Women and Jews in the Sachsenspiegel Picture-Books. Madeline H. Caviness and Charles G. Nelson. London: Harvey Miller, 2018. vi + 472 pp. €200

Women and Jews in the Sachsenspiegel Picture-Books presents a contextual study of Eike von Repgow's thirteenth-century Sachsenspiegel and the four extant pictorial recensions from the fourteenth century. Caviness here offers a fuller treatment of Eike's legal text, the relationship between...

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Bibliographic Details
Published inRenaissance quarterly Vol. 74; no. 1; pp. 309 - 310
Main Author Freedman, Marci
Format Journal Article Book Review
LanguageEnglish
Published Cambridge Cambridge University Press 01.04.2021
Subjects
13th century
14th century
Historical text analysis
Ideology
Jewish people
Philosophy
Picture books
Renaissance period
Society
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Summary:Women and Jews in the Sachsenspiegel Picture-Books presents a contextual study of Eike von Repgow's thirteenth-century Sachsenspiegel and the four extant pictorial recensions from the fourteenth century. Caviness here offers a fuller treatment of Eike's legal text, the relationship between text and image, and how the picture-books both reflect and diverge from the ideological program of the Sachsenspiegel, in that the images both confirm, embellish, and even contradict the legal text, leaving them open to “interpretation in light of current situations” (61). More broadly, Caviness shows that as the mercantile and professional classes rose in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries with increased protection under the law, the standing of women and Jews decreased.
ISSN:0034-4338
1935-0236
DOI:10.1017/rqx.2020.372