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The Jew, the cathedral, and the medieval city. Synagoga and ecclesia in the thirteenth century . By Nina Rowe . Pp. xvii+326 incl. 161 ills. Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2011. £55. 978 0 521 19744 1
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The terms 'Synagoga' and 'Ecclesia', Synagogue and Church, of the title of this book refer to the artistic female personifications which were used in different medieval art forms to represent Judaism and Christianity. Nina Rowe has chosen to focus on the particular way in which these female personifications were sculpted in the 1220s and 1230s for the south façade of the cathedral of Reims, the Fürstenportal of the cathedral of Bamberg and the double portal of the south façade of Strasbourg. Rowe's aim is to uncover how Ecclesia and Synagoga were sculpted, how and why they were combined with other sculptures, how they were viewed by those who were meant to see them and lastly how they related to the Jewish communities living in each of the three cathedral cities.
Part i opens with an overview of the situation of Jews in medieval Latin Christendom in which Rowe emphasises the accelerating deterioration of Christian attitudes to Jews from the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. The second introductory chapter traces the artistic use of female personification from antiquity to the specific female representations of Ecclesia and Synagoga before the thirteenth century. Rowe draws particular attention to classical models of exalting male dominion by coupling a powerful male figure with female figures representing victory or defeat. She also connects...