Propaganda in the Middle Ages

in Western Europe
Circa 800CE- 1500CE
 Who was the biggest
user of propaganda
during the Middle
Ages in Europe?
THE CATHOLIC CHURCH!
The power of the
Church
• Throughout the Middle Ages, the Catholic church
used propaganda to gain power through Europe
and maintain order even in the most turbulent
times.
• Through its network of parishes reaching into
every town and village in western Europe, the
Church constituted an extraordinarily powerful
propaganda machine. Medieval kings ignored the
Church’s agenda at their peril.
•Map of Western Europe circa 1054 CE
•All the pink areas are Catholic, and thus
subject to Church propaganda.
Control of literacy
• With fall of the Roman Empire, there was a major decline in secular literacy. Regular folk, outside of the
clergy could not read or write.
• The Church became the only repository of literacy.
• The church owned and ran the only universities in Western Europe, and also owned the production and
distribution of texts.
• The printing-press had not yet been invented, so texts were reproduced manually by monks.
• The Church decided what should be written down. Unsurprisingly, most of the texts produced were religious
texts (e.g. the Bible, commentaries on the Bible, works of Christian theologians, instructive texts about how
to be a good Christian, hagiographies of the Saints, etc).
• Additionally, most texts were written in Latin, some in Greek and very few in the vernacular.

TASK: look up the term hagiography. How and why could hagiography be construed/used as a form of
propaganda?
TASK: look up the term vernacular. Can you think of any reason the Church might avoid publishing texts in the
vernacular?
An illiterate audience
• Since most of the peasants, and, indeed most of the nobility in the
Middle Ages could not read, their beliefs and prejudices were
informed by sermons given by the clergy.
• Another important way the Church spread their messages to the
illiterate masses was through visual images and symbolism in stained
glass windows, church statuary and reliefs, architecture, art and
drama.
• By controlling literacy, the Church was able to manipulate regular
people and control the narrative.
By controlling literacy, the Church was able to manipulate regular
people and control the narrative.
DISCUSSION: What do you think is meant by ‘control the narrative’?
• What is the relationship between controlling literacy and
propaganda?
• Can you think of modern-day examples or equivalencies to the
Medieval Church ‘owning’ literacy and controlling the narrative?
Consider ‘media literacy’ , for example:
• the monopolies of the Murdoch media
• The influence of Facebook, Twitter, Instagram etc and their
content/publishing policies
• Who are the most ‘literate’ members of our society? Does being less
literate/illiterate make you more susceptible to propaganda?
•TASK: Answer the following
questions:
• Does this graph support the
information on the previous
slides about literacy in the
Middle Ages? How?
• Why do you think the
output of manuscripts
increases so dramatically by
the 15th century?
Medieval monks copying texts
For most of the Middle Ages, the only way to reproduce a book was to copy it by hand. Copying was solitary,
lengthy, and physically taxing work. Scribes worked long hours, in contorted positions, and abided by rigid
expectations.
Dye and parchment was incredibly expensive (not to mention gold
and silver illuminations).
The best parchment came from unborn animals, and was very
expensive.
CONSIDER: What does the ‘cost’ of literacy suggest about the Church
in the Middle Ages?
•The art in medieval texts is often as
important as the text itself.
•The ‘doodles’ in the margins
contained commentaries by the
scribes. Indeed many modern
historians consider doodles in
marginalia to be the equivalent of
medieval emojis. If you look closely,
in the image to the right, a naked
man farts into a trumpet! Clearly the
monk copying this text did not think
much of it!

CONSIDER: Why would the art be

as important as written text?
EXTENSION: Could commentaries
in marginalia be used to
subvert/undermine or reinforce
Church propaganda? Justify your
response.
Types of propaganda used by the Church
• Hagiography (in both written and visual form)
• Art (fine art, paintings, drawings, sculpture)
• Architecture (including through reliefs and sculpture)
• Drama
 Case Study:
Anti-Semitism and Anti-Judaism in medieval Church Propaganda
Anti-Judaism and Anti-Semitism in Medieval
Church Propaganda
• Antisemitism in medieval art is explored through selected images that
develop the popular pictorial themes of :
• “Christ-killing,”
• spiritual blindness,
• demonic allegiance,
• conspiracy,
• and animality.
• The imagery is linked to long-standing Christian theological beliefs and
considers the social functions and material consequences for medieval Jews.
• TASK: With a partner discuss the terms in red above. What do you think they
refer to? Can you come up with explanations/examples of each term? Report
back to the class.
Why is Anti-Semitism more prevalent than other forms of racism
and religious intolerance in medieval Church propaganda?

• Essentially because the Jews were the only non-Christian peoples who
continued to live in medieval Europe in small, but marked
communities. People with other pre-Christian and indigenous
religions were either forcefully converted and absorbed into European
Christian society, or simply destroyed.
•These maps show the distribution of Jewish peoples across
Europe during the Middle Ages. Periodically through-out the
Middle Ages, in response to Church-led pogroms, Jewish
communities were expelled from the cities in which they had
settled and were forced to emigrate to other parts of Europe.
Anti-Judaism and Anti-
Semitism in Medieval
Church Propaganda

• Churches built in the Middle

ages still bear statues or
images of two women—
Ecclesia and Synagoga.
• Ecclesia is Christian; Synagoga
is Jewish.
• They represent the Christian’s
“daily experience of Jewish
degradation.”
Strasburg cathedral built over a four- Notre dame de Paris built 1163-1260 CE
hundred year period between 1015-1439
CE
Visual Analysis Task
• With a partner, examine the images of Ecclesia and Synagoga from
Strasbourg Cathedral (see handout/ soft copy on CANVAS)
• Annotate the images. What do you see? What do you think that
means?
• What is the propaganda message being sent by Ecclesia and
Synagoga? How would this message benefit the Catholic Church?
• When you have finished, read the visual analysis on the following
slide. Does this concur with your responses?
Watch this clip about ecclesia and synagoga
• ADRABA Clip about... Ecclesia and Synagoga - YouTube
In the cathedral at Strasbourg:
Ecclesia stands upright, a crown placed triumphantly on
her head; she holds in her right hand a standard topped
by the cross and in her left a chalice….
Synagoga sways backward, away from Ecclesia’s strong
gaze. In her right hand, Synagoga holds a spear for
wounding, which is broken…. [S]he totters and falls away
from Ecclesia. Her other hand, fallen to her side, holds the
“Old Testament.”
Synagoga’s eyes are blindfolded, unable to read the
book….
Ecclesia is strong, indomitable;
Synagoga weak and vanquished. Full of hate and
obduracy, guilty of deicide,
Synagoga awaits her deserved fate at the hands of the
upright and victorious church. (Williamson, p. 234)
The AntiSemitic message of Ecclesia and Synagoga was backed by
other Church teachings during the Middle Ages:

• For example, the Medieval Catholic Church promoted the writing of Christian apologist, Tertullian
who creatively interprets Bible passages to denigrate Judasim.
• An example of this can be seen in Mark (3:31-35) where Jesus lets his mother and brothers wait outside the
house while those who do God’s will are inside. Tertullian interprets Jesus’ mother and brothers respectively as
synagogue and Jews. Those inside are Jesus’ true disciples, Christians. Tertullian views the relationship of
Christians to Jews as replacement. (pp. 237-38)
• The Medieval Church also praised the Bishop Ambrose of Milan from the 4th Century CE. Ambrose
said Judas, the betrayer, represents the entire Jewish people. He wrote that Jews are children “of
iniquity, of pestilence, and of the devil, as Scripture testifies.” (Theological and Dogmatic Works, p.
21; Williamson, p. 239)
• Another early Christian theologian loved by the medieval church was Irenaus who commented on
the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans. Jerusalem, he said, was rightly forsaken because the
Jews “are no longer useful for bringing forth fruit.” (“Against All Heresies”; Williamson, p. 115)
Watch this clip about Antisemitism in
Medieval Art
• The Weird Jewish Hats of Medieval Art: Antisemitic Trope, or Fashion
Statement? | Unpacked - YouTube