Supersessionist Time and the Turn of Synagoga in the Northern Homily Cycle and Rawlinson Versions of the Theophilus Legend

This article explores three understudied Middle English versions of the popular anti-Judaic Marian miracle tale of Theophilus. I demonstrate how these versions of Theophilus draw upon widely known medieval imagery of Ecclesia and Synagoga to depict Theophilus's journey as one of soteriological regression. A comparative analysis of the two related Northern Homily Cycle versions of Theophilus demonstrates how Synagoga is evoked in the portrayal of Theophilus's despair, which is shown to be a supersessionist issue in his misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit and Trinitarian theology. These two versions then depict Theophilus engaging with Davidic lineage in relation to Marian power, the manner of which unsettles the Christian supersessionist project of the texts and, I argue, earns him physical retribution. I show how these insecurities are resolved in the later Rawlinson version of Theophilus with an invocation of Synagoga in her "return" to Christianity, taken from eschatological readings of Song of Songs 6:13.

The story of Theophilus was a vastly popular legend in medieval England: as well as appearing in miracle collections and sermons, it was illustrated in books of hours, carvings, and stained glass windows.¹ In the eleventh century, the story was referenced in the sequence of the Office of the Virgin as "Theophilum reformans gratiae" (Theophilus transformed through grace) and was placed alongside depictions of Isaiah in twelfth-century church carvings.² Initially appearing in sixth-century Greece and transmitted to the Latin West by Paul the Deacon in the ninth century, the legend became well known in Old and Middle English and the Latin liturgy, with a particular prominence in England as a center for the early development of Marian devotion and writing.³ In most versions of the tale, Theophilus is a Christian man in poverty who is led by a Jewish magician to make a contract with Satan, exchanging his soul for worldly wealth. Mary then intervenes, appearing to Theophilus directly and demonstrating her legal power by nullifying his contract. The story exemplifies the anti-Judaic foundation of much popular and learned literature produced about Mary in the later Middle Ages.⁴

In this article, I argue that three Middle English versions of the Theophilus legend—one understudied and two virtually undiscovered—reveal reformulations of Jewishness as an identity category in the Christian imagination. While displaying the attitude that Geraldine Heng has detected in anti-Jewish literature, that medieval Christian writing could "biologize, define and essentialize" communities by way of "political theology," these texts also depict Jewish identity as a dangerously permeable category into which Christians may fall as a consequence of sin.⁵ Christian theological uncertainties and related desires to claim biblical heritage were articulated in many influential medieval texts.⁶ These often express insecurities regarding Christians' dependence on Jewish history and what they claim to "inherit" from Jews as ancestors.⁷ Heng has suggested that "Christians are bound by their inheritance of Christian blood; Jews are bound by shedding that Christian blood."⁸ She is referring to the notion that Christ's blood shed at the crucifixion founded the body of Christendom by baptizing Adam's bones beneath the cross; the salvific power of Christ's blood was understood to inhere in all Christian bodies (and sacraments) in the contemporary world.⁹ Heng suggests that the unity this blood provides for Christians constitutes an "embodied" race.¹⁰ However, Boyarin argues that this embodiment includes Jewishness in the very notion of inheritance, with the Christian desire to "identify with Jews and claim a Jewish life for Christians, but also … to reject living Jews or postbiblical Jewish characters as perversions of self."¹¹ Boyarin goes on to argue that "at stake is the claim that Christians are the real descendants of the chosen Israelites; they are the Jews who made the right choice."¹² Supersessionism, the Christian practice of regarding the Old Testament as superseded (and read in light of) the New, constructs a theological divide between pre- and post-crucifixion time: the harrowing of hell as the salvational event instantiates the beginning of Christianity. Christian ideas of shared Christian-Jewish ancestry are also intricately connected to those of supersessionist time: Boyarin has recently described this anxiety as the negotiation between "'in their times' and 'then' versus 'in our time.'"¹³

Because Judaism antecedes Christianity, when stereotypes of Jewish identity are used as negative exemplars or tropological guides for Christian sinners, they imply that Christian sin can be understood as a movement back in time. Time in medieval Christendom did not refer only to events in history but also to movements and transitions in individual experience.¹⁴ This idea of permeability, of essentialized yet transferrable ideas of race in medieval anti-Judaism, has not yet received substantial scholarly attention, but it is particularly prevalent in texts that acknowledge that, in genealogical terms, Christians and Jews can be imagined as the same race.¹⁵ Well-known Jewish characters such as Judas and Cain have been acknowledged as negative exemplars of sins that penitents should avoid or acknowledge and overcome within themselves.¹⁶ However, Christian penitential experiences of moving toward sin can also be configured as movements toward Jewishness, in which penance becomes a return or a reconversion to Christianity. Nina Rowe has analyzed an icon of Synagoga, the often-female personification of Jewish faith and community, which functioned as a negative exemplar for sinners during a penitential ritual at Strasbourg Cathedral.¹⁷ It follows, therefore, that sin could be depicted as a type of conversion, a temporary exclusion from the baptismal Christian race and the sinner's inclusion into a category of "Jewishness."¹⁸ Indeed, as Karl Morrison has noted, conversion was understood as not only an event in time but an ongoing process in the Middle Ages, much as Christian sin, penance, and absolution were understood to be an enduring cycle in earthly life.¹⁹ I suggest that the figure of Synagoga and the framing of sin and penitence as conversion processes also influenced literary portrayals of Christian forgiveness and miracle, particularly in these three Middle English adaptations of the Theophilus legend.

Because Synagoga can function as a tropological figure, in which the Jewish faith she represents is imagined by Christians to continue "obsolete" interpretations and customs, biblical and soteriological time can express and magnify the theological distortion that results from sin in the Christian imagination. Although the Theophilus texts do not mention Synagoga by name, they do strongly invoke the cultural association of Synagoga with sin to depict Theophilus's transgression as a destabilization of Christian time. Sinners can be portrayed to transport themselves backward in soteriological time, to a time before "new law" mercy was available, a time before and without Christ. All three versions of the Theophilus legend that I will discuss in this article depict his sin, particularly as he is led to it by a Jewish magician, as a regressive movement to a time before Christian salvation—a movement I refer to as soteriological regression. I begin by demonstrating how the Virgin Mary is involved in this movement of regression and return to Christianity through her role as a figure of temporal mobility and supersessionist authority. I then explore how two fourteenth-century versions from the Northern Homily Cycle (NHC) depict Theophilus's soteriological regression through a movement toward despair and a misreading of scripture. Finally, I show how the Rawlinson version condenses this regression and return, invoking imaginings of Synagoga's conversion at the end of time in order to depict a more compact and more secure repentance for Theophilus. The discrepancies among the versions demonstrate the possibility of conveying distinct theological experiences and outcomes using the same miracle narrative and provide evidence for the substantial reworking and development of the legend over time.

The Theophilus Legend and the Virgin Mary in Context

Theophilus is usually depicted as refusing or narrowly missing a position as a bishop, and thereafter he descends into poverty and depression. He seeks the aid of a Jewish magician, who leads him to sign a charter renouncing his Christian faith and pledging his allegiance to Satan. After witnessing the Jewish magician be executed for his crimes, Theophilus becomes frightened and seeks the help of Mary, who not only forgives him but delivers the diabolic charter back to him, even as it has been nullified by her mercy. In many versions, Theophilus then publicly burns the charter at mass after telling his story to the congregation. The wide reach of this tale and its strongly anti-Judaic nature indicate that its adaptations are important sources for popular belief in Mary's authority over Jews and Judaism. In illustrations of the tale, Jews are often depicted alongside Satan and his demons.²⁰ Written versions contribute to the interchangeability of the definition for "schrewe," which may signify either devils or Jews.²¹

Many scholars have commented on the vast and often unpredictable corpus of Marian miracle tales. These tales were widely copied and incorporated into sermons by the fifteenth century, and a study of this corpus highlights the role of Marian miracles in the development of medieval antisemitism.²² Although usually careful to maintain a Christian supersessionist framework, certain Middle English texts include complicated portrayals of Jewish characters.²³ Though, as Boyarin argues, "'Jew' and 'Jewish' are, by design, unstable signifiers," the Theophilus legend draws its force from emphasizing and polemicizing Jewish difference while highlighting the danger of easy slippage or conversion via sin into "Jewishness," equating Jewishness with diablerie.²⁴ This method generally seeks to portray Marian superiority over Judaism and Jews, just as Mary was also often characterized as occupying a position of superiority and control over the devil.²⁵ Boyarin has noted that the Theophilus miracle "seems in England to have led to a detailed imagination of [Mary's] ferocity in matters of judgement."²⁶ Kati Ihnat has also highlighted the story's powerful demonstration that Mary was able to forgive and save even when a criminal had openly denied her.²⁷ In the Theophilus miracle and others of its kind, such mercy is also used to create a sense of Christian superiority.

Equally, eschatological concerns about the coming of Antichrist were often linked to Jews, including the idea that Antichrist would be a child born to the devil and a Jewish woman, in contrast with Christ, who was the son of God and a Jewish virgin.²⁸ The belief that Jews would convert at the end of time and aid the conversion of other non-Christians was symbolized in the conversion of the figure of Synagoga, joining her visually twinned counterpart, Ecclesia (often one with Mary), in Christianity.²⁹ Jeremy Cohen has argued that, for medieval Christians, Jews' post-crucifixion existence "mirrors the present 'incompleteness' of salvation history; and they serve didactically to demonstrate the route that this history must follow in order to arrive at its culmination."³⁰ Synagoga, then, also functions as an iconographic promise of this eschatological reconciliation, particularly in depictions or image cycles in which she is unveiled and converted.³¹ Such eschatological concerns are often paired with typological negotiations in miracle narratives, allowing them to make statements about the perceived place of Jews and Jewishness in salvation history.

Mary is an important figure to enact these types of miracles because she, too, moves around in time. Opposing Synagoga in her role as Ecclesia, she embodies the perceived supersession of Judaism by Christianity by being the mother of Christ and the Jew who has converted.³² This proto-Christian identity inheres in, and substantiates, Mary's supersessionist authority.³³ Typological depictions of Mary as the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, such as the Christian reading of Mary as the bride in the Song of Songs, emphasize supersessionist readings of scripture.³⁴ Mary holds a role as pedagogue and lawyer in miracles, which is undoubtedly at work in the Theophilus narratives as they involve the exchange of a document with Satan.³⁵ However, the NHC and Rawlinson versions are also deeply concerned with supersessionist time. Theophilus's diabolic document evokes the oppositional role of the Charter of Christ, a legal document made of wounds on Christ's body by which Satan's control over mankind are invalidated and overruled.³⁶ The Charter of Christ signifies soteriological progression from original sin to Christic salvation; Theophilus's charter agreement with Satan emulates the Charter of Christ and thereby signifies individual penance, using this similitude to stage salvation history in the microcosm of the individual soul.³⁷ In other words, the Theophilus legend showcases individual penitence as a synecdoche for the ongoing instantiation of soteriological history in contemporary medieval devotion and sin.

Despair and Supersessionist Time in the Harley and Vernon Theophilus Tales

The earliest Middle English versions of the Theophilus tale are those of the South English Legendary (SEL). The earliest SEL version in Bodley MS Laud 108 dates to about 1280–90, with the NHC originating in about 1315.³⁸ The two fourteenth-century NHC versions—one from MS Harley 4196, the other from the Vernon manuscript—adapt the SEL versions in two significant ways: they extend the treatment of Theophilus's despair and suicidal ideation before his turn to the Jewish magician, when such despair culminates in a misunderstanding of the Trinity; and they expand the discussion between Theophilus and Mary, including a typological invocation of David and divine judgment which Theophilus uses to negotiate Marian mercy.³⁹ Many Jewish characters in medieval literature are signaled as Jewish through their misunderstanding or absence of Trinitarian doctrine.⁴⁰ Thus, it is implied that Theophilus's sin is marked as a type of conversion, a regression in time to a state of "Jewishness."⁴¹ In the fifteenth-century Rawlinson version of the legend, Theophilus recalls a widespread scriptural reading of Synagoga's conversion to Christianity at the end of time as a way of instantiating his repentance; the text builds on the earlier versions' troubling complexity by using eschatology as a way of recuperating Theophilus's similitudinous relation to Synagoga.⁴² The two NHC versions are significantly different, so I will refer to them as Harley and Vernon respectively. These texts develop the tale's theological scope in order to further interrogate the supersessionist and eschatological elements of Theophilus's penitential journey.

Minimal work has been done on these three versions. Adrienne Williams Boyarin has analyzed Marian legalism in the SEL and Rawlinson versions.⁴³ Beverly Boyd, in her collection of Marian miracles, briefly mentions that the NHC versions are different from the SEL versions but offers no further insight.⁴⁴ Saara Nevanlinna's edition of the Harley text notes some of its variations with the Vernon text, but these are mentioned briefly in the context of the textual study.⁴⁵ The temporal instability generated by Theophilus's emotional emulation of Synagoga and questioning of typological interpretation constitutes the mechanism of these texts' anti-Judaic polemic. These temporal and typological instabilities are not present in the earlier Middle English SEL version, demonstrating a clear literary and cultural development of the legend, and they have not previously been analyzed.

The lengthening of the account of Theophilus's despair in the NHC versions emphasizes the association between despair, understood in the Middle Ages to be a turn away from God as a risk of suicide, and sinful conversion towards Jewishness as a form of diablerie.⁴⁶ The SEL versions contain this implication within just three lines:

Þene deth he wilnede þingue mest. : so þat he him bi-þouȝteÞat, ho-so þene feond serui wolde : in gret richesse he him brouȝte.to a giv he wende a nyȝt : þat wonede þare-bi-side.⁴⁷

Then death was the thing he wanted most; so he then thought tohimselfThat, if he were to serve the devil, he might be brought into greatrichness.To a Jew he went at night, who lived nearby.

Theophilus's suicidality is presented as a natural antecedent for his turn to the Jewish magician. Jewishness is likewise equated with an absence of God or atheism in the SEL Saint Quiriac story, as after his conversion to Christianity Quiriac speaks of all the sinful documents he wrote "Þe ȝwyle ich was a luþer givȝ : and on god ne bi-liefde nouȝt" (l. 369) (While I was a wicked Jew, and did not believe in God).⁴⁸ This is a similar construction to that used in other Marian miracles where Satanic intervention is the cause of despair and suicide, such as the widely copied Pilgrim of Saint James story in which Satan instructs a pilgrim to slit his own throat.⁴⁹ "Jewishness" and suicide can both be articulated as absences of God: accordingly, these Satanic interventions damage Theophilus's capability to seek redemptive grace from the Holy Spirit by distorting his perception of what constitutes the Holy Spirit. With the absence of God comes the absence of the Trinity. This paradigm is often applied to depictions of Jews, whereby the Trinitarian model is questioned, dismantled, or removed; and here it is clear that Satan has instigated Theophilus's distorted perception of the Holy Spirit:

þe fende made him so think in haste,þat he moght thurgh þe wikked gasteget his office sone ogaine,and þar obout he did his payne.

(H, ll. 141–44)

The devil made him think thus in haste,That he might, through the wicked spiritSoon regain his office,And to that end he directed his efforts.

þe ffend mad him to þenke inþorwh miht of þe holi gost,hou he mihte geten his bayli aȝein,þat he wolde han so fayn.

(V, ll. 125–28)⁵⁰

The devil made him think in haste,Through the strength of the Holy SpiritHow he might get his office again,That he would be so delighted to hold.

This seems to be the culmination in Theophilus's turn toward "Jewish" sorcery, which is described directly afterward (H, ll. 145–46, V; ll. 131–34). By this time in the texts, Satan has curtailed all of Theophilus's attempts to behave charitably and penitently.⁵¹ The Holy Spirit was the Trinitarian person conceptualized as a guard against despair. Because the intervention of the Holy Spirit and the attendant grace was characterized as a specifically supersessionist blessing, brought into the world through the annunciation and the incarnation, Christian audiences would have understood an absence of grace as automatically characteristic of pre-crucifixion, and therefore Jewish, time. This role is explicitly described in Piers Plowman, when the Samaritan's Trinitarian hand allegory characterizes the palm of the hand as the Holy Spirit, that which receives grace. Despair is a physical injury, a "hurte in the hand" (B.XVII.185) (injury in the hand) that prevents the reception of grace and hence a turn away from God.⁵² Theophilus's invocation of a "wikked gaste" or "holi gost" may signify the traces of a desire to receive grace from the Holy Spirit but that now is oriented purely toward alleviating his circumstantial despair, divorced from devotional intent—in other words, a desire to find grace on Satanic terms—with Harley making this distortion in understanding explicit by replacing "holi" with "wikked." Fittingly, a phrase usually applied to Christ or Mary, "he cums to pray ȝow of ȝowre grace" (H, l. 225; V, l. 219) (he comes to pray to you for your grace) is used by the Jew to introduce Theophilus to Satan. This distortion of the Holy Spirit not only represents a turn away from God characteristic of despair but also indicates a regression in soteriological time, whereby Trinitarian salvation is overwritten by the religion, Judaism, that was understood to precede it.⁵³ Satanic influence, then, reverses the supersession.

Indeed, the reception of grace was a supersessionist issue: Thomas Aquinas highlighted what seems to have been a commonly held view that the "old law" needed to be superseded because it did not contain grace from the Holy Spirit; it is the intervention of the Holy Spirit in the earth and in sacred law that transforms it into the merciful law of the New Testament.⁵⁴ The idea that Christian mercy counterposes Jewish retribution begins with Pauline writings and inheres in this medieval negotiation of "old law" and "new law."⁵⁵ Kathleen Biddick has noted that the Christian typological imaginary must "ward off the shattering threat of typological reversibility."⁵⁶ The NHC versions portray the danger of this reversibility as Theophilus's regression into despair threatens to destabilize the Christian collective through time. There is an iconographic precedent for this depiction of despair: within the vast variety and tone of images of Synagoga produced across the Middle Ages, she is frequently depicted as defiantly turning away from the crucified Christ or a gospel text. In a similar vein, she can be equated with death,⁵⁷ and sometimes she also turns away from proto-Christian patriarchal teachers such as David.⁵⁸ These pictoral refusals indicate a rejection of salvation and hence a rejection of grace characteristic of despair.⁵⁹ Elizabeth Monroe has articulated the sense in which Ecclesia and Synagoga "act within the entire spectrum of Christian history and cosmology."⁶⁰ Synagoga's soteriologically regressive despair becomes modeled by Theophilus in this extremely detailed and extended rendering of his journey into suicidality and thereby toward the Jewish sorcerer, a progression unique to the NHC versions and one that illustrates a backward path, reversing the supersession and rendering the Holy Ghost "wikked."⁶¹

The despairing turn of Synagoga is further evoked through its opposition to the frequent link between Mary's role and that of the Holy Spirit. Mary was the mediator between heaven and earth as the dispenser of grace between the resurrection and Doomsday.⁶² In popular devotion she solicits forgiveness from the Trinitarian persons on behalf of almost-irredeemable sinners.⁶³ While Mary dispenses grace and is a gateway through which divine forgiveness can be sought in the contemporary world, Synagoga turns away in despondency until the end of time. Joshua Trachtenberg has articulated the link between the despairing turn from God to eschatological representations of intimacy between devils and Jews, observing, "Behind this desertion of God lurked the fine hand of Satan."⁶⁴ The ambition to defeat Jews as a way of wresting control of the world away from Satan takes place on an eschatological scale, a prefiguring of the last battle with Antichrist on Judgment Day.⁶⁵ This scale is evoked wherever such opposition takes place, including between individuals in miracle narratives. In this way, Theophilus's despair can be understood as a historical regression: just as Emily Steiner has observed that virtue in general "is always a proposition about time," despair necessitates temporal thinking that understands individual plight in terms of movement in history, or a perversion of soteriological time.⁶⁶

Because of this soteriological regression, Marian mercy is rendered as the product of an emotionally difficult negotiation in the NHC texts. The two versions diverge in the manner of Mary's response, with Vernon rendering Marian mercy boundless—exaggerating her anger while removing the conditionalities in Mary's speech that are found in Harley—as a way of further asserting Christian supremacy, the ease with which such "Jewish" sin can be overturned. Harley offers justifications for Mary's mercy to Theophilus: "Bot sen þou has þi trispas kend / and hertly hetes it to amend" (ll. 453–54) (But since you have known your trespass, / and truly promise to amend it) and "Me think wele by þi saws, / me and my sun sum dele þou knaws; / and all mankind I luf so wele" (ll. 517–19) (I think it well by your words, / you believe in me and my son; / and all mankind I love so much).⁶⁷ In contrast, Vernon simply omits these lines, with the latter passage beginning Mary's answer at "I loue, quaþ heo, monkynde so weel" (l. 494) (I love, said she, mankind so much). Mary's wrath is also portrayed in stronger terms in Vernon than in Harley, using the word "vnro":⁶⁸

"þou hast," quaþ heo, "maad me vnro,and maad me come hider þe to.Undurstond, what þou hast done,ȝif þou beo worþi, han þi bone

(V, ll. 424–7)

"You have," said she, "made me vexed,And made me come here to you.Understand what you have done,If you are worthy, have your prayer."

In the Vernon text, "ȝif þou beo worþi" is the only statement implying conditionality. By juxtaposing Marian anger with her (almost) unconditional willingness to forgive, the text allows a relief whereby Mary's eventual mercy powerfully overlays any fear rendered by Theophilus's conversion backwards through supersessionist time, and isolates him from the Jews he has joined in making him redeemable. As well as requesting that Theophilus forsake Christ and Mary, the Jewish magician asks, "loke þat þou make not on þe / þe tokne of the rodetre" (V, ll. 185–86) (Look that you make not on yourself / the sign of the cross), a request that allows focus on the foundation of Christianity even as the magician seeks its denial; there is a Christian security here. However, the Harley version renders the equivalent line as "and luke, þat þou amek noght on þe / no takin of þe trinite" (H, ll. 191–92) (And look that you make not on yourself / any sign of the Trinity), which refocuses the text on Theophilus's Trinitarian misunderstanding and seeks to further distort or erase his Trinitarian sensibilities. This may be why extra Marian conditionality and stringency is explored in the Harley text: to respond to the greater instability rendered by Theophilus's "wikked gaste." The long description of the crucifixion and resurrection in both texts (H, ll. 531–39; V, ll. 504–11) seems not only constructed for educative purposes but also a way of verbally reinstantiating soteriological history as a rectification of Theophilus's temporal regression, describing how Christ "fro þe fende þan toke his pray" (H, l. 533; V, l. 507) (from the devil then he took the devil's prey) and that he "all þe prophecy fullfill" (H, l. 538; V, l. 513) (all the prophecy fulfil). Satan's "pray" now includes Theophilus, who will also be rescued in the manner of the Old Testament patriarchs through the harrowing of hell—with Mary (instead of Christ) travelling to hell to secure his emancipation. That Theophilus is theologically "Jewish" is emphasized in these lines, as they reiterate the harrowing as a continual process of the voiding of fraudulent or redundant diabolic documents. However, Theophilus carries the burden of having chosen his Jewishness, rather than occupying it due to his position in history, and this is the source of Mary's rebuke.

Typological Lineage and Racialized Wounding in the Harley and Vernon Theophilus Tales

The severity of Theophilus's sin is not limited to his misunderstanding of the Holy Spirit through suicidal despair, however. During his negotiation with Mary, his theological arguments attempt to assimilate his crime and identity within a pre-Marian, Jewish lineage. This is both a mechanism for depicting the rapid progression of his redemption, which also involves jumping around in time (from contemporary Jew, to historical or patriarchal Jew, then finally to Christian), and a way of reaffirming temporal supersessionism by reading Old Testament history in dialogue with Marian judgment. Theophilus's invocation of David, an argument that even a supposedly more vengeful pre-Christian God could forgive his transgression, reinstantiates supersessionist exegesis even as it undermines any divide between Jewish and Christian divine judgment:

ffor wele J wate, þat king Dauywas wele wiser man þan I,and neuer þe lese he fell in sin,his knightes wife wrang forto win;he slogh þe nobill knight Urri,ffor he wald haue his lady.So for manslaghter and spowsebrekeserued he of god grete wreke;and leue dere lady, noght for þigod had of him ful gude mercy.

(H, ll. 484–93; V, ll. 462–71)

For I heed well that King DavidWas a much wiser man than I,And nevertheless he fell into sin,His knight's wife he immorally sought to win;He slew the noble knight Uriah,Because he wanted to have his lady.So for manslaughter and adulteryDavid gave God cause for great retribution;And observe, dear lady, it was not for your sakeThat God gave him truly good mercy.⁶⁹

It was "noght for þi" that David was forgiven, Theophilus tells Mary.⁷⁰ That God forgave David for breaking three Commandments—against murder, covetousness and adultery—suggests that Mary the merciful should certainly forgive Theophilus, he argues, but he also implies that the Christian perception of mercy was one that was always present, even before Christ's birth and Mary's role as intercessor. To mitigate against his soteriological regression, Theophilus seems to indicate here that there hardly need be a supersession: he points to the transtemporal potential of Christianized mercy. Medieval depictions of the Tree of Jesse, showing Mary and Christ's patriarchal lineage, had David as their most significant ancestor.⁷¹ David's psaltery was also portrayed as a Christic analogue.⁷² The Tree of Jesse iconography as extended Marian and Christic genealogy began in the twelfth century, at about the time the Theophilus legend was also being incorporated into church artworks and the liturgy.⁷³ Relatedly, art historians have touched on the association of Theophilus with the Davidic lineage of Mary, commenting on a sleeping Theophilus in Alfonso X's Cantigas de Santa Maria, who resembles Jesse asleep at the foot of the genealogy tree.⁷⁴ Theophilus identifies himself in this context of Jesse images, orienting his transgression within Christian readings of patriarchal Jewish ancestry by articulating the necessity of a mercy such as David received. He, Theophilus argues, had further to fall, as a "wele wiser man þan I." In doing so, Theophilus subsumes his Trinitarian distortion within his understanding of a fully Christianized history of merciful salvation, unsettling the notion of supersession as a fixed point in time. By identifying himself with David, Theophilus claims this Jewishness-as-Christianity in a way that allows him to assert the presence of Trinitarian mercy through Old Testament time, thus portraying his perception of the "wikked gaste" not as a diabolic conversion but as a temporally imitative Christian rite of passage. Indeed, in both NHC texts, it is the thought of David that provokes his contemplation of Christic mercy:

Bot, lord Jhesu! noght for þi,Dauid sais, þat þi mercypasses obouen all þi werkes

(H, ll. 377–79; V, ll. 352–54)

But, Lord Jesus! Not for you,David says that your mercyPasses above all your works.

The same formulation occurs here, with Theophilus asserting that such mercy as was given to David was "noght for þi," not because of Christ. As Boyarin has recently noted, "the identification with Jewishness, and even the ability to claim it, depend absolutely on the assumption of Christian superiority."⁷⁵ Indeed, Theophilus claims that the Jewishness of David existed within a framework of Christian mercy, implying that in the Old Testament, the supersession of the "new law" had already taken place.

The Harley text travels further back in time by having Theophilus locate the instigation of salvation history, and Marian power, not in Christ's incarnation but in the origin of humankind itself, in Eden:

if þat Adam and all his kinhad kepid þam euer out of sin,þan had þou noght bene heuinquenene goddes moder had þou noght bene

(H, ll. 508–11)

If Adam and all his kinHad kept themselves forever out of sin,Then you would not have been heaven's queenAnd God's mother you would not have been.

Vernon omits these lines, instead only generally referring to an atemporal or generalized felix culpa (fortunate fall): "ȝif synne ne were, þu neddest beo quene, / ne godes modur in heuene bene" (V, ll. 484–5) (If sin never existed, you would not have needed to be queen, / nor God's mother in heaven).⁷⁶ It is this that prompts Mary to declare her love of humankind, presumably a love that includes both virtuous and ambivalent figures of Old Testament history, adding the conditions of Theophilus's contrition in the Harley text. Theophilus demonstrates that he has claimed Jewishness within himself in a Christianized, rather than diabolic, mode. Carefully exploiting the contact he has had with the devil and the Jewish magician—from or through whom, it is implied, he has been able to glean this superior theological knowledge—Theophilus tells Mary that the mercy she distributes is dependent on a larger structure of forgiveness and reminds her of her own once-Jewish nature. Indeed, a collection of Marian verse from the late sixteenth century has a poem that cites the liturgical line "Theophilus reformans gratiae" before referring to Mary's connection to King David, suggesting that the expression of these genealogical details about Mary in the Theophilus story had become one of its enduring features.⁷⁷ But though Mary responds lovingly to this reminder, it is spoken by a penitent who is in the process of reestablishing a Christian identity; and by according the historical causality of the felix culpa too much power, such that Mary should perhaps feel grateful toward Eve, it is in turn destabilizing.

As a result of this destabilizing attempt to claim Davidic history as his own, Theophilus's body is wounded, even after he has been forgiven by Mary: his questioning of her role in the distribution of grace withstands the absolution she grants. Theophilus's triumphant burning of the charter is absent in the NHC versions; the charter of his transgression cannot be expiated because it has become wounds upon his skin:

Tyophill, þat I of talde,had wikked woundes manifaldeals theues, þat er fendes of hell,had wounded him sare þam omell,and for ded allane left þai him

(H, ll. 771–75)

Theophilus, of whom I told you,Had painful wounds manifoldAs if thieves, who are fiends of hell,Had wounded him sorely between them,And for dead alone they left him.⁷⁸

Ultimately, the materiality of Theophilus's transgression illustrates the synonymity of writing and scarring identified by Emily Steiner.⁷⁹ The embodiment of reading, documenting, and despairing is linked in medieval literature more widely not only to the Charter of Christ but also to racialized ideas of Christian blood. For example, the idea of needing to punish sin against the Holy Spirit is expressed by the Samaritan in Piers Plowman as a concern about blood.⁸⁰ Those who "offenden the Holy Goost" (offend the Holy Spirit), are figured as a wound in the palm earlier in the passus.⁸¹ That is, they are portrayed with deliberate harmful intent, to "mercy aniente" (mercy ruin), and thus deserve the same vengeance as those "That shente us and shedde oure blood" (l. 290) (who injured us and shed our blood).⁸² This appears to be referring to the Jews' murder of Christ and the perceived parallel in Jewish harm done to the Christian body and institution in the medieval present, just as sinners were believed to be constantly under attack from Satan. Indeed, these perpetrators, associated now with those who sin against the Holy Spirit through despair, are those who "forshapte us" (shaped us amiss), or the Jewish ancestors of Christians.⁸³ This phrase, implying hereditary harm, may also suggest Jewish blame for original sin, which Christians continue to bear and need to wash away through baptism. Theophilus's reading of David makes his argument for redemption an issue of inheritance, of embodied reading practices. The Harley text therefore imitates stories in which conversion is mapped onto the body. For example, Saint Quiriac, a Jew who converts when the remnants of the cross are found in Jerusalem, is named exclusively with his Christian identity only after he has served as a Christian martyr—that is, after his body, initially racialized as Jewish, has been wounded and mutilated as a way to both punish and cement the conversion.⁸⁴

That Theophilus's "wikked woundes" are inflicted not only by devils but by thieves in the Harley text invokes the idea of Jewish persecutors of Christ and those who flanked him with their parallel crucifixions. The danger of Theophilus's movement between Jewishness and Christianity is hereby associated with the potential slippage between Gestas, a figure sometimes generalized to postbiblical Jews, and Dysmas as a model of penance and conversion.⁸⁵ The text then explains that the thieves left him with these wounds as a diabolic exemplar, to show the dangers of forsaking the devil once a charter has been made (H, ll. 778–79). The Vernon text omits these references, instead allegorizing the wounds more straightforwardly as moral blemishes: "woundes on him so monifold, / þat he hedde dyed in helle pyne, / ȝif Crist ne hedde iȝiuen him medicine" (V, ll. 704–6) (Wounds on him so numerous, / That he would have died in hellish pain, / Had Christ not given him medicine). Yet again the Harley text emphasizes that Theophilus is being punished for his initial and antecedent sin of despair, which distorted the Holy Spirit into the "wikked gaste" "when he gan þe charter make" (H, l. 777) (when he began to make the charter). By associating Theophilus's wounds with thieves and devils, the embodied vitality of these wounds is foregrounded, refiguring moral wounding as the materiality of conversion to Jewishness and back again, of transgressing between religions and races. The thieves were judged with Christ as an insult to his virtue. Theophilus is not an imitation of Christ here but occupies this vilified position of similarity, which is also fulfilling a transformative function. Although Harley's mention of the "wikked woundes manifalde" does not explicate the bloodshed that follows, it is likely that this signals the longevity of these wounds: these physical marks will continue to signify "woundes" throughout time, whether freshly bleeding or sealed by scar tissue. Fittingly, the word "wikked" could signify a pathological swelling and an infected wound as well as merely a severe wound or state of iniquity.⁸⁶ Its usage here refers back to Theophilus's "wikked gaste" and may invoke a wider context of spiritual disease in the absence of the Marian medicine of grace.⁸⁷ Theophilus's body, lacerated by Jewish thieves and devils in the Harley text, constitutes a recontracting and reracializing into Christianity. Through the wounds' articulation of his transgression, Theophilus is allowed to receive Marian mercy as one of her Christian children, in a possible link to the earlier reference in the SEL versions, "ich louie muche cristine men : And norichi heom al-so" (l. 117/l. 121) (I love Christian men very much, and nourish them also). This line and connection draws on the idea of Christic blood (made of the same substance as Mary's breast milk) the body of Christendom, which was also implicated in medieval antisemitism and race making.⁸⁸ In the Harley version, the Christian body is wounded because of a racial and religious transgression across the boundary of the crucifixion itself, backward into "Jewish" time, where Theophilus communicates a despairing Trinitarian distortion followed by a typological misreading. Theophilus's wounded body is textually framed by references to Christ's healing oil and Eucharistic wine in both texts (H, ll. 765–90; V, ll. 698–720).⁸⁹ Thus, soteriological temporality is reasserted, carefully enveloping the wound of Judaism within its Christic context, castigating and securing Theophilus in post-crucifixion time.

Blood and the Turn of Synagoga in the Rawlinson Theophilus

The NHC depictions of Theophilus's wounded body, as I have shown, implement these wounds as a way of recuperating the diabolic charter as embodied penance, reinforcing the perceived synonymity of Jews and devils and the aptness of these wounds as a punishment for despair. It is not surprising, then, that later versions of the Theophilus legend in Middle English collapse the transition from document to body by depicting Theophilus signing the diabolic charter with his own blood.⁹⁰ The later fifteenth-century version of Theophilus found in Bodley MS Rawlinson 225 depicts him writing the charter in his own blood and, like the NHC versions, illustrates the transtemporality of his conversion. However, the Rawlinson Theophilus does not distort the Trinity in his despair but is portrayed as a much more virtuous and recognizable spendthrift bishop who runs out of money due to his excessive material charity. This is why the Jewish magician, perceiving this, approaches him. Theophilus's own culpability is greatly reduced in this version in comparison to the NHC and even SEL versions, where he is the one who approaches the Jewish magician. However, the iconographic twinning of Theophilus's despairing turn from Christianity and Synagoga's turn from the crucifixion is enlivened in the Rawlinson version. It incorporates the revertere (turn back, return) command from the Song of Songs 6:13 as a way of instantiating Theophilus's turn back towards Christianity, mirroring readings of this command as Synagoga's eschatological reconciliation with Ecclesia and thereby reinscribing Theophilus's mimetic journey of salvation.

Jeremy Cohen has written on Honorius Augustodunensis's innovative interpretation of Synagoga and the Sulamitess from the Song of Songs 6:13, explaining that at the end of the world she will revert to the faith of Christ.⁹¹ Honorius's commentaries on the Song of Songs were widely copied from the twelfth century onward.⁹² Cohen argues that, confronted with the mandate, "Return, return, O Sulamitess," Honorius's Synagoga responds with exemplary will: "Although her ancient cry of 'his blood be upon us and upon our children' (Matt. 27.25) once rendered her miserable, Christ now accepts her back assuring her that all will seek her peace."⁹³ Honorius has Mary as Ecclesia speak to Synagoga as the Sulamitess: "O Sulamite, already so long captive to the devil, return through faith to the mysteries of Christ. Return through hope, return through the love of God and neighbor, return through works, that they who are already in Christ may behold you, imitating your words and deeds."⁹⁴ The Sulamitess is of the same category as Mary Ecclesia: she is young and beautiful and an exemplary Christian who was born a Jew. Honorius's interpretation of Synagoga conversa is grounded in scriptural understanding, but the image of a converted Synagoga returning to Christianity at the end of time also constitutes a wide iconographic tradition that would have been familiar to the popular imagination.⁹⁵ Although Cohen remarks that Honorius's interpretation may reflect a "pervasive phenomenon" rather than a general trend, he also suggests that it was influenced by a parallel development in the twelfth century: alongside the intensification of Christian anti-Jewish polemic, there were also new hopes for Synagoga's reconciliation with Ecclesia, "hopes that blended no less well with the ideology of crusading and the growth of missionary theology."⁹⁶ It is this sensibility that seems to have informed the Rawlinson version of Theophilus and its invocation of this scriptural verse and its eschatological interpretation.

As Boyarin has noted, the Rawlinson Theophilus enacts a trick upon the devil in refusing to renounce Mary, instead agreeing to forsake "God only" (l. 311).⁹⁷ Boyarin argues that because the phrase can mean God as the Trinitarian God, Satan accepts this, though Theophilus intends it to mean "God only."⁹⁸ In the heightened sensitivity to Trinitarian theology in the Theophilus tradition, "God only" seems to constitute a non-Trinitarian God. In other words, Theophilus forsakes the Jewish idea of God and thus does not technically commit a Christian transgression, even as he forges his charter of diabolic conversion. His emotional state in the Rawlinson version is not permitted to unsettle his intellectual grasp of Trinitarian theology.

In accordance with superior fortitude against Trinity-distorting despair, the Rawlinson Theophilus seems to build on the earlier NHC versions in the way in which Synagoga is invoked, with her turn eschatologically redemptive rather than denoting despair. Theophilus hears the word revertere immediately after he has named the devil as "Lord Myn" (l. 379) (My Lord) and substantiated his bloody charter with an exposition on his diabolic loyalty. The voice comes from Heaven, but it is not a direct intervention as Mary's will be:

And as Tyofle rod, he herde a stevyn,Iwis it was a voys of Hevyn,That lyghtte adoun to grounde.A word ther was sayd: "Revertere!"Whan he it herde, he fel on kneOn swounyng in that stounde.

"Revertere! Revertere!"That word, I wot, was sayd of me.Allas what have I wrought?My richesse I wil lete al gon,And I forsakes everychon,For I wil kepen hem nought.

Allas, allas, why was I so wodThat I forsook Jhesu so goodThat hath bought al mankynne?

(ll. 403–17)

And as Theophilus rode, he heard a voice,Indeed it was a voice of heaven,That traveled down to the ground.A word therein was said: "Revertere!"When he heard it, he fell on his kneeFrom swooning in that moment.

"Revertere! Revertere!"That word, I know, was said about me.Alas, what have I done?My richness I will let dwindle,And I forsake all my possessions,For I will not keep them anymore.

Alas, alas, why was I so madThat I forsook Jesus so good,Who has saved all mankind?

The "voys of Hevyn" appears to aid what Theophilus already knows, the knowledge he has drawn on subconsciously to avoid denying Christ and Mary. While "Revertere" invokes an eschatological reading of scripture, of Synagoga's turn at the end of time, it also creates the impression of Theophilus's transtemporal journey in the sense that, instead of regressing back through the supersession, eschatological Jewishness has come forward in time to meet him and instantiate his return to Christianity. Whereas the NHC versions show Theophilus reconstructing his Christian self with a recollection of David, the Rawlinson version invokes this image of Synagoga to prompt his own return. In both cases, the utility of Theophilus's transgression is shown in the necessity of this "Jewish" mirror that validates his return to Christianity when these mirrored personae are defined in a supersessionist way. Although Boyarin argues that Theophilus can call upon Mary because he has refused to forsake her, this call is facilitated through the theologically educated, virtuous, and associative thought pattern that has linked the personae of Ecclesia and Synagoga and thereby allows him to hear the voice that says "Revertere."⁹⁹ The Rawlinson version builds on the tradition traced in the NHC versions by more vividly connecting Theophilus's journey with that of Synagoga: while his return to Christianity is mirrored with Synagoga's eschatological turn, "Revertere" is also a command that, in the context of the Song of Songs, is given by witnesses. Thus, Theophilus literally intervenes in the dialogue between Christ, Mary, and Synagoga as a way to instruct and guide himself. This one word hereby collapses Theophilus's competing identities and reaffirms the trajectory of his journey back to Christianity through the invocation of the Christic, supersessionist reading of the Song of Songs that attributes this command to him. Theophilus is hereby instantly in touch with Christ, Mary, and Synagoga at the moment of his reconversion; the text instantiates Honorius's depiction of these three personae within Theophilus's own mind.¹⁰⁰

The word revertere has few other usages in Middle English writing, but those other instances substantiate the mode in which it is used in the Rawlinson Theophilus. Eleanor Baker has identified an association in three Middle English poems of the term revertere with the Virgin Mary: the Rawlinson Theophilus, the penitential lyric "Revertere!," and the carol for the Feast of the Purification. Baker concludes that both "the plaintive wish to see the Virgin Mary again" and the scene in which "Theophilus is prompted to reconsider his sinful activity" show that revertere "was a Latin term charged with devotional potential."¹⁰¹ In the Rawlinson Theophilus poem in particular, it is likely that the voice saying revertere purposefully invokes the Sulamitess as Synagoga conversa who will return to Ecclesia at the end of the world. Regarding the carol for the Feast of the Purification, Richard Leighton Greene suggests that revertere in the burden "Reuertere, reuertere, / The quene of blysse and of beaute" (Turn again, turn again, / The queen of bliss and of beauty) is from the Song of Songs 6:13 and suggests that this carol "is unusual in praying for 'purification' of the individual soul, through Mary's help, and in not confining itself to the historic incident of her own ritual appearance in the Temple (Luke 2: 22–4)."¹⁰² However, the carol's emphasis that Christians are "Frayl to fale and euer lyke to syne / Thorow owr enmys entysyng" (ll. 2–3) (Prone to fail and to sin always / Through the enticing of our enemy) accords with the invocation of the Sulamitess as Synagoga, and the understanding, as in the Theophilus tales, that Jewishness is an ongoing presence in the world—a Jewishness depicted as constitutive of a transgression against, but also an ultimate confirmation of, medieval Christian supremacy. The Feast of the Purification also shows Mary participating in a Jewish ritual so highlights her precrucifixion identity.¹⁰³ Therefore, the "quene of blysse and of beaute" may also signify Synagoga conversa, twinned with Mary in her youth and beauty, whose converted status bolsters Marian supersessionist authority, promising an eschatological Christian loyalty on behalf of current and future Jews. The invocation of Mariological readings of the Song of Songs also contribute to the way in which miracle tales stage soteriological history in individual lives. As Ann Astell has pointed out, supersessionist readings emphasize the text's prefigurement "not only of Christ's life, but also of every Christian's life." She concludes that this mode stimulates "emotional participation in Mary's experience and helps them [the Christian audience] to become her extended self."¹⁰⁴

With his admission that "Now I have God forsaken / Mercy I may never taken / But it be thourgh Marie" (ll. 424–26) (Now that I have forsaken God / I may never receive mercy / Unless it be through Mary), the Rawlinson Theophilus builds on this tripartite contact with Mary, Synagoga, and Christ with the understanding that Synagoga conversa will be welcomed by Ecclesia upon her return. Because these identities are so condensed in Theophilus and so instantaneously overturned back to Christianity, there is less interest in this text in the racial-religious potential of Theophilus's blood. This text, unlike the NHC versions, shows no interest in opening his body through wounding because the textual work of the command "Revertere" has created a condensed and redemptive turn. Moreover, the blood Theophilus uses in the charter reinstantiates the quasi-legal work of the Charter of Christ. Satan in the Rawlinson version repeatedly fails to understand the charter and overly depends on its bodily substance. Satan's attestation to the irreversibility of Theophilus's charter indicates precisely this Christic similitude, hereby evincing the extent of his misunderstanding: "I have a chartre trewe and good. / He wrot it hymself with his owen blod" (ll. 544–45) (I have a charter true and good. / He wrote it himself with his own blood). Satan's lack of comprehension here enables Mary to declare, "That catel that thu yef the clerk, / It was al of my sones werk; / Therfore he schal be myn" (ll. 559–64) (That bond that you gave the clerk, / It was all my son's work; / Therefore he shall be mine). Mary references "my sones werk" as a way of reinscribing the Christic similitude rendered in the blood as ink on the charter and to draw attention to Christ's redemptively dual racial identity as both Jewish man and Christian body. Therefore, rather than demonstrating the dangerous material or racial mobility of the body between Christianity and Jewishness, the Rawlinson version seeks to portray the Christian security of documents forged in blood, imitative as they are of the Charter of Christ and the foundation of "new law." The purpose of this Christian security is also to demonstrate the ongoing relevance of salvation history to contemporary penitential processes, with Mary's journey to hell to invalidate a legality that Satan staunchly believes in yet has misunderstood being so directly imitative of the legal dimension of the harrowing of hell. While the NHC versions choose to complicate this with questions of typology, supersession, and the racialized gulf between Christianity and Jewishness, the Rawlinson version instead bolsters the message of Christian security by articulating the temporal dimensions of Theophilus's journey as redemptively soteriological and eschatological—focusing on the reinscribing of the harrowing of hell and the turn of Synagoga conversa.

The indebtedness of the Rawlinson version to the earlier NHC versions, revising its supersessionist anxieties into an entirely redemptivist mode, can be glimpsed in another verbal trick. Satan warns Theophilus to forsake him "For no lord newe" (l. 372) (For no new lord), as a Jew might be imagined to say about Jesus, and Theophilus responds:

It schal never comen in my thoughtFor non kynnis nede.Wherfor scholde I the forsakenAnd anothir lord now taken?That were a theves dede.

(ll. 374–78)

It shall never come into my thoughtFor no kind of need.Wherefore should I forsake youAnd another lord take now?That would be a thief's deed.

Theophilus's suggestion that to betray Satan and the Jewishness with which he is synonymized is "a theves dede" revises the embodied harm he suffers from thieves as devils in the Harley version into a covert occupation of the role of Dysmas, the good thief, in his ability to "forsake" Satan and convert back to Christianity. Rather than portraying Theophilus in interactions with multiplied versions of Gestas and metonymizing the need and efficacy of being saved by Christ, the Rawlinson version allows him to fully inhabit the role of the thief as convert. Satan's eagerness to claim Theophilus's soul as his possession, like his failure to notice that Theophilus agrees to forsake "God only," prevents him from understanding the potential of thievery to signify redemption. This mechanism again reinstantiates the theological process of the harrowing of hell, whereby Satan overly relies on the "Devil's Rights" and thus forfeits those legal rights.¹⁰⁵

Mary ends the tale by telling Theophilus, "Myn miracles to rede" (l. 603) (To read my miracles). Boyarin suggests that Marian miracles "are presented here as an antidote to the letter of the law. … Mary's legal code is taught and confirmed in the stories of her legends."¹⁰⁶ However, I have argued that the miracles, especially Theophilus's tale, also confirm scriptural, liturgical, and iconographic law through the reenactment of Marian and Christic salvation history in contemporary time, a method that signals the ongoing nature of these events—the harrowing of hell, the pain of the crucifixion, and the conversion of Synagoga—in cycles and models of penitence. In this article I have demonstrated that these three versions of Theophilus are in active dialogue and represent a progression in literary representations of Jewishness against Christian insecurity, particularly in relation to typological and supersessionist thought. Relatedly, they also display the importance of ideas and imagery regarding Synagoga to Middle English writing, a topic that has been under-explored in scholarship. Though the texts do not overtly name Synagoga, her image informs their depictions of despair, time, and redemption. These texts also demonstrate the way in which individual journeys of transgression, despair, and penitence can be portrayed on an eschatological scale because of the perceived slippage between sin and Jewishness. Indeed, where both history and future are shown to be continual, they constitute divine promises that can be fulfilled or rescinded. A medieval audience's fear was generated through the sense in which they were watching Christian history being forged and destabilized in these tales, moved around in soteriological time by the sinful, and perhaps regressively "Jewish," whims of an individual mind.