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The Siege of Jerusalem

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About the text:
Text name: The Siege of Jerusalem
Alternative names: Distructio Jerusalem per Vespasianum et Titum; Distruccio Jerusalem; The Siege; The Sege of Jerusalem; Le Sege de Jerusalem; The Alliterative Sege of Ierusalem; In Tiberius time the true emperor
Content: The Siege of Jerusalem narrates the historical events of the sacking and destruction of Jerusalem during the First Jewish-Roman War in 70 A.D. The following offers a summary of the content.

Titus and Vespasian become Christians. Forty years after Christ's death, during the time of emperor Nero, an incurable disease afflicts the noblemen Vespasian and his son Titus. Christ's following is growing through miracles at that time, as illustrated by a local king's recovery from cancer upon being moved to grief when he hears about the passion of Christ. Vespasian learns about Veronica's shroud, which can heal all sickness. He orders many knights to retrieve it and eventually they manage to do so. The shroud is presented in Rome, makes the heathen idols crumble, emits the sweetest smell and heals Vespasian and Titus. Thus, the two noblemen and many Romans convert to the Christian faith. (lines 1-260)
The Jewish-Roman War begins. The Jews refuse to pay tribute to Rome. Nero sends Vespasian and Titus as army generals to take care of the situation. They quickly invade Judea and lay siege to the city of Jerusalem. Vespasian and Titus proclaim that they have come in order to avenge Christ, "Þat all Þe cause of her com[e] / was Crist forto venge" (l. 344) and demand that the Jews surrender by the next morning. The Jews refuse, and thus both sides begin to make preparations for a drawn-out war. (lines 261-440)
The battle for Jerusalem. Caiaphas, the Jewish priest, and Vespasian motivate their people. A vicious battle begins: The Romans "Hewen on the heÞen, / hurtlen to-gedr // For-schorne gild schroud, / sch[o]dered burne[s]. // Baches woxen ablode / a-boute in Þe vale, // & goutes from gold wede / as goteres Þey runne." ('Hewed on the heathens, / dash violently together // Tore to pieces gilded shrouds, / shattered mail coats. // Brooks grew bloody / all about in the valley // and gushes from golden garments / like gutters they flow') (ll.557-60). Jewish battle elephants are slain, Roman soldiers bombarded from the city walls, dead bodies plundered, defences destroyed by siege towers, stones thrown by catapults, water supplies cut. Caiaphas and twelve clerks are captured and brutally murdered to the despair of the Jews. Yet, they will not surrender. Thus, Vespasian decides to change his strategy, stop the fighting, and starve the population of the city into submission instead. (lines 441-892)
Vespasian becomes emperor. Meanwhile, in Rome, Nero has wrought much evil. Therefore, the people rise up against him and, after a civil war, choose Vespasian as their new emperor. After consultation with his generals, Vespasian decides to accept the anointment and departs to Rome. (lines 893-1020)
The siege. The siege of Jerusalem lasts for many months. Titus falls ill but is cured by Josephus, a Jewish wise man. Jerusalem experiences great misery, hunger, violence and death. A woman roasts and devours her own baby son. Some kill the weak to eat their provisions. The Jews dig a tunnel under the walls to escape the siege and ambush Titus. The attack is stopped just in time by one of Titus' generals with 800 spearmen. Jerusalem's sorrow is growing. Its citizens must now pay "For a ferÞyng-worÞ of fode / floryns an hundred" (l. 1139). Josephus attempts to convince the population to surrender, but John and Simon, their leaders, will not listen. Dead bodies are thrown over the walls. The first individuals begin to surrender themselves to Titus. (lines 1021-1172)
The destruction of Jerusalem. Titus decides to conquer the city once and for all. They approach the walls with tens of thousands of men. A fierce battle erupts. Miracles have portended and continue to portend the downfall of Jerusalem, so that the Jews finally surrender and open the gates. Titus enters the town. He has the temple plundered and demolished, the city utterly destroyed, and the soil ploughed with salt. Pilate, who ordered Christ's crucifixion, is tried. Since Christ was sold for thirty pennies, Titus now sells thirty Jews as slaves for one penny. (lines 1173-1320)
The close. All Roman soldiers have become immensely rich from the spoils of war and go back home. Pilate commits suicide in captivity. Josephus goes to Rome and writes down the history of the Siege of Jerusalem. (lines 1321-1334)

The text is an important witness of Middle English alliterative poetry and was apparently popular as it survives in no less than 9 manuscripts. Nevertheless, modern critics have generally regarded it as a problematic piece of literature and given it comparatively little praise. "Viewed one way, [The Siege] mars the reputation of medieval chivalric literature; viewed another, it stains the good name of medieval piety. It seems ruined by rank anti-Semitism; since it transgresses ethically, it also must fail as literature. In short, its grossness is so palpable that it seems to merit the critical invisibility that has been its textual fate for most of its post-medieval existence" (Nicholson 2002: 447). (For relevant literary criticism, see e.g., Hanna (1992), Nicholson (2002), Livingston (2004: Introduction), and references therein.)
Genre/subjects: romance, epic, history, historical epic, legend, romance treatments of historical themes, the Jewish-Roman War, Second Temple, vengeance of our Lord, anti-Semitism, just war
Dialect of original composition: Northern, (Northern) West Midlands
Kölbing and Day (1932: xi-xv) investigate the dialect of the original on the basis of alliterating features, which are likely to represent the author's dialect, as well as comparative evidence between the manuscript witnesses. For example, while Southern alliterative poems can alliterate s and sh, this alliteration was not readily available to the author of the Siege (two potential exceptions), which suggests a more Northern original. The authors conclude that "the original dialect was the North-west Midland" (ibid.:xv).
The authorial dialect has subsequently been discussed in greater detail in Hanna and Lawton (2003: xxvii-xxv). They compare 8 linguistic features that must reflect the original dialect because of metrical requirements against linguistic profiles from LALME (McIntosh et al. 1986). The following example illustrates: The third person plural object personal pronoun always alliterates on h not th so that an h-based form must reflect the author's original use.

þe þridde in heuen mid hem / is þe holy goste
'The third in heaven with them / is the Holy Ghost' (line 111)
(cf. Ms. A with thaym for mid hem)

This feature is shared with linguistic profiles 18 (Y[orkshire]W[est]R[iding]) 601 (YWR), and 154 (Lancashire), but not 5 (YWR), 191 (YWR), 364 (YWR), 603 (YWR), or 365 (Lancashire). This procedure is repeated for each of the linguistic features.
In the end, the methodology points to "a geographically specific authorial dialect – a small area in the West Riding of Yorkshire, a neighbourhood centred around Barnoldswick and Earby" (Hanna & Lawton 2003: xxix).
Hanna & Lawton summarize their findings in this convenient map (click to open) (ibid: xxxi, Figure 1).
Date of original composition: 1340-1390
The poem must have been composed before its earliest manuscript, Laud. Misc. 656, was copied "probably in the 1390s […] (and compare [Ms.] P, at the latest c. 1400)" (Hanna & Lawton 2003: xxxv), and after its earliest datable source, Higden's Universal Chronicle, was written in c. 1340 (ibid.). If one allows sufficient time for copying errors to emerge, "composition during the 1370s or 1380s would seem an appropriate and conservative inference" (ibid.).
A narrower terminus a quo was proposed by Kölbing and Day (1932: xxix), who identified the Alliterative Troy Book (IMEV 2129) created after c. 1385 as one of the Siege's sources based on parallels such as the following:
The Alliterative Troy Book The Siege of Jerusalem
All merknet the mountens / & mores aboute
The ffowles þere fethers / foldyn to gedur
Nightwacche for to wake, / waites to blow;
(lines 7350-2)		 Merked [þe] montayns / & mores a-boute
Foules fallen to fote / & her fe+tres r[y]s[t]en
Þe nyȝt-wacche to þe walle / & waytes to blowe;
(lines 725-7)
In this case, one could conclude "that the Siege belongs to the last decade of the fourteenth century" (ibid.). However, this reasoning is not generally accepted any longer. Rather, the Alliterative Troy Book is regarded as the later of the two poems (perhaps after 1420, Sundwall 1975). For detailed arguments, see Hanna and Lawton (2003: xxxv-xxxviii).
The poem was composed in the "[l]ate fourteenth century" (Database of Middle English Romances).
Suggested date: 1380
PCMEP period: 3 (1350-1420)
Versification: alliteration, alliterating stress is most commonly aa/ax
The poem was originally divided into quatrains, but this structure has partially been distorted in the surviving manuscript witnesses.
"the only patterns of alliteration within the line are aa(a)/ax and permissible variants; in which stress and alliteration coincide (though we note and have accepted a handful of lines of the 'Piers Plowman type'[)] (Lawton & Hanna 2003: lxxiv, for details, see ibid.: lxxiv-lxxvi Metre and Formula, Waldron 1957)
Index of ME Verse: 1583 (IMEV), 1583 (NIMEV)
Digital Index of ME Verse: 2651
Wells: 1.106 (third text mentioned in the entry)
MEC HyperBibliography: Siege Jerus.(1)


About the edition and manuscript base:
Edition: Kölbing, Eugen & Day, Mabel. 1932. The Siege of Jerusalem: Edited from Ms. Laud. Misc. 656 with Variants from all Other Extant Mss. EETS o.s. 188. London: Oxford University Press.
Manuscript used for edition: Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 656 (SC 1059), ff. 1v-19 [L]
Laud Misc. 656 is the base manuscript for the edition. However, other manuscript readings are sometimes used to replace corrupt passages. For details, see the notes.
Online manuscript description: Summary catalogue of Western manuscripts in the Bodleian Library at Oxford, no. 1059
Digitized Manuscript, 'Digital Bodleian'
Medieval Manuscripts in Oxford Libraries
Manuscript dialect: Southern
The manuscript was "[c]opied by northwest Oxfordshire scribes" (Hanna & Lawton 2003: xiv, referring to work by Michael Louis Samuels).
Manuscript date: s. xiv-ex, s. xv-in
The manuscript dates from "s. xiv ex." (Hanna & Lawton 2003: xiii).
The online version of the MED dates the manuscript to a1400, noting that it was dated ?a1425 or ?a1450 in print versions of the MED and that it was redated in June 2019 in consultation with OED and based on the views of Hanna and Lawton (2003).
Earlier scholarship dated the manuscript to "the early fifteenth century" (Kölbing and Day 1932.: vii)


About the file:
File name: M3.SiegeJerusa
ID: SiegeJerusa,x.y.z: x=page, y=line, z=token
Word count: 10,496
Token count: 929
Line count: 1334 (plus a final Latin explicit)


Other:
General notes: The poem has come down to the present day in 9 manuscripts. They are listed below:
  • Oxford, Bodleian Library, Laud Misc. 656 (SC 1059), ff. 1v-19 [L] (late 14th century)
    This is the preferred manuscript and was edited by Kölbing and Day (1932), used as the basis for the parsed electronic file.
  • Princeton, University Library, Taylor Medieval II, ff 104v-110v [P] (late 14th century)
  • San Marino, California, Huntington Library, HM 128, ff. 205-216 [E] (beginning 15th century)
  • Cambridge, University Library, Mm.v.14, ff. 187-206v [U] (first quarter 15th century)
  • London, Lambeth Palace Library, 491, Part 1, ff. 206-216v, 217-227v [D] (first quarter 15th century)
  • Oxford, London, British Library Addit. 31042 [London Thornton Manuscript], ff. 50r-66r [A] (mid 15th century)
  • London, British Library, Cotton Vespasian E.xvi, ff. 70-75v [V] (mid 15th century)
  • Exeter, Devon Record Office, 2507 (fragment) [Ex] (second half 15th century)
  • London, British Library Cotton Caligula A.ii, part 1, ff. 111r-125r [C] (third quarter 15th century)
For the relations between the manuscripts, see Hannah and Lawton (2003: lv-lxxiv) and Kölbing & Day (1932: ix-xi)
The poet of The Siege used a number of sources: Vindicta Salvatoris (first two hundred lines), Bible en françois (lines 201-76, 317-724), Higden's Polychronicon (line 789-end), Legenda Aurea (lines 1022-62, Titus' sickness and healing and other details), and possibly Rufinus of Aquileia's translation of Josephus' Jewish Wars. These sources may have directly influenced the author's choices of certain lexical or grammatical forms. For details, see Hannah and Lawton (2003: xxxvii-lv) and Kölbing & Day (1932: xix-xxix).
See Hannah and Lawton for comments on syntax (2003: lxxvi-lxxviii), lexicon (ibid.: lxxviii-lxxxi) and translation techniques (ibid.: lxxxi-lxxxvi).
Line numbers refer to Kölbing and Day's (1932) edition. Hannah and Lawton (2003) add empty lines where material appears to be missing.
Remarks on parses: The text is quite difficult to parse. Explanations of difficult parsing decisions are included in the parsed file as CODE comments.
Emendations are indicated with square brackets. If they are not accompanied by comments, they are found as shown in the edition. If they occur with an additional comment, the changes may have been added especially for the electronic parsed file. Comments explaining emendations usually refer to other manuscripts or the commentaries in Hannah and Lawton (2003) and Kölbing and Day (1932).
The text makes frequent use of narrative present. Therefore, tense may not always be unambiguous. The tags for present (VBP) and past (VBD) are usually based on interpretations in the glossaries in Hannah and Lawton (2003) and Kölbing and Day (1932).
The poem is sometimes difficult to tokenize as a clause could either belong to a following or preceding main clause. The parses try to use context to resolve this issue, but it may be helpful to be aware of this issue when working with this file.

References

Hanna, Ralph & Lawton, David. 2003. The Siege of Jerusalem. EETS o.s. 320. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Hanna, Ralph. 1992. 'Contextualizing the Siege of Jerusalem.' The Yearbook of Langland Studies 6. 109-21.
Kölbing, Eugen & Day, Mabel. 1932. The Siege of Jerusalem: Edited from Ms. Laud. Misc. 656 with Variants from all Other Extant Mss. EETS o.s. 188. London: Oxford University Press.
Livingston, Michael. 2004. Siege of Jerusalem. TEAMS Middle English Text Series. Kalamazoo, Michigan: Medieval Institute Publications. (available online)
McIntosh, Angus, Samuels, Michael L. & Benskin, Michael. 1986. A Linguistic Atlas of Late Medieval English. Aberdeen: Aberdeen University Press.
Nicholson, Roger. 2002. 'Haunted Itineraries: Reading the Siege of Jerusalem.' Exemplaria: Medieval, Early Modern, Theory 14.2., 447-84.
Sundwall, McKay. 1975. 'The Destruction of Troy, Chaucer's Troilus and Crisyde, and Lydgate's Troy Book. ' Review of English Studies 26. 313-17. (available online)
Waldron, Ronald A. 1957. 'Oral-Formulaic Technique and Middle English Alliterative Poetry.' Speculum 32. 792-804.