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theses

My dissertation examines manuscripts and early printed books of the “Fortress of Faith” (Fortalitium fidei) as influential works in late medieval constructions of Jewish and Christian identity. I argue that the “Fortress of Faith” moves beyond traditional polemics in its comprehensive use of popular argumentative approaches, particularly in its use of images, which appealed to a variety of late medieval audiences. I suggest a revised stemma, giving preference to the influence of woodcuts over miniatures. Through both types of images, Christians were armed with mental pictures of themselves as knights guarding a Christian fortress. The first two chapters study surviving manuscripts and incunabula of the text with regard to their material execution, visual imagery, verbal content, and regional production and dissemination. The presentation of the text evolved with its shifting audience from the time it was composed around 1460 by a Castilian Franciscan friar to the time it was translated into French and illuminated around 1480 and also while it was printed numerous times between 1471 and 1525. A third chapter addresses the “Fortress of Faith’s” role in shaping communal memory. It verbally and visually underscored the perceived dangers non-Christians posed to Christianity and suggested the unique danger that the faith’s own delinquents posed toward it. The final chapter focuses on the hermeneutical Jew represented in the “Fortress of Faith” and beyond. In this text the “bad Jew,” so familiar in the medieval world, became the template for the much more broadly defined monstrous “other.” My analyses show how the images of the preaching manual within the Latin manuscript and incunabula and French manuscripts of the “Fortress of Faith” contributed to the text’s slandering of its enemies: heretics, Jews, Muslims, and demons. The body of images appropriated the visual symbols of courtly romance for new use in molding religious identity. For readers of the Fortalitium fidei, the fortress became the central feature in a universal program of animosity toward Jews and other non-Christians. This message was significant in its historical moment, affecting the understanding of medieval Jews, but also modeling their treatment throughout the early modern period in Europe.

ETD_7852

Ph.D.

Includes bibliographical references

by Brooke Falk

doi:10.7282/T3PC34TN

ETD doctoral

The author owns the copyright to this work.