Observing the Observers: Procession and Public Religion in Medieval Ashkenaz
Date of Award
Spring 2023
Document Type
Dissertation
Degree Name
Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)
Department
Religious Studies
First Advisor
Marcus, Ivan
Abstract
This dissertation investigates public Jewish-Christian interactions in the medieval towns and cities of urban Germany, northern France, and England – a region then known to the Jews as “Ashkenaz.” I argue that although the power dynamic is inherently and recognizably unequal, scholarly awareness of reciprocity – in seeing and being seen, hearing and being heard, and sharing space – is crucial to a nuanced understanding of how Jews and Christians lived largely harmoniously alongside one another for large parts of the medieval period. Methodologically, I conceptualize urban Jewish quarters as stages: intentional, constructed spaces with their own visual, aural and gestural codes. It is upon these that the drama of Jewish-Christian interaction unfolded. To illustrate this, I examine the uses and dynamics of public space for religious processions, drawing on both spatial theory and liturgical and performance history. Building upon these insights, I discuss the role of vision and sound in different circumstances of Jewish-Christian interaction from the stalls of the marketplace to papal processions, examining medieval theories of how the senses worked, and how these theories may have influenced beliefs and behaviors even beyond the medieval period. I end with death, the absence of the senses, looking at how the performance and perception analyzed in prior chapters are relayed in contemporary descriptions of death and burial, illustrating the persisting interpenetration present in Jewish and Christian understandings of ritual and culture in death as well as life. This study thus investigates the public interactions between Jews and Christians in medieval Ashkenaz within the frameworks of performance and sensory perception. The analysis of Jewish and Christian primary sources shows that Jews and Christians were constantly seeing and hearing one another’s rituals and behaviors because of their shared environment, sometimes in very specifically mediated ways. They defined their identities not only in opposition to one another but frequently in response to one another: to what they were perceiving, and to what they thought they were perceiving.
Recommended Citation
Amar-Zifkin, Emilie Eve, "Observing the Observers: Procession and Public Religion in Medieval Ashkenaz" (2023). Yale Graduate School of Arts and Sciences Dissertations. 878.
https://elischolar.library.yale.edu/gsas_dissertations/878
