The 'Vernon Manuscript' and the Image of the Jew in Late Medieval England

Anthony Bale, University of Cambridge

This video explores some of the images of Jews and Judaism in the ‘Vernon manuscript’, an important and extensive record of popular culture and belief from late fourteenth-century England. The Vernon manuscript allows us to consider the representation of Jews and Judaism about a century after the Jews had been expelled from England, and helps us understand the symbolic importance of Jews in medieval Christian popular religion.

Video

Primary Source Reading 

The entire Vernon Manuscript is available as a digital facsimile via the Digital Bodleian website: Oxford, Bodleian Library MS. Eng. poet. a. 1: https://digital.bodleian.ox.ac.uk/objects/52f0a31a-1478-40e4-b05b-fddb1ad076ff/
 

Further Reading

  •  Boyarin, Adrienne Williams. The Christian Jew and the Unmarked Jewess: The Politics of Sameness in Medieval English Anti-Judaism (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2020).
  •  Despres, Denise, ‘The Protean Jew in the Vernon Manuscript’, in ed. Sheila Delany, Chaucer and the Jews (London: Routledge, 2002), 145-64.
  • Scase, Wendy. The Making of the Vernon Manuscript: The Production and Contexts of Oxford, Bodleian Library, MS Eng. Poet. A1 (Turnhout: Brepols, 2013).

Discussion Questions

  1. How is Jewishness marked in the images in the Vernon manuscript? Are there differences between male and female Jewish characters?
  2. How might these stories about Jews from medieval England speak to Christian concerns about orthodoxy, heresy, and ‘Lollardy’?
  3. Do these stories engage with Judaism as a historical faith or Jews as a culture in any way, or should they be regarded as imaginative fantasies?

Cite

Bale, Anthony. "The 'Vernon Manuscript' and the Image of the Jew in Late Medieval England," Middle Ages for Educators, January 7, 2025. Accessed [date]. https://middleagesforeducators.princeton.edu/vernon-manuscript-and-image-jew-late-medieval-england