Abstract The theological foundations for the ecclesiastical images of the High Middle Ages depicting Jews in hell were laid as early as late antiquity by the Church Fathers, who drew on biblical passages. In the early Middle Ages, however, neither hell nor the Last Judgement was a subject of ecclesiastical art. This changed from the late 11th century onwards, and particularly with the emergence of the great Last Judgement portals in the 12th and 13th centuries. In France, almost every new cathedral now featured a large Last Judgement scene on one of its portals. Some of these also included statues of Ecclesia and Synagoga, but none featured figures of Jews. The situation was quite different in Germany, where the Last Judgement images produced from the 1220s onwards, whilst not as extensive as in France, usually depicted one or two Jews amongst the damned. The reason for this lies, on the one hand, in the Church’s anti-Jewish stance, which had been evident since the 12th century but was increasingly publicised following the Fourth Lateran Council of 1215, and, on the other hand, in the differing policies towards Jews in Germany and France. Whilst the French kings had been pursuing a strongly anti-Jewish policy since the reign of Philip Augustus, Jews in Germany were granted privileges by the king and the princes right up until the 14th century. In response, the Church sought to portray Jews as sinful, enemies of God and therefore a threat to the salvation of the faithful. Geographically speaking, there is a broad correlation between the regions where images of Jews in hell and ›Jews’sow‹ images were prevalent. Detailed studies included in this essay examine the role of Jews in the Last Judgement scenes at Beaulieu-sur-Dordogne and Bamberg, as well as the statues of the Synagogue at the churches of Notre-Dame in Paris and Saint-Seurin in Bordeaux.
Markus J. Wenninger (Thu,) studied this question.