramifications both within and beyond their immediate context. The Christian use of memories rooted in its Jewish prehistory, as is the case with the Maccabean martyrs, is a case in point. Although individual writers were not immediately concerned with the Jewish elements of this narrative or retold this narrative in a consciously anti-Jewish manner, nonetheless there was an allosemitic dimension to the Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs in late antiquity and the middle ages. Christian representations of the Maccabean martyrs were allosemitic in that the Maccabean martyrs were ambivalent figures who required interpretation in order to fit into a preexisting Christian worldview. Sometimes an allosemitic interpretation became explicitly anti-Jewish, as with John Chrysostom or Rupert of Deutz; at other times anti-Judaism was absent, as with the commentary of Peter Comestor or the works of Helias Mertz. But all these writers assumed a supersessionist worldview in which Christianity had replaced Judaism as the vehicle through which God’s providential will for the world was fulfilled. The ambivalence to which the Maccabean martyrs were subjected was a result of a deeper disposition to question the relevance of Jewish fidelity to the Mosaic Law for Christian life.


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This allosemitic treatment stemming from a supersessionist reluctance to positively evaluate explicitly Jewish elements of Christian cultural memory is an indication of the ambiguous hybrid origins of Christianity itself. As part of the effort of constructing, and then maintaining, an imperial Christendom (whether politically or ideologically) in the late antique and medieval periods, the Jewish origins of Christianity were obscured. That we can identity Christianity as a hybrid is not in itself remarkable; all cultures, as a result of the interplay of peoples throughout time, are hybrids; there is no pure form of a particular culture.3 But late antique and medieval Christian culture did not embrace the hybrid origins of Christianity by highlighting the mixed and contingent forms of its tradition as a synthesis of Jewish, Hellenistic, and locally inculturated elements. Rather, the late antique and medieval authors considered in this book claimed that Christianity was the pure continuation of the faithful people of Israel; it was the Jews who continued to cling to the Law or were led astray by idolatry and sin, who revealed a heritage that was impure and contingent. The Ethics of Remembrance As a twenty-first-century historian exposing the use of supersessionist rhetoric by Christian writers to rewrite the hybrid origins of their religious culture, I am confronted by the question of how to ethically remember and represent the past. This dilemma illustrates Walter Benjamin’s observations on the problem of remembrance in the preservation of twentiethcentury European culture. He wrote in his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” that “There is no document of civilization which is not at the same time a document of barbarism. And just as such a document is not free of barbarism, barbarism taints also the manner in which it was transmitted from one owner to another.”4 The supersessionist thought of Christianity and the concomitant repression and marginalization of Jews (and others) in Christian cultures is a manifestation of Benjamin’s barbarism that belies the civilizing impulse of universal love at the core of Christian life and belief. The perverse logic of supersessionism in which Jewish memory was appropriated and Jewish self-understandings (such as fidelity to Torah) attacked by Christians reveals the barbaric dimensions of this historically common form of Christian discourse. The refusal to recognize the ambiguity lying between Christian and Jewish recollections of a common past led to a form of thought that required the diminishment of Judaism. This move, which following Benjamin one can label as

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barbaric, shows that Christian claims to possess a pure form of religious belief and practice over and against Jewish forms itself renders such claims ambiguous. Christian traditions concerning the Maccabean martyrs found, for example, in the works of Augustine, Rupert of Deutz, and the Historia scholastica, presented a vision of Christianity as a closed system that inaugurated the climax of history with the incarnation of Jesus Christ. Such an understanding of history and supersessionist thought mutually informed one another. In order for Christianity to provide a document for civilization that was not also a document of barbarism, it would have had to understand itself as representing an open and unfinished process of God’s redemption of the world, including Jews and Gentiles alike as they have each received God’s revelation. The historian of Christianity who documents perceptions of and relations toward Jews is challenged not just by the ethical implications of fourth-century polemics or fourteenth-century expulsions. More recent history, especially the Holocaust, casts a shadow over these studies. Indeed, Benjamin, a German Jew, composed his “Theses on the Philosophy of History” while fleeing the Nazi regime. Certainly the events of the Holocaust laid bare the barbarism lying beneath the supersessionist moorings of European Christian civilization. Indeed, the destruction of European Jewry by baptized Christians employed in death camps and military units was a decisive factor in the emergence of the study of the history of Jewish-Christian relations in the twentieth century.5 The development of scholarship on cultural and social memory and forms of commemoration also was influenced by the events of the Holocaust and the efforts to remember it.6 The development of these fields of scholarly inquiry suggests that the historian’s own act of remembering the past has ethical implications. In the process of ethical remembrance, what obligations does the historian of Jewish-Christian relations have for offering inducements for contemporary Christians to remember their past in modes that allow for a positive articulation of Christian identity while avoiding negative constructions of others? This question threatens to sunder the cherished ideal of objectivity in historical investigations. But while there traditionally has been a notion of objectivity in the discipline of history, the rise of memory studies and the postmodern turn has made the question of ethics in the narration of history more pronounced.7 Edith Wyschogrod uses the term “heterological historian” to describe the historian who is “bound by a responsibility toward the dead for whom she claims to speak.”8 The heterological historian “is driven by the urgency of a promise to the dead


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to tell the truth about them, a promise that is prior to her account of the facts.”9 Yet in claiming to remember the silenced voice of others, one runs the risk of not truly giving voice to them, but only daring to speak in their name.10 This is the dilemma Michel de Certeau identified in the task of writing history. While the discipline is an effort to come to terms with the other, the writing of history involves an erasure of the other.11 How then can the past of others be remembered ethically? How can the historian of Jewish-Christian relations propose a model for responsibly speaking about the past under his or her purview? The dynamic relationship among supersessionism, martyrdom, and group difference as found in late antique and medieval traditions about the Maccabean martyrs not only reveals the realities of a previous age but also sounds a cautionary note about historical remembrance for the construction of corporate identities for our own age. The historian of Jewish-Christian relations must be aware, at the minimum, of the use of language by Christians to rhetorically marginalize Jews. Traditions of the Maccabean Martyrs and the Differend The late twentieth-century French philosopher Jean-François Lyotard’s concept of the differend provides a means to understand the power of supersessionist language as found in the Christian tradition and the ethical implications of such language. Lyotard’s The Differend is a response to the demand by French Holocaust denier Robert Faurisson for the production of specific forms of evidence by eyewitnesses to verify the events of the Holocaust. Faurisson insisted on the presentation of the testimony of Jews who actually saw the operation of the gas chambers at Auschwitz. In response, Lyotard contends that requiring such evidence is a logical double bind since the only Jews who could present such firsthand evidence perished in those same gas chambers; the silent dead cannot give witness to the truth. Faurisson’s gambit pressed for proof that could not be given in order to undermine the historicity of the Holocaust.12 Using the language of legal proceedings, Lyotard argues that the Jews who died in the Holocaust were like plaintiffs who had lost the means to provide evidence for the wrong they had suffered. This made them victims at the hands of the defendant, the Holocaust deniers like Faurisson. Lyotard defines this situation as a differend, explaining that a “case of differend between two parties takes place when the ‘regulation’ of the conflict that opposes them is done in the idiom of one of the parties while

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the wrong suffered by the other is not signified in that idiom.”13 The differend is a type of phrase regime, that is, a way of constructing language that in this case is an “unstable state and instant of language wherein something which must be able to be put into phrases cannot yet be. This state includes silence, which is a negative phrase, but it also calls upon phrases which are in principle possible.”14 The linguistic deployment of the differend silences those marginalized while empowering those in the wrong. Lyotard’s critique of Holocaust denial in his articulation of the concept of the differend also applies to assessing the historical operations of supersessionist thought. Supersessionism is a type of phrase regime that, like Holocaust denial, puts its Jewish subjects into a double bind. The logic of Christian supersessionism requires that only one group of people can be the heirs of God’s promises to Israel recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures. Supersessionism declares that the true people of Israel are not Jews, despite their physical descent, but rather Christians, who by belief in Jesus Christ become the spiritual heirs of Abraham. In a manner of speaking, physical Jews are not authentic Jews; Christians are. John Chrysostom, Augustine of Hippo, Rupert of Deutz, and Bernard of Clairvaux all employed this supersessionist phrase regime in their arguments for why the Maccabean martyrs were significant figures in Christian historical remembrance and ought to be commemorated. This appropriation of Jewish history, made to apply only to Christians, creates a differend because Jews cannot argue against the logic of supersessionism. The authors of supersessionist theology impose heterogeneity between Jewish and Christian interpretations of biblical narratives. Christian discourses about the Jewish people and their history as recorded in the Hebrew Scriptures, when composed for Christian purposes, impose a cognitive genre (or way of understanding language) that distorts the meaning of the text as understood in Jewish contexts.15 Supersessionist thought requires the acceptance of the principal truth that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah of Israel and that Jewish rejection of Jesus led to the transfer of blessings to the Gentiles. Since Jews who object cannot accept this principle, they are effectively silenced. We saw an example of this in Chapter 2 in Augustine’s sermon on the Maccabean martyrs when he conjured for his audience an imaginary Jew objecting to Augustine’s appropriation of the Maccabean martyrs for the Christian community of Hippo. Augustine responded by arguing for Jewish blindness to the truth of Scripture, which only Christians, illumined by Christ, perceived. The differend, the disallowance of Jewish terms into Augustine’s discourse, silenced his rhetorical opponent.


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Many contemporary Christians are unable to identify supersessionist thought laced throughout hymns, liturgical prayers, and sermons. Often supersessionism is not recognized, or when it is, the fact that prominent Christian figures have penned the hymn, composed the prayer, or laid the exegetical foundations for the sermon forestalls any systemic critique or reform. For example, the popular hymn sung during the Advent liturgical season in churches “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” perpetuates supersessionist theology by its imagery of a “captive Israel that mourns in lonely exile here until the Son of God appear.” In this hymn, Israel (or the Jewish people) practices a moribund religion awaiting release, while Christians possess knowledge of the Savior who redeems humanity.16 In other words, differends are regularly created in contemporary Christian life and worship, often in unintentional or unreflective ways. One means of creating awareness of such phrase regimes is the introduction of historical perspectives that would allow a fuller critique of overt and latent supersessionist manifestations in contemporary Christian life and practice.17 The historian of Jewish-Christian relations might feel uneasy about entering into sectarian ecclesiastical discourses as part of the public role of the historian. But Lyotard argues that the fact of the Holocaust requires historians to be critically reflective about the responsibility of their discipline. To him, historians must examine how history as a discipline contributes to the creation of a differend. Holocaust deniers, he explains, require that concrete facts be presented to prove the Holocaust because the discipline of history requires this; secondhand testimony, however heart rending, is not sufficient. But, Lyotard argues, the Nazi regime went to great lengths to destroy historical evidence; only the traces of testimony survive. This means that “the historian must break with the monopoly over history granted to the cognitive regimen of phrases, and he or she must venture forth by lending his or her ear to what is not presentable under the rules of knowledge. Every reality entails this exigency insofar as it entails possible unknown senses. Auschwitz is the most real of realities in this respect.”18 The historian, under the ethical burden of history to interpret events, must abandon concerns with the pursuit of documentary objectivity and instead confront what Benjamin has described as the barbarism that interlaces civilization. The efforts of the philosophers of history in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and their aspiration for a rational explanation for all historical events falter with the Holocaust. “The names which are those of ‘our history’ oppose counter-examples to their claim. –Everything real is rational, everything rational is real: ‘Auschwitz’ refutes speculative doctrine. This crime at least, which is real,

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is not rational . . . The passages promised by the great doctrinal syntheses end in bloody impasses. Whence the sorrow of the spectators in this end of the twentieth century.”19 For the historian of Jewish-Christian relations Lyotard’s conclusions means not only confronting the facts of the Holocaust but also the fact that historical supersessionist discourses created differends in their own context. The historian willing to confront the differends created by supersessionist discourses can engage in two separate responses. First, one can choose to reveal the supersessionist dynamics at work in a historical text. By identifying the superimposition of a cognitive genre that creates a differend between a supersessionist theologian, his audience, and Jews, the historian indicates the operation of a phrase regime that silences Jews and does not allow for the presentation of Jewish counterclaims and evidence. The ethical intervention of the historian in the differend created by supersessionist texts creates a space for the presentation of other perspectives that interrupts the logic of supersessionism. A historian who chooses to address contemporary Christian contexts and constituencies may go even further as a second response. A Christian community, by its own self-understanding, places the “precept of love” derived from both the Hebrew Scriptures and the New Testament at the heart of its teaching and life.20 The historian can use this Christian gospel of universal love to illustrate the problem of the two double binds of supersessionism. The first, already described, is the double bind in which supersessionist thinkers place Jews. Jews are placed into a differend because they cannot refute supersessionism on its own terms since it requires belief in Jesus Christ as the Messiah before its arguments can be engaged. The Christian historian can use this first double bind to reveal the second one. Christianity claims a gospel of universal love but rejects this principle when employing supersessionist discourses. Supersessionism essentially teaches that God’s love for the Jewish people has been withheld or removed due to unbelief regarding Jesus Christ. Yet this concept contradicts the ideal of universal love. The historian can show how this contradiction has been expressed in the history of Christianity in order to effect a change in thought and speech in contemporary Christianity. This undoing of the double bind of supersessionism represents the historian’s ethical response to the creation of differends. The ethical concern expressed here is not simply to avoid supersessionism. Christianity shares a heritage with Judaism. There is a shared body of sacred texts and a common narrative to both traditions. The question then arises about not simply how to avoid supersessionism, but


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how Christianity can speak about its biblical past in a way that does not marginalize or denigrate Judaism ancient and modern. At the same time, Christianity is a distinct tradition from Judaism, and these differences ought not to be trivialized or relativized. Christianity is different from Judaism (and other religions) and to claim otherwise is to create another differend and totalizing narrative for Christian benefit. A critique of memory studies is that rarely are explanations made concerning how actual people receive and learn cultural memories.21 This is true for the past as well as the present. While this book has examined how sermons, letters, biblical commentaries, liturgical texts, and material objects have represented Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs, it is impossible to say exactly how contemporaries received and understood these materials. The historian of Jewish-Christian relations can at least propose ways of analyzing contemporary issues that illustrate responsible ways of interpreting narratives shared by both Jews and Christians. Although there is no way of knowing how contemporaries (perhaps outside of a limited range of scholars) will evaluate his or her own work, there can at least be a record of the historian’s intentions. The Ethics of Reading Supersessionism To ethically read Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs enables one to return again to the ethics of remembrance, especially as it relates to martyrdom. When late antique and medieval Christians remembered the Maccabean martyrs, they placed them in a supersessionist filter that reinforced the marginalization of contemporary Jews. Moreover, supersessionism propagated violence, both ideological and physical. This was not only a violence to which those in power subjected the powerless. Those without power, such as the Jews of the Rhineland in 1096, mimicked and replicated this violence with devastating results. The ethics of remembering these martyrs is bound up with the ethical problems of supersessionism, colonialism, and the cycles of violence it generated. In other words, the question of ethically remembering Christian traditions of the Maccabean martyrs intersects with the question of how the historian ought to confront the ethical burden of patterns of Christian violence against Jews over the ages that culminated in the Holocaust. This book has used postcolonialism and memory studies to reveal the contested nature of narratives about the Maccabean martyrs. A postcolonial analysis of supersessionism enables a deeper appreciation of the multiple forms in which imperialism and colonialism can occur. By looking

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at Christian memories of the Maccabean martyrs, this book has situated supersessionist thought as a colonial and imperial project that created an image of the Jew as Other, a “virtual Jew” in the words of Sylvia Tomasch, at the expense of the lived experience of actual Jews. A historian who chooses to read these memories heterologically opens up not only the silences in past supersessionist discourses but also makes the historian personally open to the competing meanings of memories in contemporary context. Writing about supersessionism from a postcolonial perspective enables others to see the pernicious possibility of this ideology even in contemporary contexts, so that it can be avoided in the present and the future. To write against supersessionist manipulations of memories is to write against the manipulations of others.

Notes Introduction 1. A number of articles have been written about the Christian cult of the Maccabean martyrs, but this is the first book-length treatment of this cult. For earlier works, see especially Jean Dunabin, “The Maccabees as Exemplars in the Tenth and Eleventh Centuries” in The Bible in the Medieval World. Essays in Honor of Beryl Smalley, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 31–41; Gerard Rouwhorst, “The Cult of the Seven Maccabean Brothers and Their Mother in Christian Tradition” in Saints and Role Models in Judaism and Christianity, ed. Marcel Poorthuis and Joshua Schwartz (Leiden: Brill, 2004), 183–204; Margaret Schatkin, “The Maccabean Martyrs,” Vigilae Christianae 28 (1974): 97–113. The only other published book specifically on an aspect of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs focuses exclusively on the works of Gregory of Nazianzus and John Chrysostom. See Raphaëlle Ziadé, Les martyrs Maccabées: de l’histoire de juive au culte chrétie. Les homélies de Grégoire de Nazianze et de Jean Chrysostom (Leiden: Brill, 2007). My work differs from Ziadé in both scope and methodology. 2. Although early Jewish communities had traditions recorded in rabbinic midrash about the Maccabean martyrs, known in that context as the mother and seven sons, there is not evidence of regular commemoration of them parallel to activities in early Christian communities. 3. On the Maccabean martyrs in Jewish and Christian Syriac traditions, see Witold Witakowski, “Mart(Y) Shmuni, The Mother of the Maccabean Martyrs, in Syriac Tradition,” Orientalia christiana analecta, 247 (1994): 153–68; Sigrid Peterson, “Martha Shamoni: A Jewish Syriac Rhymed Liturgical Poem of the Maccabean Martyrdoms (6 Maccabees)” (Ph.D. diss., University of Pennsylvania, 2006). 4. In eastern Christianity other Old Testament figures, like Abraham and Moses, received feast days and were venerated as saints. The Maccabean martyrs were the only Jewish figures to receive such devotion in Latin Christianity. See Marcel Simon, “Les saints d’Israël dans la dévotion de l’église ancienne,” Revue D’Histoire et de Philosophe Religieuses 34 (1954): 98–127. The devotion to Abraham and David in the millenialist circles of Joachim of Fiore is a significant exception that proves the rule. See Robert E. Lerner, The Feast of Saint Abraham: Medieval Millenarians and the Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2001). 5. It should be noted that I make a distinction between the use of the word “Torah” and “Law” in this study. In my analysis, “Torah” refers to Jewish reception and observance of God’s revelation at Sinai and the traditions and practices emanating

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from that event. “Law” refers to a Christian conception of the contents of the Pentateuch that is contrasted negatively with the Gospel as revealed by Jesus Christ. The differing understandings between Jewish and Christian texts on what the Maccabean martyrs were obedient to (Torah or Law) is a crucial element in discerning the differing meanings of this martyrdom in these communities. Jan Willem van Henten also draws this connection but uses differing terminology. See Jan Willem van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs as Saviours of the Jewish People: A Study of 2 and 4 Maccabees (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 134–35. 6. Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Meaning: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 5. 7. Maurice Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, edited, translated, and with an introduction by Lewis A. Coser (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1992), 119. 8. Halbwachs, On Collective Memory, 182–83. 9. Ibid., 86. 10. Susan A. Crane, “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory,” American Historical Review 102 (1997), 1377. Italics in original. 11. On this concept see also Jeffrey K. Olick and Joyce Robbins, “Social Memory Studies: From ‘Collective Memory’ to the Historical Sociology of Mnemonic Practices,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (1998), 128. 12. Alon Confino, “Collective Memory and Cultural History: Problems of Method,” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1392–96. 13. Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), see especially 62–97. 14. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 135. 15. Fernando F. Segovia, Decolonizing Biblical Studies: A View from the Margins (Maryknoll, NY: Orbis, 2000), 125. 16. Segovia, Decolonizing Biblical Studies, 126. Daniel Boyarin has employed postcolonialism most recently in his investigation of heresiology and the formation of the boundaries between Judaism and Christianity, while Andrew Jacobs has applied postcolonial theory to fourth-century Christianity, especially in relation to sites in the Holy Land. See Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Andrew S. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2004); and idem, “The Lion and the Lamb: Reconsidering Jewish-Christian Relations in Antiquity” in The Ways That Never Parted: Jews and Christian in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages, ed. Adam H. Becker and Annette Yoshiko Reed (Minneapolis: Fortress, 2007), 95–118. Although R. S. Sugirtharajah locates postcolonial biblical criticism primarily as an examination of how colonial discourses have shaped biblical interpretation in the modern period, this particular hermeneutic does not preclude (in my opinion) the deployment of insights from postcolonial theory to the study of premodern history. See R. S. Sugirtharajah, Postcolonial Criticism and Biblical Interpretation (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002), 25; idem, The Bible and Empire: Postcolonial Explorations (Cambridge: Cambridge

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University Press, 2005), 2. Two recent volumes in historical theology have located the entirety of Christian history within the framework of postcolonial and counterimperial analysis: Kwok Pui-lan, Don Compier, and Joerg Rieger, ed., Empire and the Christian Tradition (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007); Joerg Rieger, Christ and Empire: From Paul to Postcolonial Times (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 2007). 17. Especially important for framing my thinking have been works such as Edward Said, Orientalism (New York: Vintage, 1979); idem, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1994); Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994; reprint, London: Routledge Classics, 2006); and Ania Loomba, Colonialism/Postcolonialism, 2nd ed. (London: Routledge, 2005). 18. See John Dagenais and Margaret R. Greer, “Decolonizing the Middle Ages: Introduction,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 431–48; Catherine Brown, “In the Middle,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 547–74; Jeffrey Jerome Cohen, ed., The Postcolonial Middle Ages (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000); Ananya Jahanara Kabir and Deanna Williams, ed., Postcolonial Approaches to the European Middle Ages: Translating Cultures (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005). I was unable to consult Deborah Goodwin’s postcolonial analysis of Herbert of Bosham’s Christian Hebraism before this book went to print. See Deborah Goodwin, Take Holdof the Robe of a Jew: Herbert of Bosham’s Christian Hebraism (Leiden: Brill, 2006); “‘Nothing in Our Histories’: A Post-Colonial Perspective on TwelfthCentury Christian Hebraism,” Medieval Encounters 15 (2009): 35–65. For an example of the use of postcolonial methodological questions in the analysis of medieval Christian-Muslim relations, see John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), especially 280–83. 19. Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1991), 9–10, 24. Cameron notes that her own study of Christian engagement with Greek traditions must be supplemented by a parallel account of Christian engagement with the Jewish culture of the Diaspora. 20. Gabrielle M. Spiegel, “Épater les médiévistes,” History and Theory 39, no. 2 (2000): 246. 21. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 159. 22. Andrew Jacobs makes a similar argument in Remains of the Jews and “The Lion and the Lamb.” 23. On this see Lieu, Christian Identity, and Boyarin, Border Lines. 24. Some of the major works dealing with this issue are Bernhard Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental, 430–1096 (Paris: Mouton, 1960); idem, Les auteurs Chrétiens latins du moyen âge sur les Juifes et le Judaisme (Paris: Mouton, 1963); John Gager, The Origins of Anti-Semitism: Attitudes toward Judaism in Pagan and Christian Antiquity (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1983); Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the

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Roman Empire (135–425), trans. H. McKeating (New York: Littman Library, 1986); R. I. Moore, The Formation of a Persecuting Society: Power and Deviance in Western Europe, 950–1250 (Oxford: Blackwell, 1987); Robert Chazan, Daggers of Faith: Thirteenth-Century Christian Missionizing and the Jewish Response (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1989); idem, Medieval Stereotypes and Modern Antisemitism (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1997); Gilbert Dahan, Les Intellectuels Chrétiens et les Juifs au moyen âge (Paris: Editions du Cerf, 1990); Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1995); Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jews in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). 25. Anne McClintock, “The Angels of Progress: Pitfalls of the Term ‘Post-Colonialism,’” Social Text 31/32 (1992): 88, cited in Sylvia Tomasch, “Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew” in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeremy Jeffrey Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 250. 26. A study that illustrates this, though not framed in explicitly colonial terminology, is Ivan Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996). 27. Kathleen Biddick, “The ABC of Ptolemy: Mapping the World with the Alphabet,” in Text and Territory: Geographical Imagination in the European Middle Ages, ed. Sylvia Tomasch and Seally Giles (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1998), 268–93. 28. Tomasch, “Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew,” 253. 29. Ibid., 254. Tomasch’s virtual Jew can be fruitfully compared to Jeremy Cohen’s notion of the hermeneutical Jew operating within the Augustinian doctrine of Jewish witness. See Cohen, Living Letters of the Law. 30. Tomasch, “Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew,” 250; Zygmunt Bauman, “Allosemitism: Premodern, Modern, Postmodern,” in Modernity, Culture, and “the Jew,” ed. Bryan Cheyette and Laura Marcus (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1998), 143–56.

Chapter 1 1. Edward W. Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 209–12, 216. 2. This original work by Jason of Cyrene has been lost. For more information on Jason’s political positions regarding the Hasmoneans, the dynastic family that ruled briefly after Israel gained independence from the Seleucids, and his historical method, see Jonathan A. Goldstein, II Maccabees: A New Translation with Introduction and Commentary, vol. 41A of The Anchor Bible (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1983), 19–24, 55–70. On the dating of 2 Maccabees, see Goldstein, II Maccabees, 71–83; Jan Willem van Henten, The Maccabean Martyrs as Saviors of the Jewish People: A Study of 2 and 4 Maccabees (Leiden: Brill, 1997), 4; David A. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha: Message, Context, and Significance (Grand Rapids, MI: Baker, 2002), 270.

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3. Goldstein, II Maccabees, 192, 230. 4. Shaye J. D. Cohen, The Beginnings of Jewishness: Boundaries, Varieties, Uncertainties (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 105–6, 135–37. 5. Goldstein, II Maccabees, 257; deSilva, Apocrypha, 274–75; van Henten, Maccabean Martyrs, 135–40. 6. Goldstein, II Maccabees, 317. 7. van Henten, Maccabean Martyrs, 140. 8. Goldstein argues that the text of 2 Maccabees 7 itself was written around between 134 and 132 BCE. See Goldstein, II Maccabees, 48, 300. 9. Unless stated otherwise, all quotes of 2 and 4 Maccabees are from the New Revised Standard Version of the Bible. 10. On the location of this martyrdom, Goldstein proposes three different background stories that the author could have used for constructing this narrative. “Story one, of a family from Antioch martyred at Antioch in the presence of the king; story two, of a family from Judea or Jerusalem arrested and carried off to Antioch, there to be martyred in the presence of the king; and story three, of a family from Judea or Jerusalem martyred in Judea or Jerusalem.” Goldstein, II Maccabees, 298. Goldstein holds that the first and third stories could have been likely historical events that were utilized for this narrative, while story two would be most likely apocryphal. Goldstein argues that the story of the mother and seven sons was actually designed as a piece of anti-Hasmonean propaganda. Supporters of the Hasmonean family portrayed them as a martyred family and the story in 2 Maccabees 7 is counterpropaganda from pious Jewish opponents. Further, the figure of the mother and seven sons represents a fulfillment of Jeremiah 15:5–9. Goldstein, II Maccabees, 298–300. 11. On this pattern, see Jan Willem van Henten and Friedrich Avemarie, Martyrdom and Noble Death: Selected Texts from Graeco-Roman, Jewish and Christian Antiquity (London: Routledge, 2002), 9. 12. Each son sounded a particular theological theme. The second and third sons emphasized bodily resurrection as a reward for dying for Torah (7:9–12); the fourth and fifth sons emphasized the Deuteronomistic promise of punishment for the enemies of Israel, particularly Antiochus and his sons (7:13–17); the sixth son reflected what van Henten describes as the Deuteronomistic understanding of national suffering as discipline for the sins of Israel (7:18–19). See van Henten, Maccabean Martyrs, 135–40. 13. Later traditions vary concerning the death of the mother. Some rabbinic midrashim hold that she commits suicide. Several Christian accounts envision her throwing herself on the flames her sons were tortured in. These passages will be treated in more detail later. 14. Robin Darling Young, “The ‘Woman with the Soul of Abraham’: Traditions about the Mother of the Maccabean Martyrs,” in “Women Like This”: New Perspectives on Jewish Women in the Greco-Roman World, ed. Amy-Jill Levine, Society for Biblical Literature, Early Judaism and Its Literature 1 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1991), 71. 15. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 216.

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16. Marinus de Jonge, “Jesus’ Death for Others and the Death of the Maccabean Martyrs,” in Jewish Eschatology, Early Christian Christology and the Testaments of the Twelve Patriarchs: Collected Essays of Marinus de Jonge (Leiden: Brill, 1991), 130. 17. The question of the dating and origin of 4 Maccabees has been of considerable debate. Currently, most scholarship places the date sometime in the mid-first century to the mid-second century CE. Regarding provenance, most agree this text was composed somewhere in the eastern Mediterranean, probably in Asia Minor. The emphasis on the necessity of maintaining Torah observance and its skillful composition in Greek suggests a composition outside of Palestine. See Elias Bickerman, “The Date of Fourth Maccabees,” in Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 1976), 1:276–81; André Dupont-Sommers, Le quatrième livre des Machabées (Paris: Champion, 1939); van Henten, Maccabean Martyrs, 78; David A. deSilva, 4 Maccabees (Sheffield, England: Sheffield Academic Press, 1998), 18–21; idem, Introducing the Apocrypha, 355–56; Richard B. Townshend, “The Fourth Book of Maccabees,” in The Apocrypha and Pseudepigrapha of the Old Testament in English, ed. Robert H. Charles (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), 654. Some, like Townshend, argue for an Alexandrian provenance because of the philosophical content, though this is not necessary as philosophical schools were found in many Greek urban areas. Dupont-Sommers also posited Antioch as the site of composition because of the later Christian cult there and because 4 Maccabees 1:10 suggests some type of festival celebration. However, the evidence of cultic activity in the fourth century does not necessitate this reading. 18. David A. deSilva, “Using the Master’s Tools to Shore Up Another House: A Postcolonial Analysis of 4 Maccabees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 126, no. 1 (2007): 99–127. 19. Said, Culture and Imperialism, 243. 20. van Henten, Maccabean Martyrs, 61–64. 21. Paul L. Redditt, “The Concept of Nomos in Fourth Maccabees,” Catholic Biblical Quarterly 45, no. 2 (1983): 249–70. 22. deSilva, “Using the Master’s Tools,” 110. 23. deSilva also posits that the occasion may have been a feast celebrating the giving of Torah (like Shavuot or Simchat Torah) because of the emphasis on Torah as the path of virtue. See deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 21–25. A flaw in this argument is that Simchat Torah is a Babylonian holiday in origin and is not documented until the Geonic period (mid-sixth to mid-eleventh century CE). Further, this holiday depends on a fixed cycle of Torah readings, which had not yet developed in the first centuries of the Common Era when 4 Maccabees was composed. On Simchat Torah, see Abraham Yaari, A History of Simchat Torah [Hebrew] (Jerusalem: Mosa Ha-Rav Kuk, 1964); Shelomoh Zevin, The Festivals according to Halakhah [Hebrew] (Tel Aviv: Tsiyoni, 1955). Regarding Shavuot, it is not clear that during this period the rabbis had yet reinterpreted this holiday as an event commemorating the giving of Torah. The Mishnah does not recount this aspect of the festival, while the Talmud does. Only in the third century CE are there

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clear references to Shavuot commemorating the giving of Torah, though these statements might represent an earlier tradition. Emphasizing the Torah as the path of virtue is an ideal firmly rooted in Hebrew wisdom literature and could easily be a source for the author of 4 Maccabees. 24. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha, 378–79. 25. J. S. Richardson, “Imperium Romanum: Empire and the Language of Power,” Journal of Roman Studies 81 (1991): 1–9. 26. Warren Carter, Matthew and Empire: Initial Explorations (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 2001), 20–34. 27. Shmuel Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 52–54; van Henten & Avemarie, Martyrdom and Noble Death, 79–83; Johannes Tromp, The Assumption of Moses: A Critical Edition with Commentary (Leiden: Brill, 1993). 28. Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs, 41–52. 29. Redditt, “The Concept of Nomos in Fourth Maccabees,” 270; de Jonge, “Jesus’ Death,” 130; Brent D. Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity: Passions of the Martyrs,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 4, no. 3 (1996): 277. 30. deSilva, Introducing the Apocrypha, 352. 31. deSilva, “Using the Master’s Tools,” 106. 32. For a discussion of the central value of obedience in the early rabbinic understanding of the Aqedah, see Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 125–42. 33. See Young, “The ‘Woman with the Soul of Abraham,’” 76, where she interprets the mother as a spiritual counterpart to Abraham. Such parallelism is prominent in rabbinic and Ashkenazi representations of the mother in the Jewish tradition. 34. Stephen D. Moore and Janice Capel Anderson, “Taking It Like a Man: Masculinity in 4 Maccabees,” Journal of Biblical Literature 117, no. 2 (1998): 262. Moore and Anderson show that at the end of 4 Maccabees the mother’s masculinity is undermined by a domestication of her identity as subservient to the sons’ textually absent father. 35. Shaw, “Body/Power/Identity,” 278–80; deSilva, “Using the Master’s Tools,” 119. 36. For a recent discussion of the problems of determining Christian identity in the first two centuries of the Common Era, see Judith Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004). 37. Richard A. Horsley, ed., Paul and Empire: Religion and Power in Roman Imperial Society (Harrisburg, PA: Trinity Press International, 1997), 209. 38. Epistle of Barnabas, ed. Pierre Prigent, SC 172 (Paris: Cerf, 1971), 4.6. 39. Justin Martyr, Dialogus cum Tryphone, ed. Miroslav Marcovich, Patristische Texte und Studien 47 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter), 11.2; 20.3; 21.1; 22; 44.2; 93.1. 40. Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Christians and Jews in the Roman Empire (AD 135–425), trans. H. McKeating (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1986), 78.

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41. For an overview of the influence of the Maccabean literature on the writers in the early church, see deSilva, 4 Maccabees, 143–55. For a discussion of how 2 Maccabees 7 and 4 Maccabees impacted early Christian martyrdom, see W. H. C. Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution in the Early Church: A Study of Conflict from the Maccabees to Donatus (Garden City, NY: Doubleday, 1967), 44–50. 42. Origen of Alexandria, An Exhortation to Martyrdom, ed. P. Koetschau, Griechischen Christlichen Schriftsteller 1 (Leipzig: Hinrichs’sche, 1899); Cyprian of Carthage, Ad Fortunatum, ed. Wilhelm Hartel, CSEL 3 (Vienna: Apud C. Geroldi Filium, 1868), 337–42. 43. On the Decian persecution, see Frend, Martyrdom and Persecution, 285–323. For Cyprian’s views on Jews and Judaism, see Charles A. Bobertz, “‘For the Vineyard of the Lord of Hosts Was the House of Israel’: Cyprian of Carthage and the Jews,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 82, nos. 1–2 (1991): 1–15. 44. CSEL 3, 337; Ante-Nicene Fathers (hereafter cited as “ANF”), 5, 503. 45. CSEL 3, 338; ANF 5, 503. 46. CSEL 3, 340–41; ANF 5, 505. 47. CSEL 3, 341; ANF 5, 505.

Chapter 2 1. On the function of resistance culture see the previous chapter and Edward Said, Culture and Imperialism (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1993; reprint, New York: Vintage Books, 1994), 209–12, 216. 2. Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994; reprint, London: Routledge Classics, 2006), 94–95. 3. Ibid., 96. 4. Ibid., 101. 5. See J. Rebecca Lyman, “Hellenism and Heresy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 11, no. 2 (2003): 209–22; idem, “The Politics of Passing: Justin Martyr’s Conversion as a Problem of ‘Hellenization,’” in Conversion in Late Antiquity and the Early Middle Ages: Seeing and Believing, ed. Kenneth Mills and Anthony Grafton (Rochester, NY: University of Rochester Press, 2003), 36–60; Daniel Boyarin, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004), 37–73. 6. Andrew Jacobs, Remains of the Jews: The Holy Land and Christian Empire in Late Antiquity (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2004), 191. 7. Martha Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15 and the Genesis of the Christian Cult of the Maccabean Martyrs,” Byzantion 64, no. 1 (1994): 166–92. On the dating of this homily see also Jean Bernardi, La Prédication des Pères Cappadociens: Le prèdicateur et son auditoire (Montpellier: Presses Universitaires de France, 1968), 101–2. For background on Gregory of Nazianzus, see John Anthony McGuckin, St. Gregory of Nazianzus: An Intellectual Biography (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2001); Anthony Meredith, The Cappadocians (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1995). 8. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio XV, In Machabaeorum laudem; PG 35, 912–33.

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9. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 169–77; Raphaëlle Ziadé, Les martyrs Maccabées: de l’histoire de juive au culte chrétien. Les homélies de Grégoire de Nazianze et de Jean Chrysostom (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 136–78. For Julian’s policies toward Christianity, see Adrian Murdoch, The Last Pagan: Julian the Apostate and the Death of the Ancient World (Stroud, England: Sutton, 2003). 10. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 177–78. 11. Ibid., 187. 12. Gregory of Nazianzus, Oratio XV, 1; PG 35, 912. 13. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob et vita beata, ed. Karl Schenkl, CSEL 32.2 (Vienna: Tempsky & Freytag, 1897), 1–70. All quotes are from Ambrose of Milan, Seven Exegetical Works, trans. Michael P. McHugh, The Fathers of the Church (Washington DC: Catholic University Press of America, 1972), 65:119–84. On the events of 386, see Gérard Nauroy, “Le fouet et le miel: le combat d’Ambroise en 386 contre l’arianisme milanais,” Recherche Augustinienes 23 (1988): 3–86; Neil B. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan: Church and Court in a Christian Capital (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), 170–96. 14. Marcia L. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs: Ethics for the Common Man (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2005), 9–19. 15. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.1.1–9.42. 16. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.1.1–2.8. 17. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.10.43–12.58. 18. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.10.43. 19. McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 209–15. 20. Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 26–27. 21. Gérard Nauroy, “Du combat de la piété à la confession du sang: Ambroise de Milan lecteur critique du IVe Livre des Maccabées,” Revue d’Histoire et de Philosophie Religieuses 70 (1990): 49–68; Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 26. 22. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.4.13–16. Cf. Romans 7:7–25. 23. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.4.16; McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 130. 24. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.5.17. 25. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.6.21. 26. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.6.23. Cf. Romans 6:4. 27. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.7.27; McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 137. 28. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 1.7.28; Nauroy, “Les frères Maccabées,” 219. 29. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.10.43; McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 174. Cf. 4 Maccabees 5:14–38. 30. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.11.45–46, 48. 31. Nauroy, “Les frères Maccabées,” 230; Colish, Ambrose’s Patriarchs, 123. 32. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.11.47; McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 176. Cf. 1 Corinthians 11:3; Ephesians 5:30. 33. Nauroy, “Les frères Maccabées,” 230–34. 34. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob, 2.12.58; McLynn, Ambrose of Milan, 184. 35. Ambrose of Milan, De Iacob 1.7.27. 36. Ambrose of Milan, De Obitu Theodosii, ed. O. Faller, CSEL 73.7 (Vienna: Tempsky-Tempsky-Freytag, 1955), 369–401.

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37. On this context, see Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews: Rhetoric and Reality in the Late 4th Century (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1983). 38. Cardinal da Tindaro Rampolla, “Martyre et sépulture des Macchabées,” parts 1–3, Revue de l’Art Chrétien 48 (1899): 290–305, 377–92, 457–65; Julian Obermann, “The Sepulchre of the Maccabean Martyrs,” Journal of Biblical Literature 50 (1931): 250–65; Marcel Simon, “La polémique anti-juive de Saint Jean Chrysostome et le mouvement judaisant d’Antioche,” Annuaire de l’Institut de philology et d’histoire orientales et slaves 4 (1936): 403–29; Glanville Downey, A History of Antioch in Syria: From Seleucus to the Arab Conquest (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1961), 448; Elias Bickerman, “Les Maccabées des Malalas,” in Studies in Jewish and Christian History (Leiden: Brill, 1980), 2.192–209. 39. Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 183–84. 40. Leonard V. Rutgers, “The Importance of Scripture in the Conflict between Jews and Christians: The Example of Antioch,” in The Use of Sacred Books in the Ancient World, ed. L. V. Rutgers et al. (Louvain: Peeters, 1998), 298–302. 41. The beginning point of this subject remains Peter Brown’s Cult of the Saints: Its Rise and Function in Latin Christianity (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1981). For a take on other views, see James Howard-Johnston and Paul Antony Hayward, ed., The Cult of Saints in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages: Essays on the Contribution of Peter Brown (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1999). 42. John Chrysostom, Homiliae in Sanctos Maccabaeos et in matrem eorum, 2–3; PG 50, 617–28; Chrysostom, De Eleazro et de septem pueris, PG 63, 520–30. 43. See Wendy Mayer and Pauline Allen, John Chrysostom (London: Routledge, 2000), 17. 44. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews, 92; Christine Shepherdson, “Controlling Contested Places: John Chrysostom’s Adversus Iudaeos Homilies and the Spatial Politics of Religious Controversy,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 15, no. 4 (2007): 483–516. 45. Chrysostom, De Eleazro et de septem pueris, PG 63, 520–30. 46. Jean Pargoire argues based on topographical clues that the sermon was delivered in Constantinople on July 31, 399. See Jean Pargoire, “Les homélies de s. Jean Chrysostome en juillet 399,” écho d’Orient 3 (1899–1900): 151–62. Wendy Mayer believes the internal evidence is limited and allows for the possibility of an Antiochene location. Martha Vinson also holds to an Antiochene setting. See Wendy Mayer, The Homilies of St. Chrysostom—Provenance: Reshaping the Foundations, Orientalia Christiana Analecta 273 (Rome: Pontificio Istituto Orientale, 2005), 379–82, 498–504; and Vinson, “Gregory Nazianzen’s Homily 15,” 186n61. Another challenge of this sermon is reconstructing its original version. Antonie Wenger has proposed a solution to this issue. See Antonie Wenger, “Restauration de l’Homélie de Chrysostome sur Eléazar et les septs frères Macchabées, (PG 63, 523–530),” in Texte und Textekritik: Eine Aufsatzsammlung, ed. Jürgen Dummer, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschischte der altchristlichen Literatur 133 (Berlin: Akademie Verlag, 1987), 599–604. Mayer offers an

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English translation based on this reconstruction in John Chrysostom, The Cult of the Saints: Select Homilies and Letters, trans. Wendy Mayer (Crestwood, NY: St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 2006), 119–34. Mayer’s translation is used in all quotes from this sermon. 47. De Eleazaro 1, PG 63, 525. 48. Ibid. 49. See 1 Corinthians 10:1–4; cf. Exodus 17:2–6; Numbers 20:2–11. 50. De Eleazaro, PG 63, 526. This image of Christ coming near to the Maccabean martyrs can also be found in Gregory Nazianzus, Oratio XV, In Machabaeorum laudem, PG 35, 287. “Nevertheless it [the Word] had been made known before then to pure souls, that before him [that is Christ’s incarnation] had received these honors.” 51. Ibid.; Mayer, Cult of the Saints, 125. 52. Ibid. 53. Bhabha, Location of Culture, 95. 54. De Eleazaro, PG 63, 527. 55. Ibid., PG 63, 528; cf. Jeremiah 31:33, Acts 2:14. 56. Wenger, “Restauration,” 602–3, lines 44–64. 57. De Eleazaro, PG 63, 529–30; cf. Numbers 15:32, 36; 1 Corinthians 6:9–11. 58. Ibid., PG 63, 530. 59. John Chrysostom, Adversos Judaeos, I–VIII, PG 48.863–942. The translation in this chapter is from Discourses against Judaizing Christians, trans. Paul W. Harkins. The Fathers of the Church 68 (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1979). The classic treatment of these sermons illustrating this approach and the necessary starting point for any investigation of these sermons is Robert L. Wilken, John Chrysostom and the Jews. 60. Discourses, 1.2.3–4, PG 48, 845; cf. Jeremiah 2:20, 5:5; Matthew 11:29–30. 61. Ibid., 2.2.2; Harkins, 40. 62. Ibid., 7.2.7. 63. Ibid., 7.2.8; Harkins, 185. 64. Jaclyn L. Maxwell, Christianization and Communication in Late Antiquity: John Chrysostom and His Congregation in Antioch (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). 65. Discourse, 1.8.1; Harkins, 31–2. 66. Ibid., 8.6.8. Harkins argues that this exhortation actually is a reference to attending the Christian church holding the remains of the Maccabean martyrs built over the site of a synagogue in the Kerateion. However, given that it is not apparent that this church had yet been constructed this is not certain. Moreover, if this was a reference to attend a Christian site associated with the Maccabean martyrs, one would expect a heightened rhetorical contrast between an inadequate Jewish commemoration and the perfected Christian veneration of these martyrs. 67. Ibid., 5.7.6, PG 48, 895. 68. Ibid., 1.5.1, PG 48, 850. 69. Ibid., 4.3.9, PG 48, 876. 70. De Eleazaro, PG 63, 529–30.

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71. See Confessions, 9.7.15, CCSL 27, 141–42; Peter Brown, Augustine of Hippo: A Biography. New edition with epilogue (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000), 95, 117; Serge Lancel, St. Augustine, trans. Antonia Nevill (London: SCM Press, 2002), 80–81. 72. Sermo 300, In Solemnitate martyrum Machabaeorum, PL 38, 1376–80. All quotes are from The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vols. 3, 8: Sermons on Saints, trans. Edmund Hill (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 1994), 276–80. 73. Sermo 300.1, PL 38, 1377; Hill, Sermons on Saints, 276. 74. Sermo 300.1, PL 38, 1377. 75. Sermo 300.2, PL 38, 1377; Hill, Sermons on Saints, 276. 76. Sermo 300.2, PL 38, 1377; Hill, Sermons on Saints, 277. 77. Paula Fredriksen, “Excaecati Occulta Justitia Dei: Augustine on Jews and Judaism,” Journal of Early Christian Studies 3, no. 3 (1995): 299–324; idem, “Secundum Carnem: History and Israel in the Theology of St. Augustine,” in The Limits of Ancient Christianity. Essays on Late Antique Thought and Culture in Honor of R. A. Markus (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1999), 26–41. I regret that I was not able to incorporate Fredriksen’s arguments from her book Augustine and the Jews. This work came out as this present book went to press. 78. Contra Faustum, 22.6, CSEL 25. All quotes are from The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century, vol. I/20: Answer to Faustus, a Manichean, trans. Ronald Teske, S. J. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2007), 301. 79. Contra Faustum, 12.9. 80. Contra Faustum, 12.10, 23; 16.21. Cf. De civitate dei, 18.46, CCSL 48, 643–45. On Augustine’s theory of the hidden sins of the Jews and their role as witnesses to Christian truth, see Fredriksen, “Excaecati Occulta”; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law: The Idea of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1999), 23–71. 81. Sermo 300.3, PL 38, 1377; Hill, Sermons on Saints, 277. 82. Three camps exist in relation to the question of Augustine’s relations with Jews. The first camp, argued by Bernhard Blumenkranz, argues that Augustine’s writings about Jews and Judaism reflect his endeavor to retard the efforts of Jewish proselytizers in Roman North Africa. See Blumenkranz, Die Judenpredigt Augustins (Paris: études augustiniennes, 1973); idem, “Augustin et les juifs: Augustine et le judaïsme,” Recherches Augustiniennes 1 (1958): 225–41. The second camp argues that Augustine’s relationship with Jews as portrayed in sermons and letters at times is positive or neutral. See Franklin T. Harkins, “Nuancing Augustine’s Hermeneutical Jew: Allegory and Actual Jews in the Bishop’s Sermons,” Journal for the Study of Judaism 36, no. 1 (2005): 41–64. The third camp, represented by Fredriksen and Cohen, has contended that any Jews represented in Augustine’s works do not reflect his actual knowledge or experience of Jews but are “hermeneutical Jews” who represent his own theological conceptions. See Fredriksen, “Excaecati Occulta,” 321–22; Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 42–51. 83. Claudia Setzer, “The Jews in Carthage and Western North Africa, 66–235 CE,” in The Cambridge History of Judaism: The Late Roman-Rabbinic Period, vol. 4

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of The Cambridge History of Judaism (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 68–75; Karen B. Stern, Inscribing Devotion and Death: Archeological Evidence for Jewish Populations of North Africa (Leiden: Brill, 2008). 84. David Efroymson argues that the later Augustine exhibited more hostile rhetoric toward Jews and Judaism but does not link this to explicitly social factors but rather to his extended reading and preaching on the Gospel of John. See David Efroymson, “Whose Jews? Augustine’s Tractatus on John,” in A Multiform Heritage: Studies on Early Judaism and Christianity in Honor of Robert Kraft, ed. Benjamin G. Wright (Atlanta, GA: Scholar’s Press, 1999), 197–212. On the term “virtual Jew,” see Sylvia Tomasch, “Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew” in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeremy Jeffrey Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 253. 85. For example, Augustine compared the deceitful Manichean preaching about Christ to Jews blinded by the veil of the Law to the truth of Christ. See Contra Faustum, 12.4. 86. Sermo 300.3–4, PL 38, 1377; Hill, Sermons on Saints, 279. 87. Sermo 300.5, PL 38, 1379; Hill, Sermons on Saints, 279. 88. Sermo 300.6, PL 38, 1379. 89. On the history of the Donatist church, see W. H. C. Frend, The Donatist Church: A Movement of Protest in Roman North Africa (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1952; 2nd ed., 1971); Jean-Paul Brisson, Autonomisme et Christianisme dans l’Afrique romaine de Septime Sévère à l’invasion vandal (Paris: E. de Boccard, 1958); Emin Tengström, Donatisten und Katholiken: soziale, wirtschaftliche und politische Aspekte einer nordafrikanischen Kirchenspaltung (Stockholm: Almqvist & Wiksell, 1964); Maureen A. Tilley, The Bible in Christian North Africa: The Donatist World (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1997); Michael Gaddis, There Is No Crime for Those Who Have Christ: Religious Violence in the Christian Roman Empire (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2005). 90. The extent to which this separatist impulse and critique of the alliance between the empire and the church indicates that the Donatist church was a type of social or national resistance movement against the Roman Empire has been a subject of debate. However, I agree with Jean-Paul Brisson that Donatism encompassed the rejection of imperial insistence on religious uniformity, whether imposed by Christian or non-Christian authorities. For the varying takes on this issue, see Frend, Donatist Church; A. H. M. Jones, “Were Ancient Heresies National or Social Movements in Disguise,” Journal of Theological Studies, n.s., 10, no. 2 (1959): 280–98; Peter Brown, “Religious Dissent in the Later Roman Empire: The Case of North Africa,” History 46 (1961): 83–101; idem, “Christianity and Local Culture in Late Roman Africa,” Journal of Roman Studies 58 (1968): 85–95; Brisson, Autonomisme et Christianisme dans l’Afrique romaine. 91. A critical edition of the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs can be found in Jean-Louis Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, vol. 1, Texte und Untersuchungen zur Geschischte der Altchristlichen Literatur, Band 134 (Berlin: Akademie-Verlag, 1987), 57–92. However, various manuscripts display a range of sympathy or coolness to these martyrs. All English quotations are from Donatist Martyr Stories: The

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Church in Conflict in Roman North Africa, trans. Maureen A. Tilley, Translated Texts for Historians 24 (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press, 1996), 25–49. Tilley’s translation is based on the manuscript BN Lat. 5297, which offers the most sympathetic portrayal. 92. See Frend, Donatist Church, 3–23. 93. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 6; Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 68; Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 32. 94. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 11; Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 73. 95. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 12; Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 76; Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 37. 96. Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 66. 97. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 19; Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 85; Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 44. 98. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 8; Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 70–71. 99. Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs 15, 18; Maier, Le Dossier du Donatisme, 78–80, 83–84. 100. In the case of Hilarianus, 2 Maccabees 7:3 is quoted, further reinforcing the connection with the Maccabean martyrs. 101. See Frend, Donatist Church, 141–93, for the history of this development. 102. Peter Brown, “Religious Dissent in the Later Roman Empire,” 209; idem, Augustine of Hippo, 209; Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 78. 103. Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 66. 104. Augustine, Breviculus collationi cum Donatisti 3.13.25; CSEL 53, 3; cf. 2 Maccabees 6:21–8. 105. Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliani, 2.92.202; CSEL 52, 123. 106. Ibid., 2.8.17; CSEL 52, 29–30; cf. Acts 1:15–26. 107. Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 66. 108. Augustine, Epistula ad Catholicos 13.33; CSEL 52, 274–76. 109. The use of collecta is found frequently, for example, in the Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs. The use of the term is taken from texts such Deuteronomy 16:8; Leviticus 23:36; 2 Chronicles 7:9. See Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 65n35. 110. Ibid., 65. 111. Ibid., 55. 112. Brisson, Autonomisme et Christianisme dans l’Afrique romaine. 113. Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliani, 2.92.202; CSEL 52, 123. 114. Augustine, Sermo, 301A.5 in Miscellanea Agostiniana, ed. Germani Morin, 2 vols. (Rome, 1930–31), 1:81–89. 115. Paula Fredriksen, “Augustine and Israel: Interpretatio ad litteram, Jews, and Judaism in Augustine’s Theology of History,” Studia Patristica 38 (2001): 121. 116. Tilley, Bible in Christian North Africa, 114–15. 117. Fredriksen, “Augustine and Israel,” 121; William S. Babcock, “Augustine and Tyconius: A Study in the Latin Appropriation of Paul,” Studia Patristica 17 (1982): 109–15; idem, “Augustine’s Interpretation of Romans (AD 394–396),” Augustinian Studies 10 (1979): 55–74.

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118. Tyconius, Liber regularum, 3. The quotation is from Tyconius: The Book of Rules, trans. William S. Babcock, Society of Biblical Literature Texts and Translations 3: Early Christian Literature Series 7 (Atlanta: Scholars Press, 1989), 37. 119. Augustine, Epistola, 93.8.24, CSEL 34, ed. Al. Golbacher (Vienna: TempskyTempsky-Freytag, 1887); Exposition 2 of Psalm 21.24, PL 36, 177. 120. Augustine, Exposition 2 of Psalm 21.25, PL 36, 177. 121. Augustine, Epistola, 196.16, CSEL 57, ed. Al. Golbacher (Vienna: TempskyTempsky-Freytag, 1891); Letters 156–210 (Epistulae), trans. Ronald Teske, S. J., vols. 2–3 of The Works of Saint Augustine: A Translation for the 21st Century. (Hyde Park, NY: New City Press, 2004), 319. 122. Augustine, Exposition 2 of Psalm 21.27, PL 36, 178. 123. Augustine, Contra litteras Petiliani 2.92.204 CSEL 52, 127–29. 124. Peter Brown, “Christianization and Religious Conflict,” in The Cambridge Ancient History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998), 13:659–61. 125. Averil Cameron, Christianity and the Rhetoric of Empire: The Development of Christian Discourse, 130; Brown, Augustine of Hippo, 336; Brown, Power and Persuasion in Late Antiquity: Towards a Christian Empire (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1992), 106–12. 126. The two examples for this section are taken from Sermo 301, PL 38, 1381, and In Psalmum 33 Enarratio, Sermo II; PL 36, 319–20. Other examples can be found in other portions of Augustine’s commentaries on Psalms and John, in sermons and in letters. Catherine Brown Tkcaz discusses in some detail the way Augustine explained the meaning of the torments of the Maccabean martyrs and the three youths. See “The Seven Maccabees, the Three Hebrews and a Newly Discovered Sermon of St. Augustine (Mayence 50),” Revue des Etudes Augustiennes 41 (1995): 59–78. 127. Sermo, 301.2, PL 38, 1381. 128. Sermo, 301.3–4, PL 38, 1382. 129. Ibid. Other passages in which Augustine makes this same general argument when comparing the three youths and the Maccabean martyrs can be found in other portions of his commentary on the Psalms. 130. Homiliae in Sanctos Maccabaeos et in matrem eorum, I-II, PG 50, 617–28. These sermons were delivered on the feast day of the Maccabean martyrs. Although the exact dating for these sermons is uncertain, an Antiochene setting is likely. 131. Aideen M. Hartney, John Chrysostom and the Transformation of the City (London: Duckworth, 2002), 68; Maxwell, Christianization and Communication, 147. 132. Homilia 2.2, PG 50, 626. 133. Homilia 1.3, PG 50, 621; translation mine. 134. Homilia 2.2, PG 50, 625. 135. Homilia 2.2, PG 50, 626. This listing of members of society who ought to imitate the Maccabean martyrs is also found in Gregory Nazianzus. According to Gregory, priests ought to emulate Eleazar; mothers, the mother of the sons; and sons, the martyred sons. See Oratio XV, In Machabaeorum laudem 12, PG 35, 297–98.

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136. Elizabeth A. Clark, Reading Renunciation: Asceticism and Scripture in Early Christianity (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1999), 156–62; Hartney, John Chrysostom, 74–77. 137. See, for example, Tractatus 3, a sermon given on September 29, 443, commemorating the anniversary of his elevation to bishop of Rome. Leo the Great, Tractatus 3, Item alius in natale eiusdem, ed. Antoine Chavesse, CCSL 138 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1973). 138. Leo the Great, Sermo 84B, In Natali SS. Machabaeorum, ed. Antoine Chavesse, CCSL 138A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1973), 529–32. An English translation can be found in St. Leo the Great: Sermons, trans. Jane Patricia Freeland and Agnes Josephine Conway, The Fathers of the Church (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 1996), 93:362–64. There had been some dispute over the authenticity of this sermon. It is attributed to both Leo and Pseudo-Augustine in Clavis Patrum Latinorum 1657a. See also Charles Pietri, Roma Christiana: recherche sur l’Eglise de Rome, son organisation, sa politique, son idéologie de Militiade à Sixte III (311–440) (Rome: Ecole française de Rome, 1976), 1543. Chavesse argues on linguistic grounds that this is an authentic sermon by Leo. See Antoine Chavesse, “Le sermon prononcé par Léon le grand pour l’anniversaire d’une dédicare,” Revue Benedictine 91 (1981): 46–104. Freeland and Josephine offer a date from between 446 and 461 CE. This sermon was offered on the occasion of the feast of the Maccabean martyrs and the dedication of a church. For a discussion of likely churches in Rome where Leo delivered this sermon, see Chavesse, “Le sermon prononcé par Léon le grand pour l’anniversaire d’une dédicare,” 99–101; Pietri, Roma Christiana, 1542–45. 139. Sermo 84B.2, CCSL 138A, 531; Freeland and Conway, Sermons, 364. 140. Sermo 84B.3, CCSL 138A, 531. 141. Homilia XVIII, De Machabaeis, PL 52, 746–49. Translation from Saint Peter Chrysologus Selected Sermons and Saint Valerian Homilies, trans. George E. Ganss, The Fathers of the Church (New York: Fathers of the Church, 1983), 17: 415–20. The dating for this sermon is not certain. Given that Valerianus was active in the councils of Riez (439) and Vaison (442) and died around 460, a midfifth-century date is likely. See Dictionnaire de Théologie Catholique, vol. 4, pt. 2, 2520–22. For another example of this sort of sermon, see Pseudo-Leo the Great, De Macchabaeis I, Patrologia Latinae Supplementum, ed. Adalberto Hammam (Paris: Editions Garnier, 1963), 3:331–34. 142. De Machabaeis 2, PL 52, 747; Ganss, Selected Sermons, 417. 143. De Machabaeis 5, PL 52, 749; Ganss, Selected Sermons, 420. 144. De Machabaeis 5, PL 52, 749. 145. For the passion of Felicitas and the seven sons, see Acta Sanctorum Julii III, 12–14. July 10 was the feast day of the martyrdom of Felicitas and her seven sons, though sometimes only for the seven sons in certain calendars. July 10 probably commemorated the translation of relics or a dedication of the church in honor of them. November 23 commemorated only Felicitas and probably was the earlier feast, likely instituted between the papacies of Boniface I (418–22) and Leo I (440–61). Based on inscriptions and monumental evidence, the

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passion of Felicitas was known in Rome since at least the end of the fourth century. See Karl Künstle, Hagiographischen Studien über Die Passio Felicitatis cum VII Filiis (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1894), 88–94; Paul-Albert Février and Jean Guyon, “Septimus ex numero fratrum: à propos des sept frères martyrs et de leur mère, quelques réflexions sur Damase et l’hagiographie de son temps,” in Memoriam sanctorum venerantes: miscellanea in onore di monsignor Victor Saxer (Città del Vaticano: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1992), 375–402. Another, slightly later Roman tradition also exists of Symphorosa and her seven sons. Beyond the passion, there is little material regarding this tradition. See BHL, 7971. 146. The passion of Felicitas and her seven sons is not a historical account of a second-century trial and martyrdom, as it purports, but rather a literary work. It likely was composed at some point in the fourth century. Karl Künstle observes that the oldest witness to the passion, Codex Augiesis, Nr. XXXII (Karlsruhe, ninth century) is a passional composed in the seventh century deriving from Rome. But based on linguistic evidence, Künstle argues that this passion, along with several others, was originally composed in Greek. See Künstle, Die Passio Felicitatis, 7–10; 13; 45–46; 78–83. 147. Künstle, Die Passio Felicitatis, 84–87. 148. Peter Chrysologus, De Sancta Felicitata 3, CCSL 24B (Turnholt: Brepols, 1982), 819. 149. De Sancta Felicitata 1.3, CCSL 24B, 818–19. Note the similarity with Cyprian, Exhortation to Martyrdom 11; Ambrose, De Jacob, 11.53. 150. De Sancta Felicitata 2, CCSL 24B, 819. Compare Maximus II, Sermo 80, De Machabaeis II, PL 57, 694. 151. De Sancta Felicitata 2, CCSL 24B, 818; cf. Exodus 25:21. 152. Other examples of this approach include Maximus II, De Machabaeis I, PL 57, 692, where the anonymous Maccabean mother is actually named Felicitas. A seventh-century Acta Apocrypha of Felicitas and her seven sons acknowledged the connection between these two narratives. See Acta Sanctorum, Julii III, 14–18. For the dating of this work, see Künstle, Die Passio Felicitatis, 124–31. 153. Gregory the Great, Homilia 3, Homilia lectionis eiusdem habita ad populum in basilica sanctae Felicitatis die Natalis eius in XL Homiliae in Evangeliae, ed. Raymond Etaix, CCSL 141 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1999), 22–25. Translation from Gregory the Great, Forty Gospel Homilies, trans. David Hurst. Cistercian Studies Series 123 (Kalamazoo: Cistercian Publications, 1990), 5–9. This work displays philological evidence that Gregory knew Peter Chrysologus’s sermon on Felicitas and borrowed certain phrases. See CCSL 24B, 817. Given that July 10 was in honor of Felicitas and her sons, this sermon was probably given on November 23, the day solely in honor of Felicitas. 154. Homilia 3.1, CCSL 141, 21; Hurst, Forty Gospel Homilies, 5. 155. Homilia 3.1, CCSL 141, 21. This is an odd statement from Gregory, as it assigns Mary to the unbelieving synagogue. Usually Mary is assigned positive roles, while this is a negative one. However, Mary is not explicitly named here. Rather one only reads of the “mother” of Jesus. Perhaps Gregory is also aware of his

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strange exegetical move and thus uses the more ambiguous “mother” in his sermon. Gregory might also be aware of Augustine’s statement in Contra Faustum 12.8 that Jesus left his mother, the synagogue, which continued to cling to the flesh of the Law, to be with his wife, the church. 156. Homilia 3.2; CCSL 141, 21. 157. Ibid. 158. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 175–77. 159. Bhabha, The Location of Culture, 94–95. 160. Ibid., 96. 161. Ibid., 101. 162. Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 191. 163. Bhabha, 153–63. 164. Jacobs defines his use of the term “hybridity” in late antiquity as a focus on “the slippage of imperial representations and identifications.” Jacobs, Remains of the Jews, 82n93. I see hybridity as an instrument that can be deployed as an object of either resistance or control depending on context.

Chapter 3 1. On the use of the word allosemitism, see the introduction to this work and Zygmunt Bauman, “Allosemitism: Premodern, Modern, Postmodern,” in Modernity, Culture, and “the Jew,” ed. Bryan Cheyette and Laura Marcus (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1998), 143–56. 2. Jacques Le Goff, History and Memory, trans. Steven Rendall and Elizabeth Claman (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992), 12–13, 71. See also the discussion of medieval views of martyrdom in Miri Rubin, “Choosing Death? Experiences of Martyrdom in Late Medieval Europe” in Martyrs and Martyrologies, ed. Diane Wood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993), 153–84. 3. For more on the development and function of homiliaries within the context of early medieval sermons, see Thomas N. Hall, “The Early Medieval Sermon,” in The Sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle, Typologie des Sources du Moyen âge, Fasc. 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 203–37. 4. Réginald Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux: analyse de manuscrits, Biblioteca Degli Studi Medievali 12 (Spolete: Centro Italiano di Studi Sull’Alto Medioevo, 1980), 245, 258. For the edition of this sermon, see Pseudo-Leo, De Macchabaeis I–II, in Patrologia Latinae Supplementum, ed. Adalberto Hammam (Paris: Editions Garnier, 1963), 3:334–37. 5. See Antoine Chavesse, “Le sermonnaire d’Agimond. Ses sources immédiates,” in Kyriakion. Festschrift Johannes Quasten, ed. Patrick Granfield and Josef A. Jungmann (Münster: Aschendorff, 1970), 800–810. 6. Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux, 371. 7. Grégoire, Homéliaires liturgiques médiévaux, 393–94, 416. 8. Hugh of Saint-Victor, Didascalion IV.8, PL 176, 784. The English translation is from The Didascalion of Hugh of St. Victor, trans. Jerome Taylor (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), IV.8, 111. Cf. Jerome, Praefatio in Libros

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Salamonem, PL 28, 1242–43; Hugh of Saint-Victor, Didascalion, IV.3, PL 176, 174. 9. I have chosen to focus primarily on two major figures in the medieval commentary tradition whose works have been edited, namely Rabanus Maurus and Peter Comestor. These two authors offer the most sustained and influential commentaries on 2 Maccabees 7 for the western Christian tradition. Elsewhere I have treated the works of Hugh of St. Cher, Nicholas of Lyra, and Deny the Carthusian. See Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, “The Maccabean Martyrs in Medieval Christianity and Judaism,” (PhD diss., Boston College, 2005), 132–47. Friedrich Stegmüller’s Repertorium biblicum medii aevi and Thomas Kaepelli’s Scriptores Ordinis Praedicatorum Medii Aevi include a total of twelve separate authors with commentaries on 2 Maccabees from the high medieval period. Stegmüller lists Albertus de Siegburg, Dominicus Grima, Geoffroy d’Auxerre, Guilelmus Brito, Hugh of Saint-Cher, Johannes of Indagine, Nicolaus of Gorran, Nicholas of Lyra, Simon of Hinton, Stephen Langton, and Pseudo-Thomas Aquinas. Kaepelli lists, in addition, Innocentius Ringelhammer Vienennsis. Stegmüller and Kaepelli attest to a limited range of commentaries on deuterocanonical books similar to the range of commentaries for 2 Maccabees. 10. On Isidore of Seville, see De ortu et orbitu patrum qui in scriptura Laudibus efferuntur 64, PL 83, 148; “De Machabaeis,” Mysticorum Expositiones Sacramentorum Seu Quaestiones in Vetus Testamentum 552, PL 83, 423; Allegoriae Quaedam Sacrae Scripturae 129, PL 83, 116. In these works, Isidore followed Cyprian in presenting the mother and seven sons as a type for the Mother Church who bears children who endured martyrdom for the sake of Christ. He used the common typological framework that both acknowledges their Jewishness and claims them as types of Christian martyrdom. Bede in Super Divi Jacobi Epistolam, PL 93, placed the Maccabean martyrs within the group of biblical figures who were killed by the ungodly. A common feature among these Old and New Testament figures was that they endured this with patience and without complaint. Aelfric’s sermon on the Maccabean martyrs was essentially a retelling in Anglo-Saxon of the narrative of 2 Maccabees 7. See Aelfric of Eynsham, “The Maccabees,” in Aelfric’s Lives of the Saints XXV, trans. Walter W. Skeat, English Early Text Society, Part 2 (London: N. Trübner, 1885), 74–79. On Aelfric’s general view of the books of the Maccabees, see Stuart Lee, “Aelfric’s Treatment of Source Material in His Homily on the Books of the Maccabees,” Bulletin of the John Rylands Library 77, no. 3 (1995): 165–76. See also Andrew P. Scheil, The Footsteps of Israel: Understanding Jews in Anglo-Saxon England (Ann Arbor, MI: University of Michigan Press, 2004). 11. On Rabanus Maurus as a reader of Augustine, see Bernhard Blumenkranz, “Raban Maur et saint Augustin: Compilation ou adaptation? A propos du latin biblique,” Revue du moyen âge latin 7 (1951): 97–110. 12. J. M. Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church (Oxford: Clarendon, 1983), 321. 13. See Wallace-Hadrill, The Frankish Church, 225–54; Mayke de Jong, “Old Law and New-Found Power: Hrabanus Maurus and the Old Testament,” in Centres of Learning: Learning and Location in Pre-Modern Europe and the Near East, ed.

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Jan Willem Drijvers and Alasdair A. MacDonald (Leiden: Brill, 1995), 161–76. For more on the Carolingian political interpretation of the Old Testament, see Pierre Riché, “La Bible et la vie politique dans le haut moyen âge,” in Le moyen âge et la Bible, ed. Pierre Riché and Guy Lobrichon (Paris: Beauchesne, 1984), 388–99. 14. Mayke de Jong, “The Emperor Lothar and his Bibliotheca Historiarum,” in Media Latinitas: A collection of essays to mark the occasion of the retirement of L. J. Engels, ed. R. I. A. Nip et al., Instrumenta Patristica 28 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1996), 232. Along with these commentaries, de Jong also identifies the commentaries on Judith and Esther, both dedicated to the empress Judith, wife of Louis the Pious, as works addressed to the concerns of the Carolingian imperial house. See Mayke de Jong, “The Empire as Ecclesia: Hrabanus Maurus and Biblical Historia for Rulers,” in The Uses of the Past in the Early Middle Ages, ed. Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 191–226. 15. De Jong, “The Emperor Lothar,” 232–33. Aside from this commentary, Rabanus Maurus also included the Maccabean martyrs in his martyrology. See Rabanus Maurus, Martyrlogium, ed. John McCulloh, CCCM 44 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1979), 76. The brief notice for the Maccabean martyrs on August 1 reads, “Sanctorum Machabeorum, vii fratrum cum matre sua, qui passi sunt sub Antiocho rege.” 16. De Jong, “The Empire as Ecclesia.” 17. For specific examples, see Albert Bat-Sheva, “Adversos Iudaeos in the Carolingian Empire,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics between Jews and Christians, ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1996), 128–35; Jean-Louis Verstrepen, “Raban Maur et le Judaïsme dans son commentaire sure les Quatre Livres des Rois,” in Revue Mabillon, n.s., 7 (1996), 23–55. 18. Amnon Linder, ed. and trans., The Jews in the Legal Sources of the Early Middle Ages (Detroit, MI: Wayne State University Press, 1997), 614–17. 19. Bernard S. Bachrach, Early Medieval Jewish Policy in Western Europe (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1977), 84–124; Kenneth R. Stow, Alienated Minority: The Jews of Latin Medieval Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1992), 41–64; Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters of the Law (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999), 123–45. 20. Rob Meens, “The Uses of the Old Testament in Early Medieval Canon Law: The Collectio Vetus Gallica and Collectio Hibernensis,” in Uses of the Past, ed. Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 67–77. 21. Verstrepen, “Raban Maur et le Judaïsme,” 29–30. 22. Rabanus Maurus, Commentaria in Libros Machabaeorum, PL 109, 1125–28. 23. Cyprian, Ad Fortunatum, ed. Wilhelm Hartel, CSEL 3 (Vienna: Apud C. Geroldi Filium 1868), 337–42. See also the discussion of Cyprian in Chapter 1. 24. Libros Machabaeorum, PL 109, 1236. 25. Ibid. 26. Libros Machabaeorum, PL 109, 1236–37.

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27. Libros Machabaeorum, PL 109, 1237. 28. Mary Garrison, “The Franks as the New Israel? Education for an Identity from Pippin to Charlemagne,” in Uses of the Past, ed. Yitzhak Hen and Matthew Innes (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 114–61. 29. On “virtual Jews,” see Sylvia Tomasch, “Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew,” The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jerome Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), 243–60, and the introduction of this book. 30. On the history of this controversy, see Brian Tierney, The Crisis of Church and State, 1050–1300 (Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1964); Uta-Renate Blumenthal, The Investiture Controversy: Church and Monarchy from the Ninth to the Twelfth Century (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1988). 31. John Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1983), 277, 287. 32. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria Verbi Dei, ed. Rhaban Haacke, MGH, QGM 5 (Weimar: Hermann Böhlhaus Nachfolger, 1970), IX.20. 33. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 32. 34. Benjamin Thomas, “The Western Empire, 1125–1197,” in The New Cambridge History (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), vol. 4, pt. 2, 390–92. 35. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 118–22, 269–74. 36. David E. Timmer, “Biblical Exegesis and the Jewish-Christian Controversy in the Early Twelfth Century,” Church History 58, no. 3 (1989): 315–17. 37. Anna Sapir Abulafia, “The Ideology of Reform and Changing Ideas Concerning Jews in the Works of Rupert of Deutz and Hermannus Quondam Iudeus,” Jewish History 7 (1993): 49. Cf. Rupert of Deutz, In Iohannis Evangelium, ed. Rhaban Haacke, CCCM 9 (Brepols: Turnhout, 1969), 7.13.981–1019. 38. Abulafia, “The Ideology of Reform,” 43; Lea Dasberg, Untersuchungen über die Entwertung des Judenstatus im 11. Jahrhundert (Paris: Mouton, 1965). 39. Friedrich Ohly, Sensus Spiritualis: Studies in Medieval Significs and the Philology of Culture, ed. Samuel P. Jaffee, trans. Kenneth J. Northcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 66. 40. The core of Ohly’s contention is reformulated within the context of postcolonial analysis in John Dagenais and Margaret R. Greer, “Decolonizing the Middle Ages: Introduction,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 30, no. 3 (2000): 431–48. 41. See Daniel 7:2–8. The four animals, respectively, are an eagle, a bear, a leopard, and a ten-horned beast. The seven-headed dragon in Revelation 12 represented the assaults of Antichrist on the church. 42. On the context for the composition of this work, see Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria Verbi Dei, 1–3; Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 282; P. C. Spicq, Esquisse d’une histoire de l’exégèse latine au moyen age, Bibliotheque Thomiste 26 (Paris: Vrin, 1944), 114. 43. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, II.18. 44. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, I.14. 45. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, II.21. For previous uses of the Cain and Abel typology, see Marcel Simon, Verus Israel: A Study of the Relations between Jews and

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Christians in the Roman Empire AD 135–425, trans. H. McKeating (London: Littman Library of Jewish Civilization, 1996), 170. 46. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, III.5–6. 47. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, III.7. 48. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.2. 49. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.3. 50. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.5–6, 8. 51. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.20; Zechariah 1:14–15; Hosea 6:4. 52. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.16. 53. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.18, 24. Cf. 1 Maccabees 1:14–15, 43–69; 2 Maccabees 4:11–17. 54. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.27. 55. Cyprian of Carthage, Ad Fortunatum, CSEL 3, 337–43. 56. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.29. 57. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.30. 58. Ibid. 59. Ibid. 60. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.31. 61. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.31. The basic form of Rupert’s analysis of Ezekiel’s interpretation of the episode of the golden calf can be found in the Epistle of Barnabas 4:6–8. As mentioned in Chapter 1, both the Didascalia Apostolorum and Justin Martyr’s Dialogue with Trypho also discussed the disobedience of Israel as the reason why the ceremonial law was imposed on the Jews. Rupert of Deutz’s application of this interpretation to the narrative of the Maccabean martyrs, however, is original. 62. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.31. 63. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.30. See also Rupert of Deutz, Anulus sue dialogues inter Christianum et Iudaeum, in Maria Lodovica Arduini, Ruperto di Deutz e la controversia tra Cristiani ed Ebrei nel secolo XII, con test critico dell’ Anulus sue dialogues inter Christianum et Iudaeum, a cure di Rhabanus Haacke, OSB. Studi Storici 119–21 (Rome: Istituto Storico Italiano per il Medio Evo, 1979), I, lines 180–93. 64. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IV.2–3. 65. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, III.22, 25. 66. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IV.19 67. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, III.26. 68. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, III.27. 69. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 221; David E. Timmer, “Biblical Exegesis.” For more on the Jewish population of Cologne in the twelfth century, see Ismar Elbogen, Aron Freimann, and Chaim Tykocinski, ed., Germania Judaica (Tübingen: Mohr, 1963), 1:69–85. 70. Rupert of Deutz, De Sancta Trinitate et operibus eius, ed. Rhabanus Haacke, CCCM 22–24 (Turnholt: Brepols, 1971–72); Rupert of Deutz, In XII Prophetas minores, PL 168, 9–836.

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71. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 241–47; Anna Sapir Abulafia, “The Ideology of Reform.” This debate is recounted in Hermannus Iudaeus’s Opusculum de conversione sua. Arduini has argued that this debate is also reflected in the contents of the Anulus. Following Abulafia, I do not agree with this interpretation. 72. Timmer, “Biblical Exegesis,” 315–17. 73. Rupert of Deutz, Anulus, I, lines 535–58; II, lines 389–94. Cf. De Sancta Trinitate, XVIII.38. 74. De Sancta Trinitate, XVIII.28. 75. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, IX.32. 76. Rupert of Deutz, De Victoria, XIII.4, 6. 77. Susan A. Crane, “Writing the Individual Back into Collective Memory,” American Historical Review 102 (1997): 1377. 78. Abulafia, “The Ideology of Reform,” 49; cf. Van Engen, Rupert of Deutz, 155. 79. Renate-Jean Hesbert’s Corpus Antiphonalium Officii indicates that within the liturgical office for August, the Maccabean martyrs were celebrated. According to Hesbert, a wide variety of manuscript traditions attest to this. While Hesbert records twenty-two separate entries for the Maccabean martyrs in his work, he catalogues 1,042 entries for the office of Peter in Chains, the primary feast for this day. Renate-Jean Hesbert, ed., Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, 4 vols. (Rome: Herder, 1963–68). The numerical analysis of the contents of Hesbert was made possible by the Web site Cantus: A Database for Latin Ecclesiastical Chant, http://publish.uwo.ca/~cantus/. 80. Renate-Jean Hesbert, ed., Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, vol. 1, Manuscripti “Cursus Romanus” (Rome: Herder, 1963), 137, 390–91; Corpus Antiphonalium Officii, vol. 2, Manuscripti “Cursus Monasticus” (Rome: Herder, 1965), #137a, 738–39. On the inclusion of 4 Maccabees into the commemoration of the Maccabean martyrs, see Heinrich Dörrie, ed., Passio Machabaeorum: die antike lateinische Ubersetzung des IV. Makkabäerbuches (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1938). 81. Clemens Blume and Guido M. Dreves, ed., Analecta Hymnica Medii Aevi, 55 vols. (Leipzig: O. R. Reisland, 1886–1899; reprint, New York: Johnson Reprint Corp., 1961), vol. 38, 159, 308; vol. 72, 276, 249; vol. 48, 361, 301; Ulysse Chevalier, ed., Repertorium Hymnologium: Catalogue des chants, hymnes, proses, séquences, tropes en usage dans l’église latine, 6 vols. (Louvain: Lefevre, 1892– 1920), 73, 6115, 1298, 22109–10, 25889, 30034, 30702, 34663, 39697. 82. Beryl Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages (Oxford: Blackwell, 1952), 49–51, 66–82; Henri de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale (Paris: Editions Montaigne, 1959), 1.1, 94–110; Odon Lottin, “Nouveaux fragments théologiques de l’école d’Anselme de Laon,” Recherches de Théologique Ancienne et Médiévale 11 (1939): 307. 83. The earliest manuscript for the Liber Pancrisis is Troyes 425, 95ra–148vb. I used Odin Lottin’s edition of this manuscript found in vol. 5 of his Psychologie et morale. Odin Lottin, Psychologie et morale aux XIIe et XIIIe Siècles (Gembloux: Duculot, 1959), 5:9. On the question of whether or not Anselm of Laon organized the Liber Pancrisis into its present summa form, see Marcia L. Colish, Peter

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Lombard, 2 vols (Leiden: Brill, 994), 1.42–43. For more on the development of the school of Anselm of Laon and the transmission of his works, including the Liber Pancrisis, see Heinrich J. F. Reinhardt, Die Ehelehre der Schule des Anselm von Laon: eine Theologie-und Kirchenrechtsgeschichtliche Untersuchung zu den Ehetexten der Frühen Pariser Schule des 12. Jahrhunderts (Münster: Aschendorff, 1974). On the question of florilegia from other manuscripts related to Anselm and the Liber Pancrisis, see Lottin, “Nouveaux fragments,” 306–8. See also George Lefèvre, Anselmi Laudunensis et Radulfi fratris suis eius Sententias excerptas (Evreux: n.p., 1895); F. Bliemetzrieder, “Autour de l’oeuvre théologique d’Anselme de Laon,” Recherches Théologique ancienne et médievale 1 (1929): 462–80. 84. Liber Pancrisis, 94; Lottin, Psychologie, 79. An identical entry on the Maccabean martyrs appears in other medieval florilegia: MS Valenciennes 14, 156va; MS Valenciennes 73, 85vb; MS Paris Nationale latine 12999 50va–50vb; MS Bamberg Staats Bibliothek cam. 10, 32r; MS Avanches 19, 161ra. See Lottin, “Nouveaux fragments,” 310. 85. Liber Pancrisis, 94. 86. On the readings for the feast of the Maccabean martyrs, see Dörrie, Passio Machabaeorum, 10–14. 87. Liber Pancrisis, 95; Lottin, Psychologie, 80. 88. Liber Pancrisis, 95. 89. Liber Pancrisis, 95. Anselm here refers to the observance of both the birth of John the Baptist (June 24) and his beheading (August 29). It is not clear if the reference to the “seven sons” is to the Maccabean martyrs or the seven sons of Felicitas. Either way, the argument remains that any question of the propriety of keeping this feast is trumped by the ancient practice of the Church to observe this feast. For more on Felicitas, see chapter two of this book and Karl Künstle, Hagiographischen Studien über Die Passio Felicitatis cum VII Filiis (Paderborn: Ferdinand Schöningh, 1894); Paul-Albert Février and Jean Guyon, “Septimus ex numero fratrum: à propos des sept frères martyrs et de leur mère. Quelques réflexions sur Damase et l’hagiographie de son temps,” in Memoriam sanctorum venerantes: miscellanea in onore di monsignor Victor Saxer (Città del Vaticano: Pontificio Istituto di archeologia cristiana, 1992), 375–402. 90. For this background, see Johannes Beleth, Summa de Ecclesiasticis Officiis, ed. Herbert Douteil, CCCM 41 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976), 29–34. William Durandus’s entry on the Maccabean martyrs almost entirely follows Beleth. See Guillaume Durand, Rationale Divinorum Officiorum, ed. A. Davril and T. M. Thibodeau, CCCM 140B (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), Caput XX, “De Festo Machabeorum,” 66–67. 91. Beleth, Summa, 142, 277–78. 92. Beleth, Summa, 142a. 93. Beleth followed Gregory the Great in this conflation in Summa, #142b. 94. Beleth, Summa, #142c. 95. Beleth, Summa, #142d.

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96. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 98, in Opera Omnia, ed. Jean Leclerq and Henri Rochais, 7 vols. (Rome: Editiones Cistercienses, 1957–74), 7.248–53. 97. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 98.2–4. 98. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola 98.2. The English translation is from The Letters of St. Bernard of Clairvaux, trans. Bruno Scott James (Kalamazoo, MI: Cistercian, 1998), 144–47. 99. Ibid. 100. See Jeremy Cohen, Living Letters, 222–24. Examples from Bernard’s works include Sermones in laudibus virginis matris I.4,1, Opera Omnia, 4:17. 101. Cohen, Living Letters, 231–33. See Sermones super Cantica canticorum 79.2.5, Opera Omnia, 2:275. 102. Cohen, Living Letters, 244. See Epistola 363, Opera Omnia, 8:311–17. For more on Bernard of Clairvaux and the Jews see David Berger, “The Attitude of St. Bernard of Clairvaux towards the Jews,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 40 (1972), 89–108; Friedrich Lotter, “The Position of the Jews in Early Christian Exegesis and Preaching,” in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen (Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996), 163–86. 103. Lotter, “Position of the Jews,” 173. See, for example, De laudibus virginis Mariae 4.2, Opera Omnia 2:275. 104. See Cohen, Living Letters, 233; Berger, “Attitude of St. Bernard,” 97–98. 105. Bernard of Clairvaux, Epistola, 363, 365. 106. For a full treatment of Bernard’s defense of Jews within the context of his antiJewish theology, see Berger, “Attitudes of St. Bernard.” 107. Literal exegesis incorporated a focus on meanings of the text associated with grammar, a plain sense reading, and historical dimensions. For a summary of this, see de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 1.2, 425–51; Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 27–35, 392–96. 108. Marie-Dominique Chenu, “The Old Testament in Twelfth Century Theology,” in Nature, Man and Society in the Twelfth Century: Essays on New Theological Perspectives in the Latin West, ed. and trans. Jerome Taylor and Lester K. Little (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1968), 159–60. This unfolding of salvation history, according to a Christian reading of the Old Testament, involved a view of the church as the true Israel. See Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1995), 63–65. 109. Other glosses composed at the cathedral school of Laon included Genesis, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, the twelve Minor Prophets, Luke, the canonical epistles of the New Testament, and Revelation. 110. On the Glossa Ordinaria and its development, see Smalley, The Study of the Bible in the Middle Ages, 46–66; Mary Dove, The Glossa Ordinaria on the Song of Songs (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publications, 2004), ix–xiii; G. R. Evans, The Language and Logic of the Bible: The Earlier Middle Ages (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1984), 37–47; Margaret T. Gibson, “The Glossed Bible,” in Biblia Latina cum Glossa Ordinaria, ed. Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 1.vii–xi; idem, “The Place of the

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Glossa ordinaria in Medieval Exegesis,” in Ad Litteram: Authoritative Texts and Their Medieval Readers, ed. Mark D. Jordan and Kent Emery Jr. (Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1992), 5–27; Guy Lobrichon, “Une nouveauté: les gloses de la Bible,” in Le moyen âge et la Bible, 95–114. 111. Biblia Latina Cum Glossa Ordinaria Facsimile Reprint of the Editio Princeps Adolph Rusch of Strassburg 1480/81, ed. Karlfried Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson (Turnhout: Brepols, 1992), 3.519A–21A; Gibson, “Glossed Bible,” ix–x. This is at least the case with Strassburg edition. I have not been able to thoroughly examine all extant manuscripts of the Glossa Ordinaria. 112. Literal exegesis incorporated a focus on meanings of the text associated with grammar, a plain sense reading, and historical dimensions. For a summary of this, see de Lubac, Exégèse médiévale, 1.2, 425–51; Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 27–35, 392–96. 113. Certainly there were other commentaries on the Maccabean martyrs by other important literal exegetes such as Stephen Langton, Hugh of St. Cher, and Nicholas of Lyra. However, Peter Comestor stands at the beginning of the literal exegesis tradition in medieval biblical scholarship, and the approaches of subsequent scholars were greatly influenced by him. For a fuller treatment of these other scholars, see Daniel Joslyn-Siemiatkoski, “The Maccabean Martyrs in Medieval Christianity and Judaism,” 132–47. 114. The essential biographical treatment of Peter Comestor is Saralynn Daly, “Peter Comestor: Master of the Histories,” Speculum 32 (1957): 62–73. See also Sandra Karp, “Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica: A Study in the Development of Literal Scriptural Exegesis” (PhD diss., Tulane University, 1978); David Luscombe, “Peter Comestor,” in The Bible in the Medieval World, ed. Katherine Walsh and Diana Wood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), 109–29. 115. Mark J. Clark, “A Study of Peter Comestor’s Method in the Historia Genesis” (PhD diss., Columbia University, 2002), 27–33. 116. Karp, “Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica,” 61; Clark, “Study of Peter Comestor,” 5; idem, “The Commentaries on Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica of Stephen Langton, Pseudo-Langton, and Hugh of St. Cher,” Sacris erudiri 44 (2005): 301–446; idem, “Stephen Langton and Hugh of St. Cher on Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica: The Lombard’s Sentences and the Problem of Sources Used by Comestor and His Commentators,” Recherches de Théologie et Philosophie médiévales 74, no. 1 (2007): 63–117. 117. Luscombe, “Peter Comestor,” 119; Karp, “Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica,” 60. 118. Karp, “Peter Comestor’s Historia Scholastica,” 186. For specific examples of how Comestor integrated Josephus into the Historia Scholastica, see Clark, “Study of Peter Comestor,” 94–101. 119. Considerable debate exists over the source of Peter’s knowledge of rabbinic midrash he mentions in his commentary. Many sources can be traced to Jerome and Hugh and Andrew of St. Victor. However, he also cited traditions that do not appear in these authors. On this issue, see Herman Hailperin, Rashi and the Christian Scholars (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1963); Esra

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Shereshevsky, “Hebrew Traditions in Peter Comestor’s Historia scholastica,” Jewish Quarterly Review, n.s., 59 (1968–69): 268–89; Samuel T. Lachs, “The Source of Hebrew Traditions in the Historia Scholastica,” Harvard Theological Review 66 (1973): 385–86; Louis E. Feldman, “The Jewish Sources of Peter Comestor’s Commentary on Genesis in his Historia scholastica,” in Begegnungen zwischen Christentum und Judentum in Antike und Mittelalter: Festschrift für Heinz Schreckenberg, ed. Dietrich-Alex Koch and Hermann Lichtenberger (Göttingen: Vandenhoeck & Ruprecht, 1993), 93–121. 120. The tradition of the mother and seven sons entered Ashkenazi Judaism through two major sources. The first were variations on a midrashic story reconfigured into the context of the persecutions leading up to and following the Bar Kokhba revolt and preserved in the Babylonian Talmud. The second was through the Sefer Yosippon, a Hebrew chronicle including narratives from 2 Maccabees and Josephus. Chapter 4 contains a fuller treatment of these sources. 121. Peter Comestor, Historia Libri II Machabaeorum, in Historia Scholastica, PL 198, 1522–25. 122. Historia Libri II Machabaeorum, Capitula I, PL 198, 1522–23. 123. Joannes Arguelles, De auctore, opera et impressione, ad lectorem praefatio, PL 198, 1051–52. 124. Maria C. Sherwood-Smith, Studies in the Reception of the “Historia Schlolastica” of Peter Comestor: The “Schwarzwälder Predigten,” the “Weltchronik” of Rudolf von Ems, the “Scholastica” of Jacob von Maerlant and the “Historiebijbl van 1360.” Medium Aevum Monographs New Series 20 (Oxford: Society for the Study of Medieval Languages and Literature, 2000), 8. My thanks go to Mark J. Clark and Christopher Ocker for their consultations on this issue. 125. Historia Libri II Machabaeorum, PL 198, 1524. For the third definition the text reads “infants,” which refers to the Holy Innocents whose slaughter by Herod is recorded in Matthew. On the Holy Innocents in Christian thought, see Paul A. Hayward, “Suffering and Innocence in Latin Sermons for the Feast of the Holy Innocents, c. 400–800,” in The Church and Childhood, ed. Diana Wood (Oxford: Blackwell, 1994), 67–80. 126. Historia in Evangelorum, PL 198, 1628–29. For more on Comestor’s interpretation of this narrative, see Christopher Ocker, “Ritual Murder and the Subjectivity of Christ: A Choice in Medieval Christianity,” Harvard Theological Review 91, no. 2 (1998): 153–92. 127. Historia Libri Apstolorum Actorum, PL 198, 1711. 128. Mark A. Zier, “Sermons of the twelfth century schoolmasters and canons,” in The Sermon, ed. Beverly Mayne Kienzle. Typologie des sources du Moyen âge occidental, fasc. 81–83 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2000), 325–62. 129. Peter Comestor, Sermo Primus in Adventu Dominus, PL 198, 1724; Sermo V de eodem Adventu Domini, PL 198, 1737; Sermo de Sancto Vincentio, PL 198, 1742; Sermo in Litania Maiore, PL 198, 1778. 130. Richard Schenk, OP, “Views of the Two Covenants in Medieval Theology,” Nova et Vetera 4, no. 4 (2006): 894–97.

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Chapter 4 1. When discussing Jewish sources, I will refer to the subject of these texts as the “mother and seven sons,” rather than the “Maccabean martyrs.” The mother (often identified as Miriam or Hannah) and seven sons are never referred to as “Maccabean” in any late antique or medieval Jewish source. See Gunter Stemberger, “The Maccabees in Rabbinic Tradition,” in The Scriptures and the Scrolls: Studies in Honour of A. S. van der Woude, ed. F. García Martínez (Leiden: Brill, 1992), 193. 2. There are other instances of regions and cities that venerated the Maccabean martyrs. Note particularly churches dedicated to the Maccabean martyrs in the Rhône Valley, especially in Lyon and Vienne, during the early medieval period. However, these churches were replaced by later churches in the same place dedicated to different saints. See Roswitha Hirner, “Der Makkabäerschrein in St. Andreas zu Köln” (PhD diss., Rheinischen Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universität zu Bonn, 1970), 40; Dictionnaire des églises de France, Belgique, Luxembourg, Suisse, 3 vols. (Paris: Robert Laffont, 1955–71), 2:84, 90. 3. On Jewish polemical works, see David Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the “Nizzahon Vetus” (New York: Jewish Publication Society, 1979). For detailed discussions of Ashkenazi Jewish acculturation in medieval western Christendom, see Ivan G. Marcus, Rituals of Childhood: Jewish Acculturation in Medieval Europe (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1996); Jeremy Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God: Jewish Martyrs and Jewish Memories of the First Crusade (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004); Israel Jacob Yuval, Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages, trans. Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2006). 4. On the influence of Sefer Josippon and its narratives of resistance on the early Ashkenazi community, see Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1987), 149–50; idem, God, Humanity and History: The Hebrew First Crusade Narratives (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2000), 192–200; Steven Bowman, “Yosippon and Jewish Nationalism,” Proceedings of the American Academy for Jewish Research 61 (1995): 23–51. For a skeptical view of the normative role of Sefer Josippon for Ashkenazi Judaism, see Haym Soloveitchik, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Medieval Ashkenaz (Part II of II),” Jewish Quarterly Review 94, no. 2 (2004): 281–84. 5. On early rabbinic concepts of martyrdom and halakhic discussions of it, see Louis Finkelstein, “The Ten Martyrs,” in Essays and Studies in Memory of Linda R. Millar, ed. I. Davidson (New York: Jewish Theological Seminary Press, 1938), 29–55; Saul Lieberman, “The Martyrs of Caesarea,” Annuaire de l’institut de philologie et d’histoire orientales et slaves 7 (1939–44): 395–446; idem, “Roman Legal Institutions in Early Rabbinics and Acta Martyrum,” Jewish Quarterly Review 35 (1944): 1–58; Aaron Oppenheimer, “Sanctity of Life and Martyrdom Following the Bar Kokhba Revolt” [Hebrew], in Sanctity of Life and Martyrdom:

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Studies in Memory of Amir Yekutiel, ed. Isaiah M. Gafni and Aviezer Ravitzsky (Jerusalem: Zalman Shazar Center for Jewish History, 1992), 85–97; Shmuel Safrai, “Qiddush ha-Shem in the Teachings of the Tanaaim” [Hebrew], Zion 43 (1979): 28–42; Shmuel Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs in the Pagan and Christian Worlds (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006), 67–106; Solomon Zeitlin, “The Legend of the Ten Martyrs and Its Apocalyptic Origins,” Jewish Quarterly Review 36 (1945–46), 1–16. 6. See Gerson D. Cohen, “Hannah and Her Seven Sons in Hebrew Literature,” in Studies in the Variety of Rabbinic Culture (Philadelphia: Jewish Publication Society, 1991), 40. 7. These texts were the basis for other midrashim on the mother and seven sons. Seder Eliahu 28 depended on Midrash Lamentations 1.16 and Midrash on Lamentations Zuta 21 developed from BT Gittin 57b. Gittin 57b was also anthologized in the medieval period in Yalkut Lamentations 1017–19. A separate midrash on the mother and seven sons, Pesikta Rabbati 43, had little influence on other midrashim or in Ashkenazi Judaism. See Cohen, “Hannah and Her Seven Sons,” 55–56n3; Elisheva Baumgarten and Rella Kushelevsky, “From ‘The Mother and Her Sons’ to ‘The Mother of the Sons’ in Ashkenaz,” [Hebrew] Zion 71, no. 3 (2006): 306–7. Robert Doran has worked out the oral nature of these texts and their relationship and recension history. See Robert Doran, “The Martyr: A Synoptic View of the Mother and Her Seven Sons,” in Ideal Figures in Ancient Judaism: Profiles and Paradigms, ed. George W. E. Nickelsburg and John J. Collins (Chico, CA: Scholars Press, 1980), 189–221. 8. Midrash Lamentations was probably redacted sometime in the early fifth century. It primarily cites Palestinian Amoraim, rabbis from the second to fifth century CE. BT Gittin 57b attributes the story of the mother and her seven sons to Rav Yehudah, a Babylonian Amora from the late third century. This passage was probably redacted in the sixth century CE. See H. L. Strack and Gunter Stemberger, Introduction to the Talmud and Midrash, trans. and ed. Markus Bockmuehl (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1992), 194–97, 285–86. For Midrash Lamentations, I consulted Midrasch Echa Rabbati: Sammlung aggadischer Auslegungen der Klaglieder, ed. Solomon Buber (Vilna: n.p., 1899). 9. Galit Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life: Folklore and Midrash in Rabbinic Literature, trans. Batya Stein (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2000), 108–11; idem, “Narratives in Dialogue: A Folk Literary Perspective on Interreligious Contacts in the Holy Land in Rabbinic Literature of Late Antiquity,” in Sharing the Sacred: Religious Contacts and Conflicts in the Holy Land, First-Fifteenth Centuries C.E., ed. Guy Strousma and Arieh Kofsky (Jerusalem: Yad Izhak Ben Zvi, 1998), 109–29. 10. See Daniel Boyarin, Dying for God: Martyrdom in the Making of Judaism and Christianity (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1999); Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs, 67–106; Simha Goldin, The Ways of Jewish Martyrdom [Hebrew] (Lod: Dvir, 2002), 70–71. 11. On the development of the concept of martyrdom, and particularly the terminology and meaning of kiddush ha-Shem, within rabbinic Judaism, see footnote

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5 above and also David Grunewald, “Qiddush ha-Shem, an Examination of a Term” [Hebrew], Molad 24 (1968): 476–84; and Avraham Holtz, “Kiddush and Hillul Hashem,” Judaism 10 (1961): 360–68. 12. On resistance culture as defined by Edward Said and expressed in traditions of the Maccabean martyrs, see the introduction and first chapter of this book. 13. This was a feature of 4 Maccabees. See especially 4 Maccabees 14:20–15:3. 14. Midrash Lamentations, trans. A. Cohen (London: Soncino, 1983), 133. Gittin 57b is terser in language but expresses the same idea. 15. See Shalom Spiegel, The Last Trial: On the Legends and Lore of the Command to Abraham to Offer Isaac as a Sacrifice: The Akedah, trans. Judah Goldin (Woodstock, VT: Jewish Lights, 1993), 83–86, 117–20; Jon D. Levenson, The Death and Resurrection of the Beloved Son: The Transformation of Child Sacrifice in Judaism and Christianity (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1993), 125–42. 16. See Hasan-Rokem, Web of Life, 121; Goldin, Ways of Martyrdom, 81nn82–83. Goldin takes up a suggestion from Hasan-Rokem that the similarity between the names of Miriam and Mary the mother of Jesus is significant. While Mary wept over the death of just one son, Miriam aided in the death of her sons. On the likelihood of rabbinic knowledge of late antique supersessionist arguments, especially in Palestine, see Marc G. Hirshman, A Rivalry of Genius: Jewish and Christian Biblical Interpretation in Late Antiquity, trans. Batya Stein (Albany, NY: State University Press of New York Press, 1996); Boyarin, Dying for God; idem, Border Lines: The Partition of Judaeo-Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004). 17. The literature on the First Crusade assaults on Ashkenazi communities is vast and growing. For an overview of the literature, see Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des Ersten Kreuzzugs, ed. Eva Haverkamp, MGH, HT 1 (Hannover: Hahnsche, 2005). See also Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God; Chazan, God, Humanity and History. 18. These attackers were not the “official” crusaders sanctioned by Pope Urban II. Rather, these crusaders were loose groups of various peoples inspired to capture Jerusalem. See Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, 61–84; Kenneth Stow, “Conversion, Apostasy, and Apprehensiveness: Emicho of Flonheim and the Fear of Jews in the Twelfth Century,” Speculum 76 (2001): 911–33. 19. Chronicle of Solomon bar Simson, prologue. The best edition of the Hebrew crusade chronicles is Haverkamp’s Hebräische Berichte über die Judenverfolgungen während des Ersten Kreuzzugs. The English translation here is from Robert Chazan, European Jewry and the First Crusade, 243–44. 20. Here I use the term “mimicry” according to its sense in postcolonial studies. I understand mimicry to be an ambivalent repetition of colonizing discourses that in its articulation disrupts colonial power and discourses. For the seminal articulation of this concept, see Homi K. Bhabha, The Location of Culture (London: Routledge, 1994; reprint, 2006); 121–31. 21. There are three Hebrew crusade chronicles: the chronicle by Solomon bar Simson, the Mainz Anonymous, and the chronicle of Eliezer bar Nathan. These texts were composed in the decades after the events of 1096 but before the events of

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the Second Crusades, with some later additions. On the dating of these texts and their relationships, see Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 34–142. 22. On the behavior of Jews during these attacks and the forms of martyrdom chosen see Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God, 4–9; David Malkiel, “Vestiges of Conflict in the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles,” Journal of Jewish Studies 52, no. 2 (2001): 323–40; Abraham Gross, Struggling with Tradition: Reservations about Active Martyrdom in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 2004); Chazan, European Jewry, 123–24. 23. Scholarship on the historical reliability of these texts varies. Robert Chazan and Abraham Gross view these chronicles as largely historically accurate. Ivan Marcus, Simha Goldin, and Avraham Grossman emphasize the literary qualities of these texts and de-emphasize, while not explicitly disavowing, their historicity. See Ivan Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom: Shifting Paradigms in the Hebrew Narratives of the 1096 Crusade Riots,” Prooftexts 2 (1982): 40–52; Simha Goldin, “The Socialisation for ‘Kiddush ha-Shem’ among Medieval Jews,” Journal of Medieval History 23, no. 2 (1997): 117–38; Avraham Grossman, Pious and Rebellious: Jewish Women in Medieval Europe, trans. Jonathan Chipman (Waltham, MA: Brandeis University Press, 2004), 199–201. Others, like Jeremy Cohen and David Malkiel, focus on the ambivalence these texts display about the violence recorded in them and on the mental states of the communities for which they were written. See Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God, 7–9, 55–59; Malkiel, “Vestiges of Conflict,” 328–40. 24. On the question of the halakhic dimensions of these acts, see Haym Soloveitchik, “Religious Law and Change: The Medieval Ashkenazic Example,” Association for Jewish Studies Review 12 (1987): 205–21; idem, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Medieval Ashkenaz (Part I of II),” Jewish Quarterly Review 94, no. 1 (2004): 77–108; idem, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics, and Martyrdom in Medieval Ashkenaz (Part II of II),” Jewish Quarterly Review 94, no. 2 (2004): 278–99. 25. The primary midrashic narratives the chroniclers utilized dealt with the binding of Isaac, the Ten Martyrs, the three youths in Daniel 3, the four hundred youths, the death of Saul, and, as discussed here, the mother and seven sons. 26. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 354–58, 522–25, 594–97. For the argument that the Ashkenazi community would have at least been familiar with BT Gittin 57b and the Sefer Josippon, see Chazan, God, Humanity and History, 181. 27. On the Hebrew crusade chronicles as a “countercrusade” that rebuts Christian crusading ideology, see Chazan, God, Humanity and History, 141–53. 28. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 597. The English translation here is from The Jews and the Crusaders: The Hebrew Chronicles of the First and Second Crusades, trans. Shlomo Eidelberg (Madison, WI: University of Wisconsin Press, 1977), 35–36. 29. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 523, 597; Eidelberg, Jews and the Crusaders, 36. 30. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 597; I have taken the English translation of this passage from Chazan, European Jewry, 259, for clarity.

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31. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 523, 597; Eidelberg, Jews and the Crusaders, 36. 32. Haverkamp, Hebräische Berichte, 23, 595; Eidelberg, Jews and the Crusaders, 36. 33. For a survey of Jewish-Christian theological encounters in the twelfth century, see Anna Sapir Abulafia, Christians and Jews in the Twelfth-Century Renaissance (London: Routledge, 1995). 34. Marcus, “From Politics to Martyrdom”; Chazan, European Jewry, 126–32. 35. See Spiegel, The Last Trial; Levenson, Death and Resurrection, 197–99; Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 6–7. An exemplar of this idea is Ephraim of Bonn, “The Slaughter of Isaac and His Revival,” in The Penguin Book of Hebrew Verse, ed. and trans. T. Carmi (New York: Penguin, 1981), 379–84. 36. Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God, 107–29; Marcus, Rituals of Childhood, 7; Lena Roos, “God Wants It!”: The Ideology of Martyrdom in the Hebrew Crusade Chronicles and Its Jewish and Christian Background (Turnhout: Brepols, 2006), 107–10. 37. Such exposure has been documented in the works of scholars such as Jeremy Cohen, Ivan Marcus, and Israel Yuval. Jewish polemical works such as the Nizzahon Vetus also reflected Jewish exposure to supersessionist thought. See Berger, The Jewish-Christian Debate in the High Middle Ages: A Critical Edition of the “Nizzahon Vetus”; Daniel Lasker, Jewish Philosophical Polemics Against Christianity in the High Middle Ages (New York: Ktav, 1977). Multiple examples of the Toledoth Yeshu legend also exist. This was a mocking story of the life of Jesus that circulated in multiple forms among Ashkenazi Jews. Its polemical satire indicates knowledge of the basic contours of the Christian gospels. 38. Shepkaru, Jewish Martyrs, 185–210. 39. Malkiel, “Vestiges of Conflict,” 334–37. 40. On Jewish conversion in this period, see Karl F. Morrison, Conversion and Text: The Case of Augustine of Hippo, Herman-Judah, and Constantine Tsatsos (Charlottesville, VA: University of Virginia Press, 1992); Jonathan M. Elukin, “The Discovery of the Self: Jews and Conversion in the Twelfth Century,” in Jews and Christians in Twelfth-Century Europe, ed. Michael A. Signer and John Van Engen (South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 2001), 63–76; William Chester Jordan, “Adolescence and Conversion: A Research Agenda,” in Jews and Christians in Twelfth Century Europe, 77–93; Joseph Shatzmiller, “Jewish Converts to Christianity in Medieval Europe, 1200–1500,” in Cross Cultural Convergence in the Crusader Period: Essays Presented to Aryeh Grabois on His SixtyFifth Birthday, ed. Michael Goodich et al. (New York, 1995), 297–318. Susan Einbinder makes a persuasive argument that certain liturgical poems concerning martyrdom were specifically composed to prevent young Jewish scholars from converting to Christianity, as they were perceived as particularly vulnerable to Christian missionary efforts. See Susan Einbinder, Beautiful Death: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002), 24–25, 51–62; and also Grossman, “Cultural and Social Background of Jewish Martyrdom,” 204–5.

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41. I have relied on the edited texts provided in Baumgarten and Kushelevsky, “From ‘The Mother and her Sons’ to ‘The Mother of the Sons,’” 328–41. These authors rely on two manuscripts, Midrash on the Ten Commandments, Oxford Or. 135, 349a-b and The Book of Deeds, Oxford Or. 135, 305a On the relationship between these texts and earlier narratives of the mother and seven sons, see Baumgarten and Kushelevsky, 305–13. My thanks to Robert Galoob for his assistance in translating this article. 42. Baumgarten and Kushelevsky, “From ‘The Mother and Her Sons,’” 340. 43. Ibid., 323–24. 44. Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 51–62. 45. Jordan, “Adolescence and Conversion.” 46. Israel Davidson, ed., Ozar ha-Shirah ve-ha-Piyyut, rev. ed., 4 vols. (New York: Ktav, 1970), vol. 1, no. 5971; Abraham Rosenfeld, ed., Authorised Kinot for the Ninth of Av (London: n.p., 1965; reprint, Jerusalem: C. Labworth, 1970), 139–42. This qinah was recited on the Ninth of Av, the fast day commemorating the destruction of the Jerusalem Temples. For other examples see Abraham Habermann, ed., Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz ve-Sarfat (Jerusalem: Tarshish, 1945), 81–82; 109–11; 133–36. 47. This translation is from Rosenfeld, Authorised Kinot, 141. 48. The first blessing after the recitation of the Shema in the liturgy. 49. Siddur Otzar Ha-Tefilot Nusah Ashkenaz (Vilna: n.p., 1914), 294–96, especially lines 48–74. This text was part of the German Ashkenazi rite. Although it is difficult to determine exactly when this work was first used, it has been found in manuscripts of German provenance from as early as the late twelfth century. For a full list of witnesses for this piyyut, see the manuscript database for the Institute for Microfilmed Hebrew Manuscripts at the Jewish National and University Library. For an example of a twelfth-century manuscript, see Leipzig, Universitätsbibliothek 1103 (Institute film number F 19508). 50. Rosenfeld, Authorised Kinot, 141. 51. Siddur Otzar Ha-Tefilot, 296, lines 72–73. 52. Einbinder, Beautiful Death, 2. 53. Meir of Rothenburg, Responsa, Rulings and Customs of Rabbi Meir of Rothenburg, ed. Isaac Kahana (Jerusalem: Mosad ha-Rav Kuk, 1960), 75. 54. Meir of Rothenburg shaped this responsa on rabbinic commentary from Genesis Rabbah 34 on Genesis 9:5 concerning Saul’s suicide in 1 Samuel 3:14. The example of Saul’s suicide is noteworthy because he commissioned his armorbearer to carry it out, thus sounding some of the same notes as found in the medieval examples of active martyrdom. R. Meir also mentioned the story of the four hundred youths. 55. For a translation of this responsum and a treatment of the logic of Meir’s reasoning and its implications, see Soloveitchik, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics and Martyrdom I,” 98–102. See also Gross, Struggling, 30–33; Goldin, Ways of Jewish Martyrdom, 228–32.

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56. For other halakhic rulings and debates on the permissibility of killing children as an element of active martyrdom, see Soloveitchik, “Halakhah, Hermeneutics and Martyrdom I,” 101–4; Gross, Struggling, 33–40. 57. Jeremy Cohen and Elisheva Baumgarten and Rella Kushelevsky each understand the medieval retelling of the story of the mother and seven sons to represent alternatives to Christian veneration of the Virgin Mary and female martyrs and saints. See Cohen, Sanctifying the Name of God, 120–29; Baumgarten and Kushelevsky, “From ‘The Mother and Her Sons,’” 318–21. 58. For a brief biography of Helias Mertz, see Hansgeorg Molitor, “Helias Marcaeus,” in Contemporaries of Erasmus, ed. Peter G. Bietenholz, 2 vols. (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1986), 2:381–82. Although scholars have commonly identified Mertz as a humanist, David Collins persuasively argues that while Mertz belongs to the category of learned clergy, his work and education do not indicate a specifically humanist orientation. See David J. Collins, “The Renaissance of the Maccabees: The Veneration of Martyred Jews in Early Modern Cologne,” in Dying for the Faith, Killing for the Faith: The Maccabees in Jewish and Christian Thought, ed. Gabriela Signori (Leiden: Brill, in press). I would like to thank David Collins for making this article available to me in manuscript form. 59. It is not clear where the nuns of the cloister lived in the interim, but that their cloister was rebuilt indicates communal support for their community. On this fire, see Cologne, Historische Archiv des Stadts Köln, GB fº 193, 152rb, and “Die cronica von der hilger stat von Coellen,” in Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte von 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Verlag von G. Hirzel, 1876), 13:803. I would like to offer my thanks to the Historische Archiv des Stadts Köln for their assistance while researching there. 60. Collins, “The Renaissance of the Maccabees.” 61. Ursula Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck: Heiligenlegenden aus frühen Kölner Offizinen (Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1996), 233. 62. On these inscriptions, see Hans Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln, eine Kunststätte der Spätgotik,” Jahrbuch des Kölnischen Geschichtsvereins 5 (1922): 87–112; and Marion Grams-Thieme, “Der Makkabäerschrein,” Colonia Romanica: Jahrbuch des Fördervereins Romanische Kirchen Köln 5 (1990): 101–10. 63. Several scholars have discussed the reliquary of the Maccabean martyrs in detail. See especially Hirner, “Der Makkabäerschrein”; Anton von Euw, “Die Makkabäerbrüder: Spätjudische Märtyrer der Christlichen Heiligenverehrung,” in Monumenta Judaica: 2000 Jahre Geschichte und Kultur der Juden am Rhein, ed. Konrad Schilling (Köln: Joseph Melzer, 1964), 782–86; Grams-Thieme, “Der Makkabäerschrein.” 64. I used the printed edition found in Oskar Schade, ed., Geistliche Gedichte des XIV. und XV. Jahrhunderts vom Niederrhein (Hannover: Rumpler, 1854; reprint, Amsterdam: Rodopi, 1968), 366–93. The earliest printed exemplar, dating from 1507, is Cologne, Universitätbibliothek, AD 575. 65. See Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck, 330–31. A 1517 exemplar can be found in Krakow Biblioteka Jagiellonska, Yg 6377 R.

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66. Cologne, Dombibliothek 271, Chronik des Benediktinerklosters SS. Machabaeorum. 67. On the importance of Cologne as a destination for pilgrims and its status as a city having a remarkably large collection of relics, see Gerald Chaix, De la cité chrétienne á la métropole catholique: Vie religieuse et conscience civique á Cologne au XVIe siècle. Thèse pour le doctorat d’état (Université de Strasbourg, 1994); Virginia Reinburg, “Religious Life and Material Culture in Medieval and Reformation Cologne,” in Fragmented Devotion: Medieval Objects from the Schnütgen Museum Cologne, ed. Nancy Netzer and Virginia Reinburg (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1999), 40–59. 68. See Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck, 233–34. 69. A younger contemporary of Mertz, Ortwinus Gratius was a member of the faculty of arts at the University of Cologne and active in the publishing trade in Cologne. On Gratius, see Contemporaries of Erasmus, 2:124–25; Dietrich Reichling, Ortwin Gratius: Sein Leben und sein Wirken (Heiligenstadt: n.p., 1884; reprint, Nieuwkoop: B. de Graaf, 1963); J. Hashagen, “Hauptrichtungen des rheinischen Humanismus,” Annalen des Historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 106 (1922): 1–56. 70. Cologne, Dombibliothek 271, Chronik des Benediktinerklosters SS. Machabaeorum, 122r–144v. My thanks to the Cologne Diözesan-und Dombibliothek for their assistance while researching in their collection. 71. On the cult of Ursula, see Acta Sanctorum 9 (October 1885), 73–303; W. Levinson, “Das Werden der Ursula-Legende,” Bonner Jahrbücher, 132 (1927): 1–164; Guy de Tervarent, La Légende de S. Ursule dan la littérature et l’art du moyen âge, 2 vols. (Paris: Les éditions G. van Oest, 1931). 72. On the location of these churches, see Paul Clemen, “Das Benediktinerinnenkloster zu den H. Machabäern” in Die Kunstdenkmäler der Stadt Köln (Düsseldorf: L. Schwann, 1937), 254; Hans Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche,” 89. 73. On the history of the cult of the Three Kings in Cologne, see Hans Hofmann, Die Heiligen Drei Könige: Zur Heiligenverehrung im kirchlichen, gesellschaftlichen und politischen Leben des Mittelalters (Bonn: Röhrscheid, 1975); Adam Wienand, Die Heiligen Drei Könige: Heilsgeschichtlich, Kunsthistorisch, das religiöse Brauchtum (Cologne: Wienand, 1974); Frank Gunter Zehnder, ed., Die Heiligen Drei Könige: Darstellung und Verehrung (Cologne: Das Museum, 1982). On Rainald von Dassel and his promotion of the cult, see Julius Ficker, Reinald von Dassel: Reichskanzler und Erzbischof von Köln, 1156–1167 (1850; reprint, Aalen: Scientia Verlag, 1966); Patrick J. Geary, Living with the Dead in the Middle Ages (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994), 243–56; Richard C. Trexler, The Journey of the Magi: Meanings in History of a Christian Story (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1997). 74. See Thomas Ilgen, “Kritische Beiträge zur rheinisch-westfälischen Quellenkunde des Mittelalters,” Westdeutsche Zeitschrift für den Geschichte und Kunst 30 (1911): 232; Manfred Gröten, “Zur Enstehung des Benediktinerinnenklosters zu den Machabäern in Köln,” in Aus überrest und Tradition. Festschrift für Anna-Dorothee von den Brincken, ed. Peter Engels (Erlangen: Europaforum, 1999), 157.

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75. Helias Mertz, “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen und afflaes tzo Mauyren bynnen Colen,” lines 761–68. 76. Dombibliothek 271, 56v–57r; 77r–77v. 77. Aegidius Gelenius, De Admiranda, Sacra, et Civili Magnitudine Coloniae Claudiae Aggripinensis Ubiorum Urbis (Colonia Agrippinae: n.p., 1645), 537; Herman Crombach, S. J., Vita et martyrium S. Ursulae et Sociarum undecim millium virginum (Colonia Agrippinae: n.p., 1647), 473–74, 481–82, 790–92. The claim that the relics of the Maccabean martyrs were in Cologne in the twelfth century can still be found in contemporary works. See for example Rhaban Haacke, ed., Die Benediktinerklösters in Nordrhein-Westfalen, Germania Benedictina (St. Ottilen: Eos, 1980), 8:68–69. 78. Ilgen, “Kritische Beiträge,” 240–46; Gröten, “Benediktinerinnenklosters zu den Machabäern in Köln,” 158. 79. Ilgen, “Kritische Beiträge,” 243; Gröten, “Benediktinerinnenklosters zu den Machabäern in Köln,” 159; Richard Knipping, ed., Die Regesten der Erzbischofe von Köln im Mittelalter (Bonn: Hanstein’s Verlag, 1901), 2:303. See also Farrago Geleniana serviens praecipe Historia Coloniensi, Machabaeorum, Col. VII, 261, Historisches Archiv des Stadt Köln, Bestandnis 1039. 80. Clemen, “Das Benediktinerinnenkloster,” 254. 81. Clemen, “Das Benediktinerinnenkloster,” 254–55; Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 88–89. 82. Ilgen, “Kritische Beiträge,” 253. 83. Gröten, “Benediktinerinnenklosters zu den Machabäern in Köln,” 162–67. 84. Clemen, “Das Benediktinerinnenkloster,” 254; von Euw, “Die Makkabäerbrüder,” 783. For the Hamburg edition, see MGH, SS 24, 333, 345. This manuscript is supposedly a continuation of a chronicle of the city of Cologne attributed to Caesarius of Heisterbach. 85. For example, the Liber Ordinarius of the Cologne church of St. Gereon, compiled from the twelfth to fifteenth centuries, contains an inventory of relics for the entire city, including a notice of the translation of the Three Kings in 1164. See Cologne, Dombibliothek 241, 65v. 86. See for example the version edited by Godfried Eckkert in “Cronica presulum et Archiepiscopum Coloniensis ecclesie,” Annalen des historischen Vereins für den Niederrhein 4 (1857): 198–99. 87. “Die cronica von der hilger stat von Coellen,” in Die Chroniken der deutschen Städte von 14. bis ins 16. Jahrhundert (Leipzig: Verlag von G. Hirzel, 1876), 13:516. 88. Ibid., 462. 89. Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck, 161–63. 90. Chronica praesulum des Conrad Jysernhoyfft von Ratingen, 24r–25v., in Abteilung Chroniken und Darstellung 8a, Bestandnis 7030, Historisches Archiv des Stadt Köln; Sammlung Alfter 14, Collectio diplomatum et aliorum chartarum, 233–35, Historisches Archiv des Stadt Köln; Knipping, Die Regesten der Erzbischofe von Köln, 2:800, 804.

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91. The 1462 fire likely also explains the relative dearth of documents and manuscripts that can be traced directly to the cloister of the Maccabees. 92. Hirner, Der Makkabäerschrein, 33–34. 93. Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 89. 94. Clemen, “Das Benediktinerinnenkloster,” 254; Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 89; Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck, 231. 95. Clemen, “Das Benediktinerinnenkloster,” 257, 263; Hirner, Der Makkabäerschrein, 23. 96. Cologne, Dom Frühdruck 217; there are illustrations of this print in Joachim Plotzek and Anton von Euw, Glaube und Wissen im Mittelalter: Die Kölner Bibliothek (München: Hirner, 1998), 499–503. 97. See Thomas H. Bestul, Texts of the Passion: Latin Devotional Literature and Medieval Society (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1996); Sara Lipton, Images of Intolerance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 1999). 98. Shulamit S. Magnus, Jewish Emancipation in a German City: Cologne, 1798–1871 (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 1997), 14–17; Matthias Schmandt, “Cologne, Jewish Centre on the Lower Rhein,” in The Jews of Europe in the Middle Ages (Tenth to Fifteenth Centuries), Proceedings of the International Symposium held at Speyer, October 20–25, 2002, ed. Christoph Cluse (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004), 367–78. 99. Alfred Haverkamp, “The Jewish Quarters in German Towns during the Late Middle Ages,” in In and Out of the Ghetto: Jewish-Gentile Relations in Late Medieval and Early Modern Germany, ed. R. Po-Chia Hsia and Hartmut Lehmann (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995), 13–28; Magnus, Jewish Emancipation, 18–19; Arye Maimon, ed., Germania Judaica (Tübingen: J. C. B. Mohr, 1987), 3.1:632–50. 100. Dean Philip Bell, Sacred Communities: Jewish and Christian Identities in FifteenthCentury Germany (Leiden: Brill, 2001), 142–45, 161–63. 101. Cf. Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck, 233–34. 102. Mertz, “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen,” lines 5–10. 103. Ibid., lines 569–632. 104. Ibid., lines 575–84. 105. Ibid., lines 587–97. 106. Some eastern theologians, beginning with Origen, associated the sword of Simeon’s prophecy with Mary’s experience of doubt during the crucifixion. In the west, beginning with Ambrose, the sword is taken as a sign of Mary’s emotional suffering at the passion. Peter Damian applied this prophecy to present her as a cosufferer with Christ. Bernard of Clairvaux deepened this to present Mary as experiencing an inner martyrdom at the cross. This development entered into the Marian piety popularized by the reforming orders of the Cistercians, Dominicans, and Franciscans. See Hilda Graef, Mary: A History of Doctrine and Devotion (London: Sheed & Ward, 1963), 45–46, 81–82; Sandro Sticca, The Planctus Mariae in the Dramatic Tradition of the Middle Ages, trans. Joseph R. Berrigan (Athens, GA: University of Georgia Press, 1988), 26–36, 102–8; Rachel Fulton,

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From Judgment to Passion: Devotion to Christ and the Virgin Mary, 800–1200 (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002), 199, 304–5, 425–27, 534n9. 107. Fulton, From Judgment to Passion, 405–58; Donna Spivey Ellington, From Sacred Body to Angelic Soul: Understanding Mary in Late Medieval and Early Modern Europe (Washington DC: Catholic University of America Press, 2001), 2. 108. André Wilmart, Auteurs spirituels et texts dévots de moyen âge latin: études d’histoire littéraire (Paris: études Augustiniennes, 1971), 511; Amy Neff, “The Pain of Compassio: Mary’s Labor at the Foot of the Cross,” The Art Bulletin 80, no. 2 (1998): 254–73. 109. Hugh of Saint Cher, In Liber II Machabaeorum, in Opera Omnia in Universam Vetus & Novum Testamentum (Lugduni: Sumptibus Societatis Bibliopolarum, 1703), tome 5, 257r–257v. This comparison marked the one original contribution Hugh made to the western Christian tradition of the Maccabean martyrs. I would like to thank the Burns Library at Boston College for providing access to this volume. 110. Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 109. 111. Grams-Thieme, “Der Makkabäerschrein,” 103; Anton Legner, Kölner Heilige und Heiligtümer: Ein Jahrtausends europäischer Reliquienkultur (Köln: Greven, 2003), 233. 112. Grams-Thieme, “Der Makkabäerschrein,” 104–6 provides a complete list. 113. Cf. Hirner, “Der Makkabäerschrein,” 19. 114. Mertz, “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen,” lines 625–32. 115. Mertz, “Dat lyden der hilger Machabeen,” 706–7. 116. Hirner, “Der Makkabäerschrein,” 128–29; Klaus Schreiner, Märtyrer, Schlachtenhelfer, Friedenstifter: Krieg und Frieden im Spiegel mittelalterlicher und frühneuuzeitlichen Heiligenverehrung (Opladen: Leske + Budrich, 2000), 47. 117. Von Euw, “Die Makkabäerbrüder,” 784. 118. Pierre Nora, “Memory and History: Les Lieux de Mémoire,” in “Memory and Counter-Memory,” special issue, Representations 26 (Spring 1989): 19. 119. Vogts edited these inscriptions, which were transcribed in the seventeenth century, prior to the destruction of the church in 1808. Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 91–93; Grams-Thieme, “Der Makkabäerschrein,” 102. 120. For example, in a chapel of St. Katherine, inscriptions accompanied an altar dedicated to three sainted Hungarian kings, Stephanus, Ladislaus, and Emericus. Elsewhere, inscriptions accompanied images of two other Hungarian saints, Johannes Eliemosynarius and Adalbertus. Such inscriptions suggest the popularity of this church as a destination for pilgrims from areas of Hungary. Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 95–96. 121. S. Brad Gregory, Salvation at Stake: Christian Martyrdom in Early Modern Europe (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1999), 45. 122. Vogts, “Die Machabäerkirche in Köln,” 96. 123. Ibid., 97. 124. Ibid. 125. Ibid., 102. 126. Ibid., 108.

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127. Ibid. 128. Rautenberg, Überlieferung und Druck, 233–34. 129. Darmstadt, Hessischen Landes-und Hochschulbibliothek 521, 164ra–b. I would like to thank the Hessischen Landes-und Hochschulbibliothek for all of its assistance while conducting research there. 130. Note the resonance of the furnace imagery with Augustine’s comparison between the Maccabean martyrs and the three youths from Daniel discussed in Chapter 2. 131. Cologne, Historische Archiv des Stadts Köln, W 12º 68, 26v–31r. These prayers were composed in “Niederrheinisch” German, showing a mix of medieval Dutch and German vernaculars. For the details of this manuscript, see Karl Menne, ed., Deutsche und niederländische Handschriften (Köln: Neubner, 1937), 335–37. Based on several important clues, I argue that this prayer book belonged to the cloister of the Maccabees. The liturgical calendar of this prayer book offers several indications about the identity of this community. First, July 16 is identified in red letters as the day of the “translation of the Maccabees.” This date does not occur in any other liturgical manuscript from Cologne that I surveyed. Given the late fifteenth-century date of this manuscript, it is possible that by this point the claims about the translation of the relics of the Maccabean martyrs, first propagated a century earlier, now were generally accepted. That this event would be observed as an important feast for the community of the cloister of the Maccabees in the second half of the fifteenth century is logical. Second, the feast day of the Maccabean martyrs on August 1 is also in red, while the observance of Peter in Chains was shifted to July 31. The translation of Peter in Chains to the previous day and the reservation of August 1 for the Maccabean martyrs alone is a decision likely to be made by a community like this cloister. Third, the manuscript contains a lengthy series of vernacular prayers to the Maccabean martyrs, which alone indicates a community particularly concerned with their cult. Fourth, in these prayers there are references to Saint Sigillindis and the rest of Ursula’s companions. Such references connect the community to the legendary history of the convent being on the site where Ursula and her companions were martyred. Finally, the text of these prayers claims that its community possesses the bones of both the Maccabean martyrs and the companions of Ursula. These statements offer significant evidence that this work belonged to the community of the cloister of the Maccabees. I would like to thank Arie Gelderblom of the University of Utrecht for his assistance in producing a translation of this text. 132. Cologne, Historische Archiv des Stadts Köln, W 12º 68, 26v. 133. Ibid., 27v. Cf. Psalm 42:1. 134. Ibid. 135. Ibid., 28v. 136. Ibid., 28v–29r. 137. Ibid., 29r–v. 138. Ibid., 30r–v. 139. Cologne, Dombibliothek Frühdruck 217, 249r–v. See also Plotzek and von Euw, Glaube und Wissen, 499–503. 140. Cologne, Dombibliothek Frühdruck 217, 249v.

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141. Ibid. 142. Ibid. 143. Chronik, 79r–119r. 144. Andreas Freitäger, Johannes Cincinnius von Lippstadt (ca. 1485–1555): Bibliothek und Geisteswelt eines westfälischen Humanisten (Münster: Aschendorff, 2000), 200. 145. David J. Collins, Reforming Saints: Saints’ Lives and Their Authors in Germany, 1470–1530 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2008), 80–97. 146. Freitäger, Johannes Cincinnius, 213–15. 147. Chronik, 82r–v. 148. Chronik, 83v; 114r–115r. 149. Chronik, 115r–v. 150. Legner, Kölner Heilige und Heiligtümer, 224. See, for example, Erasmus, Enchiridion militis Christiani, in Collected Works of Erasmus, ed. John W. O’Malley (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1988), 66:64–65, 72–73. 151. A copy of this letter can be found in Opus Epistolarum Desiderii Erasmi Roterodami, ed. P. S. Allen (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1913), 3:310–12. 152. Chronik, 8v–9r. 153. Cincinnius and Ortwinus Gratius were involved both in supporting the cult of the Maccabean martyrs and in the Reuchlin-Pfefferkorn affair in Cologne, which roiled German humanism. This affair focused on the question of the degree to which Jewish learning via Christian Hebraists ought to be incorporated into Christian scholarship. Although I concur with David Collins that no direct link can be made between this affair and the support of the cult of the Maccabean martyrs, the coincidence is tantalizing. See Collins, “The Renaissance of the Maccabees.”

Conclusion 1. Judith M. Lieu, Christian Identity in the Jewish and Graeco-Roman World (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2004), see especially 62–97. 2. Elizabeth A. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory: Early Christian Culture Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 2004), 135. 3. Homi K. Bhabha, “The Third Space,” in Identity: Community, Culture, Difference, ed. Jonathan Rutherford (London: Lawrence & Wishart, 1990), 211. 4. Walter Benjamin, “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” in Illuminations, ed. Hannah Arndt, trans. Harry Zohn (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich; New York: Schocken Books, 2007), 256. 5. Marcel Simon’s Verus Israel was published in 1946; the first volume of Léon Poliakov’s multivolume The History of Anti-Semitism in 1955. Certainly, other studies, notably James Parkes’s The Conflict between the Church and the Synagogue (1934), preceded these works, but the timing of the development of scholarship after World War II is significant. 6. On the rise of memory studies, see Kerwin Lee Klein, “On the Emergence of Memory in Historical Discourse,” in “Grounds for Remembering,” special issue,

Notes

215

Representations, no. 69 (Winter 2000): 127–50. Reflections within the discipline of the philosophy of history on the question of ethical remembrance of the past are also profoundly shaped by the imperative to remember and commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. See, for example, Edith Wyschogrod, An Ethics of Remembering: History, Heterology, and the Nameless Others (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); and Avishai Margalit, The Ethics of Memory (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2002). 7. Castelli, Martyrdom and Memory, 22. 8. Wyschogrod, An Ethics of Remembering, 7. 9. Ibid., 38. 10. Ibid. 11. Michel de Certeau, The Writing of History, trans. Tom Conley (New York: Columbia University Press, 1988), see especially 86–102. 12. Jean-François Lyotard, The Differend: Phrases in Dispute, trans. Georges Van Den Abbeele (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1988), 3–6. 13. Lyotard, The Differend, 9. 14. Ibid., 13. 15. Ibid., 156. 16. Mary C. Boys, Has God Only One Blessing? Judaism as a Source of Christian SelfUnderstanding (Mahwah, NJ: Paulist Press, 2000), 269. 17. On the practical manifestations of supersessionism in contemporary Christianity, see Marilyn J. Salmon, Preaching Without Contempt: Overcoming Unintended Anti-Judaism (Minneapolis: Fortress Pres, 2006); Henry F. Knight, Celebrating Holy Week in a Post-Holocaust World (Louisville, KY: Westminster John Knox Press, 2005); Mary C. Boys, Has God Only One Blessing? 18. Lyotard, The Differend, 58. 19. Ibid., 179. 20. Ibid., 160. 21. Wulf Kansteiner, “Finding Meaning in Memory: A Methodological Critique of Collective Memory Studies,” History and Theory 41, no. 2 (2002): 179–97.


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Subject Index Aaron (youngest son of Rachel of Mainz), 128, 131, 133 Abel, 91 Abitinian martyrs, 57–58, 61–62 Abraham, 21, 23–24, 69, 105, 125, 130, 170, 175n4 Abulafia, Anna Sapir, 89, 101, 197n71 Acts of the Abitinian Martyrs, 57–58 Aelfric of Eynsham, 82, 193n10 Agimond, homiliary of, 80 Agobard of Lyon (769–840), 84 Alcuin, 82 allosemitism, 79, 107, 109, 161–63 Cologne and, 11, 143, 154, 165 cultural memory and, 166–67 defined, 8, 192n1 literal exegesis and, 110, 112–19, 163 Rabanus Maraus and, 83–84, 86–87, 162–63 Rupert of Deutz and, 87, 89, 91, 101–2 Ambrose of Milan, 9, 29, 76, 90, 119, 162, 165 On Jacob and the Blessed Life, 30, 35–41, 51 oration on death of Theodosius I, 41 Anno II, Archbishop (1056–75), 140 Anselm of Laon, 10, 103–6, 109, 111, 119, 163 Liber Pancrisis, 81, 104, 197–98 Antichrist, 87 Antioch, 30–31, 34, 41–50, 55, 66, 74–77, 180n17, 185n66 Antiochus IV Epiphanes, Seleucid king, 1, 14–21, 36, 38–40, 43, 85, 91–93, 96, 106, 124, 152, 153

antisemitism, 8 apocalypticism, 87, 89–90, 92–93 appropriation of Christian narratives, by Jews, 123, 164 dynamics of, 5–9 of Jewish narratives, by Christians, 2, 11, 23, 25–27, 31, 42–43, 50, 64, 72–73, 75–76, 79–81, 86, 107, 118, 124, 143, 147, 159, 161, 167, 170–71 Arduini, Maria Lodovica, 197n71 Arguelles, Joannes, 115 Arians, 9, 30, 32, 35–41, 42, 67, 77, 162 Aristotelian ideas, 35 Ark of the Covenant, 71 Ashkenazi Jews, 7, 109, 121–36, 143, 159, 164–65, 181n33, 201–7 aspirantes, 35 assimilation, 5, 31, 64 Jewish resistance to, 13, 18, 21–22, 29, 34, 60 See also appropriation; conversion Assumption of Moses, 19–20 Augustine of Hippo, 1–2, 9–10, 29–31, 41, 51–57, 59–66, 68, 70, 72–73, 76, 80, 84, 95, 101, 108, 111, 144, 154, 158, 162, 168, 170, 186–87, 189, 193n11, 213n130 Against Faustus, 53 Sermon 300, 51–56, 62, 80 Sermon 301, 65, 80 Sermon 301A, 61 sermon on Psalm 33, 65 Auschwitz, 169, 171

240

Subject Index

Babylonian Talmud, 124–25, 132, 201n120 baptism, 35, 38, 46, 51 forced, 126–27, 131 See also conversion barbarism, 18, 167–68, 171 Bar Kokhba revolt, 124, 201n120 Bauman, Zygmunt, 8 Baumgarten, Elisheva, 208n57 Bede, the Venerable, 82, 193n10 Beleth, John, 10, 103, 105–7, 109, 111, 138, 144, 163 Summa on the Offices of the Church, 81, 105–6 Benedictine monasticism, 88, 136–37 Benjamin, 89 Benjamin, Walter, 167–68, 171 “Theses on the Philosophy of History,” 167–68 Bernard of Clairvaux, 10, 103, 107–11, 119, 138, 144, 154, 158, 163, 170, 211n106 Letter 98, 81, 107–8 Bhabha, Homi K., 6, 32, 45, 74–75 Bible. See Index of Biblical Sources bible commentaries, 81–83 See also literal exegesis biblical criticism, postcolonial studies and, 4–6 biblical glosses, 87, 111 Biddick, Kathleen, 7 Black Death, 143 Blumenkranz, Bernhard, 186n82 Book of Deeds, 132 Boyarin, Daniel, 176n16 Brisson, Jean-Paul, 187n90 Bursfeld Confederation, 137 Byzantine church, 105–6 Caesarius of Arles, 80 Cain, 91 Cameron, Averil, 6, 73, 177n19 Cappadocian Fathers, 33 Carolingian Empire, 81–86, 111, 119, 163

Carter, Warren, 19 Castelli, Elizabeth, 3, 4, 166 Certeau, Michel de, 169 Charlemagne, Holy Roman Emperor, 83 Charles the Bald, King of West Francia, 83, 86 Chavesse, Antoine, 190n138 Chazan, Robert, 205n23 Chenu, M.-D., 110 children, sacrifice of, 21, 129–30, 134–36, 208n56 Christian identity construction of, 2, 6, 12, 23–25, 31, 36, 40–43, 50, 75–76, 166, 181n36 hybrid origins and, 118 Maccabean martyrs and, 4, 6, 41–43, 51–56, 62, 159 See also Jewish-Christian difference “Christological continuity,” 118 Chrysologus, Peter, 64, 71–72, 191n153 Chrysostom, John, 9, 29–31, 41–51, 56, 64, 66–68, 70, 72, 75–76, 80, 125, 138, 144, 158, 162, 166, 170 Discourses on Judaizing Christians, 49–50 On Eleazar and the Seven Sons, 44–49 sermons in Homily 1 and Homily 2, 66–68 Cincinnius, Johannes, 138, 155–56, 157, 214n153 Divorum Septem Fratrum, 155–56 circumcision, 15, 47, 93, 99, 154 classical heritage, Julian ban on Christians using, 33–36 Cohen, Jeremy, 178n29, 186n82, 205n23, 208n47 Cohen, Shaye J. D., 14 Colish, Marcia, 35–36, 37 collecta of Israel, 60, 188n109 Collins, David, 208n58, 214n153 Cologne, 2, 11, 99, 121, 209n67 cathedral, 140, 142

Subject Index

Christian cult of Maccabees in, 122–23, 136–51, 158–59, 164–66, 213n131 church and cloister of Mary Magdalene, 139–40 church and cult of Ursula and virgins in, 139–42, 146 expulsion of Jews from (1424), 123, 144 humanists of, 155–58 massacres of 1096 and, 126, 143 pogrom of 1349, 143 vernacular prayer book, 152–53 colonization, 4–8, 74–75, 159, 173–74 ideological, 7–8, 79, 31–33, 81–82, 84, 86, 98–99, 102–3, 107, 109–10, 112–13, 118, 122–25, 130–31, 133, 136, 143–44, 155, 159, 163–64 Comestor, Peter, 10, 110, 112–19, 138, 145, 154, 163, 166, 193n9, 200–201 exegesis on 2 Maccabees 7, 81–82 Scholastic History, 113–15, 117, 168 competentes, 35–40, 51 conversion to Christianity, 11, 101, 122, 159, 206–7n40 forced, 126–27, 131–36 Council of Carthage (411), 59 countercrusading ideology, 130 covenant, 10, 54, 71, 93, 96–97, 152 Christian claims to be true inheritors of, 7, 23–24, 34, 90, 100, 155 Jewish resistance to Christian delegitimation of, 124–26, 128, 164 new, 46, 49 Crane, Susan, 101 Crombach, Herman, 140 Cronica presulum (Cologne chronicle), 141 Crusade, First, 109, 114 massacres of 1096 and, 7, 109, 114, 121–22, 126–36, 143, 159, 164, 173 Crusade, Second, 109

241

crusade chronicles, 10–11, 121–22, 126–31, 134, 164, 204n19 crusading ideology, 129–30 cultural imperialism, 21–22, 133 cultural memory, 3–4 malleability of, 87, 121, 165–67 See also ethics of remembrance; memory studies Cuno of Siegburg, Abbot, 90, 94 Cyprian of Carthage, 93, 101, 112, 125, 138, 144, 158, 182n43, 193n10 Letter to Fortunatus, 25–27, 57, 85 Damian, Peter, 211n106 David, King, 82, 175n4 Decian persecution, 25, 182n43 de Jong, Mayke, 194n14 Deny the Carthusian, 193n9 deSilva, David, 18, 20, 180n23 Deutero-canonical books, 81, 112 Deuteronomistic view of history, 14, 15, 17 “devout reason,” 20–22 dietary laws (refusal to eat pork), 1, 15–16, 21, 38–39, 44–45, 59, 115, 124, 153–54 framed as “burnt sacrifice,” 94–96, 100 differend, 169–74 Diocletian, Emperor of Rome, 57–59 Donatists, 9–10, 30, 32, 41, 51, 51–52, 56–66, 76–77, 162, 187 Dothan, and revolt vs. Moses, 98–99 double bind, 169–70, 172 Dupont-Sommers, André, 180n17 Efroymson, David, 187n85 Einbinder, Susan, 133, 206–7n40 Eleazar, 15–16, 18, 20–21, 33, 36, 38–39, 58–60 Eleven Thousand Virgins, 136, 139–40, 142, 149, 153, 157 Eliezer bar Nathan, 205n21 Epistle of Barnabas, 24, 46

242

Subject Index

Erasmus, Desiderius, 122, 138, 155, 157–58 ethics of remembrance, 11, 167–69, 172–74, 215n6 Faurisson, Robert, 169 Feast of Our Lady of Sorrows, 146 Felicitas, 65, 70–72, 76, 106, 198n89 Felix and Nabor, 141 Frederick I, Holy Roman Emperor, 139 Fredriksen, Paula, 53, 186n82 Gelenius, Aegidius, 140 Gepa, abbess, 139 German Empire, 87–89, 102–3, 163 Gerold, Archdeacon, 83 Gervasius, 36–37 Gilbert of Auxerre, 111 Gittin 57b, 124–25, 135, 203n8 Glossa Ordinaria, 86, 111–12, 158 golden calf, 24, 95–96, 98, 101, 196n61 Goldin, Simha, 204n16 Goodwin, Deborah, 177n18 Gratius, Ortwinus, 138–41, 142, 158, 209n69, 214n153 Decretals, 114 letter of 1524, 139–40 Gregory I, Pope, “the Great,” 29, 31, 64–65, 71–72, 76, 115 Gregory of Nazianzus, 29, 115, 162, 185n50, 189n135 On the Maccabees, 30, 33–35, 37 Gross, Abraham, 205n23 Gröten, Manfred, 141 Hagar, 23–24 hagiographical literature, 43 Halbwachs, Maurice, 3, 101 Harkins, Franklin, 185n66 Hasan-Rokem, Galit, 204n16 Hasmoneans, 18, 42, 178n2, 179n10 revolt vs. Seleucids, 14, 17, 90 Hebrew Scriptures, 24–25, 51, 73–76, 81, 84, 111, 118, 170 See also Index of Biblical Sources

Hellenism (Greek imperial culture), 4, 6, 9, 14–15, 18–22, 30, 73, 85, 112, 114, 123 Henry V, Holy Roman Emperor, 88 Henten, Jan Willem van, 176n5, 179n12 Herbert of Bosham, 177n18 Herman, Count of Saffenberg, 140 Herman of Hesse, Archbishop, 137 Herman the Jew, 99, 101, 197n71 Hesbert, Renate-Jean, 197n79 “heterological historian,” 168–69 Hippo, 31, 54, 74, 77 history, theology of, 90–92, 94, 96–99, 101, 110, 168 Holocaust, 168–72, 173, 215n6 Holy Innocents, 116, 201n125 homiliaries, 80–81, 192n3 Horsley, Richard, 24 Hosea, 92 household piety, 31, 64, 66–70, 72 Hugh of Saint-Victor, 200n119 Didascalion, 81, 114 Hugh of St. Cher, 138, 193n9, 200n113, 212n109 humanists, 11, 122, 138–30, 155–58, 165, 214n153 hybridity, 19, 20, 22, 29–31, 41–46, 48, 50, 51, 56, 62–65, 70–79, 81, 87, 91, 98–99, 104–10, 119, 122–23, 136, 150–54 Ashkenazi Jews and, in Rhineland, 123–25, 130–31 defined, 6, 192n164 dynamics of, 6–9 identity or origins of Christianity and, 9–10, 12, 103, 109, 161–64, 167, 172–73 idolatry, 94–96, 108, 124–25, 128, 132–33, 167 Ignatius of Antioch, 25 Ilgen, Thomas, 140–41 imperialism, 4–6, 23, 25–26

Subject Index

Christianity as imperial power and, 27, 29–31, 33, 73–77, 125, 162, 167 Donatist resistance to, 58–60 ideological, 31, 43 Maccabees and resistance to, 13–14, 20–21 medieval Christian rulers and, 81–88, 92–93, 102–3, 118–19 supersessionism and, 173 intercessors, 122, 147–53, 157–58 investiture controversy, 88 Isaac, 105 binding of, 125, 129–30 descendents of, as followers of Jesus, 23–24 sacrifice of, 21–22, 125 Isaac ben Asher, Rabbi, 127 Ishmael, 23–24 Isidore of Seville, 82, 193n10 Israel (Israelites) Augustine vs. Donatist claim to embody, 56–63, 76 Christian claim to title of, 7, 10–11, 23–25, 30–32, 34–36, 41, 51–52, 70, 73–76, 108–10, 162–64, 166–67, 170–71, 199n108 continuity of history of church and, in literal exegesis, 111–19 early text on Maccabees and Seleucid rule of, 14–22 history of, and Carolingian imperial rule, 82–85 history of, and Rupert on divine providence, 87, 90–103 Jewish resistance to Christian claim of title to, 76 medieval Jews and claim to title of, 123–26, 130–36, 159 Paul on Christ’s presence in, and new covenant, 45–46, 85 Jacob, 35–36 Jacobs, Andrew, 32–33, 72–73, 75, 176n16, 177n22, 192n164

243

Jason of Cyrene, 14, 178n2 Jeremiah, 116 Jeroboam, King, 96 Jerome, St., 81, 111, 138, 200n119 Jerusalem, 20, 126–27, 129, 164 Temple, 14–16, 34, 92–93 Jesus Christ biblical history culminating in, 110 crucifixion (passion) of, 24, 100, 117, 125–26, 137–38, 143–44, 159, 211n106 early Christians and God’s promise to Abraham, 23–24 “escape by reason of,” 38–39 helmet of, 39–40 Jewish rejection of, as type for unbelief, 91 as Lawgiver and, 9–10, 45–48, 50, 56, 66–67, 84, 162–63 Maccabean martyrs as type for, 39–40, 138, 143–48, 150–51, 156 Maccabean martyrs confession of, as hidden, 55 Maccabean martyrs death for Law as recognition of, 10, 45 martyrs dying in place of, 116 Mosaic Law replaced by coming of, 23–25, 46–48, 50, 76, 84, 129, 131 prophesy of coming of, 51–52 righteous who die before resurrection of, 105 suffering for Law as suffering for, 52 supersessionist thought requires acceptance of, 170 as truth Maccabean martyrs died for, 108, 116 Jewish-Christian difference or boundaries, 6, 9, 23–27, 29–32, 43–50, 54–56, 71–72, 77, 94, 117–18, 128–29, 176n16 See also boundaries between Christians and Jews; Christian identity

244

Subject Index

Jewish legal materials, 10, 132, 164 halakhah (rabbinic legal tradition), 127, 135–36, 202n5, 207–8 responsa (opinions), 121–22, 135, 207n54, 208n55 Jews. See Ashkenazi Jews; ChristianJewish difference; Mosaic Law bifurcated vision of, “true” vs. “false” (carnal vs. spiritual), 87, 89–104, 107–10, 119, 162–63 Christians, as “true,” 89, 119, 170 distinction between Maccabean martyrs and contemporary, 54–55, 99–101, 154 exile of, as punishment, Jewish response to, 132–33 expulsion and resettlement by, in Germany, 143–44, 151 as faithful before Christ, and faithless after, 84, 91, 162 marginalization and stereotyping of, by late antique bishops, 32–33 no space for contemporary, in medieval totalizing texts, 10, 164 pogrom of 1349 vs. in Cologne, 143 relationship with Christians, in Roman North Africa, 53–54 silencing of, by supersessionist thought, 167–68, 170–72 “virtual,” 8, 54, 55, 86, 102, 170, 174 Joachim of Fiore, 175n4 John the Baptist, 105 Joseph bar Solomon, Rabbi, of Carcassone, 134 Josephus, Flavius, 118, 123, 200n118 Jewish Antiquities, 20, 114 Jewish Wars, 114 Joshua, 19, 82 Jsernhoyfft, Conrad, 141 Judah, 89 “Judaizing” Christians, 43–44, 47–49 “Judaizing” process, 123 Judas Iscariot, 59

Judas Maccebeus, 17, 42, 82, 86, 93, 106 Judea, 14, 18–21 Julian II, Emperor of Rome, “the Apostate,” 30, 33–35 Justin Martyr Dialogue with Trypho, 24, 32, 46, 74–75, 196n61 Kaepelli, Thomas, 193n9 Kalonymos bar Judah, Rabbi, 133–35 kiddush ha-Shem concept, 124, 204n11 kingship, models of, 83–84 Koelhoff, Johan, 141 Kunibert, St., 140 Künstle, Karl, 191n146, 198n89 Kushelevsky, Rella, 208n57 Lamentations Rabbah, 125 Langton, Stephen, 200n113 Leo I, Pope, “the Great,” 29, 31, 64, 68–69, 138, 144, 190n138 Sermon 84B, 80 Lieu, Judith, 165–66 literal exegesis, 110–11, 113–19, 200 liturgical remembrance of Maccabean martyrs (Christian), 103–10 Lombard, Peter, Sentences, 114 Lothar I, King of Middle Francia, 83, 86 Louis I, King of the Franks, “the Pious,” 83, 194n14 Louis II, King of East Francia, “the German,” 82–86, 103, 118, 163 Lyotard, Jean-François, 169–72 The Differend, 169 Maccabean martyrs (mother and seven sons) Catholic use of, as boundary vs. rival religions, 9–10, 29–50, 56–63 Christianization of, 4, 25, 51–66, 63, 70–73, 76, 82, 85, 92–93, 106–7, 109, 112, 138, 144–48, 151, 154, 162

Subject Index

Cologne cult of, 11, 121–23, 136–53, 157–58, 164–65 core Jewish narrative of, as “mother and seven sons,” 1, 8–9, 13–28 differend and, 169–74 domestication of, and practical sermons, 31, 63–72 Donatists’ use of, 57–60 early supersessionism and, in Roman empire, 22–27 as exemplars of virtue and morality, 10–11, 26, 36–39, 41, 157 feast of, 2, 41, 64–67, 103–10, 175n4 homiliaries and, 79–81 humanists and, 11, 155–58 Jewish revival of, in medieval Rhineland, 10–11, 121, 123, 126–36, 164, 202n1, 203n8, 207n41, 208n58 literal exegesis and, 81–82, 110–19 loyalty to Carolingian empire and, 82–86 medieval Christian liturgy and, 103–10 medieval church reformers and, 87–103 rewards of and theological themes for, 179n12 scalping and, 39–40, 145 seven and, as numerical symbol, 25, 85, 106 seventh or youngest son and, 16–17, 26, 131, 134 spiritualization of, 85, 100, 112, 163 useable past and, 4, 166 Magdalius, Jacob, 138, 140 Mainz Anonymous, 127, 205n21 Malkiel, David, 205n23 Manicheans, 30, 32, 41, 51–53, 56, 63, 73, 76, 187n85 marginalization, 11, 31, 74, 77, 103–4, 162, 169–70, 173 Martyrdom of Polycarp, 25

245

martyrs and martyrdom, 14–15, 19–20, 50 communal memory and, 80 ethics of remembrance and, 173–74 four types of, 115–16 as intercessors, 122, 147–53, 157–58 medieval rabbinic Judaism and, 124–27, 132, 135–36, 204n11, 207–8 See also Maccabean martyrs; relics Mary, Virgin, 125–26, 130–31, 137–38, 144–49, 151, 156–59, 191–92n155, 204n16, 208n57, 211–12n106 Masada, siege and suicide at, 20 Matrona’s Cave, 42, 44, 49, 50 Matthias, 59 Maxwell, Jaclyn, 48 McClintock, Anne, 7 “Medism,” 14 Meir ben Baruch of Rothenburg, Rabbi, 135 memory studies, 166–68, 173–74, 215n6 See also cultural memory; ethics of remembrance; “place of memory” Mertz, Helias, 11, 121–23, 136–51, 155–58, 165–66, 208n58 Chronik des Benediktinerklosters SS. Machabaeorum, 138–40, 142–43, 155, 157 “Das Leiden der Heiligen Makkabäer” (1517), 138 “Dat Lyden der hilger Machabeen” (1507), 138, 140, 144, 147 Michael (angel), 92 midrashim (rabbinic narrative exegesis), 121–30, 132–34, 164, 175n2, 179n13, 203n7, 205n25 Midrash Lamentations, 124–25, 132, 203n8 Midrash on the Ten Commandments, 132–33 Milan, 31, 51, 74, 76–77 confrontation of 386, 35–37, 39–41, 51

246

Subject Index

mimicry, 7, 11, 126–27, 129–31, 136, 173 defined, 204–5n20 Miriam (mother), 125–26, 202n1, 204n16 Mishnah, 180n23 Mosaic Law (Law), 21, 79, 93–94, 151–55, 164 ceremonial or conditional vs. moral and eternal, 24–25, 97–98 Christian imperial contexts and devotion to, 26–27, 84–85 Christianized and domesticated, by Augustine of Hippo, 63 Christian-Jewish difference and question of validity of Law, 1–2, 5–11, 23–27, 54, 77 Christ the Lawgiver and, 9–10, 45–48, 50, 56, 66, 84, 162 Chrysostom and Augustine and creation of Christian understanding of, 30, 41–47, 53, 55, 62, 67 Cincinnius on, 155–56 Cologne cult and understanding of, 11, 151–55, 165 collapsed with Christian gospel, 106–8 Comestor and, 112, 115–18 defined, vs. Torah, 175–76n5 denial of validity of, after advent of Christ and, 23–25, 46–48, 50, 76, 84, 96–100, 129, 131 Donatists and, 58 dying for, as dying for Christ, 42–44, 46, 50 dying not for Law itself, but for promise of faith within it, 61–62 earliest texts on Maccabean martyrs and depiction of fidelity to Torah and, 13–17, 21 fidelity to God not Law and, 93 Gospel vs., 48–49, 71–72 grace of Christ and, 38–39, 53 hidden meanings of, 97–99

Jewish resistance to denigration of fidelity to, 11, 125–31, 164 Jews blamed for clinging to, 108–9, 124–25, 166–67 Law of God and, 57–60, 85, 87, 94–95 medieval Christian West and, 79 as punishment for sinners, 24, 46, 86–87, 96, 98, 117 rationality and, in Hellenistic context, 18, 20–21 relevance of, for Christians and, in second and third centuries, 24–25 relevance of, for Christians in early medieval Europe, 80–81 Rupert of Deutz and types of Law and, 94–100 spiritual nature of, or obedience to, 61–62, 66–68, 95–96, 98, 100, 163 suffering for Christ and, 51–56 supersessionist thought and malleability of memory about, 161–67 spiritualized obedience to God and, 113 truth of Christ and, 119 “true and spiritual” vs. “false or carnal” Jews and, 87, 101 veil of, 54–55 virtue of fortitude in death for, and grace of Christ, 37–40 Moses, 19, 95–98, 101, 175n4 mother figure, 17, 15, 20–21, 25–27, 31, 33, 36, 40, 61, 64–70, 91–94, 106, 115, 121–22, 125–31, 133–34, 145–48, 152–53, 157, 179n13, 193n10 masculinity and, 21, 68–69, 71, 115, 181n34 as symbol of church, 25–26, 85, 91–92 transformed, into Felicitas, 64–65, 70–72 Nazi Germany, 168, 171 Neoplatonic ideas, 35

Subject Index

Nicholas of Lyra, 193n9, 200n113 Nizzahon Vetus, 206n37 non-normative Christian groups, 9, 31, 37–38, 41, 43–44, 73–74, 162 “O Come, O Come Emmanuel” (hymn), 171 Ohly, Friedrich, 89, 195n40 Origen of Alexandria, 211n106 An Exhortation to Martyrdom, 25 “other” and “otherness,” 9, 32, 44–46, 50, 74–75, 87, 174 See also Jewish-Christian difference; stereotyping pagans, 9, 16, 31–34, 43, 67, 74, 93, 162 papacy, 87–89 passive resistance, 21 Passover, 47 Paul, St., 23–25, 37–40, 45–49, 54, 85, 94, 111, 116–17, 125 Pax Romana, 19 pearl metaphors, 97–99, 102 Peter in Chains, feast of, 103, 197n79, 213n131 Petilianus, Bishop, 59–60 Philip von Heinsberg, Archbishop, 140 philosemitism, 8, 119 piyyutim (Jewish liturgical poetry), 10–11, 121–22, 133–34, 164 “place of memory,” 148–51 Portian Basilica crisis (386), 35–37, 39–41, 51, 90 postcolonialism, 4–6, 11, 32–33, 74–75, 173–74, 176–77, 204–5n20 prophets, 17, 46, 51–52, 73, 85, 91, 116 Protasius, 36–37 Pseudo-Leo sermons On the Maccabees, 80 punishment, by God, 15–17, 24, 46, 87, 91–93, 96, 98, 117, 132–33

247

Rabanus Maurus, Archbishop of Mainz, 10, 82–86, 103, 111–13, 118–19, 138, 158, 162, 166, 101, 162–63, 166, 193, 194n15 commentary on Kings, 83–84 commentary on Maccabees, 81, 83–86, 111–12 penitentials of, 83–84 Rabbinic Judaism, 114, 20416 Rachel, weeping over dead children, 91 Rachel of Mainz, 11, 122, 126–31, 133–36, 159, 164 Radulph (monk), 109 Rainald von Dassel, Archbishop, 139–42, 146 Rautenberg, Ursula, 137, 151 reform of church, 87–103, 119, 137, 163 relics, 36–37, 73, 137–42, 146–48, 150, 156, 158, 208n63, 210n77 resistance Ambrose of Milan and, 30, 35–37, 39–40, 76 appropriation of rhetoric of, by early Christians, 22–23 core texts of Maccabean martyrs and, 14, 17, 20–21 Donatists and, 51, 57, 59–60, 63, 66 Gregory of Nazianzus and, 30, 33–35 hybridity as means of, 75 of mother, transformed into exemplar of virtues, 67–68 transformed into subsistence on power of God, 65–66 resistance culture, 13–14, 16–18, 21–22, 40, 59–60, 66, 72, 204n12 medieval Jewish, 124–25, 127–28, 130–31, 134–36, 159, 164 resurrection, 16, 91, 100, 104–5, 110, 146, 156, 179n12 Reuchlin-Pfefferkorn affair, 214n153 Rhineland, 10–11, 21–59, 165 crusade massacres of Jews and, 114, 126–31 humanists and, 155–58

248

Subject Index

Rhineland (continued) medieval Ashkenazi Jewish traditions in, 121, 123–36, 164 Rupert of Deutz and, 99–101 See also Cologne; German Empire Roman empire, 6, 9, 18–19, 22–26, 31–32, 70–74, 77, 114, 124 Arians and, 35–36, 39–41 Catholics vs. Donatists and, 56–63, 69–70 Christianity as sanctioned religion of, 6, 26–31, 35–36, 50, 77 German Empire as successor to, 88 Jewish revolt vs., 123–24 Julian persecution and, 33–34 North Africa and, 51–63 Roman gods, 19 Rosh Hashannah, 47 Rupert of Deutz, 10, 87–90, 103–4, 107–8, 112–13, 116, 118–19, 154, 158, 162–63, 166, 168, 170, 196n61 Anulus, 87, 99, 197n71 On the Holy Trinity and Its Works, 87, 99, 100 On the Twelve Minor Prophets, 99 On the Victory of the Word of God, 81, 87–88, 90–92, 99 Rutgers, Leonard V., 42–43 Sabbath, 15, 99 Said, Edward, 13, 17 Saint-Victor, abbey of, 113–14, 117–18 Salomona (mother), 138, 144–49, 157–58 salvation history, 52, 55, 61, 90, 108, 110, 117–18, 199n108 Sarah, 23–24 Satan, 91–92 Saul, 82, 207n54 Schenck, Richard, 118 scholasticism, 104, 110–11, 114 “school sermon” genre, 117–18 Second Temple Judaism, 20, 25

Sefer Josippon, 123, 132, 201n120, 202n4 Segovia, Fernando F., 4–5 Seleucid empire, 10, 14–15, 17–18, 91–93, 106, 124, 162 serpent, 91 seven-headed dragon, 90–93, 96, 195n41 Seven Sorrows of Mary, 145–46 Shavout, 180–81n23 Sherwood-Smith, Maria, 115 Simchat Torah, 180n23 Simeon, 145, 211n106 simony, 88, 89 Solinus, Archbishop, 139, 149 Solomon bar Simson, 126–28, 204n19, 205n21 Spiegel, Gabrielle, 6 Stegmüller, Friedrich, 193n9 stereotypes and stereotyping, 32–33, 44–46, 48, 50–51, 54–56, 64, 74–75 Stoicism, 20, 35 Sugirtharajah, R. S., 176n16 Sukkot, 47 supersessionism Augustine of Hippo and, 30–31, 41, 55–56 Beleth and, 107, 109 Bernard of Clairvaux and, 108–9 Chrysostom and, 30–31, 41–47, 49–50 colonial and postcolonial dynamics and, 5–8, 31–33, 74–77 Comestor and, 112–16 cultural memory, ethics, and implications of, 11, 161, 164–74 Cyprian and, 26–27 emergence of, in Roman Empire, 22–25 Jewish resistance to, 125–26, 130–36, 164, 206n37 practical Christianity and, 64 Rabanus Maurus and, 82–83

Subject Index

Rupert of Deutz and, 87, 94, 100–101 symbolic exegesis, 87, 89–91, 93–94, 99, 106, 109–10, 113 Talmud, 180n23 Taxo, 19 temple priesthood, 117 temple system, 14, 39 Ten Commandments, 96–97 Theodosius I, Emperor of Rome, 41 Thierry de Meurs, Archbishop, 146 Three Kings, cult of, 122, 136, 138–43, 157–58, 165 Tilley, Maureen, 59 Timmer, David, 89 Tkcaz, Catherine Brown, 189n126 Toledoth Yeshu legend, 206n37 Tomasch, Sylvia, 7–8, 54, 178n29 Torah, 1, 13–23 commemoration of giving of, 180–81n23 death for fidelity to, 13–14, 16, 21–23, 30–31, 45, 55, 124–26, 128–29, 131 distinction between “Law” and, 175–76n5 Felicitas and, 71 fidelity to, and Jews vs. non-Jews, 14–17, 19, 34 gives way to Gospel, 45 Jewish continued fidelity to, 125–26, 128–29, 131–36, 159, 167–68 reason and, 18, 20–22, 33 totalizing view of history, 10–11, 119, 164, 173

249

of society, 79, 88–89, 102 Townshend, Richard B., 180n17 Tyconius Liber regularum, 61 types and typology, 26, 39, 49, 85, 89, 91, 104–6, 112–13, 118, 125, 138, 143–48, 150–51, 156, 158 Urban II, Pope, 126, 204n18 Ursula, St., 11, 122, 136, 138–39, 141–43, 147–51, 157–58, 165, 213n131 “useable past,” 4, 166 Valentinian II, Emperor of Rome, 35, 36, 37 Valerianus of Cemele, 64, 69–70, 190n141 veil of Christ, 1, 125, 154 of the Law, 54–55, 95, 187n85 vengeance, 134 Verdun, Treaty of (843), 86 Vinson, Martha, 33–34, 42 virtues, exemplary, 20, 25, 31, 33–40, 63–72, 75–76, 147, 153, 155–58 Vulgate Bible, 81, 123 Wolfenbüttel 4096 (manuscript), 80 Word of God, 91, 93, 96, 98–99 Wyschogrod, Edith, 168–69 Yom Kippur, 47 Young, Robin Darlin, 17 Yuval, Israel, 123


Index of Biblical Sources Old Testament, 35, 45–46, 48, 52–53, 62, 104–7, 110–18 Genesis, 35–36, 81; (3), 91; (9), 207; (22), 21–22, 125 Exodus (19), 97; (20), 96; (23), 96; (32), 24, 95, 96 Numbers (16), 98; (21), 90 Deuteronomy (4), 58; (32), 15, 17 Judges (2–3), 96 1 Samuel (3), 207 Kings, 83–84 1 Kings (12), 96 Psalms, 81, 111; (33), 65; (113), 128 Song of Songs (1), 62, 111 Isaiah, 81; (54), 85 Jeremiah (31), 46, 58, 91 Lamentations, 111 Ezekiel, 100, 196n61; (16), 97; (20), 95 Daniel, 114, 213n130; (3), 21–22, 65; (7), 90, 91, 96, 195n41; (8), 92–93; (10), 92 Zechariah, 92–93, 108; (1), 93 Apocrypha Tobias, 81 Judith, 81 1 Maccabees, 81, 83, 93, 111 2 Maccabees, 13–18, 21, 31, 39–40, 67, 70, 81, 83–85, 93, 103, 111,

117; (5), 14–15; (6), 14–15, 17, 58, 96; (7), 1, 8–10, 13–17, 19–22, 39, 49, 81–82, 85–87, 94, 103–4, 110–19, 123, 138, 149, 152, 156, 161, 163, 165, 179, 182n41, 193; (8), 17 4 Maccabees, 9, 18–22, 25, 31, 33–40, 50, 67–70, 81, 103, 123, 138, 156, 157, 179n9, 180–82; (1), 20, 180n17; (3), 20; (8–16), 21–22; (9), 21, 39–40; (17), 21, 50 New Testament, 23, 111, 112, 116–18 Matthew, 111; (7), 98; (12), 71; (13), 97 Luke (2), 145 John, 89, 111; (15), 91 Acts of the Apostles, 117 Romans, 38; (3), 37–38; (7), 37; (9–11), 24 1 Corinthians (10), 94 2 Corinthians (3), 54, 58, 95 Galatians (3), 24–25; (4), 23–24; (5), 23–24, 47 Philippians (93), 47 Hebrews (5), 98; (11), 25 Revelation (1–3), 25; (12), 90, 91, 93, 195n41

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