Abstract:

Mark Twain wrote in Life on the Mississippi, “Then comes Sir Walter Scott with his enchantments…with decayed and swinish forms of religion. He did measureless harm; more real and lasting harm, perhaps, than any other individual that ever wrote.” To craft his fictionalized middle-ages in Ivanhoe, Walter Scott created a pseudo-medieval Christianity not as its own religion but as an antithesis to Judaism. Scott’s Jews mimic’s the same fictionalized Jews used by Christian hermeneutists in dialogues since Late Antiquity. Despite Twain’s harsh criticism of Scott’s literary religion, this paper argues that Scott’s fictionalized Christianity, acting as antithesis to Judaism—with all its harsh treatments of Jews and Jewishness—is perhaps the most accurate representation of the Middle Ages in the whole of Ivanhoe. Scholars have applauded Scott’s creation of Rebecca as a nineteenth century subversion of Judaism (or as a “character that troubles traditional opposition and identification” (Lewin 178)). However, Rebecca’s exile at the end of Ivanhoe proves that Scott’s Middle Ages is no place for Jews, even the ones that Scott characterizes as the good ones. Scott had a novice understanding of the Middle Ages and its religion and romances. However, his creation of a medieval Christian England that fictionalizes Jews and Jewishness is eerily accurate.

Conference Presentation:

Despite Sir Walter Scott’s designation of Ivanhoe (1819) as a Romance, Scott was evidently concerned with the historical accuracy of his novel. Scott’s introduction, footnotes, and endnotes are filled with references and citations to historians and their histories. Scott even thanks several historians for their information in his introduction to Ivanhoe, and he lists Sharon Turner as his greatest source of historical information (16-7). However, Scott’s novel features two prominent Jewish characters, and Turner rarely wrote about Jews in medieval England in his histories. This raises the question: where did Scott obtain his information about Jews to create his two Jewish characters?

After Scott’s death, his son-in-law, J. G. Lockhart, edited a catalogue of Scott’s library for Oxford’s English Faculty Library titled the Catalogue of the Library at Abbotsford (1838). The catalog is nearly five-hundred pages long, and each page contains dozens of books, articles, and manuscripts that influenced all of Scott’s work. Considering Scott was concerned with English history and religion, his library features six sections on the history of England (not including Irish and Scottish history), two on Old English works, two on Theology, and a section on Chivalry and Romance among another fifty separate sections. In the introduction to Scott’s library catalog, the editor promises that “the reader has before him a faithful inventory of the materials with which the National Poet and Novelist had stored in his mind before he began his public career” (iv).

Scott’s library contains two historical texts from Sharon Turner, Scott’s most influential historian: The History of the Anglo-Saxons (1799-1805) and History of England (1814-1829). The timeline of The History of the Anglo-Saxons, despite being problematic for its vision of the “Anglo-Saxon past as a romantic narrative that anticipates an English future,” ends at the Norman Conquest, and because Jewish communities did not exist in England prior to the Norman occupation, The History of Anglo-Saxons does not feature any insights into Jews or Judaism that might have influenced Scott (Ellard 216). Similarly, Turner does not include very much about Jews or Judaism in History of England, and in his longest section dedicated to Jews, he writes:

Coming into [England] from Rouen, under William the Conqueror, the Jews remained here two centuries, until they were expelled by Edward I in 1290. They were favored by Henry II more than the prejudices that many thought right …Their great wealth in England, occasioned them to be perpetually attacked and persecuted…They abhorred the language and literature of their Roman destroyers…from the still greater stimulus of their international hatred of those who had driven them from their beloved and sacred land. (386-7)

Despite Turner’s very short description of the persecution of Jews in England due to their wealth, a fact that Scott reiterates throughout Ivanhoe, Turner barely writes about Jews, and Turner’s brief description of Jews in England still does not explain Scott’s characterization of his Jewish characters. Moreover, Turner was only part way through publishing all twelve volumes of his History of England during the publication of Ivanhoe in 1819.

Within a Theology section of Scott’s library there is a book by John Peter Stehelin titled The Traditions of the Jews (1748). Stehelin’s book is a compilation of several texts—mainly Judaism Unmasked (1711-1714)—written by the “notorious [German] Jew-hater” Johann Andreas Eisenmenger (Rose 8). Stehelin translated Eisenmenger’s texts from German to English forty years after their original publication. Eisenmenger’s original texts come from a uniquely German lineage of Christian anti-Judaism created by Martin Luther in the sixteenth century. Luther published his anti-Judaic treatise On the Jews and Their Lies in 1543 where he specifically attacked Jews and Judaism for their alleged wrongs against both Germany and Christianity. Luther adopted a “hermeneutical” Jew, a tradition that dates to the earliest Christian theologians, to cast fictional Jews and Judaism as the antithesis or opposition to Christianity and nation. As Jeremy Cohen writes, “Christian theology and exegesis created a Jew of their own” (Living Letters 2). Despite the hermeneutical Jew being a fictional or imaginary creation, the purpose of the hermeneutical Jew is to personify actual Jews and Judaism for readers. Eisenmenger “cleverly mixed the different emotional elements of the Lutheran approach into a form that would appeal not only to devout Christians, but also to the…secular public that was now growing” (Rose 8). In other words, as is the purpose of hermeneutics—both Christian and secular—Eisenmenger updated his lineage interpretation to appeal to his contemporary audience just as Luther did with medieval texts for his sixteenth century audience. Stehelin’s translation—as is the case with theological translations—hermeneutically advances Eisenmenger’s original German text for an English-speaking audience. Stehelin’s translation does not appeal to a specific country, but he still maintains Eisenmenger’s anti-Judaic description of Judaism. Stehelin writes that his translation is meant to expose “Fables and Absurdities and ridiculous Quotations” in the Talmud (15). Despite the fact Stehelin addresses Jews in his introduction by writing, “People, whom God formerly had chosen for his inheritance, but whom He has rejected and dispersed throughout the world for their unbelief,” the purpose of his translation is to entertain his Christian and secular readers by amassing “quotations from the Talmud and other Hebrew sources [that show] how the Jewish religion was barbarous, superstitious, and even murderous” (Stehelin 61; Rose 8). Stehelin even writes, “We shall now entertain our Reader with some Accounts from Rabbinical writings…” (298). Much like Scott’s Ivanhoe, Stehelin claims to create his hermeneutical Jew from history for the purpose of entertaining his readers.

Like Stehelin, Scott was not a theologian or Christian interpreter, but he creates two hermeneutical Jews in Ivanhoe as the direct opposition to a unified Christian England for the purpose of entertaining his readers under the guise of a historically accurate romance. For example, Scott places all the physiological stereotypes of Jewish women in the nineteenth century on his hermeneutical Jew, Rebecca, who acts as the Jewish counterpart to Ivanhoe’s future Saxon wife Rowena. Similarly, Rachel Shulkins argues in “Immodest Otherness” that “the disparity between sexy Jewess and plain Christian beauty is clearly an extension to Sir Walter Scott’s female heroines in Ivanhoe” (111). To illustrate, Scott describes Rebecca at her introduction at the tournament:

[Rebecca’s] form was exquisitely symmetrical, and was shown to advantage by sort of Eastern dress, which she wore according to the fashion of the females of her nation. Her turban of yellow silk suited well with the darkness of her complexion. The brilliancy of her eyes, the superb arch of her eyebrows, her well-formed aquiline nose, her teeth as white as pearl, and the profusion of her sable tresses…fell down upon [her] lovely neck and bosom…The feather of an ostrich, fastened in her turban…was another distinction of the beautiful Jewess. (93-4)

Rebeccas’s eroticism is based on her particular Jewish appearance: her dark skin, black eyes, dark hair (that is described by outlaws later (362)), and her aquiline nose. “The character of the sexy Jewess,” according to Shulkins, “was conceived to reinforce the notion that Jews are a corrupt race” (2). Moreover, Rebecca is not only corrupt, but she can corrupt others through her eroticism. Prince John sees her at the tournament and immediately knows that she is Jewish, and he exclaims to Issac, her father, “yonder Jewess must be the very model of that perfection, whose charms drove frantic the wisest king ever that lived…” (94). Prince John is immediately corrupted by Rebecca causing him to violate both Norman and Saxon norm by asking Rebecca to sit near him, and the Christian Prior must stop John—and by extension Rebecca—from destroying Christian England by saying, “a Jewess!—We should deserve to be stoned…I swear by my patron saint, that she is far inferior to the lovely Saxon, Rowena” (99). Despite saying that John deserves to be stoned for his corruption, John continues, and it is only when John realizes the seriousness of his corruption that Scott writes, “from the tone in which this was spoken, John saw the necessity of acquiescence” (100). In other words, Prince John needs to be broken free of Rebecca’s corruptive Jewish eroticism by a man of high Christian status.

However, later in the novel, Rebecca’s Jewish eroticism infects the Templar, Brian de Bois-Guilbert, and he rejects his Templar duties simply because he sees Rebecca. At Rebecca’s trial for her corruption of the Templar, the Grand Master suggests that the Brian was corrupted “by means of charms and spells” (406), and he levies the charges of “sorcery” and “seduction” at Rebecca (419). “Several Witnesses,” Scott writes, “were called upon to prove…Bois-Guilbert exposed himself…to save Rebecca from the blazing castle, and his neglect of his personal defence in attending to her safety” (406). Brian was willing to risk his life for a Jew, and because he rejects his Templar duty—and his status as a Templar is his entire identity (55)—he is at first metaphorically killed by Rebecca’s corruption. However, when Rebecca is asked by the Grand Master to remove her veil in front of the court, “her exceeding beauty excited a murmur of surprise” amongst the other Templars, and Scott writes, that the knights “told each other with their eyes…that Brian…was in the power of her real charms” (411). The Templars only had to view Rebecca for a single glance to understand the corruption that drove Brian to disregard his Templar Christianness to save a Jewish woman.

At the end of the novel, Ivanhoe attempts to rescue Rebecca from Brian and the Templar stronghold where the trial is taking place. Ivanhoe challenges Bois-Guilbert to a duel for Rebecca, and the Templar defeats him. However, when Brian dismounts his horse to claim his victory, he is literally killed by Rebecca’s corruption. Scott writes, “The flush passed from [Brian’s] brow, and gave way to the pallid hue of death. Unscathed by the lance of [Ivanhoe], he had died a victim of his own contending passions” (490). Bois-Guilbert, unable to be both a Templar and corrupted by Rebecca’s Jewish beauty, dies, and because her corruption is disruptive at even a mere glance, her ability to destroy nations is the sole reason she cannot marry Ivanhoe at the end of the novel.

Prior to meeting Rebecca, Brian meets Rowena, Rebecca’s Saxon counterpart, and Scott’s description or Rowena serves as the greatest contrast between the two characters:

Formed by the best proportions of her sex, Rowena was tall in stature, yet not so much as to attract observation…Her complexion was exquisitely fair, but the noble cast of her head and features prevented the insipidity which sometimes attaches to fair beauties. Her clear blue eye…seemed capable to kindle as well as melt, to command as well as to beseech…Her profuse hair, of a colour betwixt brown and flaxen…Her dress was an under-gown and kirtle of pale sea-green silk…having very wide sleeves, which came down, however, very little below the elbow. (59-60)

Rowena is relatively plain. She’s tall but not too tall, and she’s pretty but not too pretty. She has darkish blond hair, and nothing draws attention to her bosom. She has blue eyes that do not have the power to corrupt like Rebecca’s black eyes, instead Rowena’s eyes can command and implore; she is, according to Scott, a leader fit for a Christian England. She is, in nearly every physical way, the exact opposite of Rebecca. Brian meets Rowena prior to meeting Rebecca, and he finds her appearance acceptable. Scott writes that Brian “kept his eyes Riveted on [Rowena], more striking perhaps to his imagination” (59). Since he is not corrupted by the mere appearance of Rowena, he has a conversation with her and attempts to court her—though he is unsuccessful. Moreover, there is no reason Rowena would interfere with his duty as a Templar; he can be a Templar, Norman, and still attempt courting Rowena. The purpose of Scott’s hermeneutical Jew is to act as opposition to Rowena, even if Rowena is more of a Christian ideal than a character of an actual woman. Rebecca corrupts through her Jewishness while Rowena inspires through Englishness.

Still, Rebecca is mentioned nearly three hundred times in Ivanhoe while Rowena is mentioned only half as many times, and, despite Scott’s characterization of Rebecca, readers and critics questioned Scott’s decision to have Ivanhoe marry Rowena instead of Rebecca. Scott was impacted by these criticisms and writes in his 1830 edition of Ivanhoe, “The character of the fair Jewess found so much favour in the eyes of some fair readers, that the writer was censured” (12). Scott addresses this criticism by writing:

It is a dangerous and fatal doctrine to teach young persons…that rectitude of conduct and principle are…adequately rewarded by, the gratification of our passions, or attainment of our wishes. In a word, if a virtuous and self-denied character is dismissed with temporal wealth, greatness, rank, or the indulgence of such a rashly formed or ill-sorted passion as that of Rebecca for Ivanhoe, the reader will be apt to say, very Virtue has had its reward. (12)

In other words, writes Scott, Rebecca’s love for Ivanhoe was immoral, and if Ivanhoe married Rebecca, then he would have taught “young persons” to reward “ill-sorted passions.” However, outside of Scott and his characters’ sexualization of Rebecca, she displays no exterior passions. Given that the goal of the novel is the formation of a British Christian national identity, perhaps it is the “rashly formed” and “ill-sorted passion” of a Jew that Scott believes should not be rewarded. The most obvious purpose of this introductory addition is to reinforce the purpose of his hermeneutical Jew; a purpose that has gone over some of his readers’ heads. The differences between Normans, the invader, and Saxons, the indigenous, is reconcilable. However, Rebecca and her father Isaac need to leave England so that a unified Christian English nation can be reconciled under Ivanhoe and Rowena.

If Rebecca’s “rashly formed” and “ill-sorted passion” were not enough to dissuade readers from their critique of Ivanhoe’s marriage to Rowena instead of Rebecca, Scott gives a historical reasoning: “the prejudices of the age rendered such a union almost impossible” (12). Scott’s historizing of Ivanhoe reveals the primary problem with Scott’s hermeneutical Jew: Scott claims that Ivanhoe is based on an accurate historical depiction of Jews just as Stehelin’s anti-Judaic translation does. Even the smallest details, Scott claims, are based on actual history. For example, in a relatively meaningless moment, Scott writes, “Oswald…place the best mead, the mightiest ale, the richest morat, the most sparkling cider…upon the board” (51). The sentence contains a direction to an endnote where Scott writes, “These were drinks used by Saxons, as we are informed by Mr. Turner: Morat was made of honey flavored with the juice of mulberries” (506). If Scott is concerned with the accuracy of twelfth century liquor, then we, the reader, are to assume that Scott would share the same concern with every detail of his novel, especially concerning details surrounding his primary characters. However, Scott is rarely as apt to give any historical accuracy to his hermeneutical Jews.

Scott describes Rebecca as wearing an “Eastern dress” and a “turban of yellow silk,” but Rebecca would have worn the same outfit as Rowena in the twelfth century. Two of Scott’s books write about Jews wearing hats as a marker of their Jewishness: Robert Henry’s The History of Great Britain (1805) and Joseph Strutt’s Complete View of the Manners, Customs, Arms, and Habits of the Inhabitants on England (1775-6). Both writers cite Charles Du Cange’s Glossarium mediae et infimae Latinitatis (Glossary of Middle and Low Latin) (1772-1784) as the source for their information. However, Charles Du Cange writes that only Jews in Poland wore hats as a sign of their Judaism, “Quo signo apud Polonos distinguebantur Judaei…Judaei signa, hoc est, bireta aut capellos, seu aliud capitis tegmentum coloris glauci, alias Zolte” (“By what sign were the Jews distinguished from the Poles…Jewish signs, that is, berets or caps, or some other head covering of a gray color, also knows as a Zolte”; my trans. 435). As Ivanhoe editor Graham Tulloch notes, Medieval Jews dressed like Christians, and “at the fourth Lateran Council of 1215 it was decreed that both Jews and Saracens were to wear distinctive clothing…In England in 1218 all Jews were ordered to wear a white cloth badge with a representation of the [Ten Commandments]” (428). Even after Jews were required to wear the cloth badge of 1218, Jews still, for the most part, dressed exactly like their English counterparts; the only difference between them being a small cloth badge. Scott’s description of Rebecca’s outfit has more in common with Lord Byron’s famous 1813 portrait—where Byron is wearing his favorite yellow and red Armenian outfit—than it does with a Jewish woman’s garb in 1194. The purpose of Scott’s description of Rebecca’s outfit is not to give an accurate portrayal of Jewish women in the twelfth century, instead it is to create a hermeneutical Jew that is completely unrecognizable and incomparable to her English counterpart.

Ivanhoe’s Rebecca, however, has been long speculated to be based on an actual Jewish-American woman named Rebecca Gratz (Lewin 178). Though Scott never confirmed Rebecca was based on Gratz, Gratz certainly enjoyed the idea that she shared Rebecca’s name. Shortly after the release of Ivanhoe (4 Apr. 1820), Rebecca wrote her sister-in-law, “Have you received Ivanhoe? When you read it tell me what you think of my namesake Rebecca” (qtd. in Philipson 20). Later, in a separate letter (10 May 1820), Gratz writes to her sister-in-law again, “I am glad you admire Rebecca for she is such a representative of a good girl as I think human nature can reach- Ivanhoe’s insensibility to her, you must recollect, may be accounted to his previous attachment -his prejudice was a characteristic of the age he lived in” (qtd. in Philipson 20). Most interestingly, like Scott, Gratz is quite satisfied with the idea that Rebecca, a Jewish woman, could not marry Ivanhoe, a Christian man, because it would be historically implausible. Moreover, contemporaneous accounts of Gratz described her as Scott describes Rebecca. For example, Hannah London in a book about early American portraits of Jews (1927) writes, “I noted [Gratz’s] soft, dark brown eyes, her olive complexion and brown curly hair” (qtd. in Lewin 191-2). Similarly, John Sartain writes in his memoirs (1899), “Her [Gratz’s] eyes struck me as piercingly dark” (qtd. in Lewin 192). Though Gratz and Rebecca seem to be strikingly similar, there is no historical evidence that Scott was aware of Gratz, and their shared namesake is likely based on the Rebecca of the Hebrew Bible, the wife of Isaac and mother of Jacob. According to Scott’s son-in-law, when presented with the question if Rebecca is based on an actual a woman, he reported, “the introduction of the Jewish scenes is stated to be due to the conversation of Scott’s friend James Skene, who had lived in Germany, from 1802 to 1814, and had there observed Jews, with their special costume, in their ghettoes” (qtd. in Jacobs 54). Given the description of Gratz and her own interpretation of the Rebecca and Ivanhoe relationship, Scott’s description of Rebecca seems based on nineteenth century stereotypes of Jewish women—that is, at least, partially due to the misrepresentation of Jews in English history.

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