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Almost sixty years ago, the role of the Jews in the Croxton Play of the Sacrament came into question as Cecilia Cutts suggested a metaphorical reading of the play's textual characterization;1 she argued that the Croxton Jews, in rejecting Christianity, were portrayed in such a way as to represent a different group which deliberately excluded itself from orthodox Christianity—that is, the Lollards.2 Alternatively, Steven Kruger has suggested that the Croxton Jews are representative of the specifically Jewish body, and his reassessment links corruptions of the Jewish body to Christian bodily miracles.3 In interrogating the role of Jewish identity, Elisa Narin van Court has posited a paradoxical "Jewish presence" in medieval English narratives as literary, theological, and visual representations of Jews continued long after their expulsion from England in 1290.4 Likewise, Sheila Delany has shown that the Jews continued to influence English writers with their "absent presence."5 Critics reading the late-fourteenth-century poem The Siege of Jerusalem vary similarly in their assessment of Jewish identity.6 While Mary Hamel has suggested that the Jews portrayed in the Siege represent a homogenized group of Jews, Saracens, and heretics,7 Ralph Hanna III and Narin van Court have argued that the Jews portrayed in the Siege occupy a position particular to medieval Jewish people. Setting the Siege in its textual environment of Yorkshire, Hanna suggests a Lancastrian reception of it wherein the Jews represent those killed in the Yorkshire massacre in 1190.8 In light of her research on Augustinian historians, Narin van Court argues for parallels between first-century and medieval Jews, explaining that the Jew qua Jew must be considered when reading the Siege.9 In these critiques of the Siege, two strands of thought regarding Jewish identity emerge: that of the literal, historical reading suggested by Hanna and Narin van Court, and that of the nonliteral, typological reading put forward by Hamel and others. [End Page 70] The work of these scholars has done much to address the role of the Jews in the text. Curiously, however, comparatively little has been done to explore the role of the Romans, who are characterized in variable ways. My approach here will build upon the model provided by Suzanne Conklin Akbari, who argues that Jewish identity in the poetic Siege of Jerusalem is variable, designating both in bono Christian identity and in malo Muslim identity.10 When one examines the behavior of the Romans against the ideas of medieval Christian exegetes, one finds that they are depicted as depraved persecutors of the faithful and as victorious warriors for Christ. While the Siege fits loosely within the genre of crusade literature, as Hamel has shown, the work becomes much more than a crusading poem when one acknowledges the portrayal of the Jews from the Augustinian tradition together with the depiction of the Romans from the exegetical tradition. In investigating the historical siege's background in both traditions, I will examine the writings of Joachim of Fiore, Ralph of Coggeshall, and Ranulf Higden, in order to show how, in England, the dual idea of Rome—both as city and as personification of the Church—was shifting in its cultural valence. Medieval exegetical interpretation of the historical siege of Jerusalem shows that biblical exegesis of the event influenced the reception of the poem and inspired medieval commentary on the moral state of western Christendom. Although literal and typological interpretations of the Romans of the poetic siege place them in the role of Christians who do battle for their faith, the exegetical applications demonstrate that the Romans also occupied an antagonistic role: that of the Antichrist. As medieval exegetes sought to place the historical siege within the context of biblical historiography and prophecy, they relied on the writings of Josephus, which comprised the central source...
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