Jussi Hanska’s The Destruction of Jerusalem and Anti-Jewish Commonplaces in Model Sermon Collections (1100-1350) illustrates how a single Biblical passage, initially cast as a political prophecy, became a vehicle for the spread of anti-Judaic (the term Hanska prefers) ideology through the medium of sermon literature. Along the way the book offers insights into the development of sermon literature: dating, sources, transmission, circulation, how and when innovation was accepted, and the changes brought by the introduction of preaching orders.
The passage in question here is Luke 19.4-44:
“And when he drew near, seeing the city, he wept over it, saying:
‘If thou also hadst known, and that in this thy day, the things that are
to thy peace; but now they are hidden from thy eyes. For the days
shall come upon thee, and they enemies shall cast a trench around
thee, and compass thee round, and straiten thee on every side, and
beat thee flat to the ground, and thy children who are in thee: and they
shall not leave in thee a stone upon a stone: because though hast not
known the time of thy visitation.” (8)
As Hanska asserts, this passage anachronistically places the destruction of Jerusalem into the mouth of Jesus as a prophecy of the future. Hanska focuses on this pericope (a section of sacred text designated as the liturgical reading for any given day) in part because “it is the only passage in the New Testament where the destruction of Jerusalem is linked with the Jews’ guilt for murdering Christ. In other Gospels, the Jews’ guilt that led to the destruction was essentially their refusal to hear the preaching of Christ and the early Church” (80). Hanska describes how, in the hands of medieval preachers, this pericope was transformed into a site of “diffusion of anti-Judaic stereotypes, literary topoi, and attitudes” (10). Sermons on the destruction of Jerusalem as described in Luke 19. 41-44 were preached, according to regional practice, either the tenth Sunday after Trinity or the ninth Sunday after Pentecost (which is to say sometime between mid-July and late August). It is a sign of the importance of this commemoration that when in 1415 Pope Benedict XIII mandated that Jews should attend public sermons three times a year, this day was one of the occasions named (23).
The first chapter, “The Destruction of Jerusalem and its Earliest Representations,” outlines the development of Christian exegesis on the Gospel of Luke’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem, from the earliest sources of the Jewish Wars in Josephus and his translators through Patristic literature and early Christian homiletics. It ends by introducing the authors of the thirteenth-century model sermon collections, alongside a survey of the sources they used. The story told here is of a shift from a conservative reliance on the standard biblical commentaries to borrowing among these collections as the tradition matured. The second chapter, “Sermons and Anti-Judaic Literary Topoi,” turns to an analysis of where and how anti-Judaic themes emerge in these sermons. Hanska surveys four major themes that he finds in the sermons: the representation of Jews as the murderers of Christ; the betrayal of Jesus for thirty pieces of silver; allegations of Jewish cannibalism; and the charge of Jewish obduracy. Here the argument traces the ways in which various non-related accusations came to be attached to the pericope and elaborated in the sermons. For example: the destruction of Jerusalem references the Roman siege described by Josephus. Josephus’s history includes the Mary-of-Jerusalem story: the mother who kills and cannibalizes her baby out of starvation and despair. Thus, the description of the destruction of Jerusalem is elaborated by sermon literature into a story about Jewish cannibalism, which Hanska suggests may have gone on to influence the blood-libel allegation. One very interesting observation Hanska makes in this regard is that the timing of the deaths of two of purported victims of Jewish ritual murder allegations—Hugh of Lincoln and Simon of Trent—fall during the time of year when the “destruction of Jerusalem” sermons would have been preached. Hanska also notes the absence in model sermon collections of other popular anti-Jewish sentiments that were in contemporary circulation, such as the host-desecration allegation, concerns over usury, and disapproval of Jewish physicians.
A third and final chapter, “One Pericope, Many Approaches,” draws the reader’s attention to the fact that not all of the sermons on the pericope of Luke 19. 41-44 contain anti-Judaic references. Although the pericope seemed to offer a natural point of departure for those preachers who wished to sermonize on the Jews, there were plenty of sermons that took a different approach entirely. Some preachers took a more allegorical approach, interpreting Jerusalem, for example, as “the city of the soul” (201). Others seized upon the fact that this passage is one of only three times that the Bible describes Jesus weeping, and chose to use the sermon to articulate a “theology of tears” (212). Still others ignored the theme of the destruction of Jerusalem entirely and focused instead on Luke 19. 45-46, which describes Jesus driving the moneylenders out of the Temple (although Hanska finds sermons in this category that use the topos of the moneylenders in the Temple to accuse the Jews of avarice). Finally, a conclusion distills the argument of the book into ten very useful pages.
Although it traces the development of Christian exegesis on this pericope from its origin in the Patristic period, the main focus of the argument is the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries: the era of the so-called “preaching revival.” Hanska identifies the contents of the model sermon collections that he analyses here as understudied, and he convincingly demonstrates that closer scholarly attention to these texts will be well rewarded. Indeed, one thread that runs throughout the book is the story of how the transformation of preaching practice, only in part due to the arrival on the scene of the preaching orders of the Franciscans and Dominicans, transformed the medieval media landscape and facilitated the spread of ideas from enclosed communities throughout the general populace. The desire to better understand the development of popular anti-Judaic attitudes in medieval society animates this study. Nevertheless, throughout the book Hanska is careful to contextualize and judicious in the conclusions he draws. The Destruction of Jerusalem and Anti-Jewish Commonplaces in Model Sermon Collections emphasizes that the relationship between sermonizing and anti-Judaism cannot be described as causal, but rather as contributing to a media environment that enabled—and perhaps at time encouraged—the circulation of such damaging ideas.