Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories (review)

Book Reviews 143 work very effectively in terms of garnering votes for parliamentary seats. Few, if any, overtly antisemitic candidates have been elected to the Sejm in the last few elections. The final chapter, "Toward Reconciliation," dealing with positive developments is a welcome conclusion to the volume. It is somewhat sketchy in its presentation, but that is due in part to the limited space available. Any teacher using the volume should try to expand upon the survey that Cohn-Sherbok presents in this chapter. Overall, this is a worthwhile educational resource. While it needs to be supplemented and even corrected in some areas, particularly chapters two and sixteen, it stands as a useful, very readable, presentation ofChristianity's antisemitic legacy that needs to be better known and not tom out of Christian history books, as Fr. Edward Flannery has so aptly put it. John T. Pawlikowski, Ph.D. Catholic Theological Union, Chicago Devils, Women, and Jews: Reflections of the Other in Medieval Sermon Stories, by Joan Young Gregg. SUNY Series in Medieval Studies, Paul Szarmach, editor. Albany: State University ofNew York Press, 1997. 286 pp. $20.95. In this clever, lucid, and forcefully written work Joan Young Gregg examines medieval sermon narratives for their depiction of what she terms the "unholy trinity"-devils, women, and Jews. According to Young Gregg, the medieval sermon exempla, particularly after the Fourth Lateran Council in 1214, became key instruments in the revitalization of preaching and the tightening grip of medieval clerical authority. But medieval sermons were more than mere theological exercises; they were grounded in contemporary reality, "depicted realistic figures in ordinary situations," and afford a significant portal for understanding the interchange between scholarly and popular theology and the subsequent crafting ofthe medieval mind. For Young Gregg medieval sermons had the capacity to mirror as well as shape the cultural world of their audiences. Young Gregg traces the development and formalization of medieval exempla, focusing primarily on the substantial number of sermons that found their way into thirteenth-century collections. Although she recognizes that the medieval church was never able to exercise complete hegemony, she argues that "through the revitalization ofpreaching, the church was largely successful in its efforts to bring all segments of society into closer conformity with desired social and religious practices" (p. 16). For Young Gregg it seems natural and inevitable that the church would project derogatory characterizations onto groups ofOthers, particularly those that in some way challenged the position of male clerical authority in a period of significant religious crisis. 144 SHOFAR Fall 1998 Vol. 17, No.1 The book is divided into four major sections: an introduction and one section each on representations of devils, women, and Jews in medieval sermon stories. For each of the sections Young Gregg introduces the subject in roughly 40 pages and then offers translations of numerous exempla dealing with the subject of the section. Holding the sections together is her notion that devils, women, and Jews were cast as an Other that was simultaneously familiar to medieval culture and a challenge to clerical authority. Indeed it was the possibility of overcoming the evil each of these groups represented that made them useful as part of the penitential process itself. As Young Gregg deftly notes: Within each ofthese seemingly polarized categories, however, there was a contiguousness as weB as a separation; perhaps they might be viewed as obverse sides rather than opposites of each other. Devils both possessed angelic power and were wicked beyond redemption; women might be either dangerous temptresses or imitations ofthe Virgin Mary; Jews might be both forerunners of Christianity and its archenemy. But the ultimate paradox which resolved all others was that evil was necessary so that man might choose good and be found worthy of salvation on the day of Judgment. (p. 18) According to Young Gregg, devils, women, and Jews were cast as destabilizers of a Christian equilibrium that was being consciously forged in the thirteenth century. One common theme in the characterization ofthese groups revolves around sexuality, which, of course, is not surprising since Young Gregg describes a masculine clerical perspective of the sermons and so ofthe culture that they helped produce and form. All three groups...