Beautiful Death
Subtitle: Jewish Poetry and Martyrdom in Medieval France (Jews, Christians, and Muslims from the Ancient to the Modern World)
Publisher: Princeton University Press
Published: July 1, 2002
Language: eng
Format: Hardcover
Number of pages: 232
ISBN-13: 9780691090535
Subjects: Judaism; Poetry & poets: classical, early & medieval; Poetry anthologies: classical, early & medieval; c 1000 CE to c 1500; Literature - Classics / Criticism; Inspirational & Religious; Hebrew; Poetry; Medieval; Martyrdom; Jewish; European History; History / Jewish; Jewish Studies; History and criticism; France, Northern; Hebrew literature, Medieval; Martyrdom in literature
First sentence: THE MEDIEVAL literature of Jewish martyrdom was born not long after the First Crusade attacks on Jewish communities along the Rhine-that is, not long after the deaths of the men, women, and children who became the subjects of its chronicles, lists, and laments.
Description: "When Crusader armies on their way to the Holy Land attacked Jewish communities in the Rhine Valley, many Jews chose suicide over death at the hands of Christian mobs. With their defiant deaths, the medieval Jewish martyr was born. With the literary commemoration of the victims, Jewish martyrology followed. Beautiful Death examines the evolution of a long-neglected corpus of Hebrew poetry, the laments reflecting the specific conditions of Jewish life in northern France.

The poems offer insight into everyday life and into the ways medieval French Jews responded to persecution. They also suggest that poetry was used to encourage resistance to intensifying pressures to convert."--BOOK JACKET.