Siege of Jerusalem, The

(ca. 1370–1390)

   The Siege of Jerusalem is a long (1,334 lines) ALLITERATIVE VERSE poem in MIDDLE ENGLISH, probably composed in the last decades of the 14th century in far west Yorkshire. This production of the socalled ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL tells the story of the Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70 C.E., and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews. The nine surviving manuscripts testify to a wide popularity, and the medieval collations that situate the poem variously in scriptural, romance, Crusade, or historical contexts indicate that the reception of the poem was diverse, complicated by the poem’s complex retelling of a popular and wellknown story.

   Drawing on chronicles and legendary materials, including Josephus’s first-century account of the Jewish War, the apocryphal Vindicta salvatoris, RANULPH HIGDEN’s POLYCHRONICON, the Bible en françois of Roger d’Argenteuil, and the Legenda Aurea, the poem relates how Titus and Vespasian, Roman leaders and recent converts to Christianity, embark upon a crusade against the Jews of Jerusalem to avenge Christ’s death (and to punish the Jews for ceasing to pay taxes to the Roman emperor). The Romans lay siege to Jerusalem and after a graphic and bloody battle in which many Jews are slain, the Jews retreat within the city walls and the Romans assail the town. The poetic narrative of the two-year siege of Jerusalem by the Romans is filled with diverse and disturbing details of both Roman and Jewish actions, including detailed scenes inside the city walls, where hundreds die daily for lack of food and water, the gruesome murder of the Jewish high priest that leads hundreds of Jews in Jerusalem to take their own lives, and a Jewish woman killing and eating her own child. The siege ends with the surrender of the Jews and their sale into slavery by the Romans. The Siege of Jerusalem is formed and informed with a variety of sensibilities, religious, political, economic, and social. Regarding the religious, the Roman crusade against the Jews and Jerusalem is framed in Christian justifications, and medieval expressions of anti-Semitism are given voice when the Jews are referred to as the “faithless,” the “heathen,” and Christ-killers. Political issues of empire and rule are played out within the Roman camp and between the Romans and the Jews. Because the Jews have refused to pay tribute to Rome, the economics of revenge activate, in part, the original decision to besiege the city. The social dimensions of the work range from the semi-chivalric Roman knights hunting and hawking outside the city walls (a ROMANCE element at odds with its own setting) to relations within the city and relations between individual Jew and Christian. Unlike the less-nuanced Titus and Vespasian concerning the same events, The Siege of Jerusalem has proved fertile ground for a variety of interpretations and readings.

   Marginalized for years from critical consideration due to its seemingly unambiguous anti-Semitism and violence, The Siege of Jerusalem is in the process of being reassessed by scholars of Middle English literature and culture. Although the author remains anonymous, there is some consensus (based on manuscript evidence and theological influences) that the poet was an Augustinian canon writing at Bolton Priory. The composition and reception of the poem are widely debated, and the debate primarily revolves around the nature of the poem’s anti-Semitism.Where some scholars read The Siege of Jerusalem as expressing the anti-Semitism considered to be an inevitable and universal commonplace of medieval thinking and writing, others find a more subtle representation of Jews and Judaism that includes both anti-Semitic and sympathic gestures. Written approximately 100 years after the expulsion of the Jews from England in 1290, the poem is increasingly the cause of discussions about the nature of medieval anti-Semitism and the ways in which Jews (absent or present) define the Christian community.

   Bibliography

   ■ Chism, Christine.“The Siege of Jerusalem: Liquidating Assets,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern Studies 28 (1998): 309–340.

   ■ Hanna, Ralph. “Contextualizing The Siege of Jerusalem,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992): 109–121.

   ■ Hamel, Mary. “The Siege of Jerusalem as a Crusading Poem.” In Journeys Toward God: Pilgrimage and Crusade, edited by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur, 177–194. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute Publications, 1992.

   ■ Kölbing, E., and Mabel Day, eds. The Siege of Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 188. London: Published for the Early English Text Society by H. Milford, Oxford University Press, 1932.

   ■ Lawton, David, and Ralph Hanna III, eds. The Siege of Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 320. Oxford: Published for the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University Press, 2003.

   ■ Millar, Bonnie. The Siege of Jerusalem in Its Physical, Literary and Historical Contexts. Dublin: Fourcourts, 2000.

   ■ Narin van Court, Elisa. “The Siege of Jerusalem and Augustinian Historians: Writing About Jews in Fourteenth-Century England,” Chaucer Review 29 (1995): 227–248.

   ■ ———.“Socially Marginal, Culturally Central: Representing Jews in Late Medieval English Literature,” Exemplaria 12 (2000): 293–326.

   Elisa Narin van Court