This is later than your period, but the Spanish Chapel, Santa Maria Novella,
Florence, Via Veritatis fresco has Jews, in distinctive hats, in the
audience as Thomas Aquinas preaches to them, some closing their ears, one,
far left, clad in red, tearing pages from a book identical with the Summa
contra Gentiles from which Thomas preaches, which mirrors in turn the Book
(Bible/Creation) the Creator holds. Chaucer similarly has his red-clad Wife
of Bath tear pages from and then burn her clerkly husband's book about
wicked wives.
sAt 07.12 17/10/97 -0400, you wrote:
>Dear Listmembers:
>
> The story of the 1290 Paris host desecration libel (which came
>to be known as the Rue des Billettes) describes the Jew, Jonathan, as
>unwilling to relinquish a "book" he claims will protect him from
>burning. William Jordan has suggested this motif is evidence of a
>Christian association of antiChristian activity and rabbinic texts
>(specifically, the Talmud, which was "tried" and burned in Paris 50
>years earlier). However, I know of no other libel or host desecration
>story that includes the motif of a Jew with a book -- any help from the
>list here?
>
> One possibility I am toying with is that the Jew may have said
>something in translation which would be almost idiomatic in Hebrew,
>echoing the expression "ledabbeq batorah" -- to cling to the Torah
>(i.e., not to commit apostasy) -- which is, in fact, used in other
>martyrological texts.
>
> I look forward to whatever you can offer on this.
>
> Susan Einbinder
>
>Hebrew Literature
>Hebrew Union College
>3101 Clifton Avenue
>Cincinnati, OH 45220
>
>
____
Julia Bolton Holloway
via del Partigiano 16, Montebeni, 50014 FIESOLE, ITALY
[log in to unmask]
http://members.aol.com/juliansite/Juliansite.htm
Wherefore it behovyth nedys to be that alle hevyn alle erth shalle tremylle
and quake whan the pillers shall tremylle and quake.
Julian of Norwich, Paris Manuscript, fol. 158v.
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