Re-membering the Jews: theatrical violence in the N-Town Marian plays

Comparative Drama, Winter, 2007 by Merrall Llewelyn Price

The elimination of Jews in these cases is total, whether achieved by large-scale conversion or by the utter physical destruction of the Jewish father by the heat of the oven: when the ashes are examined, "pai cuthe nowder fynd of hym bone nor lith." Finally, a third manifestation of this type is the host desecration miracle in which the Virgin's voice is heard lamenting that her child is being tortured and abused. A search reveals a group of Jews torturing the host, or in some versions, an image of the crucified Jesus, and severe physical punishment is meted out. The Cantigas de Santa Maria of Alfonso X contains an example of this type, in which Jews in Toledo are caught striking, spitting upon, and preparing to hang a waxen image of Jesus. They are only prevented from doing so by the sound of a woman's voice during Mass, lamenting, "Oh, God, Oh, God, how great and manifest is the perfidy of the Jews, who killed my Son, though they were his own people, and even now they wish no peace with Him." The Christians hurry posthaste to the Jewish quarter, where they find the abomination in process: "For this deed they were all to die, and their pleasure was turned to grief." (34) Here Mary, frequently the representative of institutional power, is replaced by it, as she often is in the miracles that end with a purging of recalcitrant members rather than with their reincorporation into the social body. This type of tale, easily fabricated, is notable for its direct historical consequences, as in Deggendorf in 1337, and Passau in 1478, both of which resulted in tortures, deaths, forced conversions, and/or expulsions in the Jewish community. (35)

Obviously, the depth and virulence of the anti-Semitism in these tales vary, depending as much on the writer as on the cultural expectations of Mary. In one of the most widely known collections of Marian tales of the thirteenth century, that of Gautier de Coincy, the Jews are bestial and like "a reeking dog," and he adds, "God hates them and I hate them, and everyone should hate them." (36) However, de Coincy, while especially unpleasant, is not unrepresentative. Why, then, are Jews and Mary so incompatible in these texts, and why does Mary act out her anti-Semitism so corporeally, reinscribing her punishment for doubt on the offending Jewish body? I would like to posit a number of suggestions for this, but I should point out that each of the phenomena is interlinked; they feed off and strengthen one another. First of all, as a Jewish woman, Mary is in an untenable position in medieval Christendom. Women and Jews were linked in the popular medieval imagination, both thought of as shrewd, manipulative, disloyal deceivers, stubborn in their failure to adhere to the dominant values of Christian masculinity. (37) Mary's special quality of perpetual virginity, however, identifies her much more closely with masculine hegemony than with the other daughters of Eve. She is both female and not-female. Similarly, she is both Jew and not-Jew; her anti-Semitism separates her from the Jews she punishes, while the repeated presence of the Jews in the tale is a continual reminder of her own religious background. Stephanie Gaynor has suggested, in the context of the Prioress's tale, that speaking anti-Semitism, as the Prioress does, enables "the discourse of women" by "the serial generation of 'others'"--in other words, she invokes anti-Semitism to attract attention to her position as a Christian among other Christians, rather than to her position as a woman among men. (38) Similarly, Mary's disavowal of her fellow worshippers simultaneously recognizes and denies her own--and her son's--origin.