Strickland ANTICHRISTJEWSMEDIEVAL 2011

ANTICHRIST AND THE JEWS IN MEDIEVAL ART AND PROTESTANT PROPAGANDA
Author(s): Debra Higgs Strickland

Source: Studies in Iconography , 2011, Vol. 32 (2011), pp. 1-50
Published by: Board of Trustees of Western Michigan University through its Medieval
Institute Publications and Trustees of Princeton University
Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23924230
JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide
range of content in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and
facilitate new forms of scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org.
Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at
https://about.jstor.org/terms
and are collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Studies in
Iconography
This content downloaded from

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
All use subject to https://about.jstor.org/terms
ANTICHRIST AND THE JEWS IN
MEDIEVAL ART AND PROTESTANT PROPAGANDA
Debra Higgs Strickland
The legend of Antichrist figures prominently among the anti-Je

tions that informed so many works of medieval Christian art. In this stud
highlight the transformative potential of the Antichrist legend by ex
Reformation artists appropriated and reworked pictorial motifs from this
medieval traditions in their creation of anti-Catholic imagery. By v
imagery through the twin lens of medieval iconography and Reformat
I hope to explain how anti-papal visual propaganda gained power and
through the creative redeployment of familiar anti-Jewish motifs, thus r
derisory sentiment from the outcast Jews to the very Roman Catholic
cast them out.
Antichrist and the Jews
The story of Antichrist was a familiar one to medieval Christian audiences

from a wide range of works of art and literature. According to virtually all of
the foundational sources—from the fourth-century Tiburtine Sibyl, to Jerome's
fifth-century Commentary on Daniel, to the seventh-century Revelations of the
Pseudo-Methodius, to Abbot Adso's mid-tenth-century Libellas de ortu et de
tempore Antichristi (Little treatise on the origin and time of Antichrist), to the
twelfth-century Glossa ordinaria—Antichrist was to be born a Jew of the tribe of
Dan.1 His prophesised birthplace varied; it might be Babylon, Rome, Bethsaida, or
Chorozaim.2 As an adult, Antichrist would impersonate Christ with the goal of
annihilating Christendom and, because they were deemed "his people," the Jews
would be his first and most ardent disciples. By the late Middle Ages, additional
details of Antichrist's life were recorded in the highly influential Compendium
theologicae veritatis (Compendium of theological truth), today attributed to
Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg (d. 1268).3 As the most widely disseminated outline
of scholastic theology during the later Middle Ages and Reformation, the Com
pendium carried the weight of authority and informed most contemporary treatises
on Antichrist, from illuminated eschatological manuscripts to the fifteenth-century
illustrated Entkrist blockbooks.4
© 2011 by the Board of Tmstees of Western Michigan University

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
The chiroxylographic blockbook Entkrist printed in Nuremberg around

1456 represents the apogee of medieval Antichrist iconography and the central
roles assigned to the Jews. The blockbook's first image shows Jacob, Dan, and the
rest of the tribe assembling in advance of Antichrist's conception (Fig. 1). Both
text and images describe how, with the aid of the Devil, Antichrist will be con
ceived as the result of the sexual union of a male member of the tribe of Dan with
his own daughter.5 Antichrist's birth in Babylon by violent Caesarean section is
graphically rendered but in the register below; his unchaste adult life in Bethsaida
is only mildly suggested (Fig. 2).6 Subsequent leaves picture and describe Anti
christ's three-and-a-half-year career of torture and murder that culminates in his
own demise, the Last Judgment, and the end of the world.
Apart from illustrating the Compendium text, the Entkrist functioned as an
extended commentary on both the biblical Apocalypse (Book of Revelation) and
on 2 Thessalonians 2. Although neither of these scriptural texts directly expresses
anti-Jewish sentiment, both soon received anti-Jewish glosses.7 The gloss on the
Apocalypse attributed to Berengaudus is frequently included in thirteenth-century
illuminated apocalypse manuscripts. Although the Berengaudus gloss contains
numerous anti-Jewish passages, it does not specifically link the Jews to Antichrist,
nor does it identify Antichrist himself as a Jew.8 However, as Suzanne Lewis has
shown, artists made these links in the iconographically related Abingdon and Gul
benkian apocalypses by means of a concurrent visual gloss.9 As discussed by Lewis,
both of these manuscripts contain full sets of illustrations to both the Apocalypse
text and the Berengaudus commentary. A significant number of the commentary
illustrations feature negative figures of Jews displaying a range of stereotyped
physiognomical features, costumes, attributes, and activities, thus considerably
expanding, in an anti-Jewish direction, the implications of the written gloss.10
Of the two manuscripts, the Gulbenkian Apocalypse contains the best
preserved and fullest range of anti-Jewish imagery, as demonstrated by just a few
examples. The Berengaudus gloss on the Apocalypse passage concerning the Beast
of the Sea (Apoc. 13:1-2) equates the Beast with Antichrist. Although the text does
not mention the Jews, it is accompanied nevertheless by an image of a crowned
and enthroned Antichrist holding a large sword and staring menacingly at a group
of Jews wearing pointed headgear identifiable as the ubiquitous medieval Judenhut
(Fig. 3). The familiar Christian idea of Jewish usury, based on the supposed Jew
ish obsession with money, would have informed viewer interpretation of the Jew
swallowing the coins he pours from a moneybag as well as the tonsured (!) demon
pouring coins down the throats of several other Jews imprisoned in a hellmouth.
Elsewhere, other figures of Jews, identifiable by their hats and grotesque expres
sions, gloss a variety of other text passages. They rebuild the Temple at Antichrist's
command (fol. 6r), occupy a hellmouth (fol. llv), kneel at Antichrist's feet (fol.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 1. Tribe of Dan; conception of Antichrist. Nuremberg Entkrist; Schweinfurt, Collection of Mr.
Otto Schäfer, leaf 2r. (Photo: By permission of Sammlung Georg Schäfer.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
bfp&0jE?tdt
Zc^^Z^&** <* t mj
■«li1k'<faix>&dIfatyXmQ&n&n
^ ■ -». -r,^nte * —
Fig. 2. Birth of Antichrist; Antichrist and h

Mr. Otto Schäfer, leaf 2v. (Photo: By perm

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 3. Commentary image for Apoc. 13:1-2. Gulbenkian Apocalypse; Lisbon, Museu Calouste
Gulbenkian, L. A. 139, fol. 34v. (Photo: Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; by
permission of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.)
26v), worship the dragon and the Beast of the Sea (fol. 35r), conduct money trans
actions while the two pious witnesses lie dead in the street (fol. 27r), gleefully
witness Antichrist's (failed) attempt to make the dead rise (fol. 39v), receive their
marks from the Beast of the Earth (fol. 40r), and crucify St. Peter (fol. 16v).
In fact, the Gulbenkian Apocalypse artists associated nearly all of the nega
tive apocalyptic characters with Jews. For example, to accompany the Berengaudus
commentary on the unclean spirits (described in Apoc. 16:13-14), three Jews stand
before Antichrist, who is attended by his guardian demon (Fig. 4). Two more
small demons emerge from the mouths of the first two Jews, while still another
one hovers behind the third Jew. In addition to linking the Jews to Antichrist,
the image suggests a specifically Jewish harbor for "the spirits of devils working
signs" (Apoc. 16:14). Equally anti-Jewish is the commentary image concerning
the capture of the beast and the false prophet (Apoc. 19:20), which shows Anti
christ as an oversized, grotesque Jew entering the mouth of hell by St. Paul's com
mand as an angel dives downward from Christ's mandorla to cut off the dragon's
head (fol. 67v).

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 4. Commentary image for Apoc. 16:13-14. Gulbenkian Apocalypse; Lisbon, Museu Calouste
Gulbenkian, L. A. 139, fol. 56v. (Photo: Conway Library, The Courtauld Institute of Art, London; by
permission of the Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, Lisbon.)
It is true that the Gulbenkian and Abingdon apocalypses exhibit an excep

tional amount of explicitly anti-Jewish imagery that departs considerably from the
more typical iconographical patterns observable in other thirteenth-century illumi
nated apocalypses. In most of the latter, anti-Jewish meanings are interpolated into
the visionary narrative by integrating scenes from the Antichrist legends into more
conventionalized Apocalypse iconography. An image from the mid-thirteenth
century Morgan Apocalypse is a good example of an Antichrist image imported
into the Apocalypse narrative that is especially interesting from an iconographical
perspective (Fig. 5)." In the top register, a figure labelled Antichristus positioned
on the far right wears a Jewish hat and beard. Enthroned inside the temple of
Solomon, he oversees henchmen bribing followers and murdering unbelievers. In
the scene directly below, he is slain by the breath of an angry God administered
through a lion's mouth.12 As Antichrist topples to his death with closed eyes, his
Jewish hat falls off, thus recalling the familiar iconography of the falling Synagoga.
In other artistic contexts, this popular and profoundly negative female personifica
tion of Judaism is often depicted blindfolded or with downcast eyes and headgear

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
T>tc(fecr tomrfc m tsrnplo ttuma I
Fig. 5. Antichrist's persecutions and destruction. Morgan Apocalypse; Pierpont Morgan Library, M.
524, fol. 7v. (Photo: The Pierpont Morgan Library, New York. Gift; J. P. Morgan (1867-1943); 1924.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
8 Debra Higgs Strickland
slipping from her head as she crumbles before the triumphant Ecclesia, as a sign
of the abrogation of the Old Law in the presence of the Church Triumphant.13 In
the Morgan Apocalypse, the iconographical motif of falling thus provides a semi
otic link between God's defeat of Antichrist and the longed-for Christian defeat of
Judaism. The visual reference to Synagoga also conjures the eschatological dream
of the conversion of the Jews dramatized in medieval mystery plays, such as the
twelfth-century Tegernseer Ludus de Antichristo (Play of Antichrist).14 By pointing
outwards to other pictorial and performed iconography, Antichrist imagery thus
functions in the Morgan Apocalypse and other illuminated apocalypse manuscripts
at once as eschatological prophecy and as anti-Jewish commentary.
Participation in the glorious conversion at the end of time is a chief narrative
role played by the Jews in eschatological legends, but not before they have served
Antichrist as his disciples and henchmen. The early fifteenth-century Wellcome
Apocalypse emphasizes this initial Jewish collusion in an extended image series
that interrupts the scriptural Apocalypse episodes. Between the earthquake (Apoc.
11:14) and the sounding of the seventh trumpet (Apoc. 11:15), the Wellcome
designers inserted six folios of eighteen Antichrist scenes (three scenes per folio)
accompanied by brief descriptions based on the Compendium text. In one of them,
Jews rebuild the Temple while Antichrist oversees the burning of the Law (Fig.
6).15 Antichrist's exaggerated size and stance affirm his power and authority in the
presence of his smaller, weaker Jewish servants. He wears a crown over his Jew
ish mitre. Interestingly, the mitre appears elsewhere in medieval art on the heads
of not only Christian bishops but also high-ranking Jews, and in spite of the fact
that there is no evidence of mitre wearing in medieval Jewish ritual.16 In the Well
come Apocalypse, the mitre functions in the first instance as a sign of Antichrist's
(pseudo-) priestly authority. Moreover, because Exodus 28 and 29 specify that
Aaron, the first high priest, must wear on his head a golden plate affixed to a mitre
(although the precise form of neither is specified), Antichrist's headgear may also
point to a specifically Jewish messiah while simultaneously serving his Christian
disguise.17
Jews continue to appear in the Wellcome Apocalypse Antichrist imagery
as Antichrist's disciples, courtiers, and henchmen. They also infiltrate the main
Apocalypse scenes alongside the various supernatural creatures—the locust king
(Abaddon), the Beast of the Sea, the Beast of the Earth, and the seven-headed
dragon—ignored in the Compendium but described in the Apocalypse text and
interpreted by medieval exegetes as different manifestations of Antichrist.18 A
Jewish presence outwith the Antichrist scenes in the main apocalyptic visions
demonstrates a more comprehensive attempt to situate Jews at the conceptual
center of Christian eschatological events. For contemporary viewers, the Jewish
figures function additionally as references to contemporary Jews and Judaism

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 6. Antichrist burns the law while Jews rebuild the Temple. Wellcome Apocalypse; London,
Wellcome Library, MS 49, fol. lOv. (Photo: Wellcome Library, London.)
indicative of physical abnormality, disease, pathology, demonic allegiance, usury,

idolatry, unbelief, and, above all, deicide.
The Wellcome Apocalypse image that accompanies the text of Apoc. 13:16—
18, for example, uses figures of Jews to populate a vision of spiritual corruption
(Fig. 7). At this dramatic moment, Antichrist in his guise as a goatlike Beast of the
Earth prepares to mark his followers as they step forward from an orderly queue.19
Waiting to receive their marks are Jews, some of whom wear bright yellow hats.
The lame and infirm figures, as well as the pilgrim wearing a scrip and holding a
dog on a lead, suggest that those lined up expect not only to be marked but also to
be healed, both physically and spiritually.20 To integrate Jews among an otherwise
ailing cohort makes the visual argument that Jewishness is a form of spiritual and
physical pathology as expressed by John Chrysostom in one of his early Christian
sermons:
[The synagogue] is not simply a gathering place for thieves and

hucksters, but also of demons; indeed, not only the synagogue,
but the souls of the Jews are also the dwelling places of demo
Instead of exchanging greetings with them and addressing one
word to them, ought one not rather avoid them as a pestilence
and disease spread throughout the whole world?21

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 7. The Beast of the Earth marks his followers. Wellcome Apocalypse; London, Wellcome Library,
MS 49, fol. 17r. (Photo: Wellcome Library, London.)
Elsewhere in medieval literature, Jews are described as physically abnormal and

as carriers of strange diseases, and Jews were accused of deliberately spreading
epidemics, such as the Black Death, among the Christian population.22 Physical
abnormality in an eschatological context also resonates with the prophesied malig
nant effects of Saturn upon the bodies of the Jews at the end of time.23 If viewed
from this broader ideological perspective, the inclusion of Jews in the Beast of
the Earth's marking queue incidentally subverts Christian notions of penance and
pilgrimage while corroborating the relentless anti-Jewish thrust of the Antichrist
legends.
That the world's Jews will recognize and accept Antichrist as their messiah
was a popular pictorial and literary topos that merged the past, present, and future
of late medieval Jews.24 In German-speaking areas, the legend of the so-called Red
Jews further reinforced the alleged eschatological and conspiratorial orientation
of contemporary Jews through a convoluted conflation of living Jews, the Ten
Lost Tribes of Israel, and the apocalyptic Gog and Magog (Apoc. 20). At the end
of time, these Red Jews were to organize a massive Jewish support system for
Antichrist, calling first upon contemporary Jews with whom they could commu
nicate secretly in Hebrew.25 Not many images of the Red Jews survive, but an
early fifteenth-century example from Strasbourg makes especially effective use
of the colors red and yellow to negatively intensify a narrative illustration of a

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Antichrist and the Jews 11
£ > Mi
1 MM
Fig. 8. Red Jews. Uffenbachsches Wappenbuch; Flamburg, Staats- und

Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. 90 B in serin., fol. 51 r. (Photo:
Staats- und Universitätsbibliothek Hamburg.)
menacing group of grimacing, bloodthirsty Jews, awaiting the arrival of

in the mountains of "Yndia" where they had supposedly been imprisoned
by Alexander the Great (Fig. 8).26
Pictorial imagery was not the only means of visualizing the prophesie
allegiance to Antichrist. Across Western Europe from the twelfth centur
the Reformation, this allegiance was also dramatized in public plays, m
which likely animated and augmented viewer experiences of static works
In the Tegemseer play, the Chester Play of Antichrist, and the Bensanço
jugement (Judgment Day), among others, characters ranging from Ant
his followers, to an anonymous collective headed for ultimate, glorious c

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
were normally portrayed as Jews.28 The French play places unusual emphasis on
Antichrist's Jewish mother, who conceives her unholy son by a demon named
Angingnart and gives birth to him under the spiritual protection of Muhammad!29
This last detail hints at the role of "Saracens" in the Christian eschatological sce
nario. Although beyond the scope of this essay, Muslims, including the Prophet
himself, were in some literary and pictorial contexts identified as followers and
forerunners of Antichrist, sometimes with Jewish co-conspirators.30 During the
Middle Ages, eschatological Saracens signalled contemporary Christian failures
on Crusade, and during the early modem period similar roles were assigned to
the Turks at a time when the Ottoman invasions of Europe were viewed as God's
angry answer to backsliding Christendom and as a sign of the imminent End.31
Well before medieval Antichrist iconography was appropriated by Protestant
artists, it had already migrated from dedicated eschatological manuscripts, such as
the ones discussed above, to other contemporary artistic contexts. The sumptuous
Bibles moralisées created in Paris during the thirteenth century for French royal
patrons contain some intriguing imagery that bears witness to this earlier period of
iconographical appropriation.32 In these richly illustrated manuscripts, a number of
the commentary images that gloss various scriptural passages highlight Antichrist's
relationship with the Jews.33 Neither text nor images explicitly identity Antichrist
himself as a Jew but rather stress his alliance with Jews, thereby employing him as
an especially sinister Jewish attribute. In the Apocalypse sections, this relationship
is forged primarily by the artists, but elsewhere the accompanying text explicitly
links the Jews to Antichrist or to more generalized "Jewish crimes" such as unbelief
and idolatry.34 One particularly interesting commentary passage in the London Bible
interprets John's letter to the church of Philadelphia (Apoc. 3:7-13) as a harbinger
of the Jews' conversion following Antichrist's destruction (Fig. 9).35 The accompa
nying roundel thus features a multihorned, dark blue, monstrous Antichrist point
ing a finger, as if expressing loss, behind several Jews assembled before a seated,
tonsured cleric holding the Eucharistie bread and wine on a cloth spread across his
lap. Jews are also linked to Antichrist in a later copy of the Bible moralisée in a
pair of framed drawings that gloss 2 Thessalonians 2:1-4, the passage that warns
of the coming of the Son of Perdition (Fig. 10).36 In the top image, a three-faced
Antichrist holds the hand of a hatted Jew standing beside two other Jews also
wearing tall, conical hats, while St. Paul points a warning finger at them. Below, a
tonsured cleric rebukes the Jews while the Devil standing beside them turns away
and towards a seated, now fully tricephalic, Antichrist. The accompanying text,
which does not mention the Jews, indicates that Antichrist will come at the end of
the world, claim to be God, and turn people to his infamy.37
In the Bibles moralisées, anti-Jewish eschatological ideas even informed
interpretations of some of the Old Testament episodes. For example, in a narrative

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 9. Conversion of Jews who reject Antichrist. Bible

moralisée\ BL, Harley 1527, fol. 118v. (Photo: © British
Library Board, All Rights Reserved.)
roundel in Vienna 2554 that accompanies the text of Judges 6:28, Gideon des
the false god Baal as well as the woods in which he found him (Fig. II).38 B
the moralization specifies that Gideon finding and destroying the wick
(mauuez deu) signifies Christ, who at the end of time will find Antichrist; a
woods Gideon destroys signifies Antichrist's companion Jews, usurers, and
miscreants whom God's voice will also destroy.39 Accordingly, in the accom
ing commentary roundel, Christ waves away a three-faced Antichrist surro
by Jews, rendered here as elsewhere in the Bibles moralisées with the stereo
beards and hats.40 As Sara Lipton has shown, in these highly complex imag
supposed Jewish love of money is a key theme and one that is consistently
to associated sins of usury, idolatry, and the worship of Antichrist.41 In add
addressing particular moral and economic concerns of their French royal pat
the Bibles moralisées imagery incidentally provided an explanation as to w
Jews will follow Antichrist by framing their allegiance to him as the logi
come of a natural progression rooted in avarice, the supposedly quintessen
Devil-given, Jewish trait.
In the Bibles moralisées and elsewhere in medieval art, avarice and its
ciated sins were signified by the iconographical motif of the moneybag, and
moneybag continued to function as an important anti-Jewish sign during th
modern period. Nearly forty years after the production of the Nuremberg Entkr

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 10. Antichrist and the Jews. Bible moralisée;

BL, Add. 18719, fol. 292v. (Photo: ©British Library
Board, All Rights Reserved.)
Albrecht Dürer illustrated Sebastian Brant's chapter on Antichrist in the endur

ingly popular Ship of Fools ( 1494) with a striking image of the Son of Perdition
(Fig. 12). Sitting atop an overturned ship, Antichrist holds a flail in one hand and
a moneybag in the other as he contemplates overboard, impious fools drowning
in the surrounding sea. In the foreground, St. Peter calmly guides an upright ship
full of the faithful.43 By now, Antichrist's moneybag was charged with the nega
tive meanings accrued from the wider arena of late medieval anti-Jewish imagery
exhibited in some of the images already discussed. Returning to the Wellcome
Apocalypse image of Antichrist as the Beast of the Earth (Fig. 7), one of the

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 11. Gideon smashes Baal; Christ rejects Antichrist and

the Jews. Bible moralisée; ÖNB, MS 2554, fol. 58vC-c.
(Photo: Österreichische Nationalbibliothek, Vienna, Picture
Archiv.)
hatted Jews holds a yellow moneybag as a sign of the same Jewish usury evoked
a century earlier in the Gulbenkian Apocalypse (Fig. 3) and throughout the Bibles
moralisées,44
When it is held in the hands of Antichrist, however, the moneybag is a more

complex pictorial motif. In addition to functioning as a general signifier of ava
rice, the moneybag is in these contexts a more targeted reference to Antichrist's
technique of securing loyalty through bribery. According to the Compendium of
Theological Truth, bribery is one of four ways by which Antichrist will obtain
allegiance, the other three ways being preaching, false miracles, and torture.45 In
the Wellcome Apocalypse all four coercive methods are vividly portrayed, with a
lurid emphasis on grisly torture variants (fols. 12r-12v). Immediately preceding
the torture scenes, Antichrist and his henchmen bribe on-the-fence onlookers with
a golden crown, coins from a large chest, and a bulging moneybag (Fig. 13).
A woodcut illustration from a late fifteenth-century Lyons edition of the
Vie du maulvais Antecrist (Life of the malicious Antichrist), in addition to a cen
tral focus on the moneybag motif, provides some interesting pictorial details not
directly related to the accompanying text, which is mainly an account of Anti
christ's false miracles (Fig. 14).46 In this scene, Antichrist simultaneously preaches
and bribes his potential followers, all of whom wear Jewish hats or turbans, in full

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 12. Albrecht Dürer, The Coming of Antichrist. Sebastian Brant,

Ship of Fools, trans. Alexander Barclay; Glasgow, University Library
Bn6-d.9, fol. 225r. (Photo: University of Glasgow Library, Depart
ment of Special Collections.)
view of desecrated Christian images that litter the ground at the foot of his pulpit.
As in the Wellcome Apocalypse bribery image (Fig. 13), the moneybag prompts
viewers to see Antichrist not only as one who secures his followers through bribery
as described in the legends but more fundamentally as an avaricious Jew. The pres
ence in the Lyons woodcut of the discarded crucifix and broken images of saints
further deepens the anti-Jewish dimension of the scene by recalling inflammatory
Christian illustrations of Jews desecrating the Host and other Christian images,
illustrations which circulated widely in tandem with criminal accusations levelled
against Jews all over Western Europe.47 Such an image thus presents a dual narra
tive of Jewish avarice and eschatological doom, in which each theme intensifies
the negative power of the other.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
I ~ %
Fig. 13. Antichrist bribes his followers. Wellcome Apocalypse; London, Wellcome Library, MS 49,
fol. 1 lv. (Photo: Wellcome Library, London.)
Fig. 14. Antichrist preaching and bribing. Viedel'AntecrisV,

BL, IB 42 340, fol. 8v. (Photo: © British Library Board,
All Rights Reserved.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Antichrist and the Reformists
The iconographical motif of the moneybag was next appropriated and rede
ployed for new purposes in anti-papal Reformation pamphlets, books, and broad
sides (flugblätter). The most skilled exploitation of its accrued meanings may be
observed in the most successful, extended work of visual propaganda produced
during the Reformation, the Passional Christi und Antichristi (1521), with text by
Philip Melanchthon and woodcut images by Lucas Cranach the Elder.48 In one pair
of narrative scenes, as we shall see below, the moneybag at once signifies Anti
christ's bribery, Jewish avarice, and, most importantly, papal corruption (Fig. 15).
The Passional text and images advance the belief that Antichrist will rise
from within the established Church hierarchy to assume its highest position. Cra
nach's image pairs—in which the pope is always labelled Antichristus—address
different aspects of papal misconduct by calling attention to the perceived moral
gaps between Christ and his so-called vicar. Tailor-made as it might seem for Refor
mation propaganda, this inflammatory idea was not a reformist invention but rather
had rumbled alongside the anti-Jewish tradition in medieval eschatological proph
ecy from the thirteenth century onwards in order to condemn particular individuals
or as a general critique of Church corruption.49 By now, however, the explicit notion
of a papal Antichrist had gained considerable momentum through Martin Luther's
enthusiastic endorsement and through his artist Cranach's polemical image series,
which exerted a powerful influence on subsequent anti-Catholic imagery.50
The identification of the pope with Antichrist also gained currency in early
modern Antichrist plays and theological works that by this time were essentially
anti-papal in orientation.51 An interesting early example of the latter is Die Toten
fresser (The devourers of the dead), a polemical dialogue attributed to Pamphilus
Gengenbach (1499-1524) and published in 1522.52 Some of its more notable fea
tures include a speech by the pope emphasizing the oppositional lifestyle between
Christ and himself, a papal mob complaining about Luther, and an appearance by
the Devil, who praises the papists just before dragging them off to hell.53
In the particular Passional image pair considered here (Fig. 15), the icono
graphical motif of the moneybag prompts viewers to contemplate the parallels
between Antichrist's bribery and papal corruption. A more detailed look reveals
additional levels of meaning. A scene of Christ chastising the Temple money
changers (Matt. 21:12-13) is juxtaposed with one of the pope selling indulgences.
In the latter image an official clutching a bulging moneybag counts coins laid out
on the table, while the pope busily writes one indulgence while handing over a
completed one already adorned with papal seals. Both scenes are anti-Jewish,
but in different ways. In the Temple money-changing image, anti-Jewish mean
ing is located in the negative contrast between Christ and the 'usurious' Jews.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
r5-
IIo
O
"q o
S <->
03
<2
g a
2 <2(D
£
O u
C 5
«? "72
fci
CO O
o 0^
—>
T3
C
Qh
o
Oh
<L>
•£j
53 ■i
Fig.15LucasCrnhteEldr.Chistebuk hmoneychagrs;teposlindugecs.PhilpMeanchto,PasinlChrsti undAtichrs;Atlan,PisTheolgicaLbry,EmoUniversty.(Pho:CurtesyofhRicardC.KeslrRfomatinColec , PitsTheolgyLibray,CandlerScholfTheolgy,EmoryUniversty.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
In the indulgence sales image, by offering salvation in exchange for monetary

bribes, the pope mimics (in reverse) the traditional modus operandi of the Jewish
Antichrist.54 The indulgence scene also parallels visually the rhetorical strategy
adopted by contemporary churchmen of identifying corrupt Christians as Jews, a
practice borne of the medieval Christian concept of Judaizing. "Judaizer" was a
derogatory designation applied by Christians not to Jews but to other Christians.
Judaizing activities could include reading Scriptures too literally, sympathizing
with Jews, according primacy to the Hebrew Bible or engaging in activities, such
as usury, routinely defined as Jewish and therefore against the Church.55 By these
definitions, and especially when viewed in relation to the eschatological and anti
Jewish significance of the moneybag, the pope granting indulgences in the Pas
sional image is simultaneously a Judaizing Christian and the Jewish Antichrist.
Just as Protestant artists incorporated details of Antichrist's life into their
polemical images of the pope, so they also employed references to Antichrist's
death in order to turn still other anti-Jewish ideas to new derogatory purposes. In
the eyes of the reformers, the common meeting ground for the pope, Antichrist,
and the rest of the Jews was hell. In medieval art, hell as destination was already a
favorite anti-Jewish theme integrated into a wide variety of devotional and narra
tive contexts and manifest in numerous images of Jews imprisoned in hell's jaws,
tortured in its flames, or boiling in its cauldron.56 The Jewish Antichrist would end
up there, too. In a woodcut rendered by Michael Wolgemut for the 1493 Latin
edition of the Nuremberg Chronicle, after St. Michael has slain Antichrist with
his sword, three howling demons wrestle the evil one to hell (Fig. 16). Below, jux
taposed representations of Antichrist preaching to the reprobate (on the left) and
the pious witnesses, Enoch and Elijah, preaching to good Christians (on the right)
highlight the two choices that will be available to the faithful.57
Using hell as a central organizing motif, Reformation artists created com
pelling iconographical links between the pope, Antichrist, and Jews—sometimes
with the aid of texts—in order to supply their anti-papal imagery with additional
pejorative power. Juxaposed with an antithetical scene of Christ ascending into
heaven and representing a formative stage in this iconographical development is
Cranach's final image in the Passional series (Fig. 17).58 It depicts the pope, still
wearing his tiara and bejewelled papal robes, hurtling headfirst to hell with the
aid of several demons towards a tonsured cleric already engulfed by the flames.
The accompanying text accomplishes the final collapse of distinction between the
pope/Roman Catholics and Antichrist/followers by excerpting key Scriptural
passages that foretell Christ's final destruction of the evil one and his followers at
the end of time (Apoc. 19; 2 Thess. 2).
Produced only three years after the Passional series, The Roman Clergy's
Procession into Hell (1524), rendered by the Nuremberg artist Sebald Beham,

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
SSeptima eras mudi
Fig. 16. Michael Wolgemut, Life and Death of Antichrist. Hartmann Schedel, Lib
cronicarum; Glasgow, University Library BD9-a.2, fol. 263v. (Photo: University
Glasgow Library, Department of Special Collections.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
JO
&
IS)
W
"S
C3
Fig.17LucasCrnhteEldr.AsceniofChrst;decnofAtichrs.PaionlChrstiundAchrist,AlanPitsTheolgica Libray,EmoUniversty(Pho:CurtesyofhRicardC.KeslrRfomatinCleco,PitsTheolgyLibra,CndlerScho f Theol gy, Emory University.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
provides a more detailed, condemnatory look at the entire Catholic ecclesiastical

hierarchy, shown arriving in a horse-drawn cart and then assembled inside a clas
sical temple awaiting their doom (Fig. 18).59 The pope appears twice, first ridin
pompously on his horse ahead of the cart and again standing on the temple bal
cony gravely eyeing the demon ready to cast him into the flames of hell below.6
The accompanying text by Nuremberg's most famous poet and playwright, Han
Sachs, identifies the Catholic clergy with the Babylonian captors of the children o
Israel, in support of the popular claim that the reformists are God's (newly) chosen
people and as such the rightful inheritors of his covenant with Israel.61 Thus, text
and image together put forth a complicated matrix of ideas aimed not only against
the Roman Catholic Church but still also against Judaism—as producers of the
Christ imitator but, more fundamentally, as the once chosen but now discarded
people of God.
Besides money and hell, the breath of God was another familiar iconograph
ical motif in medieval art and literature put to new and negative use in Protestant
propaganda. Its utility for the reformists once again was derived from the Anti
christ legends, which identified the breath of God as one possible method by which
Antichrist would be destroyed. That is, although the medieval sources agree tha
Antichrist will be killed after three and a half years, they disagree on the manner
of his demise. In the Nuremberg Chronicle image described above, Antichrist dies
at the hand of St. Michael, but other sources assert that he will be destroyed by
the breath of God, as depicted in the Morgan Apocalypse image described ear
lier (Fig. 5). The Compendium allows for both options and further specifies that
Antichrist's death will occur on the Mount of Olives, the same place from which
Christ ascended into heaven.62 Thus, in the Wellcome Apocalypse, by the force of
Saint Michael's sword, Antichrist falls to his death from the summit of the Mount
of Olives on which Christ's footprints are still visible (Fig. 19). As in the Morgan
Apocalypse image (Fig. 5), when he falls, his crown slips from his head.63 In the
final and most dramatic scene of the brief Antichrist cycle included in the mid
fifteenth-century Livre de la Vigne de Nostre Seigneur (Book of Our Lord's vine
yard), Antichrist is a strangely graceful figure of bent-back agony blasted by the
breath of God (Fig. 20).64 A demon seizes his soul, while the fiery fallout destroy
the former beneficiaries of Antichrist's self-serving largesse. The pictorial motif
of God's death-bringing breath in this and other images especially disturbs as a
simultaneous evocation and subversion of the positive iconography of God breath
ing life into Adam, or the Holy Spirit beaming down upon the Virgin Mary.
In Protestant propaganda, God predictably aims his destructive breath at the
pope, as observable in the famous 1525 broadside The Fall of the Papacy, rendered
by Sebald Beham and accompanied by another text by Hans Sachs (Fig. 21).65
The intense drama of the scene is located in the crowded composition and the

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
ft
jltnu
Fig.18SebaldBhm,TeRoanClergy'sPoceintoHel.Nurmbeg,GrmanischeNtonalmuse.(Phot:GermanischNtonalmuse, Nuremberg.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
' " "' '^
WiSm
Fig.
Fig.19.19.
Destruction
Destruction
of Antichrist.
of Antichrist.
Wellcome Apocalypse;
Wellcome London,
Apocalypse;
Wellcome Library,
London,
MS 49,Wellcome
fol. Library,
13r.
13r.(Photo:
(Photo:
Wellcome
Wellcome
Library, Library,
London.) London.)
surreal effects of text on arrows flying to earth from heaven: on the left to
the virtue of the pious, kneeling reformists; on the right to condemn th
his three cardinals. Using a thick rope tied around the back of the papal
central prince, who strongly resembles Emperor Charles V, assisted by
bishops tries to hold it upright, while the Roman Catholic "temple" cra
crumbles.66 On the left, a group of evangelicals led by a triumphantly
Luther holding a bible surveys the scene from the side of Christ.
That the toppling pope is really the defeated Antichrist is clear from
rounding text, which refers to him by name and as an earthly god and a
tion. The text block on the far right, directly above the falling pope, rec
for assistance that recalls Antichrist's attempts to secure followers via br
I call to you, you kings and princes,

Who are all thirsting for silver and gold.
I want to give you rich wages
And want to give you what you want.
See if you can arrange things
And stand me up again.
Truth oppresses me greatly and surely
It is an unbearable burden to me.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 20. Destruction of Antichrist. Livre de la Vigne de Nostre Seigneur, Bod. Lib., Douce 134,
fol. 36r. (Photo: The Bodleian Library, University of Oxford.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
pa
Oh
=3
M
M
a>
J3
'Sa> .S
ca
CQ <L>
IJ
§-*
t-<
W .22
O1 ca
CA
=33 3
££
« I
SA
s" ö
3 CQ
2,
ffl 3
C3
3*
-8 .2
CQ 7!
Fig.21SebaldBhm,TeFalofthePapcy.Berlin,StasbilothekPrusicheKultrbesiz,YA273gr.(Phot:Berlin, Sta sbilothekzuBerlin—PreusicherKultrbesitz.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
I beg you firmly to suppress it [i.e., the truth]

And strive diligently
to keep it from making progress.
I give you gold and silver as a reward.
So that you alone can save my position
And trample all truth.
You must do that with great vehemence.
You all see well: my [time of] honor is over.67
Meanwhile, excerpts from Scriptural passages traditionally interpreted in relation

to Antichrist are inscribed on all five of the arrows about to pierce the length of the
pope's body.68 In an evangelical context, God blasting Scripture-bearing arrows
pictures the power of the Word, as articulated in the text block just above the
Lutheran group, inscribed Chistenheyt (Christendom). The Lutherans speak out
against the pope/Antichrist:
Let us heed God's strength.

This will allow us to get our revenge on him
And shatter his power and kingdom.
Let us shoot God's word at him.
In this way, down falls the power and refuge
Of his kingdom; we see that well.69
Aimed at a de facto Antichrist falling to his death by the force of God's breath in
a manner familiar from medieval eschatological imagery (Figs. 5, 20, and 21),
the arrows may also be read against the killing power of St. Michael's sword.
Using pictorial references in these ways, Beham fed reformist fantasies by skill
fully evoking both methods of Antichrist's prophesied demise, thus underscoring
the finality of the papacy's destruction as an unstoppable act of God.
Alongside Antichrist
In their visual condemnations of the Catholic Church, Reformation artists

appropriated and redirected still other anti-Jewish iconographical themes circulat
ing beyond the boundaries of the strictly eschatological. One of the most highly
charged of these is the motif of Jews persecuting a lamb. Because lambs consis
tently symbolized Christ in medieval art and literature, such imagery functioned
in various late medieval devotional, liturgical, and vernacular works of art as a
powerful reference to deicide—the "Christ-killing" of which the Jews were long
accused.70 An especially virulent example from the early fourteenth-century Codex
Gisle depicts grotesquely caricatured Jews abusing an upside-down hanging Pas
chal Lamb (Fig. 22). They hold spears and other staff weapons that allude to the

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig. 22. Jews abusing the paschal lamb. Codex

Gisle; Osnabrück, Archiv des Bischöfliches Gene
ralvikariats, MS 101, p. 141. (Photo: Archiv des
Bischöflichen Generalvikariats, Osnabrück.)
sadistic and supposedly singularly Jewish torture of Christ on the cross.7

tion of the lamb also conjures contemporary inflammatory Jewish ref
Christ as "the hanged one."72
While far removed from the Codex Gisle chronologically and stylist
believe that a similar habit of mind informed an anonymous Reformation
engraved around 1555 and distributed simultaneously in Latin, German
lish versions (Fig. 23).73 The central figure of condemnation is Stephen
(ca. 1497-1555), the Roman Catholic bishop of Winchester firmly oppos
reformists and held responsible by them for the Marian exile of English P
and the execution of several of their leading bishops.74 Gardiner is surro
other English Catholics, all rendered with wolf heads. As they voraciou
in their chalices the blood from a crucified lamb whose neck Gardiner
a demonic Antichrist with a tiara-shaped, reptilian head looks down app
from the upper right corner.75 Beneath the altar is a pile of slain sheep
by their inscriptions as dead Protestant bishops and other churchmen.76
foreground, a group of Catholic laymen are attached to Gardiner by a ro
by their noses, implying their foolishness and gullibility.77 In addition t
images of Jews abusing a lamb, this complex iconography also conjures
images of lassoed Jews led to hell by demons. More immediately, th
employs the contemporary Protestant literary and pictorial trope that ide
Catholic ecclesiastical hierarchy with wolves.78 The broadside's central in

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
'Vti&ydoyot* mt ojw fyr^aS i

ant tSfotitM 6nm niadt otr AX
pit tSaft *U f&ftjfcr ' yl
wmsmm
ffin* -fWtty'ffg fj>n£ti
■iiM&mt in ymm%.fy ■'ysfaftrffnt
' ,-mitddwk(ymd\
(fgjtdhdej%»t tit i^MfOtieirew/l '.£1^; V%'$
ty'wmf£***••
.xa»... ^tetr^Jik
:♦<> J
iMk S^VS:
5b
!•* MM
.j^Jm Wf/f_^
u KmW.
ft
•" "'V
b«Mrt
u t(iur oafy ,
Kartr (r*n/r* <
wfcM
mm
|Jj|
i ■ rp jii Hi
S3 »a fewKgii:
f 7
m;; • is 1 ■
1 I'1.
&f7 ►' t'iiidi 3y4a:
Prymr rr-
Prr/irrrtfi mmmm jhtne
tr&fmft drJhimtr
jherpr Jrlhnntr h
to St
6t- ftnyne
jfaynt. s. M
r7S'Wfa nnfutrt. '-Jftmftt ' ' ' . ,
l-CffmrntHatntr
PefftmniSatn* mut' **J drink
mj' and tiuïit an Mr
drnjvmitrit. Mm enttnßlmi^'
tanSmadr tduiftand,
«.» Jw£uûfîldûp.
tntmaemuftr and imfiwjt m
rr**V
(t»V 6m» 6m«
mutie mutSi iluddc
tfuJJc and and
mm fir famwSf
Je. But ftrdt,
Jue6e tu Btdjuebe
(taue HmtUtas banemat
bluJJe etoicbr
mutbr bfuddt andl*,it
ft'Je if thry mueie fteeUif
tynaef f fbty UiftUyna
titer atmt.emJ
tfieer atmt.andart Jtdhtutt
art Jedhh.tr oftUr
oftbr ayße ayjit ofibadbkr,
ofefaihbt, da and
Ja and tmtH often mudi fynnt
grruoufltc often mgrntonfUr fynne m aduoutene fttniiahon.att
nduautene fot.mahon.andpH
(nltotu
hi mthe
ho tu an dtr etyabb.But'loe
ttyabhBtti'yoi mt dribtnb
are Jribtute of the gifteofoflinyiftr ef bat»
efudkH, mJ detbfotd and
no Snyuw ban*
of owr noergoßt
»»ni, boptarf)'»»»/ #«r*
muht mid•*<«. «3«"W* ft'-" •»>"*<
tfrnt./ttfj
often./t <wf»e» Stitfiotti
tid 'vihtw f(,»hùnge
Wlbout of bitijdr of
fbenMnae ft' no rtmtffi'o*
Myddrj* of mmft'on
nt> Jyvu. thtrfen
of fyd'Veljjmf fogtruaufly.noltc
fytnt, tirrforr fyd'votjymtouejbttoft
mar
ghwmfiyftoHt o tuft ft
Wrti/r mat V Jayiy ffxJJt jo fteynovffy. V;
umlt mat %e dayiy fteddeft Sryaoufly.
Fig.
Fig. 23.
23. The
TheLambe
LambeSpeaketh:
Speaketh:Why
WhyDo Do
YouYou
Crucifie
Crucifie
Me Agen.
Me A
London,
London, British
BritishMuseum,
Museum, Department
Departmentof of
Prints
Prints
and and
Drawings,
Drawi
Y,1.92.
Y,1.92. (Photo:
(Photo:©©Trustees
Trusteesofof
the
the
British
British
Museum,
Museum, London.)
Londo
reinforces the anti-Jewish sentiment that lies at its core: "T

Why do you crucifie me agen." Thus, in this English Protesta
Catholics are with Jews kindred Christ-killers.79
In an image of even greater iconographical complexity, th
a sow in an especially derisory portrait of the pope likely tri
ries of the notorious Judensau motif (Fig. 24). An apparentl
the Judensau is a degrading image of Jews sucking the teats
sow that obscenely parodies Romulus and Remus imagery wh
Jewish ban on pork.80 Sculpted examples remain in situ in G
Luther's former operational base in Wittenberg. The badly w
southeastern corner of the choir of the Wittenberg Stadtkirche h
early fourteenth century, and was recorded in several seven
ings with the inscription, "Rabini Schern Hamphoras" (Th
name of God), thought to have been added in Luther's time (F

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
*»SS*S»S?}.»SMgsSs
F R A us
A M B I T I O
SUPERSTITIO
Fig.
Fig.24.
24.Fraus
Fraus
Ambitio
Ambitio
Superstitio
Superstitio
Tergeminam
Tergeminam
Papae PeperPapae Peper
ere
ereCoronam.
Coronam. Wolfenbüttel,
Wolfenbüttel,
HerzogHerzog
August Bibliothek,
August Bibliothek,
Cod. Cod.
Guelf.
Guelf.32.4
32.4
Aug.
Aug.
2°, fol.
2°, 876.
fol.(Photo:
876. (Photo:
Herzog August
Herzog Biblio
August Biblio
thek,
thek,Wolfenbüttel.)
Wolfenbüttel.)
Conceived at a time when late medieval Judensau imagery was ubiquit

across Germany, the image of the pope riding the sow enjoyed great popul
from the time it was produced in the Cranach workshop in 1545. Originall
was paired with an image of an enthroned ass wearing a papal tiara and pla
the bagpipes. Martin Luther so liked the two images that he wrote a pair of
verses to accompany them.82
The title of the 1609 single print edition considered here, Fraus Amb
Superstitio Tergeminam Papae Peperere Coronam proclaims, "Deception
tion, and superstition brought forth the triple crown of the pope" (Fig. 24).
Pope Paul III (1534-49) who rides the sow, making the sign of blessing with
right hand while holding a pile of steaming excrement in his left. As if to r

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
RAHM], ScHEMHAMPHORASj
i^ABJNJc ScHEMHAMPHORASj
§\ 1 .
H Wmh
it? W^t*
i /i..,in;
MiiiM
f/Jlh'fi"
wAm
tpX :?*•
i
Fig.
Fig.25.
25.The
TheWittenberg
Wittenberg
Judensau.
Judensau.
Joannes
Joannes
Wolfius,Wolfius,
LectionumLectionum
memorabilium
memorabilium
et recondi et recon
tarum
tarumCentenarii
Centenarii
XVI.XVI.
. vol.. ii,
vol.
p. 1031;
ii, p. BL,
1031;
717.m.3.
BL, 717.m.3.
(Photo: © (Photo:
British Library
© British
Board,
Library Boa
All
All Rights
RightsReserved.)
Reserved.)
any lingering doubt as to whether or not the image should be read in relation to the
Judensau, the papal rider is rendered with the stereotyped physiognomy of a Jew,
in left profile with a long nose and long beard. Of the excrement, towards which
the sow inclines, the verse below proclaims that its smell is worthy of the pope's
nose and that "such gifts swell such swine" (distendant tales talia dona sues).84
Thus, even the language of the verse recalls the mocking sarcasm of the Judensau
inscriptions that obscenely suggest a Jewish fixation with the sow's hindquarters
and its by-products. Only now, the mockery is aimed back at its original authors—
the Roman Catholic Church.85
The image of the pope riding a sow evokes other, more conventional types
of polemical Protestant portrayals, especially the popular pairing of Christ hum
bly riding a donkey and the pope riding pompously on horseback, as depicted
in the Passional Christi und Antichristi and subsequently on single-leaf prints
and panel paintings (Figs. 18, 26).86 In the 1609 print, however, the pope pomp
ously (and ridiculously) rides a sow rather than a horse, and there is no pious
counterexample. The iconography also brings to mind another type of derisory
portrait of the pope as a triple tiara-wearing Whore of Babylon riding the dragon,
as rendered by Lucas Cranach for Luther's 1522 translation of the New Testament
(September Testament).87 The artist responsible for the image of a "Jewish pope"
riding a sow thus produced a richly complex visual polemic by marshalling the
negative meanings of the Judensau, the pompous pope, the apocalyptic whore,

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Fig.26LucasCrnhteEldr.Chistdngas;poeridngahorse.PinalChrstiundAchrist;Alan,PitsTheolgicaLbry, EmoryUnivesty.(Pho:CurtesyofhRicardC.KeslrRfomatinColec ,PitsTheolgyLibra,CndlerScho fTelogy, Emory University.)

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
and the concept of Judaizing to create a new image of mockery whose pejorative
impact far outweighs the sum of its parts.
The widespread appropriation of Roman Catholic iconography, altarpieces,

architecture, and liturgical accoutrements was a project critical to the establishment
of the newly founded Reformation church. Reworked and redefined for changed
doctrinal and liturgical needs, the continued use of Catholic forms and buildings
was an important means of evangelical legitimization because it announced that
the new faith was already present in the old. And because they were already familiar
to the new religionists, such appropriations served a syncretic function by easing
the transmission from the old faith to the new.88
A crucial aspect of this process was the establishment of truth value for
the reformed religion, pursued artistically at the microlevel by the appropriation
of iconographical motifs such as the ones investigated in this study. Taking their
cue from their medieval forebears, Reformation artists aiming to discredit Roman
Catholicism apparently knew that the ultimate condemnatory strategy was to
taint the Roman Church with a Jewish brush. Just as the Church for centuries had
asserted of the Jews, the reformists claimed that the papacy was allied not to Christ
but to the Devil, that it was a corrupt and depraved destroyer of the True Church,
now revealed in the newly reconfigured liturgy, its propagators, and its adherents,
identified now as the verus Israel. To reformists, the papacy—like the Jews—was
awtz-Christian; and thus the pope was Antichrist, a figure traditionally defined as
Jewish. What more powerful way to portray the pope as the enemy of the Church
than by means of literary and pictorial strategies used for centuries to condemn the
proto-enemies of Christ himself?
The changing portrayals of Antichrist in Christian art demonstrate the endur
ing power of negative imagery, first to condemn the Jews but later to denounce
as corrupt the very patrons of anti-Jewish traditions. The success of the latter
project was greatly aided by the technological and educational developments of
the sixteenth century, mainly the rise in literacy and the development of print
ing that allowed for wide distribution and reception of pamphlets, broadsides, and
other printed propaganda.89 Of course, not all early modern propaganda targeted
the Roman Catholic Church. Much of it was also aimed at the Turks, sometimes
implicating them in eschatological mischief, as noted briefly above. Still other
printed poison in the form of illustrated pamphlets and broadsides recounted as
factual imaginary incidents of Jewish host desecration, ritual murder, desecration
of Christian images, and the imminent rampaging of the so-called Red Jews.90
Even after the Jews had been expelled from the areas in which the artists worked,

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
plays and other visual images directed against them continued to be publicly
formed and displayed, thus keeping the ideological and pictorial stereotypes ali
and in focus.91
Endorsed by Martin Luther himself, visual propaganda distributed across

popular audience was reinforced in official evangelical circles through the com
position of more "learned" anti-Jewish theological tracts. Most interesting in lig
of the Jewish-papal visual connection is its parallel presence in the written reco
One of the most prominent statements may be found in Luther's On the Jews
Their Lies (1543), in which Luther repeatedly compares the supposed perversio
of the Jews to those of the pope.92 Writing near the end of his life, the so-ca
"charioteer of Israel" states in one place in his vulgar screed:
But now that we have grown old, the pope comes along—and the devil
with him—and teaches us to convert this into an opus legis or opus
operatum. He severs word and sign from each other, teaching that we
are saved by our own contrition, work, and satisfaction. We share the
experience related by St. Peter in 2 Peter 2[:22]: "The dog turns back
to his own vomit, and the sow is washed only to wallow in the mire."
Thus our sacrament has become a work, and we eat our vomit again.
Like the Jews, as they grew old, ruined their good circumcision performed
on the eighth day, separated the word from the sign, and made a human
or even swinish work out of it. In this way they lost God and his word
93
and now no longer have any understanding of the Scriptures.1
In a more creative appropriation and displacement of identities, the papacy was

described by the Zurich reformer Ulrich Zwingli (1484—1531) as the yoke of "Jew
ish legality" from which the True Church must be liberated, just as the ancient
Israelites were emancipated from slavery in Egypt. As in Beham's broadside dis
cussed above (Fig. 18), Zwingli identified the Catholic Church with "discredited"
Judaism and characterized the reform movement as the renewal and continuation
of Old Testament covenant history.94 A more nuanced ideological strategy than
simply substituting Catholics for Jews, such statements demonstrate the Protes
tant redeployment of negative and positive images of Jews against their original
Roman Catholic authors, in a continuation of the medieval Christian claim that the
coming of Christ signalled that no longer the Jews but rather the Christians—read
Protestants—are God's chosen people.95
Conclusions
In Reformation imagery moneybags, lambs, demons, Antichrist, and other

iconographical motifs functioned as signs of Jewish usury, Christ-killing, demon
alliance, and anti-Christian conspiracy, just as they had done in late medieval ar

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Only now these images and charges were levelled against a new enemy: the Roman
Catholic Church. Iconographical appropriation in reformist propaganda intensified
the negative force of the new messages by allowing Protestant artists to wordlessly
condemn the Roman Church for its Judaizing with images that fed current—yet
long-standing—Christian anxieties about the Jews, church corruption, and the end
of days.
For the many centuries of its duration, the medieval Antichrist tradition has
expressed more than Christian eschatological fears and the concomitant need to
prepare one's soul for the imminent End. It did more than denounce non-Christians
whose full destructive force, as the medieval faithful believed, would be unleashed
at some indeterminate moment prior to Judgment Day. Considered more broadly,
I believe the Antichrist tradition betrays a fundamental uncertainty about the effi
cacy of the Christian faith. How else could a false Messiah be expected to meet
with such success among Christians unless it is presumed that those whom he
seeks to seduce remain unsaved and unsatisfied? As sinner after sinner performs in
the late medieval Jour du jugement, renouncing both Christ and his mother surely
would be impossible acts were it not for these sinners' fears of suffering, death, and
eternal punishment that devotion to the Christian pantheon—and obedience to its
earthly administrators—had so far failed to alleviate.
Unfulfilled longing and the nagging possibility of more efficacious sources
of human salvation likely propelled both Christian artistic phenomena examined in
this brief study. In the medieval Antichrist tradition, first Judaism and later Islam
threaten to overshadow the Christian Church, while Protestant propaganda reveals
the anxiety of competing with the Roman Catholic Church's powerful salvific
program. The next Antichrist would be Martin Luther himself, who in this guise
fuelled the recovery dreams of the very Church whose corruption and failings
allowed the reformists to gain such initial momentum.96 Looking once more at the
Lyons portrait of Antichrist (Fig. 14), the discarded and broken images scattered
on the ground may have signalled to a later generation of viewers the reality of
Protestant iconoclasm.97 As St. John observed, there are many antichrists.98
NOTES
I am grateful to Alison Adams, Sam Cohn, and Don Spaeth for their assistance with various a
of research that I have acknowledged in more detail in the relevant notes. I would also like t
Steven J. Reid for reading and helpfully commenting on an earlier draft of this essay, and on
anonymous readers at Studies for additional bibliography and translation assistance.
1. Editions: S. Hieronymi Presbyteri Opera, Pars I, Opera Exegetica 5, ed. Franciscus G
CCL 75A (Turnhout: Brepols, 1964), 914-44 (Jerome); Emst Sackur, Sibyllinische Texte un
schungen: Pseudomethodius, Adso und die tiburtinische Sibylle (Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1898)
(Pseudo-Methodius), 104-13 (Adso), 177-87 (Tiburtine Sibyl); Adso Dervensis, De ortv et te
antichristi, ed. D. Verhelst, CCM 45 (Turnhout: Brepols, 1976). The editio princeps of the

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
ordinaria (Strasbourg, 1480/1) has been reprinted in facsimile with an introduction by K

Froehlich and Margaret T. Gibson, Biblia latina cum glossa ordinaria, 4 vols. (Turnhout: B
1992); on the Jewish Antichrist, see the marginal commentary for 2 Thess. 2. See also Mi
Signer, "The Glossa Ordinaria and the Transmission of Medieval Anti-Judaism," 'm A Distinc
Medieval Studies in Honor of Leonard Boyle, O.P., ed. Jaqueline Brown and William P. St
(Notre Dame, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997), 591-605. For English translat
Pseudo-Methodius and Adso, see respectively: Francisco Javier Martinez, "Eastern Christia
lyptic in the Early Muslim Period: Pseudo-Methodius and Pseudo-Athanansius," 2 vols. (Ph.
Catholic University of America, 1985); John Wright, The Play of Antichrist (Toronto: Pontifi
tute of Mediaeval Studies, 1967), 101-10. The seminal study of the sources is Richard K. Emm
Antichrist in the Middle Ages: A Study of Medieval Apocalypticism, Art, and Literature (Manc
Manchester University Press, 1981). On the Jewish Antichrist, see Andrew Gow, The Red
Antisemitism in an Apocalyptic Age, 1200-1600 (Leiden: Brill, 1995), esp. pp. 93-130; and A
Gow, "The Jewish Antichrist in Medieval and Early Modern Germany," Medieval Encoun
(1996): 249-85.
2. Differences of opinion seem to have arisen partly owing to Adso's claim that Antichrist
be born in Babylon but would also inhabit Bethsaida and Chorozaim. Jerome asserts that Ant
will come from Babylon, Pseudo-Methodius states that he will be born in Bethsaida, while th
ordinaria and the late thirteenth-century Compendium (see below) both follow Jerome and A
Babylon. Babylon emerged as the favorite doubtless owing to its characterization in the Apoc
and elsewhere in Scriptures as the archetypical wicked city. See I. L. Finkel and M. J. Seymou
Babylon: Myth and Reality (London: British Museum Press, 2008).
3. The ca. 1265 text (first printed in 1473) was during the Middle Ages wrongly attribut
Albert the Great, Bonaventure, and Thomas Aquinas. Compendium theologicae veritatis in B.
Magni. . . Opera Omnia, ed. Etienne César Auguste Borgnet, vol. 34 (Paris, 1895), 241 —
Georg Steer (Hugo Ripelin von Strassburg: Zur Rezeptions- und Wirkungsgeschichte des "C
dium theologicae veritatis" im deutschen Spätmittelalter [Tübingen: Niemeyer, 1981]) wh
logues some 469 manuscripts and 59 printed copies of the work, and discusses its disseminati
reception among the German laity.
4. Andrew Gow (Red Jews, 110 n. 59) notes that the Compendium went through about
printings. On the Entkrist blockbooks, see Christoph Peter Burger, "Endzeiterwartung im
Mittelalter: Der Bildertext zum Antichrist und den Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten G
in der frühesten Druckausgabe," in Karin Boveland, Christoph Peter Burger, and Ruth S
Der Antichrist und Die Fünfzehn Zeichen vor dem Jüngsten Gericht (Hamburg: F. Wittig
2:18-22. Volume 1 of this work is a facsimile edition of a ca. 1480 xylographie Entkrist pri
Strassburg.
5. "Hye wird der endkrist enpfangen in muterleib von krafft des tewffels der in füret vnd erfül
let alles vbels vnd aller posshait vnd besleffi ein vater sein aygen tochter vnd der wirt des endkrists
vater" (Entkrist, leaf 2rb). In this and subsequent quotations from the Nuremberg Entkrist, I have
expanded abbreviations but have retained the original spellings, punctuation, and capitalizations. The
entire blockbook has been published in facsimile-edition with parallel modern German text transla
tion: Der Antichrist und die fünfzehn Zeichen: Faksimile-Ausgabe des einzigen erhaltenen chiroxy
lographischen Blockbuches, ed. Heinrich Theodor Musper, 2 vols. (Munich: Prestel Verlag, 1970).
Even though it accompanies virtually the same text, a much more explicit image of Antichrist's
incestuous conception appears on leaf 3 of the Strassburg Antichrist (as in n. 4, above).
6. The artist envisioned the birth as caesarean and the midwife as demonic, but the text simply
indicates that Antichrist will be born in Great Babylon full of the vice and evil bequeathed to him by
the Devil: "DEr endkrist wirt hye geporn In einer stat hayst gros Babilonie. vnd is aller vntugent vnd
posshait vol wann der tewffel alles sein vermügen dar czu tut." (Entkrist, leaf 2va). On the manner of
Antichrist's birth and this image in particular, see also Renate Blumenfeld-Kosinski, Not of Woman

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Born: Representations of Caesarean Birth in Medieval and Renaissance Culture (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1990), 125-42. The text in the lower register begins, "HJe wirt er vnkewsch vnd
frawen vast begern In der Stat Betsayda." (Entkrist, leaf 2vb).
7. 2 Thess. 2, which describes the coming of the Son of Perdition, is interpreted as descriptive
of the Jewish Antichrist in the Glossa ordinaria (as in n. 1, above) which was the standard medieval
exegetical source from the twelfth century onwards. Curiously, no commentary on the career or fol
lowers of Antichrist appears in the Glossa ordinaria Apocalypse section.
8. The origins of the Berengaudus gloss are still contested; historians have dated it to either
the twelfth or ninth century. Editions: Expositio super septem visiones libri apocalypsis, PL
17:765A-970C (Latin version); The Trinity Apocalypse, ed. David McKitterick (London: British
Library, 2005) (Anglo-Norman French version included on CD-ROM). See also Derk Visser, Apoca
lypse As Utopian Expectation (800-1500): The Apocalypse Commentary of Berengaudus of Fer
neres and the Relationship Between Exegesis, Liturgy, and Iconography in the History of Christian
Thought (Leiden: Brill, 1996); this work, however, does not address the commentary's anti-Jewish
character. Suzanne Lewis has published the most extensive analysis of some of the pictorial impli
cations of the gloss's anti-Jewish dimensions; see Suzanne Lewis, Reading Images: Narrative Dis
course and Reception in the Thirteenth-Century Illuminated Apocalypse (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1995); Suzanne Lewis, "Exegesis and Illustration in Thirteenth-Century Apoca
lypses," in The Apocalypse in the Middle Ages, ed. Richard K. Emmerson and Bernard McGinn
(Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1992), 259-75; and the articles cited in n. 10 below. For a list of
medieval manuscripts containing the Berengaudus gloss, see Richard K. Emmerson and Suzanne
Lewis, "Census and Bibliography of Medieval Manuscripts Containing Apocalypse Illustrations, ca.
800-1500," pts. 1, 2, and 3, Traditio 40 (1984): 337-79; 41 (1985): 367^409; 42 (1986): 443-72.
9. This trend is examined throughout Lewis, Reading Images.
10. BL, Add. 42555 (Abingdon Apocalypse); Lisbon, Museu Calouste Gulbenkian, L.A. 139
(Gulbenkian Apocalypse). See Suzanne Lewis, "Tractatus adversus Judaeos in the Gulbenkian
Apocalypse," Art Bulletin 68 (1986): 543-66; and Suzanne Lewis, "Giles de Bridport and the
Abingdon Apocalypse," in England in the Thirteenth Century: Proceedings of the 1984 Harlaxton
Symposium, ed. W. M. Ormrod (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 1985), 107-19. Black-and-white
photographs of the Gulbenkian Apocalypse miniatures are available for consultation in the British
Library. I have been unable to examine the color facsimile produced by Moliero publishers (2002);
the commentary volume is more accessible: Nigel Morgan et al., ed., Apocalipsis Gulbenkian
(Barcelona: M. Moliero, 2002). Of the two manuscripts, the pictorial messages in the Gulbenkian
Apocalypse carry the greatest impact because although the Abingdon Apocalypse contains similar
iconography it is also unfinished: the majority of its illustrations are drawings with only preliminary
gilding and/or color washes, which deprives them of the semiotic power of color as well as of cos
tume and narrative details. On stereotyped Jewish features, see Ruth Mellinkoff, Outcasts: Signs
of Otherness in Northern European Art of the Late Middle Ages, 2 vols. (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1993).
11. PML, M.524 (London? ca. 1250), fol. 7v. See Nigel Morgan, Early Gothic Manuscripts,
vol. 2,1250-1285 (London: Harvey Miller, 1988), 92-94. This manuscript contains excerpts in Latin
of the Apocalypse text and the Berengaudus commentary, but the Antichrist imagery is accompa
nied only by identifying inscriptions and cryptic narrative descriptions. The Morgan Apocalypse is
iconographically related to the Bodleian Apocalypse (Bod. Lib., Auct. D.4.17) and several blockbook
apocalypses, including one in Glasgow (Glasgow University Library, Hunterian Collection, Ds 2.
3). See Jessie Poesch, "Revelation 11:7 and Revelation 13:1-10, Interrelated Antichrist Imagery in
Some English Apocalypse Manuscripts," in Art the Ape of Nature: Studies in Honor ofH. W. Janson,
ed. Moshe Barasch and Lucy Freeman Sandler (New York: H. N. Abrams, 1981), 15-33; and Gertrud
Bing, "The Apocalypse Block-Books and Their Manuscript Models," Journal of the Warburg and
CourtauldInstitutes 5 (1942): 143-58.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
12. On this image, see also Rosemary Muir Wright, Art and Antichrist in Medieval
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995), 118-20. As noted by Wright ( 118), the i
of the lion's mouth complements the accompanying text reference to God's wrath: "Hic desce
Dei de celo, et interficit Antichristum" (PML, M. 524, fol. 7v). In this and subsequent transc
from manuscripts, I have expanded abbreviations and added capitalizations and punctuatio
have not normalized spellings.
13. On Synagoga, see Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrate
tory (London: SCM, 1996), 31-66; Sara Lipton, "The Temple is My Body: Gender, Carnalit
Synagoga in the Bible moralisée," in Imagining the Self, Imagining the Other: Visual Represe
and Jewish-Christian Dynamics in the Middle Ages and Early Modern Period, ed. Eva Fr
(Leiden: Brill, 2002), 129-63; and Nina Rowe, "Idealization and Subjection at the South Faç
Strasbourg Cathedral," in Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism and Antisemitism in Medi
Early Modern Visual Culture, ed. Mitchell B. Merback (Leiden: Brill, 2008), 179-202. An int
parallel motif that also signifies the abrogation of the Old Law is that of Joseph's Jewish hat
off in a Nativity scene depicted on a single leaf from a late twelfth-century German gos
(Cleveland, Cleveland Museum of Art); see Mellinkoff, Outcasts 1:80 and 2: fig. 111.89.
14. Bayer. Staatsbibl., Clm 19411 (Kloster Tegernsee, Bavaria), ca. 1160. See Ludus de
christo, in The Drama of the Medieval Church, ed. Karl Young (Oxford: Oxford Universit
1933), 2:385, esp. lines 360-68; translated in John Wright, Play of Antichrist, 95-96.
Geistliche Spiele: Lateinische Dramen des Mittelalters mit deutschen Versen, ed. Karl Lan
(Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1957), 365-^415; Horst Dieter Rauh, Das B
Antichrist im Mittelalter: Von Tyconius zum Deutschen Symbolismus (Münster: Aschendorff
365^115; and Klaus Aichele, "The Glorification of Antichrist in the Concluding Scenes of t
eval 'Ludus de Anticristo,"' Modern Language Notes 91 (1976): 424-36. See Gisela Vollmann
"Tegernseer Ludus de Antichristo" in Die deutsche Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexiko
Burghart Wachinger et al., vol. 9 (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1995), 673-79, with bibliograph
The Christian belief that Jews must be kept alive for conversion at the End of Time
to justify their toleration in medieval Christian society. However, the Franciscan philosop
theologian Duns Scotus (ca. 1265-1308) put forward the astonishing argument that this need
all of them: just a few Jews kept alive on an island ought to be enough to fulfill the divine p
Nancy L. Turner, "Jewish Witness, Forced Conversion, and Island Living: John Duns Scotus o
and Judaism," in Christian Attitudes toward the Jews in the Middle Ages, ed. Michael Frasset
York: Routledge, 2007), 183-210.
15. London, Wellcome Institute Library, MS 49 (SE Germany? ca. 1420-30), fols. 10
The Wellcome Apocalypse, a large, copiously illustrated medical and moral compilation,
ten mainly in Latin with some parts in German, and opens with an illuminated and glosse
apocalypse. Commentary and facsimile (on color microfiche): Almuth Seebohm, Apocaly
moriendi, medizinische Traktate, Tugend- und Lasterlehren: Die erbaulich-didaktische Samme
schrift London, Wellcome Institute for the History of Medicine, Ms. 49 (Munich: H. Lengenf
1995). Seebohm (30) notes that the Apocalypse commentary text is excerpted from the Beren
gloss and the Glossa ordinaria but does not mention that the Antichrist section text is based
Compendium (see below). The Wellcome Apocalypse folios are available for study on the W
Institute Library website, http://images.wellcome.ac.uk/. See also the catalogue entry in The
lypse and the Shape of Things to Come, ed. Frances Carey (London: British Museum Press
90-91 ; Rosemary Wright, Art and Antichrist, 171-77; and F. Saxl, "A Spiritual Encyclopedia
Later Middle Ages," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 5 (1942): 82-134.
16. Ruth Mellinkoff, "Christian and Jewish Mitres: A Paradox," in Florilegium in honorem
Nordenfalk octogenarii contextum, ed. Per Bjurström, Nils Göram Hökby, and Florentine Mü
(Stockholm: Nationalmuseum, 1987), 145-58.
17. Rosemary Muir Wright suggests that Antichrist's headgear in this and other Wel

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Apocalypse images might directly reflect imperial regalia because Charles IV wore this same combi
nation of crown and mitre (Art and Antichrist, 174).
In the early fifteenth-century Berry Apocalypse illumination that accompanies the text to Apoc.
13:6 (PML, M.133, fol. 43v), in an image more strictly suggestive of a Christian disguise, Anti
christ is dressed as a mitred bishop with a shoulder-demon holding his crozier. Standing by a Gothic
church, the gigantic Antichrist dwarfs the trees and rests his hand on a crack in the tower. The image
is reproduced on the Morgan Library website, http://corsair.morganlibrary.org. On the Berry Apoca
lypse, which contains the Berengaudus commentary but lacks overtly anti-Jewish imagery, see Paris
1400: Les arts sous Charles VI, ed. Elisabeth Taburet-Delahaye (Paris: Fayard, 2004), no. 180.
18. Apoc. 9:1-11 (locusts), Apoc. 13:1-10 (Beast of the Sea), Apoc. 13:11-18 (Beast of the
Earth), Apoc. 17:3-18 (seven-headed dragon). The term, antichrist, does not appear in the Apoca
lypse; it is only found in the first and second epistles of John ( 1 John 2:18,2:22,4:3 ; 2 John 7). On the
development of the term, see Second Thessalonians: Two Early Medieval Apocalyptic Commentar
ies, trans. Steven R. Cartwright and Kevin L. Hughes (Kalamazoo, MI: Medieval Institute Publica
tions, 2001), 1-12.
19. On this image, see also Debra Higgs Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making
Monsters in Medieval Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003), 214—25.
20. The linking of bodily to spiritual ailments is a late medieval topos. See R. I. Moore, "Her
esy as Disease," in The Concept of Heresy in the Middle Ages (llth-13th c.), ed. W. Lourdaux
and D. Verhelst (Louvain: University Press, 1976), 1-11; Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews,
29-59; and Carole Rawcliffe, Leprosy in Medieval England (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell Press, 2006),
44-55.
21. John Chrysostom, "Against the Jews," [Homily 1], trans. Wayne A. Meeks and Robert L.
Wilken in Jews and Christians in Antioch in the First Four Centuries of the Common Era (Missoula
Scholars Press, 1978), 92, 98. This same work has also been translated into English as Discourses
Against Judaizing Christians (as in n. 55, below).
22. Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jew and Its
Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism, 2nd ed. (Philadelphia and Jerusalem: Jewish Publication Society,
1983), 44-53; The Black Death, ed. and trans. Rosemary Horrox (Manchester: Manchester Univer
sity Press, 1994), 207-26; Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 73; and Samuel K. Cohn Jr., "The Black Death and the
Burning of the Jews," Past and Present 196 (2007): 3-36.
23. Eric Zafran, "Saturn and the Jews," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 42
(1979): 16-27.
24. As succinctly expressed by Hugh Ripelin of Strassburg, "Nascetur autem in Babylonia de
tribu Dan . . . Post hoc veniet in Jerusalem, et circumcidet se, dicens Judaeis se esse Christum illis
promissum, unde plebs Judasa specialiter ei adhaerebit." (Compendium, cap. VII; ed. Borgnet, 241)
25. Gow, Red Jews', and Gow, "Jewish Antichrist," 267-73.
26. Uffenbachsches Wappenbuch (Strasbourg, ca. 1400-1410). Hamburg, Staats- und Uni
versitätsbibliothek Hamburg, Cod. 90 B in serin., fol. 51. See Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and
Jews, 232-36 and pi. 15 (color). On the negative significance of red and yellow in medieval art, se
Mellinkoff, Outcasts 1:35—56. On the Alexander legends, see Andrew Runni Anderson, Alexander's
Gate, Gog and Magog and the Inclosed Nations (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Academy of America,
1932); and Gow, Red Jews, 24-92.
27.1 would go further to suggest that memories of the mystery plays and other types of public
performance, including popular ceremonial and liturgical ritual, had a significant impact on contem
porary perceptions of most Christian pictorial imagery. See Mitchell B. Merback, "The Living Image
of Pity: Mimetic Violence, Peace-Making and Salvific Spectacle in the Flagellant Processions of th
Later Middle Ages," in Images of Medieval Sanctity: Essays in Honour of Gary Dickson, ed. Debra
Higgs Strickland (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 141^16.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Forty-three Antichrist plays are described in Klaus Aichele, Das Antichristdrama des Mit
alters, der Reformation und Gegenreformation (Den Haag: Martinus Nijhoff, 1974); see also G
"Jewish Antichrist," 278-82. On the social consequences of these plays, see Trachtenberg, Devil an
the Jews, 36-39.
28. Editions: Ludus de Antichristo (as in n. 14, above); Antichrist in The Chester Mystery Cycl
ed. R. M. Lumiansky and David Mills, vol. 1 (EETS, s.s. 3, 9) (Oxford: Oxford University Press
1974), 408-38; Jean-Pierre Perrot and Jean-Jacques Nonot, Le Mystère du Jour du Jugement: Tex
original du XI Ve siècle (Chambéry: Éditions Comp' Act, 2000); see also Emile Roy, Le Jour du j
ment: Mystère français sur le Grand Schisme ( 1902; repr., Geneva: Slatkine Reprints, 1976), 213-
The fourteenth-century manuscript copy in which the Jour du jugement appears is fully illustrat
(Besançon, Bibl. Mun., MS 579). The play's anonymous and named Jewish characters (Annes, C
fas, Vivans, Corbadas, Haquim, Marquim, Malaquim, and Mossé) are portrayed alongside Antichr
wearing stereotypical hats and beards. In one scene, they also wear round badges (fol. 17r). For co
reproductions and discussion of all of the miniatures, see Karlyn Marie Griffith, "Illustrating An
christ and the Day of Judgement in the Eighty-Nine Miniatures of Besançon, Bibl. Mun. MS 579,
(master's thesis, Florida State University, 2008); available on the Florida State University Electron
Theses, Treatises, and Dissertations website, accessed June 20, 2009, http://etd.lib.fsu.edu/thes
available/etd-07142008-145350/.
29. Je met m'esperance trestoute / En Mahon et en sa puissance. / Fol sont trestuit cil, sanz
doubtance, / Qui ne croient ces vertuz belles. /... A Mahon en doy graces render. / Je le met en vostre
baillie (Jour du jugement, lines 418-21 and 454—55; ed. Perrot and Nonot, Mystère, 100, 102). See
also Aichele, Antichristdrama, 35-39.
30. On the theological development of this theme, see John V. Tolan, Saracens: Islam in the
Medieval European Imagination (New York: Columbia University Press, 2002). See also Kenneth
Baxter Wolf, "Muhammad as Antichrist in Ninth-Century Cordoba," in Christians, Muslims, and
Jews in Medieval and Early Modern Spain: Interaction and Cultural Change, ed. Mark D. Meyer
son and Edward D. English (Notre Dame: Notre Dame University Press, 1993), 3-19; and Suzanne
Conklin Akbari, "The Rhetoric of Antichrist in Western Lives of Muhammad," Islam and Christian
Muslim Relations 8 (1997): 297-307. On pictorial traditions, see Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and
Jews, 211-39; and Debra Higgs Strickland, "Saracens, Eschatological Prophecies, and Later Medi
eval Art," in Medieval Christian Discourses of the Muslim Other, ed. Jerold C. Frakes (New York:
Palgrave, forthcoming).
31. See Robert Schwoebel, The Shadow of the Crescent: The Renaissance Image of the Turk
(1453-1517) (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1969); Andrew Cunningham and Ole Peter Grell, The
Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse: Religion, War, Famine and Death in Reformation Europe (Cam
bridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000), 137-51; and Norman Housley, "The Three Turks," chap.
5 in Religious Warfare in Europe, 1400-1536 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2002). Prominent
contemporary anti-Turkish statements include Sebastian Brant, Narrenschiff (Basel, 1494), chap. 99
(trans. Edwin H. Zeydel in Sebastian Brant, The Ship of Fools [New York: Dover Publications, 1944],
315-22); Martin Luther, "On War Against the Turk," trans. Charles M. Jacobs in Luther's Works, vol.
46, The Christian in Society III, ed. Robert C. Schultz (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1967), 161-205;
and John W. Bohnstedt, The Infidel Scourge of God: The Turkish Menace as Seen by German Pamphle
teers of the Reformation Era, Transactions of the American Philosophical Society, n.s. 58,9 (Philadel
phia: The American Philosophical Society, 1968). See also Akbari, "Rhetoric of Antichrist," 303-4.
32. Richard K. Emmerson has discussed the functions of Antichrist imagery in other types of
illuminated manuscripts, including the Toledo Bible (see below) in "Seeing, Reading, and Interpret
ing the Apocalypse in Complex Medieval Manuscripts" (plenary lecture, 43rd International Congress
on Medieval Studies, Kalamazoo, MI, May 9, 2008.
33. In Vienna 2554 (ÖNB, MS 2554; Paris, ca. 1215/30) these include the following (repro
duced in facsimile with translated text in Gerald Guest, Bible moralisée [London: Harvey Miller,

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
1995]): fols. 60rb (Judg. 9:1-4, 6); 60rc (Judg. 9:5); 42vd (1 Kings 31:1-3); 43a (1 Kings 31:4, 2
Kings 1:6-10); and 43va (2 Kings 2:8-9). On this last image, see Sara Lipton, Images of Intoler
ance: The Representation of Jews and Judaism in the Bible moralisée (Berkeley: University of
California Press, 1999), 121-22; consult Lipton also for reproductions and discussion of the follow
ing examples of Antichrist imagery in Vienna 1179 (Vienna, ÖNB, MS 1179; Paris, ca. 1220-29):
fols. 69rd (Judg. 6:28); 71rd (Judg. 9:3-4); and lOlrb (2 Kings 2:8-9). Predictably, Jews also play
negative roles in the Toledo Bible (Biblia de San Luis) apocalypse fragment housed in the Morgan
Library (M. 240). See especially folio lv which illustrates their relationship to Antichrist in com
mentary images to Apoc. 19:19 and Apoc. 19:20-21. The Morgan fragment has been reproduced in
facsimile with commentary by Hans-Walter Stork, Die Bibel Ludwigs des Heiligen: Vollständige
Faksimile-Ausgabe im Originalformat von MS M. 240 der Pierpont Morgan Library, New York, 2
vols. (Graz: Akademische Druck- u. Verlagsanstalt, 1995). On the Toledo Bible (Paris, ca. 1225—
35), presented as a gift to Alfonso X by Louis IX, the rest of which is today housed in the Toledo
Cathedral Library, see the facsimile commentary volume, The Bible of Saint Louis, ed. Ramon
Gonzâlvez Ruiz (Barcelona: M. Moliero, 2004) (which I have been unable to examine); and John
Lowden, The Making of the Bibles moralisées, 2 vols. (University Park: Pennsylvania State Univer
sity Press, 2000), 1:95-137.
34. On the text sources of the Bibles moralisées, see Lipton, Images of Intolerance, 9-10. The
Apocalypse commentary is based on a late twelfth-century northern French or English composition
best represented by BnF, fr. 403 (Apocalypse) and Vienna 1179. See Günter Breder, Die Lateinische
Vorlage des Altfranzösischen Apokalypsenkommentars des 13. Jahrhunderts (Paris, B.N., MS. fr.
403) (Münster: Aschendorff, 1960), 16-54; Yves Christe, "L'Apocalypse dans les Bibles moralisées
de la première moitié du XHIe siècle," Bulletin archéologique du comité des travaux historiques
et scientifiques, n.s. 2 (1997): 7-46; and John Lowden, "The Apocalypse in the Early Thirteenth
Century Bibles Moralisées: A Re-Assessment," in Prophecy, Apocalypse and the Day of Doom: Pro
ceedings of the 2000 Harlaxton Symposium, ed. Nigel Morgan (Donington, Lincolnshire: Shaun
Tyas, 2004), 195-219.
35. "Per hoc quod promittit Iudeos adorare ad pedes eius significat quod per destructionem Anti
christi, Iudei convuertentur ad fidem et Dominum in Sancta Ecclesia adorabunt" (BL, Harley 1527,
fol. 118vc; Paris, ca. 1225-35; entire folio reproduced in A. de Laborde, Bible moralisée, conservée
à Oxford, vol. 4 [Paris, 1911], pi. 589).
36. BL, Add. 18719, fol. 292vD-d; entire folio reproduced in Laborde, Bible moralisée, vol.
4, pi. 722. On Add. 18719 (London? last quarter, 13th c.), made for an unknown royal patron and
possibly as an exemplar, see Lowden, Making of the Bibles moralisées 1:189-219.
37. "Hoc significat quod in fine mundi Antichristus sedebit et predicabit tanquam esset Deus, et
quidam credentes ei, a ueris predicatoribus et a uia iusticie recident et ad eius infamas conuertentur"
(Add. 18719, fol. 292v).
38. Vienna 2554, fol. 58vC-c. The original patron of this manuscript is unknown, but it was
almost certainly created for a member of the French royal family. The most recent study hypothesizes
that it was made for Blanche of Castile; see Lowden, Making of the Bibles moralisées, 1:8, 52; 2:200;
see also 1:11-54 (chapter on Vienna 2554).
39. "Ici uient Gedeon en un bois et trueue un mauuez deu. Et il prent un pel, et escreuente et le
deu et tot le bois" (Vienna 2554, fol. 58vC); "Ce qe Gedeon uient el bois et troua le mauuez deu et
il destruist lui et tot le bois senefie Iehsu Crist, qi trouvera en la fin del munde le mauuez deu, ce est
Antecrist. Le bois senefie Gieus et usuriers et mescreanz, et Deux de sa voiz destrura lui et tote sa
compagnie" (Vienna 2554, fol. 58vc). For an English translation, see Guest, Bible moralisée, 95. For
a reproduction and discussion of the corresponding commentary image in Vienna 1179 (fol. 69rD-d),
in which one of the Jews clutches a large moneybag, see Lipton, Images of Intolerance, 41-42.
40. The multivalence of the Jewish figures in the Bibles moralisées, especially in Vienna 1179,
provides the analytical focus of Lipton, Images of Intolerance.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
41. Lipton, Images of Intolerance, 30-53; also published as Sara Lipton, "The Root of All Ev
Jews, Money and Metaphor in the Bible moralisée," Medieval Encounters 1 (1995): 301-22.
42. See Lipton, Images of Intolerance, 45-53.
43.1 examined a copy of the 1509 London edition of Alexander Barclay's English translati
(Glasgow, University Library Bn6-d.9, fol. CCXXV); text and images reproduced in Sebastian Bran
The Ship of Fools, trans. Alexander Barclay, 2 vols. (Edinburgh: W. Paterson, 1874), 2:224-30.
also Brant, Ship of Fools, trans. Zeydel, 331-37.
44. On the concept of Jewish usury, see Kenneth R. Stow, "Papal and Royal Attitudes toward
Jewish Lending in the Thirteenth Century," AJS Review 6 (1981): 161-84.
45. "De quatuor modis quibus decipiet," cap. IX, Compendium; ed. Borgnet, 242-43. Sebasti
Brant also refers to Antichrist's bribery in the Ship of Fools, trans. Zeydel, 333.
46. Le livre et auctorites des salucts docteurs: Touchant de laduenement du maulvais Antecrist
selon lappocalipse. . . . (Lyons, 1495?) (BL, IB 42340, fol. 8v; accompanying text in Latin with
French summary on fol. 9r). My thanks to Sam Cohn for verifying the location of the image in this
work and for research assistance. On Lyons editions of the Life of Antichrist, see James B. Wads
worth, Lyons 1453-1503: The Beginnings of Cosmopolitanism (Cambridge, MA: Medieval Acad
emy of America, 1962), 26-31.
47. On the stories, images, and accusations in the North, see Rubin, Gentile Tales-, and Hermina
Joldersma, "Specific or Generic 'Gentile Tale'? Sources on the Breslau Host Desecration (1453)
Reconsidered," Archiv für Reformationsgeschichte 95 (2004): 6-33; I thank my anonymous Stud
ies in Iconography reader for this last reference. See also David Kunzle, The Early Comic Strip:
Narrative Strips and Picture Stories in the European Broadsheet from c. 1450 to 1825 (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1973), 21-28; and Schreckenberg, Jews in Christian Art, 255-96. On
accusations in Italy, see Dana E. Katz, The Jew in the Art of the Italian Renaissance (Philadelphia:
University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008). In England, the notorious Croxton Play of the Sacrament
put an imagined incident of Jewish host desecration on the Christian stage; see Non-Cycle Plays and
Fragments, ed. Norman Davis, EETS, s.s. 1 (London: Oxford University Press, 1970), 58-89. For a
recent analysis of the engagement of the Jews with the Host in this play, see John Parker, The Aesthet
ics of Antichrist: From Christian Drama to Christopher Marlowe (Ithaca: Cornell University Press,
2007), 125-35.
48. The Passional was published in Wittenberg by J. Grunenberg. Facsimile and edition: Gustav
Kawerau, Passional Christi undAntichristi (Berlin: G. Grote, 1885). Online facsimiles are available
on the Pitts Theological Library Digital Archive website, accessed June 30, 2009, http://www.pitts.
emory.edu/dia/1521LuthWWBook/pcl.cfm; and the Copenhagen Royal Library website, accessed
June 21, 2009, http://www2.kb.dk/luther/passion/index.htm. See also Carey, Apocalypse, 143-44;
G. Fleming, "On the Origins of the Passional Christi und Antichristi," Gutenberg Jahrbuch (1973):
351-68; Karin Groll, Das "Passional Christi und Antichristi" von Lucas Cranach d. À. (New York:
P. Lang, 1990); and Joseph Leo Koemer, The Reformation of the Image (London: Reaktion, 2004),
119-22.
49. On the development of the idea of the papal Antichrist, aided greatly by Joachim of Fior
(ca. 1135-1202) and the Spiritual Franciscans, see Bernard McGinn, Antichrist: Two Thousand Years
of the Human Fascination with Evil (New York: Columbia University Press, 2000), 143-72; and
Hélène Millet, Les successeurs du pape aux ours: Histoire d'un livre prophétique médiéval illust
(Vaticinia de summis pontificibus) (Turnhout: Brepols, 2004).
50. On the uses to which Luther and his followers put the Antichrist myth, see Volker Le
pin, Antichrist und Jüngster Tag: Das Profil apokalyptischer Flugschriftenpublizistik im deutsch
Luthertum 1548-1618 (Gütersloh: Gersloher Verlagshaus, 1999); and Peter Parshall, "The Visio
of the Apocalypse in the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries," in Carey, Apocalypse, 99-124. T
most recent assessment of the art of Lucas Cranach, with curiously little attention to his Prot
tant paintings, was stimulated by a major exhibition held at the Royal Academy of Arts in Londo

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Cranach, ed. Bodo Brinkman (London: Royal Academy of Arts, 2007). On the Protestant paintings,
see the important exhibition catalogue, Gesetz und Gnade: Cranach, Luther und die Bilder (Eisenach:
Wartburg-Stiftung, 1994). On Cranach's relationship to Luther, see also Fleming, "On the Origins,"
351-53; Joseph Leo Koerner, The Moment of Self-Portraiture in German Renaissance Art (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1993), 363—410; and Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 76-78. On
anti-papal and anti-clerical broadsides and their audiences, see R. W. Scribner, For the Sake of Simple
Folk: Popular Propaganda for the German Reformation (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press,
1981), 95-149; Christiane Andersson, "Popular Imagery in German Reformation Broadsheets," in
Print and Culture in the Renaissance: Essays on the Advent of Printing in Europe, ed. Gerald P.
Tyson and Sylvia S. Wagonheim (Newark: University of Delaware Press, 1986), 120-50; and Keith
Moxey, Peasants, Warriors, and Wives: Popular Imagery in the Reformation (Chicago: University of
Chicago Press, 1989), 19-34. See also Andrew Pettegree, Reformation and the Culture of Persuasion
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2005), 102-27, in which it is argued that popular images
were not crucial to the success of the Reformation.
51. See Aichele, Antichristdrama, 51-75; "In den reformatorischen Antichristdramen ist nun
also die dramatisch sehr dankbare alte Antichristlegende mit ihrem biographischen Schema zum
grossen Teil aufgegeben. An ihre Stelle tritt ein undramatischer Katalog der Laster und Verbrechen
des Papsttums und eine Demonstration der Antithesen zwischen Christus und dem Papst" (55).
Aichele lists and summarizes twelve Reformation plays.
52. Aichele, Antichristdrama, 56. Edition: Pamphilus Gengenbach, Die Todten fresser, ed.
Hedwig Heger, in Spätmittelalter Humanismus Reformation, vol. 2, Blützeit des Humanismus und
der Reformation (Munich: C. H. Beck'sche Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1978), 434-41. See also Kerstin
Prietzel, "Gengenbach, Pamphilus," in Deutscher Humanismus 1480-1520: Verfasserlexikon, ed.
Franz Joseph Worstbrock (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 2008), 1 : cols. 889-904, esp. col. 902 (on Die
Totenfresser); Josef Schmidt, Das Zürcher Spiel vom reichen Mann und vom armen Lazarus und
Pamphilus Gengenbach: Die Totenfresser (Stuttgart: Reclam, 1969), 39-50; Andersson, "Popular
Imagery," 136-141 and fig. 16; and D. M. van Abbé, "Development of Dramatic Form in Pamphilus
Gengenbach," Modern Language Review 43 (1950): 60-61.
53. This view of the pope contrasts sharply with that expressed in the late medieval Jour du
jugement, in which Antichrist commands the Jews to seize and haul in the pope, whereupon the latter
is promptly imprisoned as punishment for resisting Antichrist's powers (lines 1210-1374; ed. Perrot
and Nonot, Mystère, 170-82). These events are dramatized in four accompanying miniatures (fols.
20r-22r).
54. Luther offers an anti-Jewish interpretation of the Temple money changers episode in one of
many vitriolic passages in The Jews and Their Lies', see Von den Juden undjren Lügen (1543), trans.
Martin H. Bertram in Luther s Works, vol. 47, The Christian in Society IV, ed. Franklin Sherman
(Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1971), 227.
55. One of the most famous anti-Jewish works in all of patristic literature is John Chrysos
tom's Discourses Against Judaizing Christians; see the English translation by Paul W. Harkins, in
John Chrysostom, Discourses Against Judaizing Christians (Washington, DC: Catholic University
Press of America, 1979). On the complexity of this term and its diachronic usage, see Robert Dân,
"'Judaizare'-—The Career of a Term," in Antitrinitarianism in the Second Half of the 16th Century,
ed. Robert Dân and Antal Pirnât (Leiden: Brill, 1982), 25-34. For a recent exploration of the growing
importance of this concept during the middle ages, see Sean Eisen Murphy, "Concern about Juda
izing in Academic Treatises on the Law, c. 1130-c. 1230," Speculum 82 (2007): 560-94.
56. Some representative examples: while in the ca. 1160 Winchester Psalter (BL, Nero CIV, fol.
39r; reproduced in Francis Wormald, The Winchester Psalter [London: Harvey Miller and Medcalf,
1973], color frontispiece) a Jew wearing a knobbed hat is situated inside a gigantic hellmouth among
several Christian types, suggesting a more integrated hell; in the twelfth-century Hortus Deliciarum
multi-tiered image of hell, the hatted but otherwise naked Jews get their own cauldron, inscribed Judei

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
(reproduced with transcribed text in Herrad of Hohenbourg, Hortus Deliciarum, ed. Rosalie G
et al., 2 vols., Studies of the Warburg Institute 36 [London, Warburg Institute, 1979], 1:438-3
Oxford Bible (Paris, ca. 1235^15) includes as a commentary image (to Gen. 49:32-50:1), a lin
distressed-looking, bearded and hatted Jews balancing precariously on the lower jaw of a hel
about to swallow them down (Bod. Lib., Bodley 270b, fol. 34rc; reproduced in Laborde, Bib
alisée, 1 : pl. 34; and in Schreckenberg, Jews in Christian Art, 244.) Although today severely d
a Jew with a moneybag hanging around his neck is located in the center front position insid
dron held fast by a hellmouth attended by demons in a late thirteenth-century French psalt
Add. 17868, fol. 3 lr; see Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews, 124—26 and fig. 52).
57. Hartmann Schedel, Liber cronicarum (Nuremberg: Anton Koberger, 1493), fol. 262
gow, Glasgow University Library). For the accompanying text, which follows events outlined
Compendium, see the facsimile reprint with German translation of the Latin copy in the He
Anna Library in Weimar: Hartmann Schedel, Chronicle of the World: The Complete and Ann
Nuremberg Chronicle of 1493, trans. Stephan Füssel (London: Taschen, 2001), fol. 260. Se
Adrian Wilson, The Making of the Nuremberg Chronicle (Amsterdam: Nico Israel, 1976).
58. The image pair is reproduced with observations by Giulia Bartrum in Carey, Apoca
143-44.
59. Woodcut, 35 x 47.5 cm. See F. W. H. Hollstein, German Engravings, Etchings and Wo
cuts, ca. 1400-1700 (Amsterdam: Menno Herzberger 1954), 3:231; and Max Geisberg, The Ger
Single-Leaf Woodcut: 1500-1550, rev. and ed. Walter L. Strauss (New York: Hacker Art Bo
1974), 205; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 70-71; and Moxey, Peasants, Warriors,
Wives, 25-29.
60. Scribner (For the Sake of Simple Folk, 71) notes pictorial references in the composition to
the contemporary Nuremberg carnival, especially the horse-drawn cart (here full of Catholic clergy),
the carnival tree in the center of the carriage (from which hang papal indulgences), and the running
pranksters who harass the crowd (here rendered as demons).
61. On this theme, see below and n. 95.
62. Compendium, cap. 14, "De morte Antichristi"; ed. Borgnet, 345.
63. Antichrist dies by St. Michael's sword in the Nuremberg Entkrist, leaf 14, and in the icono
graphically related Strassburg Entkrist, leaf 24 (as in n. 4, above). He is dramatically decapitated in
the Nuremberg image, but in neither image does he wear or lose a crown.
64. Bod. Lib., Douce 134, fol. 36r. Rosemary Muir Wright (Antichrist, 170-71) characterizes
this manuscript as possibly anti-papal; while Martin Kauffmann (in Carey, Apocalypse, 93-94) con
nects it with the Carthusian order. See also Thomas Kren, "Some Illuminated Manuscripts of The
Vision of Lazarus from the Time of Margaret of York," in Margaret of York, Simon of Marmion,
and "The Visions ofTondal," ed. Thomas Kren (Malibu: J. Paul Getty Museum, 1992), 141-56.
The manuscript is divided into two parts; the first volume is housed in the Bibliothèque Municipale
in Grenoble (MS 408 [337]). A full-scale study of this fascinating and richly illuminated treatise on
heaven, hell, and events of the Last Days is still lacking.
65. Woodcut, 35 x 47.5 cm. See Hollstein, German Engravings, 3:231 ; Geisberg, German Single
Leaf Woodcut, 204; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 161-63; and Moxey, Peasants, Warriors,
and Wives, 25-29.
66. Scribner (For the Sake of Simple Folk, 161) saw in the central prince and the figure standing
next to him resemblances to Charles V and his brother Ferdinand. The central figure does display the
distinctive enlarged lower jaw observable in other contemporary portraits of the emperor.
67. Trans. Alison Adams. The German reads:
Ich rüff euch an jr kunig und fiirsten /
Die all nach silber und golt thüt dürsten /
Ich wil euch geben reychen soldt
Und wil euch geben was jr wolt

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Sehet / ob jr die sach möcht schlichten

Und möcht mich wider auffrichten.
Die warheyt trückt mich seer und fast
Sie ist mir eyn untreglicher last.
Ich bitt euch fast / jr wölts verdemmen
Und habt groffen [= grossen] fleyss möcht jrs verwenden /
Das sie nicht möcht jren furgang han
Ich gib euch golt und silber zü Ion
Das jr alleyn meyn recht thüt retten
Und alle warheyt untertreten
Das müst jr thon mit grossem Strauß
Ir sehet all sampt wol / meyn ehr ist auß.
In this and subsequent transcriptions from prints and broadsides, I have expanded abbreviations but
otherwise have retained the original capitalizations, spellings, and punctuation.
68. Excerpted on these five arrows are passages from 2 Thess. 2, Matt. 14, Dan. 8, and Acts
8. The excerpted verses on most of the remaining arrows have also been interpreted as referring to
Antichrist.
69. Lines 3-8, trans. Alison Adams. The entire German verse reads:
Und drawet er wöll uns all brennen /
Gleych sam stünd es in seyner macht.

Auff Gottes krafft lat uns haben acht /
Dieselbig wirt uns an jm rechen
Und jm sein macht und reych zerbrechen /
Laßt uns zü jm schiessen Gottes wort.
Dardurch feilt nider macht und port
An seinem reych; das sehen wir wol
Des laßt uns sein gantz freüden vol /
Darob allein soll man Gott preysen
Der uns allzeyt thüt kraf[ft] beweysen.
70. On the Christian idea of Jews as Christ-killers, see Jeremy Cohen, "The Jews as Killers of
Christ in the Latin Tradition, from St. Augustine to the Friars," Traditio 39 (1983): 1-27; and Jeremy
Cohen, Christ Killers: The Jews and the Passion from the Bible to the Big Screen (Oxford: Oxford
University Press, 2007).
71. Osnabrück, Archiv des Bischöfliches Generalvikariat, MS. 101, p. 141. On this and other
late medieval images of Jews abusing lambs, see Strickland, Saracens, Demons, and Jews, 117-22;
and Judith Oliver, Singing with Angels: Liturgy, Music, and Art in the Gradual of Gisela von Kers
senbrock (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007), 153-55. On the Codex Gisle, known also as the Gradual of
Gisela of Kerssenbrock, see also Codex Gisle, ed. Christian Dolfen and Martin Wackemagel (Berlin:
Verlegt bei Buchenau & Reichert, 1926) (facsimile); and Renate Kroos, "Der Codex-Gisle I: For
schungsbericht und Datierung," Niederdeutsche Beiträge zur Kunstgeschichte 12 (1973): 117-34.
The murder of God by the Jews was imagined in the second century by Melito in his Peri Pas
cha, which contains an extensive and sadistic crucifixion narrative. See Melito of Sardis, On Pascha,
and Fragments, ed. and trans. Stuart George Hall (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1979), 2-61. See also
Cohen, Christ Killers, 55-70.
72. On the contemporary significance of this slur, see Katrin Kogman-Appel, "The Tree of Death
and the Tree of Life: The Hanging of Haman in Medieval Jewish Manuscript Painting," in Between
the Picture and the Word: Manuscript Studies from the Index of Christian Art, ed. Colum Hourihane
(Princeton: ICA; University Park: Penn State University Press, 2005), 185-208, esp. 199.
73. Engraving and etching, 26.4 x 19.1 cm. See Catalogue of Prints and Drawings in the Brit
ish Museum, Division I, Personal and Political Satires, ed. F. G. Stephens, vol. 1 (London: British

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
Museum, 1870), no. 10 (where it is dated February 4, 1555); and the description accessible
British Museum Prints and Drawings Department Collections Database website, accessed J
2009, http://www.britishmuseum.org/research/search_the_collection_database.aspx. On i
phy, copies, and later versions, see R. J. Smith, "The Lambe Speaketh ... An English Prot
Satire," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes 61 (1998): 261-67. It has been su
that the image with Latin inscriptions was first made for William Turner's The hunting of th
she vuolfe (Emden, 1555?) and subsequently adapted for the popular English market. See M
Jones, "The Lambe Speaketh ... An Addendum," Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld In
63 (2000): 287-94. On another copy of the same image (Wolfenbüttel, Herzog August Bib
MS 38.25 Aug. 2°, fol. 259r), see Wolfgang Harms, Deutsche illustrierte Flugblätter des 16. un
Jahrhunderts (Munich: Kraus International, 1980), vol. 2, no. 8; and Cunningham and Gre
Horsemen, 54-56.
74. On Gardiner's career, see Glyn Redworth, In Defence of the Church Catholic: A L
Stephen Gardiner (Oxford: Basil Blackwell, 1990).
75. In the German version, the demonic figure holds a banner that reads, "Ich byn Pabst
the pope) (Harms, Deutsche illustrierte Flugblätter, vol. 2, no. 16). In the English version (
the scroll reads, "Youe are my verye chyldren in that youe haue slayne the Prophètes. For euen
the begynning, Was a murtherer."
76. Inscriptions identify the slain sheep as Thomas Cranmer (1489-1556), John Br
(ca. 1510-55), John Hooper (ca. 1495-1555), Nicholas Ridley (ca. 1500-55), Hugh Latim
1485-1555), and John Rogers (ca. 1500-55). John Rogers, the first Protestant martyr unde
Mary, was burned at Smithfield on February 4, 1555. During this same year, Hooper was
on February 9, Bradford burned on July 1, and Latimer and Ridley burned together in Oxfo
October 16. Cranmer was also burned at Oxford but not until the following year, on Ma
1556. For a Protestant account of the charges, responses, and martyrdoms, see John Foxe, A
Monuments (1563, 1570, 1576) available electronically as Foxe 's Book of Martyrs Variorum
Online (Sheffield, 2006), accessed February 11, 2009, http://www.hrionline.ac.uk/johnfox
also Alexandra Walsham, Charitable Hatred: Tolerance and Intolerance in England, 150
(Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2006), esp. 160-214. My thanks to Don Spaeth fo
references.
77. During this period, to pull someone by the nose was a well-known expression mean
deceive or to make a fool out of someone. On this theme in relation to Sebald Beham's woodc
Nose Dance at Fools ' Town ( 1534), see Moxey, Peasants, Warriors and Wives, 44—47.
78. See Andersson, "Popular Imagery," 129-39; and Jones, "The Lamb Speaketh," 291-
good visual example of this topos is an anonymous broadside from the 1520s, The Spiritual W
(Berlin-Dahlem, Staatliche Museen, Kupferstichkabinett), which features two wolves, one wea
cardinal's hat and the other a papal tiara, attacking sheep gathered at the base of Christ's cros
a haloed Martin Luther and St. Peter watch from a hilltop (reproduced and discussed in Scribn
the Sake of Simple Folk, 55-57).
79. The central top inscription reads in full, "The Lambe speaketh. Why do you crucifie m
For with one oblation haue I for euer made perfecte those that are sanctified." The pendant ins
immediately below reads, "The Winchester wolfe speaketh / Whil come in youth a foxe that h
/ In age am a woolfe more valiant in synne / A foxe when I was the lambe & the henne / Dyd
content, but noue I feede on men."
80. On this motif, see Isaiah Shachar, The Judensau: A Medieval Anti-Jewish Motif
History (London: Warburg Institute, 1974); Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:108; Schreckenberg,
Christian Art, 331-37; and Debra Higgs Strickland, "The Jews, Leviticus, and the Unclean
eval English Bestiaries," in Beyond the Yellow Badge: Anti-Judaism, Anti-Semitism, and E
Visual Culture before 1800, ed. Mitchell B. Merback (Leiden: Brill, 2007), 226-28.
81. The Wittenberg Judensau inspired a written response from Martin Luther himself and

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
him, Laurentius Fabricus, who devoted a whole section of his Oratio de Schemhamphorasch usu et
abusu (1596) to a discussion of the relief. See Shachar, Judensau, 30-31 and 43-51. See also n. 85,
below.
82. See D. Martin Luthers Werke: Kritische Gesamtausgabe, ed. O. Clemen, et al., vol. 54 (Wei
mar: Hermann Böhlaus, 1928), 367 and figs. 3-4. Published beneath the sow image, entitled "Papa
dat concilivm in Germania" (The pope holds a council in Germany), Luther's verse reads: "Sau du
must dich lassen reiten: / und wol sporen zu beiden seiten. / Du wilt han ein Concilium: / Ja dafür
hab dir mein merdrum" ("You must let yourself be ridden and spurred along on both sides. You will
hold a council: yes, for this I have for you my shit"). The verse published beneath the facing image
of the bagpipes-playing, triple-tiara wearing ass, entitled "Papa doctor theologiae et magister fidei"
(The pope, teacher of theology and leader of the faith), reads: "Der papst kan allein auslegen / Die
Schrifift und jrthum ausfegen / Wie der Esel allein pfeiffen / Kan: und die noten recht greiffen." ("The
pope is the only one who can explain the Word and sweep out the errors, just as the ass is the only one
who plays the bagpipes and can hit the right notes.") My thanks to Alison Adams and my anonymous
Studies reader for assistance with the English translations.
83. On this edition, see Harms, Deutsche illustrierte Flugblätter, vol. 2, no. 80; and Petra
Schöner, "Visual Representations of Jews and Judaism in Sixteenth-Century Germany," in Jews,
Judaism, and the Reformation in Sixteenth-Century German, ed. Dean Phillip Bell and Stephen G.
Burnett (Leiden: Brill, 2006), 388-91.
84. The entire verse reads:
Naso dignus odor, PAPAE qui pronus adorat

Dreccreta, hoc misere pascitur ille cibo.
Non sic, o non sic. Moniti meliora sequamur,
Distendant tales talia dona sues.
("The smell is worthy of the nose of the pope, who, bending forward, worships the dreccreta, he
feasts miserably on this food. Not such, oh not such. After instruction, let us move on to higher
things. Such gifts swell such swine.") My thanks again to Alison Adams for this translation.
85. However, Luther and others also continued to aim their mockery at the Jews. In addition to
his description of the Wittenberg Judensau (see above), Luther compares Jews to sows eight times in
The Jews and Their Lies (1543). He constructs one especially vicious passage around the image of
the Judens au:
Shame on you, here, there, or wherever you may be, you damned Jews, that you
dare to apply this earnest, glorious, comforting word of God so despicably to your
mortal, greedy belly, which is doomed to decay, and that you are not ashamed to dis
play your greed so openly. You are not worthy of looking at the outside of the Bible,
much less of reading it. You should read only the bible that is found under the sow's
tail, and eat and drink the letters that drop from there. That would be a bible for such
prophets, who root about like sows and tear apart like pigs the words of the divine
Majesty, which should be heard with all honor, awe, and joy
(trans. Bertram, Luther's Works, 47:212).
Shachar (Judensau, 30-31) hypothesized that this passage was inspired by the Wittenberg Judensau.
Luther directly describes the Wittenberg Judensau for similar polemical purposes in another and
equally obscene anti-Jewish tract composed the same year (1543), Vom Schern Hamphoras und vom
Geschlecht Christi (Of the Unknowable Name and the Generations of Christ), trans. Gerhard Falk
in The Jew in Christian Theology: Martin Luther's Anti-Jewish Vom Schern Hamphoras, Previously
Unpublished in English, and Other Milestones in Church Doctrine Concerning Judaism (Jefferson,
NC: McFarland, 1992). The relevant passage is translated on pp. 182-83.
86. On the iconography of the equestrian pope, see Jörg Träger, Der reitende Papst: Ein Beitrag
zur Ikonographie des Papsttums (Munich: Schnell & Steiner, 1970), 112-16. The same riding Christ/
pope pairing was used earlier to condemn the papacy by the Hussites in the Jena Codex of ca. 1475

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
(Prague, National Museum, MS IV.B.24); reproduced in Träger, Der reitende Papst, fig. 47. On
Jena Codex, see also Zoroslava Drobnâ, The Jena Codex: Hussite Pictorial Satire from the End of
Middle Ages, trans. Eleanor Wheeler (Prague: Odeon, 1970); and Thomas A. Fudge, The Magnifi
Ride: The First Reformation in Hussite Bohemia (Aldershot, Hants: Ashgate, 1998), 228-53. Pain
panels of Christ riding a donkey opposite the pope riding a horse sometimes included vernac
verse contrasting the ways of Christ with that of his "servant", as on the anonymous sixtee
century Dutch panel housed today in Pollok House in Glasgow.
It is interesting that Christ's entry into Jerusalem three days before Passover was linked by med
eval exegetes to Antichrist's three-and-a-half-year reign on earth (Honorius Augustodensis, Gem
Animae [PL 172:768C]); and that the typical positioning of Christ on the (viewer's) left and the p
on the right is consistent with the positioning in medieval art of Ecclesia and Synagoga (Träger, R
ende Papst, 114—15). On the ideological significance of relative positioning in late medieval paint
see Mellinkoff, Outcasts, 1:211-27.
87. See Peter Martin, Martin Luther und die Bilder zur Apokalypse: Die Ikonographie der Illu
trationen zur Offenbarung des Johannes in der Lutherbibel 1522 bis 1546 (Hamburg: Wittig, 198
78-79 and fig. 31; Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk, 169-74; Cunningham and Grell, Fou
Horsemen, 19-51, esp. 27-30; and Carey, Apocalypse, 144—45.
88. Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 52-68.
89. The seminal study of this phenomenon is Scribner, For the Sake of Simple Folk. On the f
blätter, see also Falk Eisermann, "Mixing Pop and Politics: Origins, Transmission, and Readers
Illustrated Broadsides in Fifteenth-Century Germany," in Incunabula and Their Readers: Printing
Selling and Using Books in the Fifteenth Century, ed. Kristian Jensen (London: British Acade
2003), 159-77. Against this thesis, Andrew Pettegree (Reformation, 160) estimates that during
1520s the male literacy rate was around 30 percent, and that the purchase of printed pamphlets
not necessarily mean that their owners were reading them (156-57).
90. R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germa
(New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988); Gow, Red Jews, 131-75; Schreckenberg, Jews in Ch
tian Art; Rubin, Gentile Tales; Joldersma, "Specific or Generic"; Schöner, "Visual Representations
On the general ideological climate against which such agitprop was viewed and read, see Heik
Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of Renaissance and Reformation, trans. James
Porter (Philadelphia: Fortress Press, 1984); and Mark U. Edwards, "Against the Jews," in Essen
Papers on Judaism and Christianity in Conflict: From Late Antiquity to the Reformation, ed. Jere
Cohen (New York: New York University Press, 1991), 345-79.
91. On the phenomenon of post-expulsion anti-Jewish imagery, see Bernard Glassman, A
Semitic Stereotypes without Jews: Images of the Jews in England, 1290-1700 (Detroit: Wayne Sta
University Press, 1975), esp. 21-50; and Anthony Bale, The Jew in the Medieval Book: English An
semitisms, 1350-1500 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2006). See also Sylvia Tomasc
"Postcolonial Chaucer and the Virtual Jew," in The Postcolonial Middle Ages, ed. Jeffrey Jero
Cohen (New York: St. Martin's, 2000), 243-60 (reprinted in Chaucer and the Jews: Sources, C
texts, Meanings, ed. Sheila Delaney [New York: Routledge, 2002], 69-85); and Steven F. Kruge
The Spectral Jew: Conversion and Embodiment in Medieval Europe (Minneapolis: University
Minnesota Press, 2006).
92. As in n. 54, above. On this treatise and its broader context, see Mark U. Edwards Jr., Luthe
Last Battles: Politics and Polemics, 1531-46 (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1983), 115-42.
93. Martin Luther, Von den Jüden und jren Lügen (1543); trans. Bertram in Luther s Wor
47:162-63. Philip Melanchthon endorsed Luther's directions to civic authorities to banish
Jews, destroy their synagogues, and burn their books as brutally outlined in this same trac
in which Melanchthon claimed to have found "much more useful teaching." See Timothy
Wengert, "Philip Melanchthon and the Jews: A Reappraisal," in Jews, Judaism, and the Refor
tion, 125-27.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00
94. Hans Martin Kirn, "Ulrich Zwingli, the Jews, and Judaism," in Jews, Judaism, and the Re
formation, 175-79. On the papal-Jewish matrix, see also the chapter by Thomas Kauffmann, "Luther
and the Jews," in this same volume.
95. The claim that Christians are the "true Israel" was first made by the Church Fathers. See
John Y. B. Hood, Aquinas and the Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1995),
12-13; and Sophia Menache, "Faith, Myth, and Politics: The Stereotype of the Jews and Their Expul
sion from England and France," The Jewish Quarterly Review 75 (1985): 352-74. See also Eric W.
Gritsch, "The Jews in Reformation Theology," in Jewish-Christian Encounters over the Centuries:
Symbiosis, Prejudice, Holocaust, Dialogue, ed. Marvin Perry and Frederick M. Schweitzer (New
York: P. Lang, 1994), 197-213.
96. On anti-Luther, counter-Reformation visual propaganda, see Scribner, For the Sake of Sim
ple Folk, 229-39; and Koerner, Reformation of the Image, 114-15.
97. On which see Eamon Duffy, The Stripping of the Altars: Traditional Religion in England,
c. 1400-c. 1580 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1992); and Koerner, Reformation of the Image,
52-68, 83-93.
98. 1 John 2:18.

172.225.195.46 on Thu, 22 Feb 2024 09:39:55 +00:00

Strickland ANTICHRISTJEWSMEDIEVAL 2011

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Strickland ANTICHRISTJEWSMEDIEVAL 2011

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

ANTICHRIST AND THE JEWS IN MEDIEVAL ART AND PROTESTANT PROPAGANDA

Author(s): Debra Higgs Strickland

Stable URL: https://www.jstor.org/stable/23924230

This content downloaded from

Debra Higgs Strickland

The legend of Antichrist figures prominently among the anti-Je

Antichrist and the Jews

The story of Antichrist was a familiar one to medieval Christian audiences

© 2011 by the Board of Tmstees of Western Michigan University

This content downloaded from

The chiroxylographic blockbook Entkrist printed in Nuremberg around

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

Fig. 2. Birth of Antichrist; Antichrist and h

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

It is true that the Gulbenkian and Abingdon apocalypses exhibit an excep

This content downloaded from

T>tc(fecr tomrfc m tsrnplo ttuma I

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

indicative of physical abnormality, disease, pathology, demonic allegiance, usury,

[The synagogue] is not simply a gathering place for thieves and

This content downloaded from

Elsewhere in medieval literature, Jews are described as physically abnormal and

This content downloaded from

Fig. 8. Red Jews. Uffenbachsches Wappenbuch; Flamburg, Staats- und

menacing group of grimacing, bloodthirsty Jews, awaiting the arrival of

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

Fig. 9. Conversion of Jews who reject Antichrist. Bible

This content downloaded from

Fig. 10. Antichrist and the Jews. Bible moralisée;

Albrecht Dürer illustrated Sebastian Brant's chapter on Antichrist in the endur

This content downloaded from

Fig. 11. Gideon smashes Baal; Christ rejects Antichrist and

When it is held in the hands of Antichrist, however, the moneybag is a more

This content downloaded from

Fig. 12. Albrecht Dürer, The Coming of Antichrist. Sebastian Brant,

This content downloaded from

Fig. 14. Antichrist preaching and bribing. Viedel'AntecrisV,

This content downloaded from

Antichrist and the Reformists

This content downloaded from

Fig.15LucasCrnhteEldr.Chistebuk hmoneychagrs;teposlindugecs.PhilpMeanchto,PasinlChrsti undAtichrs;Atlan,PisTheolgicaLbry,EmoUniversty.(Pho:CurtesyofhRicardC.KeslrRfomatinColec , PitsTheolgyLibray,CandlerScholfTheolgy,EmoryUniversty.)

This content downloaded from

In the indulgence sales image, by offering salvation in exchange for monetary

This content downloaded from

SSeptima eras mudi

This content downloaded from

Fig.17LucasCrnhteEldr.AsceniofChrst;decnofAtichrs.PaionlChrstiundAchrist,AlanPitsTheolgica Libray,EmoUniversty(Pho:CurtesyofhRicardC.KeslrRfomatinCleco,PitsTheolgyLibra,CndlerScho f Theol gy, Emory University.)

This content downloaded from

provides a more detailed, condemnatory look at the entire Catholic ecclesiastical

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

' " "' '^

I call to you, you kings and princes,

This content downloaded from

This content downloaded from

Fig.21SebaldBhm,TeFalofthePapcy.Berlin,StasbilothekPrusicheKultrbesiz,YA273gr.(Phot:Berlin, Sta sbilothekzuBerlin—PreusicherKultrbesitz.)

This content downloaded from

I beg you firmly to suppress it [i.e., the truth]

Meanwhile, excerpts from Scriptural passages traditionally interpreted in relation