The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval City Rowe Hardback 9780521197441

The Jew, the Cathedral and the Medieval CitySynagoga and Ecclesia in the Thirteenth Century\nAuthor(s): Nina Rowe\nFormat: Hardback\nPublisher: Cambridge University Press, United Kingdom\nImprint: Cambridge University Press\nISBN-13: 9780521197441, 978-0521197441\nSynopsis\nIn the thirteenth century, sculptures of Synagoga and Ecclesia - paired female personifications of the Synagogue defeated and the Church triumphant - became a favoured motif on cathedral faades in France and Germany. Throughout the preceding centuries, the Jews of northern Europe prospered financially and intellectually, a trend that ran counter to the long-standing Christian conception of Jews as relics of the prehistory of the Church. In this book, Nina Rowe examines the sculptures as defining elements in the urban Jewish-Christian encounter. She locates the roots of the Synagoga-Ecclesia motif in antiquity and explores the theme's public manifestations at the cathedrals of Reims, Bamberg, and Strasbourg, consid.