The Siege of Jerusalem is a long (1,334 lines) ALLITERATIVE
VERSE poem in MIDDLE ENGLISH, probably
composed in the last decades of the 14th century
in far west Yorkshire. This production of the socalled
ALLITERATIVE REVIVAL tells the story of the
Roman siege and destruction of Jerusalem in 70
C.E., and the subsequent dispersion of the Jews.
The nine surviving manuscripts testify to a wide
popularity, and the medieval collations that situate
the poem variously in scriptural, romance, Crusade,
or historical contexts indicate that the reception
of the poem was diverse, complicated by the
poem’s complex retelling of a popular and wellknown
story.
Drawing on chronicles and legendary materials,
including Josephus’s first-century account of the
Jewish War, the apocryphal Vindicta salvatoris,
RANULPH HIGDEN’s POLYCHRONICON, the Bible en
françois of Roger d’Argenteuil, and the Legenda
Aurea, the poem relates how Titus and Vespasian,
Roman leaders and recent converts to Christianity,
embark upon a crusade against the Jews of
Jerusalem to avenge Christ’s death (and to punish
the Jews for ceasing to pay taxes to the Roman emperor).
The Romans lay siege to Jerusalem and
after a graphic and bloody battle in which many
Jews are slain, the Jews retreat within the city walls
and the Romans assail the town. The poetic narrative
of the two-year siege of Jerusalem by the Romans
is filled with diverse and disturbing details of
both Roman and Jewish actions, including detailed
scenes inside the city walls, where hundreds die
daily for lack of food and water, the gruesome
murder of the Jewish high priest that leads hundreds
of Jews in Jerusalem to take their own lives,
and a Jewish woman killing and eating her own
child. The siege ends with the surrender of the Jews
and their sale into slavery by the Romans.
The Siege of Jerusalem is formed and informed
with a variety of sensibilities, religious, political,
economic, and social. Regarding the religious, the
Roman crusade against the Jews and Jerusalem is
framed in Christian justifications, and medieval expressions
of anti-Semitism are given voice when the
Jews are referred to as the “faithless,” the “heathen,”
and Christ-killers. Political issues of empire and rule
are played out within the Roman camp and between
the Romans and the Jews. Because the Jews have refused
to pay tribute to Rome, the economics of revenge
activate, in part, the original decision to
besiege the city. The social dimensions of the work
range from the semi-chivalric Roman knights hunting
and hawking outside the city walls (a ROMANCE
element at odds with its own setting) to relations
within the city and relations between individual Jew
and Christian. Unlike the less-nuanced Titus and
Vespasian concerning the same events, The Siege of
Jerusalem has proved fertile ground for a variety of
interpretations and readings.
Marginalized for years from critical consideration
due to its seemingly unambiguous anti-
Semitism and violence, The Siege of Jerusalem is in
the process of being reassessed by scholars of Middle
English literature and culture. Although the author
remains anonymous, there is some consensus
(based on manuscript evidence and theological influences)
that the poet was an Augustinian canon
writing at Bolton Priory. The composition and reception
of the poem are widely debated, and the
debate primarily revolves around the nature of the
poem’s anti-Semitism.Where some scholars read
The Siege of Jerusalem as expressing the anti-Semitism
considered to be an inevitable and universal
commonplace of medieval thinking and writing,
others find a more subtle representation of Jews
and Judaism that includes both anti-Semitic and
sympathic gestures. Written approximately 100
years after the expulsion of the Jews from England
in 1290, the poem is increasingly the cause of
discussions about the nature of medieval anti-
Semitism and the ways in which Jews (absent or
present) define the Christian community.
Bibliography
Chism, Christine.“The Siege of Jerusalem: Liquidating
Assets,” Journal of Medieval and Early Modern
Studies 28 (1998): 309–340.
Hanna, Ralph. “Contextualizing The Siege of
Jerusalem,” Yearbook of Langland Studies 6 (1992):
109–121.
Hamel, Mary. “The Siege of Jerusalem as a Crusading
Poem.” In Journeys Toward God: Pilgrimage and
Crusade, edited by Barbara N. Sargent-Baur,
177–194. Kalamazoo, Mich.: Medieval Institute
Publications, 1992.
Kölbing, E., and Mabel Day, eds. The Siege of
Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 188. London: Published for
the Early English Text Society by H. Milford, Oxford
University Press, 1932.
Lawton, David, and Ralph Hanna III, eds. The Siege of
Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 320. Oxford: Published for
the Early English Text Society by the Oxford University
Press, 2003.
Millar, Bonnie. The Siege of Jerusalem in Its Physical,
Literary and Historical Contexts. Dublin: Fourcourts,
2000.
Narin van Court, Elisa. “The Siege of Jerusalem and
Augustinian Historians: Writing About Jews in
Fourteenth-Century England,” Chaucer Review 29
(1995): 227–248.
———.“Socially Marginal, Culturally Central: Representing
Jews in Late Medieval English Literature,”
Exemplaria 12 (2000): 293–326.
Elisa Narin van Court