Christian Imperialism and Antisemitic Violence inTitus and Vespasian

Abstract

This paper examines the understudied Middle English Titus and Vespasian, a fall-of- Jerusalem narrative that fictionalizes the historical Roman occupation and siege of the city circa 70 CE. While the poem follows roughly the same narrative trajectory as the more widely read Siege of Jerusalem, it fictionalizes these events at three times the length, incorporating considerably more episodes of anthropophagy, graphic suffering, and gruesome violence. I argue that Titus and Vespasian amplifies the antisemitic violence of poems such as Siege in order to validate such action as appropriate and proper Christian behavior. By presenting violence against Jewish bodies as a crucial element of the Roman emperor Vespasian’s conversion process, the poem constructs a notion of Christian orthodoxy that fuses violence and imperial power to Christian piety. Thus, Titus and Vespasian champions discourses of Christian imperialism that circulated throughout later medieval England, narratives that foster more circumspect but no less insidious antisemitic theologies into the present.