These Things I Will Remember: The Troyes Martyrdom and Collective Memory

In 1288, thirteen Jews were martyred in Troyes in the county of Champagne. Two elegies about the event—one in Hebrew, one in Old French—are attributed to Jacob bar Judah of Lorraine. In this essay, I present evidence that Jacob leaned on both the Song of Roland and the Legend of the Ten Martyrs in his constructions of the martyrdom so as to establish frameworks for memorializing and understanding the tragedy. French and Jewish influences are woven together in both elegies, just as they were in medieval French Jewish life.