Jewish Culture and History

ISSN: 1462-169X (Print) 2167-9428 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rjch20

Byzantine tales of Jewish image desecration:

tracing a narrative

Katherine Aron-Beller

To cite this article: Katherine Aron-Beller (2017): Byzantine tales of Jewish image desecration:
tracing a narrative, Jewish Culture and History, DOI: 10.1080/1462169X.2017.1326367

To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/1462169X.2017.1326367

Published online: 22 May 2017.

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Jewish Culture and History, 2017
https://doi.org/10.1080/1462169X.2017.1326367

Byzantine tales of Jewish image desecration: tracing a

narrative
Katherine Aron-Beller
Rothberg International School, The Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, Israel

ABSTRACT ARTICLE HISTORY

This paper questions the significance and meaning behind the Received 21 November 2016
Byzantine legends of Jewish image desecration between the sixth Accepted 24 April 2017
and tenth centuries. The narrative of these tales, as historical and
KEYWORDS
literary phenomena, uncover the uneasy equilibrium between the Christian images; Byzantine
Christian theologians’ fear of idolatry and their need to gratify the History; Jewish image
Christian veneration of sacred images. It also confirms how doctrinal desecration; iconoclastic
issues regarding types of images, their representation, real presence, controversy; Eucharistic
worship and theological truth could be integrated into fictitious tale blood
narratives about Jews to locate and define the Christian response to
images at any given time.

In the following pages, I will attempt to bring Byzantine legends of Jewish image desecration
into sharper focus, by mapping their constellation, their diachronic development, and by
trying to discern patterns in their social and cultural processes. In these stories, Jews are
depicted not as real people, but as faceless marionettes invoked by the writer to prove a
point about the superiority of Christianity – most fully, perhaps, when the figurative Jew
witnesses the image’s miraculous powers. If, as Jeremy Cohen correctly observes, ‘Christian
theology and exegesis created a Jew of their own,’ an attempt will be made to try and under-
stand, and analyse the purpose of this developing narrative, the type of icons that were
attacked, and the changing roles of the Jewish aggressor in the narrative.1
The essay begins with the first known allegorical tale of image desecration and then
moves on to consider two historical representations that I argue strengthened the desecra-
tion narrative in Byzantine popular thought: First, the use of descriptions of Jewish icono-
clasm in Byzantine-Christian chronicles and second, the propagation of rhetoric about the
other’s idolatry from both Christian and Jewish writers. After an analysis of further tales, I
will finally suggest how the tale moves from an act of desecration by a single Jew to an act
of crucifixion on an image, this time by a whole Jewish community, who collectively convert
as a result of the miracle brought about by their desecration. I will also argue that the tale
as it develops is concretized into far reaching legends with Eucharistic elements. These stem
from the Christian need to affirm and gratify their veneration of sacred images. They not
only use Jewish polemics about idolatry but carefully cause the Jew to change his response
to images as the narrative develops.

CONTACT  Katherine Aron-Beller  katheri7@post.tau.ac.il

© 2017 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group
2   K. ARON-BELLER

The creation of a narrative

Already in Classical Greece, Plato and Aristotle had theorized aspects of representation and
emphasized the divine presence in images.2 By the early second century AD/CE Christians
had begun to use images in their devotional practices, but it was not until the fourth and
fifth centuries, that image veneration began to be discussed, arousing both opposition and
polemical support from churchmen.3 Patricia Cox Miller sees certain Christian authors using
discursive strategies to achieve ‘the conjunction of discourse, materiality and meaning that
marked’ their turn towards material objects.4 In her view:
The idea that a representation of a holy body might be animate was … a continuation, with a
Christian hagiographical twist, of an ancient Mediterranean culture-pattern, in which immobility
and animation were paradoxically linked.5
Miller argues that just as the Graeco-Roman culture had given the human characteristics
of moving, speaking, sweating, and bleeding to the statues of their gods, so the Christians
gave the same attributes to their icons.6 As a result, the readers’ sensory imaginations became
receptive towards icons [and relics], responding to the divine energy of these items, without
idolizing them. By the late sixth century, miraculous icons were appearing not only in
churches but also in domestic spaces.7 An image of Christ, the Archeiropoiteon (c.600), was
located at the Lateran in Rome, the icon of Christ of Kamuliana in Cappadocia, and there
were similar images in Constantinople and Edessa.8 In addition to their historical and devo-
tional importance, these works included an artistic element demonstrating that painting
was favoured by religion which made use of it to record its own history. Such icons also
provided a fertile breeding ground for legends and tales, in which the thaumaturgical images
responded not only to those who venerated them but also to those who violated them.9
The notion of desecrating or completely destroying Christian images probably stemmed
from the practice of erasing the memory of disgraced emperors (damnatio memoriae) by
destroying their statues. This practice was legally sanctioned in the Roman period (in both
the Republic and Empire) although it was infrequently practiced. Jás Elsner sees this process
as a highly sophisticated one insinuating that the attack on a statue of a past emperor rep-
resented an attack against that emperor himself.10 The early Byzantine period saw a persistent
movement of religious iconoclasm running parallel to political iconoclasm. Since the fourth
century, Christians themselves had been desecrating pagan idols and sanctuaries.11 By the
sixth, they were even desecrating their own images of the patriarchs of Constantinople,
which were destroyed and replaced by images of their successors.12 As such, the image had
come to represent tributes to the perceived power and potency of the patriarchs.
The incorporation of Jewish desecrators into the Byzantine tale narrative of miraculous
images must also be contextualized. The Second Commandment prohibits idolatry, ordering
Jews not to worship others gods, not to build their own carved idols, nor to create a Divine
image of God that would become an object of idolatrous worship.13 In Jewish tradition,
idolatry could refer equally to the betrayal of God, as the error of worshipping other gods,
the worship of an intermediary rather than God himself, or worshipping a mistaken idea of
God.14 As Rachel Neis so carefully contends by tracing ancient Jewish iconophilia in its literary
form, Talmudic rabbis debated how Jews were to view other societies’ ‘idols.’ Neis defines
the rabbis as themselves shaping various viewing strategies whereby Jews could exterminate
the power of these idols.15 In the Palestinian Talmudic tractate of Moed Qatan, there is a
suggestion of ‘blinding’ the eye of an idol, which could be interpreted as looking away by
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   3

covering one’s own eyes, or as an actual act of desecration – that of defacing the image.16
Here, Jews are commanded to say a special prayer when they see a place of idol worship.
They are to pray for the total annihilation of idolatry because the idols disturb their worship
of God:
May it be your will Lord our God that idolatry be rooted out from all the places of Israel, and that
the hearts of your servants return to your worship.17
These sources provide clear evidence that some rabbis sanctioned Jews, not only to turn
away from non-Jewish cult objects, but to curse them or even destroy them.
The first surviving tale depicting Jews as image desecrators appeared in Gregory of Tours’
De Gloria martyrum (c.538–594) in France in the sixth century, when miraculous images
became a major form of ecclesiastical propaganda.18 In this book of miracle stories that
contain a series of anecdotes about the lives and cults of martyrs, Gregory of Tours tells the
story of a Jew desecrating an icon of Christ. Whether Gregory of Tours created or copied this
tale is unclear, but it stands as testimony to the contemporary theological polemic on images
and his belief in their thaumaturgical qualities.19 The tale ‘The Jew who stole an image of
Christ’ portrays an unnamed Jew, representative of ‘the eternal enemy of the human race,’
who ‘reveals himself to be envious,’ of the Christians. This Jew had continually noticed a
painting of Christ on the wall of a church. Gregory of Tours states:
For after a Jew had often looked at an image of this sort that had been painted on a panel
and attached to the wall of a church, he said “Behold the seducer who has humbled me and
my people!” So coming in at night, he stabbed the image with a dagger, pried it from the wall,
concealed it under his clothes, carried it home, and prepared to burn it in a fire.
Gregory of Tours, thankful that a miracle was about to occur to protect the image, pre-
empts the event with these words:
But a marvelous event took place that without doubt was a result of the power of God.
At this point, blood began to pour from the image immediately after the Jew had stabbed
the painting. However, the Jew ‘because he was obsessed with rage’ failed to observe the
blood.20 It was only when he returned home, that he noticed it on his body:
But after he had made his way through the darkness of a cloudy night to his house, he brought
a light and realized that he was completely covered with blood.21
Frightened but unsure of the power of the image, the Jew hid it. The tale continues:
Fearing lest his crime became obvious, he hid the panel he had stolen in an obscure spot; nor
did he dare any more to touch what he had wickedly presumed to carry away. At dawn the
Christians came to the house of God. When they did not find the icon, they were upset and
asked what had happened. They then noticed the trail of blood.22
The Christians were therefore able to successfully retrieve the image. Having restored the
painting to the church, the tale ends with the Christians crushing ‘the thief beneath stones.’23
Gregory’s decision to cast a Jew as a desecrator might well have been elaborating on a
theory that a Jew, plagued by his notorious iconophobic discomfort of images, would nat-
urally want to desecrate or destroy them, more so than a pagan polytheist. By the time Tours
wrote this tale, other writings had emerged, which had already connected Jews with the
abuse of Christian images. For example, the fourth century bishop of Antioch, John
Chrysostom, had propagated the Jews’ mockery of the cross in his Adversus Judaeos
Orationes.24
4   K. ARON-BELLER

Tell me, if demons dwell [in the synagogue], is it not a place of impiety even if there is not a statue
of an idol standing there? Where Christ-killers gather, the cross is ridiculed, God blasphemed,
the father acknowledged, the son insulted, the grace of the Spirit rejected.
In the tale, Gregory of Tours depicts the Jew as being blinded by the ‘darkness of a cloudy
night’ to the blood that seeped from the image, or the trail of blood that would lead the
Christians to him. This association of Jews with blindness had already been established in
the New Testament.25 In the Gospel of John, after Jesus had cured a blind man, the Pharisees
remained spiritually blind to his identity. Similarly in the same gospel, the blindness and
deafness of Isaiah was read as Jewish blindness to Christ.26 Jewish blindness was also to
become a major theme in the Adversus Judaeos literature.27
However, there was no suggestion in the tale that the Jew was re-enacting the crucifixion
on the image. The image is not described as a Passion painting or a crucifix but seems to
represent Christ’s corporality. Tours’s tale portrays the Jews’ attack on the body of the living
Christ, ‘as a seducer’ and not as a Christ-killer and his intention was to destroy the image by
burning, not by crucifying. The allegation of Jews re-enacting the passion on a ‘form made
to resemble the saint cross in contempt of the Christian faith,’ had already surfaced in fifth
century Byzantium, where Christians believed that on the festival of Purim – when Jews
celebrated the demise of Haman – they were equating him with Christ and crucifying him.28
In the Theodosian Code of 408, Emperor Honorius formally instructed his provincial gover-
nors to restrain the Jews from doing this, arguing that the Jews had the felonious intention
of mocking the Christian faith. In Gregory of Tours’s tale there is no mention of the Jewish
festival, and its focus remains an attempt to harm the living Christ through his image rather
than re-enact the passion upon the image. The image responded to the Jews’ violation by
acting as a miraculous, corporeal body. Once it was stabbed, the image came alive by bleed-
ing, not only in memory but also in art.
Gregory of Tours’s tale ends with the Jew’s extermination by the Christians. His body, like
the painting he had sought to attack was punished by crushing and obliteration. By this
ending, Gregory of Tours stressed the inherent protective mechanism of the venerated
image. Unlike the Jew’s body, the painting’s divine presence had made it indestructible.29

Jewish iconoclasm and its effect

It seems that Gregory of Tours’s fictitious depiction of the Jewish desecrator was soon to be
endorsed by hostile Byzantine–Christian chronicles, which continually portrayed the icon-
oclasm of historical Jews. In the sixth century, Jews are depicted by John Malalas as a diso-
bedient, disloyal people who deserve to be punished.30 Seventh century chroniclers, such
as Sophronius and Antiochus Strategos describe the Jews as performing iconoclastic acts
against imperial and ecclesiastical authorities, participating in civil disturbances and destroy-
ing Christian crosses and churches.31 They also blamed the Jews (as well as the Christians)
for the military crises created by the Persians in 614 and then the Arab wars in 641 and 643.
During the Persian siege of the Holy Land in 614, when the armies of Chosroe II, King of the
Sassanids occupied Jerusalem and captured the relic of the True Cross, descriptions of violent
acts against Christians are ubiquitous, based on the assumption that Jews preferred to be
ruled by Persians rather than Christians.32 Jewish informers were reported to have assisted
the Persian conquerors in entering the city, attacking local Christians, and burning and pil-
laging churches in their efforts to renew Temple services.33 The author of the Khuzistan
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   5

Chronicle (ca 660–670) particularly stresses the Jewish attacks upon Jerusalem’s churches,
claiming that Jews had set fire to all of them.34
Yet, modern scholars have understood these chronicles as sensational stories that
intended to give a false impression of Jewish treachery.35 Averil Cameron and Robert Wilken
argue that the loss of Jerusalem had a huge emotional and psychological impact on Byzantine
Christians, who were unable to accept the idea that the Holy City could be captured by a
foreign and hostile enemy.36 David Olster contends that Antiochus Stategos, a monk from
the monastery of Sabas in the Judean desert, followed an implicit strategy in his work to
make the Jews the enemies of the Byzantines.37 Strategos himself is now recognized as
having exaggerated the Jews’ role in the destruction of Jerusalem, the capture of the True
Cross and the looting of sacred vessels from churches.38 Although it should be suggested
that the Jews had welcomed the invaders, their involvement in Persian atrocities was inflated
by these chroniclers to emphasize Jewish culpability.39 It is also important to remember that
the Jews did not have the political structure to be recognized allies of the Persians or to
exercise control over Jerusalem.40
In 641, Jewish rebels were again described as participating in a popular uprising to rid
Constantinople of its patriarch, Pyrrhus. Rioters are recorded as breaking into St. Sophia,
desecrating the church and, in a display of mockery and triumph, carrying its keys through
the city.41 The Chronicle of Theophanes also reports that in the year 642/3 Caliph Umar was
advised by the Jews of Jerusalem to take down the cross on the top of the Church of
Ascension on the Mount of Olives. The Jews, it was reported, believed that this would enable
the new al-Aqsa mosque to remain standing, since during its building it had continually
collapsed.42 Oddly, Theophanes concludes the summary of these events with the words: ‘For
this reason Christ’s enemies took down many crosses,’ although it makes no further mention
of which crosses were in fact removed. Ora Limor suggests that the chronicler used poetic
licence here to show how the miraculous power of the cross on the church of Ascension had
prevented the Muslims from building their mosque on the Temple Mount in Jerusalem. For
when the Jews brought about the destruction of the cross, they removed its miraculous
power and caused not only the Christians’ downfall at the hands of the Muslims, but pre-
vented Christians from returning to the Holy City.43 Syriac and Greek sources record that the
Jews also removed crosses from the roofs of churches in Damascus, including the Church
of St. John the Baptist.44
Although they cannot be disconnected from other forms of Jewish rebellion and civil
protest against imperial authority, the Jews’ aggression against images, churches and crosses
could certainly be used to stigmatize them with further iconoclastic tendencies. Yet there
remains a fundamental difference between the fictional Jew of Gregory of Tours and the
historical one of the Byzantine chronicles. In the Byzantine Christian chronicles, Jews are
recorded as destroying crosses, whereas in the desecration tale, the image was violated, not
a cross destroyed. Was there a difference in the Christian mind between crosses and other
Christian images? As Kitzinger points out, by the fourth century, crosses as religious symbols
were themselves fully identified with the True Cross on which Jesus had been crucified and
they had been absorbed into church theology and practice without opposition.45 Crosses,
like Christian images, were accepted as having thaumaturgical powers and were often worn
by Christians, either embroidered onto their clothes or as amulets around their necks.46 Since
during the Iconoclastic controversy, crosses were to become the exclusive icon of the
Christian faith, it seems that the Jews’ real iconoclastic actions against crosses were easily
6   K. ARON-BELLER

manipulated into cautionary tales of image desecration to serve the purpose of the icono-
philes and the increasing centrality of images. As we shall see to iconophiles in the Iconoclastic
controversy, the veneration of the Cross authorized the legitimacy of images.47

Jewish response
Jews of Byzantium did respond internally by confirming a genuine abhorrence on doctrinal
grounds of the Christian use of icons, and their daily discomfort with the ubiquity of images
that surrounded them.48 One such response, is a Hebrew tract called ‘The Apocalypse of
Zerubbabel’ or Sefer Zerubbabel, which was probably written in early seventh century
Palestine.49 Here, as Boustan argues, its Jewish writers describe graphic violence against
Roman Emperors to hide their abhorrence of the Byzantine Emperors for their oppressive
deeds.
At one point in the text the author describes the Roman Emperor Armilos, a figure of
Antichrist and acryptogram for the Byzantine emperor Heraclius, as intending to build idols:
And he [Armilios] will begin to plant on the face of the land all the asheroth [idols] of the gentiles
which the Lord hates, and he will take the stone from which he was born and transport it to [the
valley of Arbael] and he will build seven altars for it, and it will be the chief object of idolatry,
and all the peoples will come from all places and worship this stone and offer incense to it, and
pour libations, … And Armilos angered the Lord with his evil deed.50
Wilkins has argued that although Asheroth was the name of a Canaanite goddess, the
tale really implies the hoped for destruction of Christian crosses on churches dedicated to
the Virgin Mary in the Holy Land.51 The text relates that when God saved the Jews, ‘all the
strange gods and every temple of images and wall and cliff,’ would fall to the ground.52 Here
the Jews were certainly depicting themselves as justified iconoclasts, playing into the hands
of the Christian theologians, who at this precise time were condemning the Jews’ very alle-
gations that Christians worshipped their own created idols.

The polemical arguments

In the sixth and seventh centuries, portrayals of historical Jews and their actions were wors-
ening not only in Byzantine Christian chronicles, but also in civil law, in literary texts, and
anti-Jewish polemics, creating negative stereotypes that could easily be manipulated.53
Byzantium had been profoundly affected by the Persian and then the Arab invasions of
674–8 and 717. Coupled with a terrible plague and economic hardships, the empire had
been reduced in size, and its cities fractured and populations displaced.54 Averil Cameron
argues that part of the iconoclastic controversy was connected with a reactive polemical
outpouring as to who fit into society and who did not, strengthening and defining the ide-
ological boundaries and mindset of the Christian Byzantine people not only against the Jew,
but also against the heretic and the Muslim.55
As Vincent Dérouche argues, although an allegation of the Jews’ idolatry appears in the
disputation literature at the beginning of the seventh century, there was minimal discussion
about the Jews’ image desecration or iconoclastic tendencies.56 Christian polemical literature
used the generic argument that the Hebrew Bible prohibited icons being owned by Jews
because Jews were prone to idolatry.57 Yet in his hypothetical dialogue between a Jew and
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   7

a Christian entitled ‘A Polemic against the Jews,’ Bishop Leontios of Neapolis provides a
powerful polemical defense of images against accusations of idolatry:
If the Jews accuse the Christians of idolatry they should be covered with shame, for they did
obeisance to their own kings and the kings of other nations. Everywhere the Christians have
armed themselves against the idols; … Supposing that an idolater had come into your temple
and seen the two sculpted cherubim and had blamed the Jews as being themselves idolaters
what could you reply? For the Christians, the cross and the icons are not gods; they remind us of
Christ and His Saints that we should do them honor; they are there to beautify our churches …58
Here Leontios angrily contests the Jews’ charge of idolatry by emphasizing the special/
particular status not only of Old Testament kings, but of their icons, which he argued, like
Christians icons, confirmed spiritual presence.59 Leontios was the first and only polemic
writer to accuse Jews of being desecrators of Christian images, questioning why they were
unable to ‘see’ and love God, as Christians did. At one point his Christian addresses the Jew
with these words:
Tell me, is it not fitting to worship the saints, rather than to throw stones at them as you do? Is
it not right to worship them, rather than to attack them, and to fling your benefactors into the
mire? If you loved God, you would be ready to honor His servants also.60
Since Leontios does not mention the Jews’ desecration in any other place in his dialogue,
or give any specific examples of the Jews’ committing this offence, it must be suggested that
this is a metaphorical attack rather than a literal one.
In addition, Leontios’s text was the first to claim that images could work miracles. Here
he expresses his anger firstly against ‘fools’ who misunderstand these reactions:
often blood will gush forth from the icons and the relics of the martyrs, and foolish folk, though
they see this, are not persuaded, they treat the miracles as myths and fables.61
And then more so against the Jews62:
Let those who refuse to do obeisance to the cross and the icons explain how it is that the holy
icons have often poured forth streams of myrrh by the power of the Lord and how it is that a
lifeless stele when it has received a blow has miraculously given forth blood as though it were
a living body.63
In effect Leontios was connecting the two issues from Gregory of Tours’s legend: the
stubborn ‘blind’ Jews on the one hand and the miraculous images that acted like a ‘living
body’ as a result of the Jews’ violation on the other.64 What is never questioned by Leontios
is how the Jews and the object related to each other, and why the object responded to the
Jews’ violation in particular. This suggests that his main focus is the onotological qualities
of the images rather than the Jews as desecrators. It also indicates that stories of icons
responding miraculously to Jewish desecration were already well known, although he does
not refer to or include any tale in the text.65
The only other text dealing with this issue is the seventh-century Dialogue of Papiscus
and Philo (which alludes to being a much older lost text than it was to exhibit continuity). It
describes a dialogue between a monk, (called Anastasius in one manuscript) and two wise
Jews, Papiscus and Philo, before an assembly of members of both religions. Anastasius begins
to blame the Jews for accusing Christians of committing idolatry when Jews themselves had
worshipped the image of Nebuchadnezzar and the golden calf. Moreover the monk asks:
Where are the tablets, the ark of the covenant, the tabernacle, the rod of Aaron, the burning
bush, manna, the pillar of fire?66
8   K. ARON-BELLER

These, the monk continued, have all disappeared, but still the Jews remain blind regarding
the power of Christian images.67 Here the Jew’s blindness towards images stood generically
for Jewish faithlessness and wickedness towards Christianity.
When between 754 and 787, Iconoclasm became the official policy in Byzantium, icono-
philes quickly associated iconoclasts and their position on idolatry with the Jews, selecting
the parts of the Jews’ policies on idolatry most congenial to their needs.68 This was monot-
onously repeated in texts proving that iconophiles were using these theories to attack icon-
oclasts, rather than launching a real Jewish polemical outburst.69
By the eighth century, as iconophiles strove for doctrinal unification, iconoclastic as well
as desecrating Jews had become useful villains in cautionary tales both socially and theo-
logically. Their main message so far was that religious icons with their thaumaturigical qual-
ities, were unquestionably to be understood as a fundamental component of Christian
spirituality.

A traveler’s version
The next surviving tale of Jewish desecration after that of Gregory of Tours was set in
Constantinople and appears in a seventh century travelogue De locis sanctis.70 Composed
by Adomnán, the hagiographer and abbot of Iona (627/8-704), the text describes the travels
of Arculf, a Gallic bishop, who went on a pilgrimage to visit the holy sites in the Middle East
and returned via Byzantium.71 Much has been written about Adomnán, his sources and his
relationship with Arculf.72 Some scholars see the De locis sanctis as an authentic record of
Arculf’s travels, whereas others, such as Thomas O’Loughlin, view it as Adomnán’s sophisti-
cated scriptural interpretation of the holy places Arculf visited.73 Until now most scholars
have analyzed Book One of the travelogue, in which Adomnán describes the topography of
Jerusalem. Book Three, which concentrates on Arculf’s recollections of Constantinople and
the island of Vulcano, is much shorter and has received far less attention.74 Here Arculf’s
recollections include legends that he heard from ‘well-informed citizens’ of Constantinople.
Adomnán relates the following:
The oft-mentioned Arculf gave us an accurate rendering also of a true story about an ikon of
the holy Mary, mother of the Lord, which he learned from some well-informed witnesses in the
city of Constantinople. On the wall of a house in the metropolitan city, he said, a picture of the
blessed Mary used to hang, painted on a short wooden tablet. A stupid and hardhearted man
asked whose picture it was, and was told by someone that it was a likeness of the holy Mary ever
virgin. When he heard this that Jewish unbeliever became very angry and, at the instigation of
the devil, seized the picture from the wall and ran to a building nearby, where it is customary
to dispose of the soil from human bodies by means of openings in long planks whereon people
sit. There, in order to dishonor Christ, who was born of Mary, he cast the picture of His mother
through the opening on the nuisance lying beneath. Then in his stupid folly he sat above himself
and evacuated through the opening, pouring the nuisance of his own person on the ikon of the
holy Mary which he had just deposited there. After that disgraceful action the hapless creature
went away, and what he did subsequently, how he lived, or what sort of end he had, is unknown.
After the scoundrel had gone, one of the Christian community came upon the scene, a fortu-
nate man, zealous for the things of the Lord. Knowing what had happened, he searched for the
picture of the holy Mary, found it hidden in the refuse and took it up. He wiped it carefully and
cleaned it by washing it in the clearest water, and then set it up in honor by him in his house.

Wonderful to relate, this wonderous oil proclaims the honor of Mary, the mother of the Lord Jesus
of whom the Father says: ‘With my oil I have anointed him.’ Likewise the psalmist addresses the
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   9

Son of God himself when he says: ‘God thy God hath anointed thee with the oil of joy beyond
thy companions.’75
Gregory of Tours’s trope had changed substantially by the seventh century into a ‘true story’
or so it was disseminated. Here the legend involved an icon of the Virgin Mary rather than
an icon of Christ. This change in the object of abuse not only reflects the growing variety of
icons in the Byzantine world, but underlines the increasing importance of the Virgin Mary
in the Eastern church.76 From this time, the Virgin was endowed with all the characteristics
of a universal mother, and in our story in particular she is attacked ‘in order to dishonor
Christ,’ her son.77 We know that relics had turned churches of Mary in Constantinople into
cult centers, but there is some suggestion that miraculous images or acheiropoietoi did so
as well, in that these paintings were supposedly not manufactured by hands, but had a
miraculous origin, thereby bridging the gap of sanctity between a manufactured icon and
a non-manufactured relic.78 At the beginning of the fifth century, the first ‘true’ portrait of
the Virgin and Child, and one of the few known about in the city, was supposedly painted
by Saint Luke and was discovered by Eudocia, the wife of Emperor Theodosius II (408–50).
By the middle of that century it was reported that the painting was being kept in the former
home for the blind.79 Was this the image Adomnán was referring to when he wrote that the
icon of Mary was exhibited in a ‘house’?80 While Adomnán recounts that Arculf not only saw
this Marian icon but also its seeping oil, (a clear reference to the sort of activity that Mary
performed in life – pouring and/or anointing with oil and exuding nourishing liquid from
her body) he makes no mention of the icon’s exact location in the city, which in a travelogue
would have been essential.81
The narrative also gives the Jewish desecrator a different, more aggressive role. The first
time he is described, he is presented as ‘a stupid and hard-hearted man,’ but not as a Jew.
He seems not to know who Mary was, and on being told, flares up in anger, and moves to
desecrate at the ‘instigation of the devil.’ Devils frequently appeared in seventh century
Byzantine tales which depicted Jews; and the Jews’ association with the devil had been
repeatedly penned, a New Testament idea that is subsequently repeated by Church fathers.82
Pope Gregory the Great had elaborated the idea of the Jews’ alliance with the devil and the
Antichrist, and how the Jews fulfilled the Devil’s interests and determined the Jews’ past and
future.83 John Chrysostom had even referred to the Jews as worshipping the devil, and their
synagogues being ‘the homes of the Devil.’84
But at this point, in Adomnán’s tale, the Jew’s act of desecration turned into the most
outrageous possible violation of Christianity, whereby the Jew defecates on the image. Was
this act influenced by Jewish writings, which, as Ora Limor points out, distorted the Latin
form of Mary’s name Maria to haria meaning faeces?85 It seems though that this extreme act
of aggression was addressed at Mary rather than the image. This is emphasized by Adomnán’s
moralizing at the end of the tale, where he demands that his reader focus on the honor of
the divine model, the Virgin Mary herself, rather than the miraculous image. Her energies
were not invested in retaliating against the Jew but in ensuring that when treated appro-
priately, her images will convey her favor upon her venerators.
After his nauseating act, the Jew is forgotten – an important contrast with the Gregory
of Tours’s tale which concerned itself with the Jew’s extermination. Here however the Jew’s
personal fate remains irrelevant to the tale, since as an infidel rather than an unbeliever, he
cannot be saved by the Virgin’s grace. In contrast to the Jew, the virtuous Christian ‘zealous
10   K. ARON-BELLER

for the things of the Lord’ rescues the painting, removes it from the privy and meticulously
cleans it ‘in the clearest water,’ thereby purifying it from the ‘dishonor’ done by the Jew.

Tracing the Jewish desecration narratives

The final stage of my essay will trace one more desecration narrative as it developed through
time and space, from tale to legend, to discern the changes in the narrative and the religious
and social processes, which might have influenced it. By the time this legend materialized
there had been a significant shift in the development of Byzantine iconographic theology.
Whereas from the fifth century theologian Anastasius had introduced icons of the Passion
into theological debates and John of Damascus had passionately confirmed the image of
Christ as a locus of real theandric presence, it was the Council of Hiereia in 754 which con-
firmed that both divinity and humanity existed in the iconic depiction of Christ.86 The 82nd
canon confirmed that:
Christ our God, should from now be portrayed as a man, instead of the ancient lamb, even in
icons; for in this way the depth of the humility of the Word of God can be understood, and one
might be led to the memory of his life in the flesh, his passion and his saving death, and of the
redemption which thereby came to the world.87
The legend below contextualized this new reality, giving it explicit shape and form and
portraying the possible complicated emotions that resulted from it.88

The tale ‘Christ of Beirut’ at Nicaea

A new legend of Jewish iconoclasm/desecration narrative was recorded, this time in the
fourth session of the Seventh ecumenical council at Nicaea in 787. The intention of ecumen-
ical councils was to resolve the doctrinal differences not only on images, but on the very
nature of God. But the acts of this council temporarily reinstated icons, proclaiming icono-
phile polemics rather than debating them.89
A report about ‘Christ of Beirut’ was read in the fourth session (1 October) of the council,
which discussed the legitimacy of the worship of icons on the basis of the Holy Scripture
and the Fathers, as well as biblical and patristic texts. Here 16 reports of miracle working
icons were also recorded.90 One particular miraculous image was the spurious ‘Christ of
Beirut.’91 Its tale was publicly read by the iconodule Bishop, Peter of Nicomedia.92 He ascribed
the tale to the fourth century St. Athanasius of Alexandria, clearly trying to validate the story
by its association with an authoritative father of the Church.93 The legend, whose develop-
ment has been meticulously traced by Michele Bacci, is set in fourth century Beirut, under
Byzantine rule, where its Jews were integrated into the social structures and spaces of the
town.94 After a brief description of its geographical location, Peter recounted the more com-
plex narrative of a devout Christian, who prayed in his bedroom to a picture of Christ:
most definitely venerable since it reproduced the full figure of Christ the Lord.95
His dwelling was rather small and near the synagogue, so he decided to move to another
part of town and, leaving his home, he forgot to take the portrait with him. The new owner,
a Jew, is depicted as remaining oblivious to the life-size image hanging in his bedroom. One
evening, the Jew invited some of his Jewish friends to dinner and when one saw the image
of Christ, he asked him:
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   11

How do you as a Jew have the nerve to have such an image in your house? … The host, who
wanted to defend himself, stated with innocence that he had not noticed it before. Then the
guest became silent.96
Failing to believe his host, after dinner the Jew accused him of blasphemy in front of
the other guests. The Jewish council were informed and decided that the image should
be removed from the house. The following morning the rabbis and other Jews broke into
the Jew’s home. Seeing the image, they began collectively to re-enact the crucifixion on
the painting shouting out:
Whatever our fathers did to him, let us all do the same to this image.
After spitting, and punching the image, they pierced its hands and feet with nails, spong-
ing it with vinegar and gall to drink, and sticking a crown of thorns on its head. Then it was
suggested that they whip the icon and one said:
It is common knowledge that they [our forefathers] pierced his side with a lance. Let us leave
nothing out; let’s do that too!97
When they had pierced the side with a lance, they were shocked by the multitude of
blood and water that seeped from the icon. (This gushing of both blood and water attested
to the Crucifixion story according to the fourth canonical Gospel of John, where a Roman
soldier had pierced Jesus’ side with a lance to check that he was dead, and from that place
there had been ‘a sudden flow of blood and water.’98) Then in the tale, the Jews, wondering
at this gushing, decided to collect the liquids and test its powers on Jews who were inflicted
with ailments.
Since Christian worshippers say that He was the author of many unprecedented miracles in the
world, let us collect this blood and water and take them to our synagogue where we will gather
everyone who is sick. We will sprinkle them with these liquids: if what is said about Christ is true,
everybody will be immediately healed; otherwise we will use them as a proof against what his
believers declare about him.99
Many sick Jews including the blind and paralytic were healed and deceased Jews were
brought back to life as a result of the miraculous power of the blood. At this point the Jews
approached the local bishop and asked him to baptize them all. The bishop, keen to learn
the details of the case before him, called for the first owner of the image. The owner explained
that the image had been painted by Nicodemus, a Pharisee Jew who had shown kindness
to Jesus.100 Since, according to the Gospel of John, Nicodemus had been present at Jesus’
crucifixion, the Beirut icon was noted as having the authenticity of a New Testament relic,
an original painting of Jesus’ Crucifixion, equal to acheiropoietai images.101 The Beirut
­synagogue was turned into a church and was consecrated to Christ, the Saviour. Tarasisus,
the Patriarch present at the Nicaea council, confirmed the iconophilic message of the story
for those present:
It is a sign that God has made through the image, that images should draw us closer to the
Christian faith.102
This eighth century narrative, of Jewish image desecration must be decoded. ‘Christ of
Beirut’ transformed the narrative into a meticulous and blatant re-enactment of the cruci-
fixion played upon an image of Christ, with the miraculous blood confirming an authentic
reaction of Christ through the painting, and its waters symbolizing the redemptive waters
of baptism that brought about the conversion of the Jews.
12   K. ARON-BELLER

Instead of stealing an image from a church or a Christian home, the Jew now has an icon
of Christ in his own property. The fact that a Jew could be situated in a domestic space with
a Christian icon is intriguing and reflects the ubiquity of the images by the eighth century.
Because the image was originally located in the Jew’s house, it also matched contempora-
neous traditions of Byzantine relic legends. These included the legend of the Virgin’s cloak,
which had been preserved by the women of a Jewish family since the time of Mary’s death
and that of the True Cross, where Judah of Jerusalem was the only person able to reveal its
secret location to Queen Helena, because of information he had received from his Jewish
forefathers.103 None of these Jews who discovered these ‘relics’ worshipped them in secret,
but they were seen to preserve them and be unwilling to destroy them. In portraying Jews
as the people who secretly preserved Christian sacred objects, Christianity was even able to
imply that perhaps these objects meant something to the Jews.104 This would certainly
explain why the Beirut Jew in whose house the image was situated had unconsciously kept
it – a fact that is otherwise difficult to understand.
The fact that ‘Christ of Beirut’ did not specify whether it was a Passion painting or not,
allowed it to be seen as either – an image of Christ as a divine man who bled on the cross
or an image whereby Jesus had already died and was God.105 Belting has identified that
panels of the crucifixion in the Mount Sinai monastery where Christ was depicted as a dead
person with his eyes closed were already extant in the seventh century, so either identity
was possible.106 The legend combines the Jews’ manipulation and hiding of Christian mate-
riality, their witnessing of Christian truths in the miraculous reaction of the image, and their
consequent desire to be baptized. Christian authors now portray the Jews’ attempt at des-
ecration, not as an attempt at destruction, but as an endeavor to test the image’s worth for
themselves. For had not the Jews actually converted to Christianity, when they discovered
the truth about the image? As Ora Limor argues:
The Jews in these legends are a sort of prototype of the eschatological Jews, a symbol and
example of their co-religionists who will eventually follow them.107
In effect, the Jews (a community as opposed to a single offender) for the first time are
allowed to witness the divinity of Christ work through his painting. Christ causes his image
to bleed and the Eucharistic ontological reaction of the image enables the Jew to see him.108
Testing the authenticity of the blood, the Jews then willingly and collectively accept con-
version, ensuring their regeneration from defiant and perverse enemies of Christian grace
to beneficiaries of the miraculous Christ. Moreover, the Jews’ collective conversion allowed
for a process of catechism and a happy ending. As James Parkes argued in 1934:
… it was an ingenious thought to evolve a series of stories in which Jews were represented
as having been converted by the power of those images which the iconoclasts claimed to be
merely idols.109
Whether this was connected to the experience of real Jews of Byzantium who had con-
sistently been subjected to forced conversion firstly by an imperial edict of Heraclius, and
then by similar rulings of Leo III and Basil I, must be suggested.110 It made sense to illustrate
the Emperors’ eschatological hopes, not only because of their attempts in the recent past,
but also because of the prevalence, as Cameron has shown, of conversion stories in contem-
porary hagiography, disputation literature and other texts.111 The 787 council even sanc-
tioned new guidelines advocating the sincere conversion of the Jews.112
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   13

Eucharistic symbolism also underlies the Beirut tale, whereby the miraculous power of
Christ’s blood substantiates belief for the Jewish onlookers. The iconophiles were clearly
creating a legend that directly connected Christ’s Eucharist blood to an icon of Christ. Was
this not their attempt at what Ambrosios Giakalis calls ‘explaining the Eucharistic element
in relation both to materiality and to representation’?113 It certainly counterattacked the
iconoclastic argument that the only true icon of Christ given by God was the bread of the
Eucharist. For it was reported at the end of the tale, that Bishop Peter had ordered a great
quantity of glass containers to be filled with the holy substance of the miraculous blood and
water, which were then ‘dispatched throughout Asia, Africa and Europe.’114 Here the mirac-
ulous liquid, the seeping Eucharistic blood, seemed to be as important as the icon. The
bishop’s legates were also ordered to spread the story of the Beirut miracle and ensure that
it be commemorated annually on 9th November.115 The Eucharistic blood from this image
quickly became an epistemological concern, substantiating the icon of Beirut as a standard
legendary typos throughout the later medieval period.116
The tale’s new emphasis on salvific blood that seeped from images seemed to sprout
different redactions of the tale. Theodore Abū Qurrah’s treatise notes a Syriac tale where a
blind Jew from Tiberias becomes a Christian after regaining his sight by placing the blood
that had miraculously seeped from a desecrated image of a crucified Christ upon his eyes.117
In this story two Jews – one blind and the other paralytic – who were cured by the miraculous
blood and water seeping from the side of the image, convert to Christianity and become
Christian heroes.118 The tale itself is less about the bleeding image, which is a result of a
divine earthquake ‘no man ever saw again,’ than its seeping blood and water, which contin-
ued to heal the sick.119 Since Theodore Abū Qurrah describes the ‘Christ of Beirut’ tale as
being ‘famous and known in all the Christian churches,’ it is probable that this Tiberian tale
was a local variant of the ‘Christ of Beirut’ legend. A similar story is also recounted in
Alexandria.120 In all these examples, the Jews re-enact the crucifixion on a figure or icon, and
the miraculous liquid that seeps from it, heals those who touch it, and brings about their
conversion and their abandonment of Judaism.121 The central importance of the desecrated
image has shifted to a secondary role after that of Eucharistic blood.

A final tale narrative

The final four tales studied in this section appear in the Letter of the Three Patriarchs, which
purports to be an official letter to the iconoclastic Byzantine Emperor Theophilos. It was
composed by the three Oriental Patriarchs, who exercised control over the cult of icons in
the east – Christopher of Alexandria, Job of Antioch and Basil of Jerusalem – at an enormous
synod held at the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in April 836.122 Many such letters
survive from this period and some are indeed theological tracts addressing major issues of
practice and belief, but although the Letter of the Three Patriarchs seems to adopt this format,
scholars tend to argue otherwise.123 They claim that it is more likely that this Letter is a late
ninth or tenth century anthology of an original document addressed to the emperor with
a selection of other texts added. The Letter includes four tales about Jews and their attack
on Christian images that at that time were being disseminated in Constantinople.124
The Letter is a work of deliberate anti-iconoclastic propaganda demanding that the
Byzantines view the eastern provinces as part of the Orthodox church, which continued to
venerate religious images despite the pressure of Muslim criticism.125 For our purposes, it
14   K. ARON-BELLER

confirms that the previous tales and their oral traditions analyzed in this paper were com-
mitted to writing in different forms without different textual collections in the late ninth and
tenth centuries. Two new, but less aggressive tales, were also added.
The Letter consists of fifteen tales that bestow canonical authority on the restoration of
images and give authenticity to twelve icon prodigies in which Christ, Mary and St. Andrew
worked miracles through images. These images (including the Holy Face of Edessa, an Image
of Mary in the church in Lydda and Luke’s depiction of Mary) acted in favor of their supporters
(such as Emperor Constantine the Great and Pope Gregory II) or against their desecrators
who included Arabs, Persians, Jews and Christian heretics.126 The message of these stories
is mentioned towards the end of the Letter. Here iconoclasts, who desecrate crosses or images
of Christ, are compared to infidels:
Since whoever tramples upon or rejects the image and shape of the life-giving Cross in whatever
material it may be depicted, though made by human hand, is a foul infidel and a denier of Christ
and has made himself alien to the whole Christian faith because of the insult he is already leveling
at the prototype, how much greater punishment and eternal condemnation do you think, will
be deserved by anyone who sets aside the revered and honoured image of the crucified One,
who sanctified the Cross, and how much more so if he tramples it underfoot and spits upon it?
Such a person is similar and equivalent to those Jews who spat in His face, struck Him on the
head with a rod and slapped Him …127
The text implies that the first type of iconoclast is the one who destroys the human made
crosses, which in effect was an attack upon Christ himself. The second type of iconoclast
referred to, was one who violated images of the Passion or crucifixes, since their desecration
would be equal to the Jews’ re-enactment of the crucifixion, an action already demonstrated
in the previous Christ of Beirut tale and referred to again here. Jews were hereby recognized
as standardized desecrators of Christ, to whom other iconoclasts were to be compared. Their
pivotal role as desecrators suggests how successful the dissemination of such tales had been,
and that it continued to assist iconophiles in their polemical arguments.
If, as Jaś Elsner argues, iconoclasm by the ninth century had become a debate about
‘appropriate epistemology’ – about how the holy was to be ‘known, worshipped, and
approached,’ – it certainly made sense to disseminate tales connected to real existing icons
in the east with the intention of ensuring their veneration.128 All four tales in the Letter provide
a mythical provenance and background to these images, which were attacked by Jewish
violators – in Beirut, Lydda, one just outside Lydda and Constantinople. They confirm the
value of the icons, as objects in relation to their mediating functions. One tale, not surpris-
ingly, is an abridged version of ‘Christ of Beirut.’129 It merely describes how a [wicked man],
a Jew in Beirut injured a sacred image of the Saviour with a spear, ‘as did the Jews in the past’
(a clear reference to the Passion itself ). Immediately it caused an outpouring of blood which
had healing qualities.130 This version fails to mention the conversion and baptism of the
Jewish community, giving the whole narrative a different emphasis in this instance.
The second tale is an adaptation of the Arculf narrative, from the seventh century, although
here the image changed from that of the Virgin to an icon of Christ.131 (It is not clear that this
was an image of the Passion but its change to an image of Christ reflects the Letter’s intention
of emphasizing that icons could affirm the reality of Christ’s incarnation). This icon was said
to be situated next to a holy well at the Church of Saint Sophia in Constantinople. (According
to Christian Walker, pilgrim tales later describe a well at the south-east corner of the church.)132
A Jew stabbed the icon through the heart and blood covered his face and clothes. He quickly
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   15

threw the icon into the well (no longer a latrine) and its water turned to blood.133 The blood
on his clothes exposed his crime, and the Jew was arrested as a murderer. When he admitted
his crime, the icon was removed from the well with a dagger plunged in its chest. Seeing
the icon bleeding profusely, the witnesses were ‘gripped with amazement and terror.’ This
time, the Jew and his family converted to Christianity and were baptized, ‘having believed
in the Lord together with his entire household.’134
Arculf’s tale has been significantly altered. It has adopted standard literary tropes about
image desecration for the author’s own purposes. Now blood was the vital attestation of
the miraculous character of the Christ image like it was in ‘Christ of Beirut’ tale. Here the Jew
is no longer despicable, but plays a part not just as an aggressor of the image, but as a
compliant offender who admits to his crime, when he sees the blood and converts as a result,
like the Jews did in ‘Christ of Beirut’ having witnessing the miracle. The Jew can no longer
stay unaffected by the power of images and is transformed into a Christian as a result of
witnessing the seeping of Eucharistic blood.
The result of the Jews’ attack in the two first tales was the flow of blood from the wounded
image, which healed those who saw it and brought about the conversion of the Jewish
desecrators. The depiction of the Jewish image desecrator becomes progressively less vio-
lent, here in particular with the substitution of a well for a latrine as the place where the Jew
had put the painting. This did not necessarily reflect a less aggressive attitude towards Jews,
but rather that their role as quintessential desecrators was less relevant or needed.135 The
favorable outcome of these tales had become not only the seeping of Christ’s blood from
images, but the open and willing conversion of the Jews, since as the letter later
confirmed:
with the shedding of the immaculate blood, flowing from God the Church is revealed as sanc-
tified, pure and unblemished, having no stain or wrinkle, through the waters of rebirth and the
renewal of the Holy Spirit, and shown to be a chosen race, a holy nation, a royal priesthood, a
unique nation …136
In the third and fourth tales, the Jews’ even play a far less aggressive role, being merely
props to show the thaumaturgical power of Mary’s images. Here the Jews are not even able
to physically desecrate a Marian image. One called ‘Lydda,’ describes an acheiropoieton image
of Mary, which the Jews were unable to desecrate. It is set in the fourth century in a church
originally built by the apostles Peter and John and dedicated to the Virgin in Lydda (Lod),
eighteen miles north from Jerusalem. Mary’s image had been miraculously imprinted on
one of the columns of the church after the apostles had requested her presence at the
church’s consecration.137 The Emperor Julian the Apostate heard about this image and had
a group of ‘Hebrew painters’ investigate it.138 When they tried to remove it, the image only
became more radiant and luminous. Here the Jews’ official violation [since it was] sanctioned
by the Emperor himself – had no effect nor were they punished for their discretion.139 Their
lack of strength to damage the painting is meant to contrast the miraculous strength of
Mary to keep her image safe. The tale reminded readers not only of the indestructable power
of the acheiropoieta image of Mary, but also the sanctification of Mary through her image.140
Hans Belting even discovered a sermon which ‘reported’ the image’s miraculous transpor-
tation to Constantinople, now located in the Chalcoprateia church.141
Another very similar story follows almost directly. The story describes how in a city near
Lydda the paralytic Aeneas, cured by Peter, had built with his own hands a house of prayer
to Mary. Here the Jews share the stage with Greeks who had taken recourse to the local
16   K. ARON-BELLER

governor because they both wanted to gain possession of the Holy site. The governor
decided to have the site closed under guard for three days by which time an image of the
Virgin had miraculously appeared on the western wall of the church, wearing purple, and
with letters carved above her that read ‘Mary the Mother of Christ, the King from Nazareth.’
The Jews and Greeks left humiliated and the image continued to demonstrate its thauma-
turgical qualities by healing the sick.142
On the one hand, Byzantine tales of Jews desecrating images had finally become far less
aggressive removing the evil Jewish desecrator from centre stage.143 On the other, Christ’s
icons, are hereby confirmed as not only witnesses to the incarnation but as autonomous
and sufficient representations that portrayed and defended their divine models and bring
about the Jews’ conversion. In the two last tales of Marian images, potential Jewish desecra-
tors are powerless against these Marian images, which in their acheiropoieton cannot even
be touched by infidels.

Conclusion
In reports of historical military confrontations, Byzantine chroniclers portrayed Jews as icon-
oclasts, who sought the total destruction of Christian crosses and occasionally images.144
However in desecration tales, fictitious Jews are depicted as only violating or defiling sacred
icons, unable to do more. As the tale narrative developed, so too did the Jew’s response to
the images he tried to desecrate. In Gregory of Tours’s tale he wanted to destroy the image.
This desire only increased in Arculf’s tale where his attempt at destruction became the most
outrageous possible violation of Christianity. But by the later tales, the Jew is bestowed with
a knowledge of the painting, which transforms him into a curious desecrator, who is drawn
to test the image, in a way he had not been given credence to do in previous tales. Only
then, does the image seem to respond to the fictitious Jew, and the Jew is allowed to convert
to Christianity.
Tracing image desecration narratives has confirmed how doctrinal issues regarding the
types of images, representation, real presence, worship and theological truth, were inte-
grated into these relevant tales, resonating on different levels as the iconoclastic controversy
developed. Like other outsiders, the Jew’s role was to locate and define the Christian response
at any given time to the persistent attack from iconoclasts versus the increasing acceptance
and veneration of images by the iconophiles. In the first tale the Jew’s actions resonated
with Gregory of Tours’s belief that there was a purpose to venerating images. In Arculf’s tale,
the Jew highlighted Mary’s response not only to those who desecrated her images, but also
to those who venerated them. In ‘Christ of Beirut,’ it was the images of Christ’s Passion seeping
Eucharistic blood that were shown to miraculously enable Jews to see Christ’s divinity and
be converted to Christianity. As a convert the Jew bore witness and facilitated the increasing,
visible presence of Christ in Byzantine images until the image could demonstrate Christ’s
own corporality in art. These ideas were reiterated in the Letter’s tales as was the message
that Mary’s acheiropoietoi images were to be equally venerated.
Through vases of blood and water that seeped from the violated image, and through the
commemoration of a day in remembrance of the Jews’ desecration, our most prominent
tale, the ‘Christ of Beirut’ in all its force would be brought with the others, to the west.145 Here
the narrative would continue to be disseminated in Marian tales in the twelfth and thirteenth
centuries.146 For had not the ‘Christ of Beirut’ tale enabled figurative Jews to realize that
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   17

Christ’s blood had healing qualities? How interesting then that by the middle of the thir-
teenth century, Jews would be accused of killing Christian children to collect their blood for
these very healing qualities.

Notes
1. Jeremy Cohen Living Letters of the Law: Ideas of the Jew in Medieval Christianity (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999), 2.
For a previous study on this topic see Elliott Horowitz, Reckless Rites: Purim and the Legacy
of Jewish Violence (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2007), chap. 6. Horowitz’s thesis
centers on his belief that Jews did actually demonstrate a collective and standardized reaction
to crosses, which he extrapolates equally from Jewish and non-Jewish sources. But Horowitz
discusses the Jews’ reaction to the cross and does not differentiate the Crucifix from the cross.
He also draws mostly from examples after the eleventh century when crucifix imagery became
prominent in western Christian piety.
2. See Jaś Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse: From Antiquity to Byzantium,” The Art Bulletin 94,
no. 3 (September 2012): 368–94, 369.
3. See Ernst Kitzinger, “The Cult of Images in the Age Before Iconoclasm,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers
8 (1954): 83–150, 92ff; and Leslie Barnard, “The Theology of Images,” in A. Bryer and J. Herrin,
ed. Iconoclasm (Birmingham: Centre for Byzantine Studies, 1977), 7–15.
4. She calls this ‘corporal imagination.’ See Patricia Cox Miller, The Corporal Imagination: Signifying
the Holy In Late Ancient Christianity (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2009), 7.
Christian thinkers who wrote on this include Epiphanius of Salamis, Jerome in his letter to
Bishop Neopotian in 394, the early fifth century Philostorgius and the Neoplatonic mystical
writer Pseudo-Dionysius.
5. Ibid., 136.
6. Ibid., 137. Also see Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence: A History of the Image Before the Era of
Art, trans. E. Jephcott (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1994), 40.
7. Miller, The Corporal Imagination, 165. See also Ewa Kuryluk, Veronica and Her Cloth: History,
Symbolism and Structure of a ‘True’ Image (Cambridge, MA: Basil Blackwell, 1991), 50.
8. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 106.
9. See David Freedberg, The Power of Images: Studies in the History and Theory of Response (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1991).
10. Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse,” 370 and 377.
11. Ibid., 373–3. See the evidence provided in the Theodosian and Justinian legal codes
to approaches to paganism. For an English translation of the Theodosian code see
https://archive.org/stream/ecclesiasticaled00boyd/ecclesiasticaled00boyd_djvu.txt (accessed
April 30, 2017) and for the Justinian code see Thomas Cooper (ed.) Corpus Juris Civilis. Institutiones
(P. Byrne, 1812).
12. Ibid., 370. Elsner notes that the sixth-century Syriac historian John of Ephesus recorded this
process. As a result he believes that John saw this iconoclastic strategy as a normal procedure.
13. See Moshe Halbertal and Avishai Margalit, Idolatry translated by Naomi Goldblum (Cambridge,
MA: Harvard University Press, 1992). See also Rachel Neis, The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture:
Jewish Ways of Seeing in Late Antiquity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2013), 170.
14. Halbertal and Margalit, Idolatry, 238–40. See also Sarah Pierce, ed., The Image and Its Prohibition
in Jewish Antiquity (Oxford: Journal of Jewish Studies, 2013), in particular Philip Alexander,
“Reflections on Word Versus Image as Ways of Mediating the Divine Presence in Judaism,” 10–27.
15. Rachel Neis, “The Sense of Sight in Rabbinic Culture,” 171–3 The Palestinian Talmud propagated
the idea that Jews should avert their gaze from the idol. Another option was to look ‘awry’ –
which was to look at the object and then curse it to oneself. Ibid., 181.
16. Ibid., 187–9. In the Palestinian Talmud, Moed Qatan 3:7, 83c. Here when Rabbi Jacob asks how
to proceed when encountering an idolatrous image, Rabbi Yohanan sanctions desecration
with ‘blinding its eye.’ Avodah Zarah 4: 4 44a had already noted the inadequacy of spitting to
18   K. ARON-BELLER

nullify the idolatrous nature of the image. Medieval rabbinic Judaism reinforced these anti-
idolatrous convictions, promoting on occasion severe iconoclastic policies against their own.
Byzantine Jews actually intensified their opposition to the depiction of figurative works in their
synagogues and probably chose to destroy their own mosaic images, on the pretext that such
representations were unsuitable for their sanctuaries. See Steven Fine, “Iconoclasm and the Art
of Late Antique Palestinian Synagogues,” in From Dura to Sepphoris: Studies in Jewish Art and
Society in Late Antiquity, ed. L. Levine and Z. Weiss, Journal of Roman Archaeology Supplementary
Series (1999), 182–93.
17. Palestinian Talmud, Brachot I: 9,1.
18. See Gregorius Turonensis, Liber in Gloria Martyrum, no. 21, ed. Bruno Krusch (Monumenta
Germaniae Historica, Scriptores rerum Merovingicarum 1, 2; Hannover, 1885), 51. For the English
translation, see Gregory of Tours: Glory of the Martyrs, trans. Raymond Van Dam (Liverpool:
Liverpool University Press, 1988).
19. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 101, note 56, believes that this tale was originally written in either
Syriac or Greek in the early years of the fifth century and by 500 was circulating in the Latin
West. Nor is Gregory of Tours’s miracle tale, ‘The Jew Who Stole an Image of Christ’ the only one
in De Gloria martyrum to describe the ontological powers of images of Christ. In the very next
tale in his work, Gregory describes how the painted picture of the Crucified Christ at Narbonne
‘girded as it were with a linen [loincloth]’ communicated in a dream to Basileus the priest that
it wished to be covered by a curtain for reasons of modesty. See Glory of the Martyrs, no. 22
“Another picture of the Lord Christ.”
20. Glory of the Martyrs, no. 22.
21. Ibid.
22. Ibid.
23. Ibid.
24. http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm (accessed
September 27, 2016). Translation taken from Cohen Living Letters of the Law, 14.
25. See the New Testament, Romans 11: 25–28; 2 Corinthians 4, 4; 2 Corinthians 3: 15–18. See also
the Gospel of John, Chaps. 9 and 12.
26. On the blindness of Isaiah in the Hebrew Bible see the Old Testament, Book of Isaiah 6: 9–10.
Eusebius wrote of the Jews’ blindness to their own Scriptures. See Eusebius von Caesarea de
vita constantini über das leben Konstantin seingeleitet von Bruno Belckmannübersetzt und
kommentiert von Horst Schneider (Turnhout: Brepols, 2007) 333 (book III Chap. 18). Here he
talks about the Jews ‘who have impiously defiled their hands with enormous sin, and are,
therefore, deservedly afflicted with blindness of soul.’ See also Eric R. Varner, Mutilation and
Transformation: Damnatio Memoriae and Roman Imperial Portraiture (Leiden: Brill, 2004).
27. Another example of the Jews’ blindness was in the sixth-century disputatio between Gregentios
and Herban. Here the miraculous appearance of Christ caused thousands of Jews who, up
until that moment were blinded to his appearance, to seek baptism and be healed from their
maladies. See A. Berger, ed. with G. Fiaccadori, Life and Works of Saint Gregentios, Archbishop of
Taphar: Introduction, Critical Edition and Translation Millenium-Studien 7 (Berlin, 2006), 780–96.
28. See Amnon Linder, The Jews in Roman Imperial Legislation (Detroit: Wayne State, 1987), 236–7;
and David Chapman, Ancient Jewish and Christian Perceptions of Crucifixion (Tübingen: Baker
Academic, 2008), 231, 236–8. See also Timothy C.G. Thornton, “The Crucifixion of Haman and
the Scandal of the Cross,” Journal of Theological Studies 37, no. 2 (1986): 419–26, 421.
29. In Glory of the Martyrs, Tours includes another tale of a Jewish violator. In ‘The Boy Who Was
Thrown Into the Fire,’ the Jewish glazier who threw his son into the furnace for ingesting the
Eucharist in a church, was not killed by divine retribution but was burnt to death in the furnace,
the same place where he had attempted to kill his son. See also Miri Rubin, Gentile Tales: The
Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2004),
8–9.
30. Ra’anan S. Boustan, “Immolating Emperors: Spectacles of Imperial Suffering and the Making
of a Jewish Minority Culture in the Late Antiquity,” in Violence, Scripture, and Textual Practices in
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   19

Early Judaism and Christianity, ed. Raanan Shaul Boustan, Alex P. Janssen, and Calvin J. Roetzel
(Leiden: Brill, 2010), 204–34, 225.
31. A.V. Cameron, “Byzantines and Jews: Some Recent Work on Early Byzantium,” Byzantine and
Modern Greek Studies 26 (1996): 249–74, 255.
32. On the Jews’ iconoclasm in Jerusalem see The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor: Byzantine and
Near Eastern History AD 284–813 trans. with introduction and commentary by Cyril Mango and
Roger Scott with the assistance of Geoffrey Greatrex (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997), 301; and
Frederick Conybeare, “Antiochus Strategos’ Account of the Sack of Jerusalem in AD 614,” English
Historical Review 25 (1910): 502–17, esp. 507–8.
33. The evidence for the attempted renewal of Temple sacrifices is very slim. Stefan Leder has drawn
attention to the distortions in the sources in a useful article See S. Leder, “The Attitudes of the
Population, Especially the Jews, Towards the Arab-Islamic Conquest of Bilad al-Sham and the
Question of Their Role Therein,” Die Welt des Orients 18 (1987): 64–71. See also Michael Witby
and Mary Witby, Chronicon Paschale 284–628 AD (Liverpool: Liverpool University Press), 183;
and Joshua Starr, “Byzantine Jewry on the Eve of the Arab Conquest (565–638),” Journal of the
Palestine Oriental Society 15 (1935): 280–93, 285. An eyewitness report by Stategos, described
the destruction of the churches by Jews and their murdering of the Christians, who refused
to accept Judaism.
34. See Chronicon anonymum, ed. and trans. Ignazio Guidi in Chronica Minora I (Paris: L. Durbecq,
1903) 26 (text); 23 (trans), See also Robert Schick, The Christian Communities of Palestine from
Byzantine to Islamic Rule: A Historical and Archaeological Study (New Jersey: Darwin Press, 1995),
33–9; and Elliott Horowitz, “‘The Vengeance of the Jews Was Stronger Than Their Avarice’:
Modern Historians and the Persian Conquest of Jerusalem in 614,” Jewish Social Studies A (1998):
1–39, 9.
35. For example, in 609 the chroniclers Theophanes and Michael the Syrian blamed the Jews for
the murder of Anastasis II, the Patriarch of Antioch. See The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor,
425–6. But J.D. Frendo succinctly proves that the Patriarch was not murdered by the Jews of
Antioch but killed by soldiers. See Idem. “Who killed Anastasius II?” Jewish Quarterly Review 72
(1982): 202–4.
36. Robert Louis Wilken, The Land called Holy: Palestine in Christian History and Thought (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 1992), 192ff; and Cameron, “Byzantines and Jews,” 253.
37. D.M. Olster, Roman Defeat, Christian Response, and the Literary Construction of the Jew
(Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1994), 206.
38. Wilkin, The Land Called Holy, 219.
39. See Rivkah Fishman-Duker, who confirms that the anonymous author in the Chronicon Paschale
depicts the Jews as enemies of the empire and the Christian faith. Rivkah Fishman-Duker, “Anti-
Jewish Arguments in the Chronicon Paschale,” in Contra Iudaeos: Ancient and Medieval Polemics
between Christian and Jews, ed. Ora Limor and Guy G. Stroumsa (J.C.B. Mohr: Tübingen, 1996),
105–18, 116. See also Wilken, The Land called Holy, 202–3.
40. Ibid., 213.
41. See Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon ad annum Christi 1234 pertinens I praemissum est Chronicon
Anonymum ad A.D. 819 pertinens interpretatus est I.-B, Chabot, (Louvain, Imprimeri Eorientaliste,
L. Durbecq, 1952), 262–3.
42. See The Chronicle of Theophanes Confessor, 476.
43. Ora Limor, “Christian Sacred Space and the Jew,” in From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism
in Medieval Christian Thought, ed. Jeremy Cohen (Wolfenbütteler Mittelalter-Studien, 11,
Wiesbaden, 1996), 55–77, 73–4. See also Joshua Starr, “An Iconodulic Legend and its Historical
Basis,” Speculum 8, no. 4 (October 1933): 500–3, 502ff.
44. See Anonymi Auctoris Chronicon Ad Annum Christi, 262–3 for Jewish measures taken against
Christians in the time of Caliph Uthman (644–656) recorded in this anonymous Syriac chronicle.
45. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 89–90.
46. The Chronicle of Theophanes (1982), 82 notes that in 362/3, the sign of the Cross which was
appearing on altar-cloths, church instruments and clothes had even miraculously appeared
on the clothes of Jews. On the wearing of crosses and their uses see Henry Maguire, “Garments
20   K. ARON-BELLER

Pleasing to God: The Significance of Domestic Textile Designs in the Early Byzantine Period,”
Dumbarton Oak Papers, 44 (1990): 215–24, 218. Charles Barber, Figure and Likeness: On the
Limits of Representation in Byzantine Iconoclasm (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2002),
84–7, 104.
47. See Erik Thunø, Image and Relic: Mediating the Sacred in Early Medieval Rome (Rome: L’Erma
di Bretschneider, 2002), 151–2. Note how John of Damascus in his Contra Imaginum subtlely
legitimates the veneration of images, because of the Christians’ veneration of the cross.
‘If you, O Jew, reproach me by saying that I worship the wood of the Cross as I worship God,
why do you not reproach Jacob for bowing down before the point of Joseph’s staff? It is obvious
that he was not worshipping wood, but that he was bowing down before Joseph by means of
the wood. So with us; we glorify Christ through the Cross, and not the wood itself. If we bow
down before the Cross, no matter what substance it is made from, shall we not bow down
before the image of Him who was crucified upon it?’ (John of Damascus, Contra imaginum. 1,
54 ed. Kottern 156; trans. Anderson, Divine Images 41).
48. See Hagith Sivan, “From Byzantine to Persian Jerusalem: Jewish Perspectives and Jewish/
Christian Polemics,” Greek, Roman and Byzantine Studies 41 (2000): 277–306. On an earlier
expression of Jewish antagonism against Christian images, see the sixth century poem by the
Jewish liturgical poet Yannai. Zvi M. Rabinowitz, ed., The Liturgical Poetry of Rabbi Yannai, vol.
2 (Jerusalem: Bialik Institute, 1985–7), 221–2.
49. Under the threat of a Persian invasion, the text offered the Jews a longed for eschatological
revelation that would save them. For one version of the Hebrew text of The Apocalypse of
Zerubbabel see I. Lévi, “L’Apocalypse de Zorobabel et Le Roi de Perse Siroès,” Revue Des Études
Juives 68 (1914): 126–60 (cont. in REJ 69 (1919): 108–21). Lévi translates the story into French.
See also P. Speck, “The Apocalypse of Zerubbabel and Christian Icons,” Jewish Studies Quarterly
4, no. 2 (1997): 183–90, who argues against Déroche for a later seventh century date for the tale.
50. I. Lévi, “L’Apocalypse de Zorobabel et Le Roi de PerseSiroès,” Revue Des Études Juives 68 (1914):
158–9.
51. Wilkin, The Land called Holy, 210.
52. Lévi, “L’Apocalypse de Zorobabel,” 139 (Hebrew) and 155 (French).
53. Boustan, “Immolating Emperors,” 209.
54. Averil Cameron, “Disputations, Polemical Literature and the Formation of Opinion in the
Early Byzintine Period,” in Dispute Poems and Dialogues in the Ancient and Medieval Near East:
Forms and Types of Literary Debate in Semitic and Related Literatures, ed. G.J. Reinink and H.L.J.
Varistiphout (Louvain: Peeters, 1991), 91–108, 106.
55. Ibid. See also Eidem, “How to Read Heresiology,” in The Cultural Turn in Late Ancient Studies:
Gender, Asceticism and Historiography, ed. D.B. Martin and P. Cox Miller (Durham, NC: Duke,
2005), 193–212, 204.
56. Vincent Déroche, “La polémique anti-judaïque au VI e et au VII e siècle: Un mémento in édit, Les
Képhalaia,” Travaux et Memoires 11 (1991): 275–311, 290ff. The Kephalaiae paporetika published
by Vincent Déroche, a collection of questions for Christians to use in arguments with Jews does
not mention desecration. Other disputation literary works include The Disputation of Sergius the
Stylite Against a Jew; the fragments of Stephen of Bostra Against the Jews; the treatise written
by Anastaius of Sinaias well as an extant Dialogue on the Trinity between a Jew and a Christian
by Jerome of Jerusalem.
On eighth century works see B. Kotter, ed., Contra Imaginum Calumniators Orations Tres, Die
Schriften Des Johannes Von Damaskos, vol. 3 (Berlin, 1975), 123–6. The ‘Objection of the Jews,’
probably composed shortly after the Council of Nicaea in 787, has hardly any discussion on
Jews and images. See Pierre Andrist, “Les Objections des Hébreux: Un Document du Premier
Iconoclasm,” Revue des Études Byzantines 57 (1999): 99–140.
57. See Idem., “L’Apologie Contre Les Juifs de Léontios de Néapolis,” Travaux et Mémoires 12 (1994):
45–104.
58. Ibid., 77.
59. Ibid., 75.
60. Ibid.
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   21

61. Ibid.
62. Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 147.
63. The translation is Norman H. Baynes’s, in “The Icons Before Iconoclasm,” Harvard Theologial
Review 44 (1951): 93–106, 101.
64. See Déroche, “L’Apologie,” 75 and idem. “Forms and Functions of Anti-Jewish Polemics:
Polymorphy, Polysémy,” Jews in Byzantium, 535–48, 546.
65. Nor did later anti-Judaic tracts by iconophiles disseminate desecration tales or discuss Jewish
desecration.
66. See Arthur Cushman McGiffert, Dialogue Between a Christian and a Jew: The Greek Text Edited
with Introduction and Notes, Together With a Discussion of Christian Polemics Against the Jews
(Marburg, 1889) 75ff, incorporating the Dialogue of Papiscus and Philo.
67. Ibid.
68. See Kathleen Corrigan, Visual Polemics in the Ninth-Century Psalters (Cambridge: Cambridge
University Press, 1992), 30–1 and L.W. Barnard, “The Jews and the Byzantine Iconoclastic
Controversy,” Eastern Churches Review 5 (1973): 125–35.
69. Barnard, “The Theology of Images,” 7–15. As Elsner in “Iconoclasm as Discourse,” 371, notes
this particular accusation is made by certain churchmen who opposed images, including
Epiphanius and John the Metropolitan of Salonica.
70. See Adamnán’s De Locis Sanctis: Scriptores Latini Hiberniae, vol. III, ed. Denis Meehan (Dublin:
The Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies, 1958), 112–3.
71. Thomas O’Loughlin, Teachers and Codebreakers: The Latin Genesis Tradition 430–800 (Instrumenta
Patristica et Mediaevalia, 1999), 112 notes other contemporaneous works in this genre.
72. See Rodney Aist, “Adomnán, Arculf and the Source Material of De Locis Sanctis,” in Adomnán of
Iona: Theologian, Lawmaker, Peacemaker, ed. Jonathan M. Wooding et al. (Dublin: Four Courts
Press, 2010) [V. Hiberno-Latin and British Latin; XII.C. Church History and Hagiography, Ireland]
Allard, G.H., ed. Johannis Scoti Eriugenae. Periphyseon, 162–80.
73. Thomas O’Longhlin, “The Exegetical Purpose of Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis,” Cambridge
Medieval Celtic Studies 24 (Winter, 1992): 37–53.
74. See Rodney Aist’s discussion in “Adomnán, Arculf,” 162–180.
75. See Meehan, Arculfus, 119–120.
76. See John of Damascus’s classification of six types of images, in Contra Imaginum Calumniators
Orations Tres, Die Schriften Des Johannes Von Damaskos, vol.3, ed. B. Kotter (Berlin, 1975), 123–6.
On the increase of the cult of the Virgin see, Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence, 34.
At the Council of Ephesus (431), the title of Theotokos (‘Mother of God’) was officially
bestowed upon her, and this set in motion her autonomous and general veneration. See Ora
Limor, “Mary and the Jews: Story, Controversy and Testimony,” Historein 6 (2006): 55–71, 56.
77. Meehan, Arculfus, 112–3.
78. Such objects had begun to appear before the Iconoclastic controversy but after the death
of Justinian. See Averil Cameron, “The Language of Images: The Rise of Icons and Christian
Representation,” in The Church and the Arts, Studies in Church History 28, ed. D. Wood (Oxford,
1992), 1–42, 31.
79. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 75.
80. Meehan, Arculfus, 112; and Cameron, “The Language of Images,” 9. Leontios himself stated that
acts of worship of images, including kissing and embracing had become more common in
private houses at this time, as had the belief that these images could perform miraculous acts.
See Vincent Déroche, “L’Apologie Contre Les Juifs de Léontios de Néapolis,” Travaux et Mémoires
12 (1994): 45–104,74. See also Ernst Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 98 who contends that images
had been held in private dwellings for some time. It is interesting that David Woods has argued
that the use of a house (domus) in this story as well as in other stories in Adomnán’s travelogue
could well have been due to the bishop’s mistranslation of the Greek word for church. See David
Woods, “Arculf’s Luggage: The Sources for Adomnán’s De Locis Sanctis,” Ériu 52 (2002): 25–52,
37–8. Unfortunately this does not help us to locate the actual image mentioned in the tale.
22   K. ARON-BELLER

81. For example see the Gospel of John 12: 3, and the Gospel of Mark 16: 1. For a discussion of
such Marian qualities see Miri Rubin, Mother of God: A History of the Virgin Mary (New Haven,
CT: Yale University Press, 2009), 42, 64.
82. See Vera von Falkenhausen, “In Search of the Jews in Byzantine Literature,” in Jews in Byzantium:
Dialectics of Minority and Majority Cultures, ed. Robert Bonfil et al. (Leiden: Brill, 2012), 871–91,
888.
83. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law, 85.
84. http://www.tertullian.org/fathers/chrysostom_adversus_judaeos_01_homily1.htm (accessed
October 6, 2016).
85. See Ora Limor, “Mary and the Jews,” 64. These texts include the Talmud, the Midrash and the
Sefer Toledot Yeshu. The Talmud tells of Jesus being condemned to be tortured in hell in boiling
faeces. See Babylonian Talmud, Gittin 57a.
86. Hans Belting, Likeness and Presence, 107 and 139.
87. See Barber, Figure and Likeness, 41–2.
88. During the Second Iconoclasm, debates about terminology reached a highly sophisticated
level in the works of Nicephorus and Theodore the Studite.
89. Cameron, “Byzantines and Jews,” 269. Note also that among lists of approved quotations in the
second session on 26th September, was one of the council’s many false citations – the narratio of
John of Jerusalem (who represented the Eastern patriarchates). It claimed that the iconoclastic
heresy, which argued that a manufactured icon could not be truthful, had been initiated by a
Jewish advisor and magician from Tiberias, Tessarakontapêchys (meaning 40 cubits!). The Jew
had persuaded Yazīd Ibn Abd al-Malik (713–14) or Yazīd II an Umayyad caliph, who ruled from
720 until his death in 724, that if he destroyed all Christian images in Byzantium, he would
reign for an additional forty years. Yazīd had agreed and an edict was pronounced. However,
the caliph had died prematurely, the icons had been restored and Tessarakontapêchys was
eliminated as a fraud. Byzantine chroniclers reported that Emperor Leo III had failed to take
heed of Tessarakontapêchys’s false prophecy and instead initiated the iconoclastic controversy,
following the Jew’s ‘baneful doctrine’ of destroying images. See Ambrosios Giakalis, Images of
the Divine: The Theology of Icons at the Seventh Ecumenical Council (Brill: Leiden, 2005), 5–6. On
Theophanes see J.D. Mansi, Sacrorum conciliorum nova etamplissima collectio, Florence and
Venice 1759–98 reprinted Paris 1901 vol. 13, 197–200. On this decree see A.A. Vasiliev, “The
Iconoclastic Edict of the Caliph Yazid II, A.D. 721,” Dumbarton Oaks Papers 9/10 (1956): 23–47. The
intention of this narrative might well have been to convince Greeks living outside the frontier
under Arab rule that Jews, who lived in the homeland of Leo III, had played a fundamental role
in convincing the emperor to initiate the controversy. But it also forged another false tradition
that connected the controversy with the Jews’ practices of iconoclasm.
90. Giakalis, Images of the Divine 18, 48. Stories told of prized icons healing Constantine the Great
and others, punishing Christians, who had insulted them and the non-destructive qualities of
acheiropoietai.
91. Given the increase in attention paid to the Beirut image, the Byzantine government subsequently
ordered the ‘image’ transferred from the obscurity of Beirut to a proper home in Constantinople.
Chroniclers report that the image of Beirut itself was brought to Constantinople in 975 by
Emperor John Tsimiskes and placed in the chapel of the Chalkì of the Imperial Palace. Its passion
relics received official backing through the introduction of a new feast and the inclusion of
special liturgies. Even this is questionable. Leo the Deacon who records this does not call ‘Christ
of Beirut’ a portrait but a crucifix. See Christopher Walker “Iconographical Considerations,” in
The Letter of the Three Patriarchs, lx.
92. Unfortunately no philological edition of the Latin versions of the Beirut tale is available. I thank
Michele Bacci for confirming this for me. For the original text see Collectio- Sacrorum Conciliorum
Nova et Amplissima Collectio, a cura di G.D. Mansi, Florentiae-Venetiis 1759–1798; Patrologiae
Graecaevol XIII, 24–32; and Patrologiae Cursus Completes Omnium SS. Partum, Doctrorum,
Scriptorum que Ecclesiasticum sive Latinorum, sive Graecorum, ed. J.-P Migne (Turholti, Belgium,
1858), vol. XXVIII coll. 797–812, “Admonitio in Historiam Imaginis Berytensis.” See also A. Alexakis,
“Codex Parisinus Graecs 1115 And its Archetype Washington 1996,” Dumbarton Oaks Studies
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   23

34 (1980): 170–2. See also P.M. Chaîne, “Sermon sur la Pénitence Attribute a Saint Cyrille d’
Alexandrie: Textes Traduits et Annotés,” Melanges de la Faculté Orientale de Beyruth IV (1909):
493–511.
93. See Giakalis, Images of the Divine, 47.
94. See Michele Bacci, “Quel Bello Miracolo onde si fa la Festa Del Santo Salvatores’: Studio Sulla
Metamorfosi di Una Leggenda,” in Santa Croce e Santo Volto. Contributiallo Studio Dell’ Origine e
Della Fortuna del Culto del Salvatore (Secoli IX-XV), ed. G. Rossetti (Pisa: Gisem-ETS, 2002) [‘Piccola
Biblioteca Gisem’ 17], 1–86. His essay investigates the origins and development of the ‘Christ
of Beirut’ legend in texts and images from the eighth to the fifteenth century. Bacci shows
how the legend gathered round itself greater and greater symbolic value by surveying the
texts that related to it in chronological development. See also Michele Bacci, “The Berardenga
Antependium and the PassioYmaginis Office,” Journal of the Warburg and Courtauld Institutes
61 (1998): 1–16, 4.
95. Patrologiae Cursus. Col. 580.
96. Ibid., Col. 581. See also Michel Bacci, “The Berardenga,” 4.
97. Patrologiae Cursus, col. 581. See Bacci, “The Berardenga,” 5–6.
98. Scripture describes how Christ bled profusely during his scourging and on the cross. See the
Gospel of John, 19: 33–7. In addition, according to the fourth century Acts of Pontius Pilate
also known as the Gospel of Nicodemus, the Roman centurion was called Longinus. See The
Apocryphal New Testament, trans. M.R. James, 2nd ed. (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1953),
113, 155. The Patristic poet Venantius Fortunatus (c.530–609) noted this idea with the words
‘From the wound opened by a cruel lance poured forth water and blood, to cleanse us from
the stain of our sins.’ See A.S. Walpole, Early Latin Hymns (Cambridge: Cambridge University
Press, 1922), 174.
99. Patrologiae Cursus. col. 582–583.
100. See the Gospel of John, 3: 1–20. Bacci, “Quel bello,” 17–18, document 3. This Vatican document
described how the icon was passed from Nicodemus down through the generations until it
ended up in Beirut.
101.  See Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 113.
102.  Patrologiae Cursus, col. 585.
103.  See Ora Limor, “Christian Sacred Space,” 57–61. Gamaliel is also depicted as revealer of the
bones of St. Stephen, but at the point when he did, he was already a baptized Christian. Ibid.,
63. No scholar has of yet been able to directly associate the popular fourth-century legend of
the True Cross to later Byzantine tales of desecration. On the True Cross see Barbara Baert, A
Heritage of Holy Wood: The Legend of the True Cross in Text and Image (Brill: Leiden, 2004); and
Amnon Linder, “Jerusalem as a Focus of Confrontation Between Judaism and Christianity,” in
Vision and Conflict in the Holy Land, ed. Richard I. Cohen (New York: St. Martin’s Press, YadIzhak
Ben-Zvi, 1985), 1–22, 13. See also See also Thunø, Image and Relic, 14.
104.  As Limor in Ibid., 77, that the Jew ‘is the one who guards their secret, brings them to light
voluntarily or under coercion and confirms their sanctity … The Jew is the constitutor of
Christian identity.’
105.  In the tale the image is described as a full length image of Christ so that Jews were imagined
attacking the whole body depicted in the painting. Michele Bacci, argues that it is only later
texts which refer to Christ of Beirut interchangeably as an image, a painted board or after as
a crucifix. See Bacci, “The Berardenga Antependium,” 4; and Idem, “Quel Bello,” 43.
(Until this point, it was unclear that the full length painting of Christ necessarily depicted
him at the Passion.)
106.  Belting, Likeness and Presence, 35.
107.  Ibid., 76.
108.  Giakalis, Images of the Divine, 81 points how iconophiles argued that vision was a higher
sense than hearing, and how they labeled their opponents as being blind, since they could
not regard ‘that which is beheld and contemplated as light.’
109.  The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue (London: The Soncino Press, 1934), 291.
24   K. ARON-BELLER

110. Cameron, “Byzantines and Jews,” 257. On the topic of the forced baptism of Jews see also L.W.
Barnard, “The Jews and the Byzantine Iconoclastic Controversy,” 125–35, for various cases of
baptism by force carried out against the Jews in the Byzantine Empire including in 721–2 by
Emperor Leo III, and in 873–4 by Emperor Basil I.
111. Cameron, “Byzantines and Jews,” 257.
112. Carlos Espí Forcén, Recrucificando a Cristo: Los Judíos de La Passio Imaginis en la Isla de Mallorca
(Leonard Muntaner, Editor S.L: 2009), 47–9.
113. Giakalis, Images of the Divine, 39.
114. Patrologiae Cursus, col. 585. “Denique ampullas præcepit fierivitreas, in
quibusportionesmisitsingulas de sanguine et aqua, quæ de imagine Domini Salvatoris nostril
decurrerunt: quasetiam per Asiam, Africam, Europam …” Bacci, “Quel Bello,” 55–6, 58. See
documents 6, 7, 8, 10.
115. Patrologiae Cursus, col. 585.
116. See M. Vassilaki, “Bleeding Icons”, in Icon and the Word: The Power of Images in Byzantium,
ed. A. Eastmond and L. James (Surrey: Ashgate, 2003), 121–9; Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,”
106, 142–3; Kenneth Parry, Depicting the Word, 8, 24–5, 181 and also Vladamir Baranov, “The
Doctrine of the Icon-Eucharist for the Byzantine Iconoclasts,” Studia Patristica XLIV (2010):
41–6; and Milton V.Anastos, “The Argument for Iconoclasm as Presented by the Iconoclastic
Council of 754,” in Late Classical and Medieval Studies in Honor of Albert Matthias Friend Jr., ed.
K. Weitzmann (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1955), 177–88.
117. See Griffith, “Theodore AbūQurrah’s Arabic Tract.” Sadly, this Syriac tale has no provenance
and one cannot identify the exact period in which its narrative arose. For the tale see Ernest A.
Wallis Budge, ed., The History of the Blessed Virgin Mary and the History of the Likeness of Christ
Which the Jews of Tiberius Made to Mock at: The Syriac Texts Edited with English Translations.
Luzac’s Semitic Text and Translation Series 4–5 (London: Luzac and Co.), 1899. This manuscript
was copied down in Iraq in 1892 from an original document of an unspecified date. The tale
is actually listed under ‘The History of the Likeness of Christ, which the Jews of Tiberius made
to mock at in the days of Emperor Zeno.’ Zeno was a Byzantine Emperor in the years 474 to
475 and again from 476 to 491. Budge’s version seems to be a much later one, written by one
Philotheus (probably fourteenth century) ‘deacon of the Country of the East.’ See also William
H. Worrell (ed.), The Coptic Manuscripts in the Freer Collection (New York: Macmillan, 1923). In
“A Homily on the Virgin by Theophilus Archbishop of Alexandria,” 369–74. Archbishop from
385–412.
118. According to the tale, the Jews of Tiberias had deceived a Christian painter into believing
that they were genuine worshippers of Christ. They commissioned him to paint an image
that would ‘multiply’ Christ’s praise among men. The converts in our story had to struggle
with and deceive the Jews in order to have access to the image. Could the Jews in fact be
Jewish Christians as Simon C. Mimouni’s suggests in his article “Pour une Définition Nouvelle
du Judéo-Christianisme Ancien,” New Testament Studies 38 (1992): 161–86. According to Rivka
Fishman-Duker, this is a typical feature in Byzantine chronicles whereby potential converts
are portrayed as saintly even before their conversion. See Fishman-Duker, “Images of Jews in
Byzantine Chronicles,” Jews in Byzantium (2012): 777–98, 793.
119. Ibid., 200.
120. Bacci, “Quel Bello,” 10. See also Mahboub-Agapio di Menbidj, Kitab Al-Unvan2, 2 ed. A. Vasiliev,
Turnholt 1971 (Patrologia Orientalis VIII/3) 408 who reports: ‘In the same period in Alessandria
were many Jewish inhabitants. One fine day, many of these were baptized, shortly after they
took a statue, crucified and said, This is the Messiah! …’
121. The end result was also the foundation of several monasteries in Syria. See Ibid. Among the
various readaptations of this tale, there is an interesting Coptic version, written as a sermon,
falsely attributing it to Theophilus, bishop of Alexandria. See Norman Russell, Theophilus of
Alexandria (London: Routledge 2007), 46. The influence of Christ of Beirut on this sermon is
clear. See also Kitzinger, “Cult of Images,” 101 n. 59.
122. The Letter, xiii.
123. Brubaker and Haldon, Byzantium, 277.
 JEWISH CULTURE AND HISTORY   25

124. See Belting, Likeness and Presence, 185, 192.

125. Corrigan, Visual Polemics, 102.
126. The Letter. For Constantine the Great see 18 (5a); Pope Gregory II 48 (7.14a); an Arab who
had caused a mosaic icon of Christ to continually bleed see 40 (7.7); Persians 42 (7.8.a); and
Christian desecrators 44 (7.9), (7.10) and (7.11).
127. Ibid. (9.d).
128. Elsner, “Iconoclasm as Discourse,” 382.
129. See note 134.
130. The Letter (7.2).
131. Bacci, “Quel Bello,” 15–16. Bacci shows how the texts of the icon at Beirut and the icon at
Constantinople were often read together in church services, propagating some confusion
between the stories. See ibid document 22 page 65.
132. See Walker, “Iconographical Considerations,” in The Letter, lx.
133. See Sansterre, “L’image Blessée”, who argues that this Greek legend inspired the story according
to the Greek Orthodox Church about the meeting between the Samaritan Woman and Jesus
at the well. See the Gospel of John 4: 4–26.
134. The Letter, 46 (7.13).
135. On the position of Jews between 641 and 1204 see Robert Bonfil, “Continuity and Discontinuity
(641–1204),” Jews in Byzantium, 65–101.
136. The Letter, 10–11 (2b).
137. Ibid., 36–9 (7.4). The story of Lydda is possibly derived from Acts 9: 32 where Peter had gone
to preach to the people. See Ibid., 150 (4b). The same story appears in a shortened form of
The Letter, the ‘Letter to Emperor Theophilus on the Holy and Venerated Icons,’ in the same
volume, attributed erroneously to the Syrian priest John Damascene (675/6-749).
138. Fishman-Duker points out in “Images of Jews,” 782–3 that Byzantine chronicles are not
fastidious about the terms ‘Jews’ and ‘Hebrews’ and use these terms interchangeably.
139. The Letter, 36 (7: 3).
140. Other well-known acheiropoieta include the image of Christ’s face impressed on Veronica’s
veil, and an image painted by Luke of Mary in Rome. See Averil Cameron, “The History of the
Image of Edessa: The Telling of a Story,” Harvard Ukrainian Studies 7 (1983): 80–94.
141. Belting, Likeness and Presence, 190.
142. See The Letter, 38–41 (7.6).
143. Moreover, in two tales, it is the Christian desecrators representing Christian iconoclasts, who
are placed at the mercy of Mary’s cruel destruction for their abusive actions against the images.
See Ibid., 44 (7.9) and (7.10).
144. Jewish iconoclasm is again found in the writings of the tenth century Christian chronicler
Yahya ibn Sa’ib (Eutychius). He reported that in 937 Jews, together with Muslims, destroyed St.
Mary’s Church in Ashkelon and thirty years later badly damaged three of Jerusalem’s churches
during anti-Christian riots during which Patriarch John VII was murdered. See Shelomo
Dov Goitein, Palestinian Jewry in Early Islamic and Crusader Times (in Hebrew), ed. J. Hacker
(Jerusalem: Magnes Press, 1980), 17.Christian histories and apologists who wrote in Arabic,
such as Theodore AbūQurrah, Agapius of Manbig, Eutychius of Alexandria, and Severus ibn al-
Muqafa in the tenth century, recorded numerous instances of clashes among Jews, Christians
and Muslims, often instigated by some alleged abuses of crosses or icons at the hands of Jews.
145. Bacci, “Quel Bello,” 14–15, 24–5, 39. As Bacci points out, from the tenth and eleventh centuries,
the sermon of the pseudo-Athanasius read out at Nicaea which reported the tale of Christ
of Beirut was included in the homiletic collections, theological and exegetical texts from the
tenth century. It was incorporated into lectionaries and passionals of the Benedictine abbeys
and canonical colleges of the great cathedrals.
146. See my article “Fictitious Tales, Narrative Transformations and Legal Proceedings: Image
Desecration Accusations Against Jews in 12th–13th Century England and France,” Antisemitism
Studies Journal I (Spring, 2017): 38–81.
26   K. ARON-BELLER

Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor
Katherine Aron-Beller is a lecturer in Jewish History at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem and at Tel
Aviv University. Her publications include Jews on Trial: The Papal Inquisition in Modena, 1598–1638 and
The Roman Inquisition: Centre Versus Peripheries (forthcoming), which she co-edited with Christopher
Black. She is currently writing a book on the medieval accusation that Jews desecrate Christian images.
She is also co-editor of H-Judaic.