JEWISH IDENTITY IN "THE SIEGE OF JERUSALEM" AND HOMILETIC TEXTS: MODELS OF PENANCE AND VICTIMS OF VENGEANCE FOR THE URBAN APOCALYPSE

In the very early fifteenth century, an English preacher, frightened by the desolations of the Hundred Years War, advised his congregation to take stock of the apocalyptic signs around them, and to view themselves in the likeness of the Jews under attack by Titus and Vespasian during the first-century Roman siege of Jerusalem.1 Aligning a late medieval Christian parish with an embattled Jewish community would prove to be an effective rhetorical device that dared its audiences to imagine not only a shared ruin, but also a shared humanity. [...] the narrative of violence and retribution is present, but it seems that the faculty of agency receives special attention in the poem.8 Present-day scholarly opinion is divided over the poem's portrayal of the Jews - often interpreting them either as purely typological representations, or as renderings of real, first-century Jews - but it is perhaps worth questioning this binary in order to reveal additional readings of the work, and to further explore the role of the forty-year 'grace period' in medieval thought.\n126 In its focus on the perceived Jewish rejection of God's love, the Titus and Vespasian poet minimizes his text's focus on ideas of Jewish potential for mercy, thereby diminishing a positive relatability.