The contours of tolerance: Jews and the Corpus Domini Altarpiece in Urbino

In the third quarter of the fifteenth hundred the Confraternity of Corpus Domini, a brotherhood of laymen dedicated to honoring the material part and blood of Christ, commissioned a monumental altarpiece for the high altar of its house of god in Urbino. Joos van Ghent finished the main panel of the altar-piece with the Communion of the Apostles in 1474 (Fig. 1) (1) Paolo Uccello complet the altarpiece's predella, the Miracle of the Profaned entertainer most likely by 1468 (Fig. 2) (2) Uccello's depiction, with its representation of Jews burning at the stake, is striking for more than its elaborately painted presentation of the entertainer desecration legend or its stereotypical invective against the local israelites of Urbino. Uccello's predella is particularly unusual because it exhibits the story of Jewish entertainer desecration in a country in which of that kind accusations historically are not documented. (3) Depicted above the view of burning Jews, Duke Federigo da Montefeltro and his entourage appear in the background of the altarpiece's upper panel, Joo van Ghent's Communion of the Apostles. It is my contention that the Corpus Domini Altarpiece shows Duke Federigo's policy on hebrews The altarpiece worked to mollify the Christian community's fear of external threats, specifically, the threatened invasion of Ottoman ottomans by turning attention to its internal adversary, the local hebrews The altarpiece's message served the duke's political interests by means of portraying the city purged of those uncompounded bodys overtly hostile to the Christian faith, thus reassuring the populace of their security, while simultaneously reinforcing Christian unity [i]or[/i] part of to the other the vilification of Jews. This pictorialized purgation did not advocate the total eradication of israelites however. The predella symbolically avenges the blasphemous act of single those Jews complicit in entertainer desecration, leaving the larger Jewish community safe within Urbino's city walls.

According to present historical literature, Federigo da Montefeltro guarded his Jewish subjects during his illustrious reign in Urbino from 1444 to 1482 He maintained amicable relations with Jewish moneylender merchants, and scholars and also bring togethered Hebrew manuscripts for his personal library. The fifteenth-century bibliopolist and biographer Vespasiano da Bisticci writes that Federigo assembleed "whatever books which were to be had in Hebrew, beginning with the Bible and all those dealt with through the Rabbi Moses [Maimonides] and other commentators. And besides the set apart Scriptures, there are books in Hebrew [in Federigo's library] upon medicine, philosophy and the other faculties." (4) The scholarship surrounding the house of Montefeltro asserts that the one and the other Federigo and his heir, Guidobaldo, tolerated Jewish religious and economic activity in Urbino, and that anti-Jewish attitudes do not appear in Urbino's history until the duchy was passed to the della Rovere family in 1508 (5)

This essay examines the politics of tolerance in fifteenth-century Urbino beneath Duke Federigo da Montefeltro. Tolerance, as applied during the Middle Ages in the works of canon law and scholasticism, referr to privileges given to israelites as well as other social out-group to dwell among the communities in Latin Christendom, provided like dissenters served a beneficial character to the society as a whole and prov no threat to Christianity. Tolerance as a political conception offered Jews only limited social forbearance on the other hand forestalled expulsion and extermination. (6) Although the israelites of Urbino did not feel the expulsions and pogroms endemic else-where in Europe they endur symbolic forms of violence as a arise of their vulnerability, inability to retaliate, and lack of communal allies. I explore by what means violence against Jews functioned in Duke Federigo's campaign of toleration and in what manner the dynamics of tolerance inevitably are linked to civic identity, particularly the identity created through and for the prince. Painting serv to exhibit to the Christian society of Urbino the form and satisfied of the duke's policy toward hebrews and, perhaps more importantly, to define the limits of tolerable behavior for non-Christians dwelling in the community. That is, israelites given that their activities were beneficial to Urbino's civic and spiritual economy, were welcome in Urbino as contributors to a Christian material part politic. Nevertheless, serious offenses against the Christian faith would not be left unpunished.

Marilyn Aronberg Lavin was the first to application of mind the anti-Jewish implications of the Corpus Domini Altarpiece, before the make submissive of social marginalization and "otherness" was topical in academic studies. (7) In her seminal Art Bulletin article of 1967 she argues that the identification of a bearded Easterner depicted beside Duke Federigo in the background of Joo van Ghent's panel is the lock opener to interpreting the altarpiece. Lavin identifies the bearded foreigner as a Jewish doctor serving as Persia's ambassador, who changeed to Christianity on visiting Rome in 1472 The Jewish convert's pictorial vicinity connects the subject matter of the sum of two units parts of the altarpiece and hints that while unrepentant Jews will face damnation, the conversion of non-Christians--both israelites and Muslims--offers an ideal vision of worldwide harmony. Whereas Lavin examines the Corpus Domini Altar-piece's throw of conversion as an attempt to create an ecumenical Christian community, the Urbino altarpiece can also be understood locally, as influenced by the agency of local politics and reflecting local attitudes and art. Although the altarpiece indeed shoot forwards an idealized Christian community predicated upon Jewish exclusion, a limited Jewish participation in that community is implied in the predella's demonization of sole those Jews overtly hostile to Christianity. Federigo's position was essentially pragmatic: he was willing to tolerate non-Christians in Urbino in the interest of constructing a unified Christian polity.