On Which the Jews Were Forced to Attend an Annual Christian Sermon in Rome
Text and publication
First publ. M & W, 10 Nov. 1855; repr. 1863, 18632, 1868, 1880, 1888. Our text is 1855.
Composition and date
According to Sharp, the poem was composed during the Brownings’ period of residence in Rome in the winter and spring of 1853–54; this suggestion is given added credibility by the Roman subject of the poem. There is, however, evidence that B. was still revising the poem just a month or so before its publication; see ll. 113–14n.
Sources and contexts
In his book Six Months in Italy (1853; rpt. 1856) B.’s American friend George Stillman Hillard notes the existence of a Papal Bull dating from 1584 which obliged Jews to attend a Christian sermon once a week, and adds: ‘This burden is not yet wholly removed from them; and to this day, several times in the course of a year, a Jewish congregation is gathered in the church of S. Angelo in Pescheria, and constrained to listen to a homily from a Dominican friar, to whom, unless his zeal have eaten up his good feelings and his good taste, the ceremony must be as painful as to his hearers’ (p. 305). The church of Sant’ Angelo in Peschiera is on the edge of the Roman ‘ghetto’, the area in which Jews were forced to live after the accession of Paul IV in 1555. Hillard describes Paul IV as a ‘dark and fervid bigot’ and indicates some of the humiliations heaped on the Jews during his Papacy: ‘He compelled them to wear a visible badge of separation, which for men was a yellow hat, and for women a yellow veil or handkerchief. Jewish physicians were forbidden to prescribe for Christian patients, and Jewish families were not allowed to employ Christian servants … Since that time, the Jews in Rome have been restricted to a particular quarter, which is called the Ghetto. It is a cluster of narrow and crooked streets, bounded on one side by the Tiber, and situated near the island where the river makes a sudden bend … It is entered by eight gates, which, until the accession of the present Pontiff [Pius IX], were closed from Ave Maria till sunrise’ (p. 303).
According to Giacomo Blustein, Storia degli ebrei in Roma (Roma 1921): ‘In the early days of the [compulsory sermon] no less than a third of the community had to attend the sermons every week according to the decree; this was reduced by Pope Gregory XIII to 150 people, but then grew to 300. As the traveller Abraham Levi mentions in 1724, no fewer than 300 men and 200 women had therefore to listen to the sermon (which lasted two hours) every Saturday, while the pontifical authorities later contented themselves with 100 men and 50 women’ (p. 173; our transl.). He adds: ‘Many used to go there with their ears already sealed with wax so as not to have to listen to the attacks that were made on their religion and the formal invitations they were given to relinquish it. As soon as anyone started to fall asleep, or even failed to pay sufficient attention, the overseer warned him with a blow from a stick: at which point a hubbub— perhaps somewhat forced—would arise, in order to make the preacher pause and therefore lose the thread of his subtle reasonings’ (ibid. 174). This account is corroborated by an entry in Evelyn’s Diary for 7 Jan. 1645: ‘A Sermon was preach’d to the Jewes at Ponte Sisto, who are constrain’d to sit, till the houre is don; but it is with so much malice in their countenances spitting, humming, coughing and motion, that it is almost impossible they should heare a word, nor are there any converted except it be very rarely’ (Melchiori, ‘Browning and the Bible’, Review of English Literature vii [1966] 23).
‘Holy Cross Day’, also known as The Feast of the Exaltation of the Cross, is celebrated on 14 Sept.; it is supposed to commemorate the recovery of the true Cross from the Persians by the Emperor Heraclius in ad 629, but the date in question actually refers to an earlier feast for the dedication of the basilica built by the Emperor Constantine on the site of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem in ad 335. Holy Cross Day has no recorded connection with the practice described in the poem; B.’s imaginary sermon seems to be set during Lent (see ll. 51–4n.).
Rowena Fowler (‘Browning’s Jews’, VP xxxv (1997), 245–65) places the poem in the context of the ‘conversionist’ attitude to Judaism which was part of the evangelical heritage of both the Brownings. The name of the Rabbi whose ‘Song of Death’ closes the poem (ll. 69–120) may be significant in this respect. This figure has usually been identified with the renowned scholar and teacher Abraham Ben Meir Ibn Ezra (ad 1092–1167), but B. would also have been aware of the fictional Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, a converted Jew created by the Jesuit priest Manuel Lacunza in his book La venida del Mesías en gloria y majestad [The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty]. This book was translated into English by the Revd Edward Irving in 1827 (The Coming of Messiah in Glory and Majesty. By Juan Josafat Ben-Ezra, A Converted Jew. Translated from the Spanish, with a Preliminary Discourse, by the Rev. Edward Irving, A.M. 2 vols.) and was clearly well known to EBB.; in a letter to Susanna Thorold she states: ‘Irving’s “Orations” I have read, & also his preface to “Ben Ezra,” giving much admiration to his fervour & elevation, & richness of poetic imagery—but I heard him preach only once, when I was very young’ (3 Dec. 1848, Correspondence xv 178). In his Preface (vol. i, pp. v–vi), Irving suggests that amongst the signs of the Second Coming will be a renewal of messianic fervour amongst the Jews, and their restoration to the biblical land of Israel:
When the Lord shall have finished the taking of witness against the Gentiles … he will begin to prepare another ark of testimony, or rather to make the whole earth an ark of testimony; and to that end will turn his Holy Spirit unto his ancient people the Jews, and bring unto them those days of refreshing spoken of by all the holy prophets since the world began: in the which work of conveying to them his Spirit by the preaching of the word, he may, and it is likely will use the election according to grace, who still are faithful among the Gentiles; though I believe it will chiefly be by the sending of Elias, who is promised before the dreadful and terrible day of the Lord, and by other mighty and miraculous signs … [this preaching will accomplish] in the Jewish church … that refining and passing through the fire which is spoken of immediately on their restoration. (Mal. iii. 3. Zech. xiii. 9.) Which Antichristian spirit among the Gentiles, and enraged infidel spirit among the Jews, may amalgamate with one another, to produce a spurious restoration of the nations to their own land, and occasion that great warfare in the neighbourhood of Jerusalem, when Antichrist shall fall, and his powers be broken in the battle of Armaggeddon. But the faithful among the Jews now brought to believe on him whom they have pierced, shall in the meantime be prepared by much sorrow, and distress, and supplication, for the coming of the Lord to settle and establish them surely and for ever in their own land … in this way the Lord will be preparing for himself an ark of testimony in the Jewish nation, through whom to make the whole world one great and universal ark of faithful testimony.
Irving also points out that the book was banned by the Catholic authorities, a fact which increases its value for him as a testament to the survival of the ‘truth’ of Christian doctrine in the face of persecution. His faith in its value is unshaken by his discovery that it was written by a Jesuit priest, not least because he remains ‘sceptical’ that the character of the converted Jew is ‘assumed’ (pp. xix–xx).
B.’s interest in theories of this kind is indicated by his admiration for Dunbar Isidore Heath’s The Future Human Kingdom of Christ (1852). Heath takes what EBB. calls the ‘dense material view of the personal reign at Jerusalem’ which involves the restoration of Israel as a temporal kingdom (2 Mar. 1853, EBB to Arabella i 543). His argument combines conversionism with Zionism, suggesting that the revived nation of Israel will recognize Christ as its saviour and be ‘nationally’ saved in first place amongst the nations of the earth: ‘If the Jews were gathered into the land they still claim as their own, and they were to incur in consequence a formidable military attack from European powers; if the Jews were on the very point of being put down, and some sign of the Son of Man should appear, what more probable, humanly speaking, and merely taking Europe and the Jews as we now find them,—than that the Jews should nationally accept Christ, that nine European newspapers out of ten should scoff at the “sign,” that individuals should accept it, and that the sudden taking away of these individuals should then be the beginning of a moral action upon the remaining nations’; cp. ll. 109–20n.
In spite of the similarities between these theories and the ending of the poem, B. later denied any ‘conversionist’ intention in a letter to Furnivall: ‘in Holy Cross Day, Ben Ezra is not supposed to acknowledge Christ as the Messiah because he resorts to the obvious argument “even on your own showing, and accepting for a moment the authority of your accepted Lawgiver, you are condemned by His precepts—let alone ours” ’ (17 Feb. 1888, Trumpeter 151).
The ‘Diary by the Bishop’s Secretary’ is fictional; note that it is a pastiche of Elizabethan English prose, not (as it should logically be) Italian. This, and other features of the first half of the poem, such as its ‘vulgar’ vocabulary and grotesque rhymes, may owe something to the Ingoldsby Legends: see headnote to Heretic’s Tragedy, III 219.
Parallels in B.
A number of B.’s poems are on Jewish subjects; cp. Ben Karshook (III 659). Rabbi Ben Ezra (see above, Sources) is given his own poem in DP (p. 649); Jewish resistance to Christian persecution is the subject of Filippo Baldinucci on the Privilege of Burial (Pacchiarotto, 1876). The proto-Zionism of the closing stanzas is, as Fowler notes, anticipated in bk. v of Paracelsus: ‘See how bright St. Saviour’s spire / Flames in the sunset; all its figures quaint / Gay in the glancing light; you might conceive them / A troop of yellow-vested, white-hair’d Jews / Bound for their own land where redemption dawns!’ (ll. 324–7 in the first-edition text; the last line was added in B.’s revisions to the poem made in 1847: see II 285). Fowler also notes a parallel with the (pre-Christian) Roman persecution of the Jews in the second century ad mentioned in Jochanan Hakkadosh 176 (Jocoseria, 1883).
[“Now was come about Holy-Cross Day, and now must
my lord preach his first sermon to the Jews: as it was of
old cared for in the merciful bowels of the Church, that,
so to speak, a crumb at least from her conspicuous table
5 here in Rome, should be, though but once yearly, cast
to the famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon
beneath the feet of the guests. And a moving sight in
truth, this, of so many of the besotted, blind, restive and
ready-to-perish Hebrews! now paternally brought—nay,
10 (for He saith, “Compel them to come in”) haled, as it
were, by the head and hair, and against their obstinate
hearts, to partake of the heavenly grace. What awakening,
what striving with tears, what working of a yeasty
conscience! Nor was my lord wanting to himself on so
15 apt an occasion; witness the abundance of conversions
which did incontinently reward him: though not to my
lord be altogether the glory.’—Diary by the Bishop’s Secretary,
1600.]
Though what the Jews really said, on thus being driven
20 to church, was rather to this effect:
1
Fee, faw, fum! bubble and squeak!
Blessedest Thursday’s the fat of the week.
Rumble and tumble, sleek and rough,
Stinking and savoury, smug and gruff,
5 Take the church-road, for the bell’s due chime
Gives us the summons—’tis sermon-time.
2
Boh, here’s Barnabas! Job, that’s you?
Up stumps Solomon—bustling too?
Shame, man! greedy beyond your years
10 To handsel the bishop’s shaving-shears?
Fair play’s a jewel! leave friends in the lurch?
Stand on a line ere you start for the church.
3
Higgledy piggledy, packed we lie,
Rats in a hamper, swine in a stye,
15 Wasps in a bottle, frogs in a sieve,
Worms in a carcase, fleas in a sleeve.
Hist! square shoulders, settle your thumbs
And buzz for the bishop—here he comes.
4
Bow, wow, wow—a bone for the dog!
20 I liken his Grace to an acorned hog.
What, a boy at his side, with the bloom of a lass,
To help and handle my lord’s hour-glass!
Didst ever behold so lithe a chine?
His cheek hath laps like a fresh-singed swine.
5
25 Aaron’s asleep—shove hip to haunch,
Or somebody deal him a dig in the paunch!
Look at the purse with the tassel and knob,
And the gown with the angel and thingumbob.
What’s he at, quotha? reading his text!
30 Now you’ve his curtsey—and what comes next?
6
See to our converts—you doomed black dozen—
No stealing away—nor cog nor cozen!
You five that were thieves, deserve it fairly;
You seven that were beggars, will live less sparely.
35 You took your turn and dipped in the hat,
Got fortune—and fortune gets you; mind that!
7
Give your first groan—compunction’s at work;
And soft! from a Jew you mount to a Turk.
Lo, Micah,—the self-same beard on chin
40 He was four times already converted in!
Here’s a knife, clip quick—it’s a sign of grace—
Or he ruins us all with his hanging-face.
8
Whom now is the bishop a-leering at?
I know a point where his text falls pat.
45 I’ll tell him to-morrow, a word just now
Went to my heart and made me vow
I meddle no more with the worst of trades—
Let somebody else pay his serenades.
9
Groan all together now, whee—hee—hee!
50 It’s a-work, it’s a-work, ah, woe is me!
It began, when a herd of us, picked and placed,
Were spurred through the Corso, stripped to the waist;
Jew-brutes, with sweat and blood well spent
To usher in worthily Christian Lent.
10
55 It grew, when the hangman entered our bounds,
Yelled, pricked us out to this church like hounds.
It got to a pitch, when the hand indeed
Which gutted my purse, would throttle my creed.
And it overflows, when, to even the odd,
60 Men I helped to their sins, help me to their God.
11
But now, while the scapegoats leave our flock,
And the rest sit silent and count the clock,
Since forced to muse the appointed time
On these precious facts and truths sublime,—
65 Let us fitly employ it, under our breath,
In saying Ben Ezra’s Song of Death.
12
For Rabbi Ben Ezra, the night he died,
Called sons and sons’ sons to his side,
And spoke, “This world has been harsh and strange,
70 Something is wrong, there needeth a change.
But what, or where? at the last, or first?
In one point only we sinned, at worst.
13
“The Lord will have mercy on Jacob yet,
And again in his border see Israel set.
75 When Judah beholds Jerusalem,
The stranger-seed shall be joined to them:
To Jacob’s House shall the Gentiles cleave.
So the Prophet saith and his sons believe.
14
“Ay, the children of the chosen race
80 Shall carry and bring them to their place:
In the land of the Lord shall lead the same,
Bondsmen and handmaids. Who shall blame,
When the slaves enslave, the oppressed ones o’er
The oppressor triumph for evermore?
85 “God spoke, and gave us the word to keep:
Bade never fold the hands nor sleep
’Mid a faithless world,—at watch and ward,
Till the Christ at the end relieve our guard.
By his servant Moses the watch was set:
90 Though near upon cock-crow—we keep it yet.
16
“Thou! if thou wast He, who at mid-watch came,
By the starlight naming a dubious Name!
And if we were too heavy with sleep—too rash
With fear—O thou, if that martyr-gash
95 Fell on thee coming to take thine own,
And we gave the Cross, when we owed the Throne—
17
“Thou art the Judge. We are bruised thus.
But, the judgment over, join sides with us!
Thine too is the cause! and not more thine
100 Than ours, is the work of these dogs and swine,
Whose life laughs through and spits at their creed,
Who maintain thee in word, and defy thee in deed!
18
“We withstood Christ then? be mindful how
At least we withstand Barabbas now!
105 Was our outrage sore? but the worst we spared,
To have called these—Christians,—had we dared!
Let defiance to them, pay mistrust of thee,
And Rome makes amends for Calvary!
19
“By the torture, prolonged from age to age,
110 By the infamy, Israel’s heritage,
By the Ghetto’s plague, by the garb’s disgrace,
By the badge of shame, by the felon’s place,
By the branding-tool, the bloody whip,
And the summons to Christian fellowship,
115 “We boast our proofs, that at least the Jew
Would wrest Christ’s name from the Devil’s crew.
Thy face took never so deep a shade
But we fought them in it, God our aid!
A trophy to bear, as we march, a band
120 South, east, and on to the Pleasant Land!”
[The present Pope abolished this bad business of the sermon.—R.B.]
Epigraph. [3.] cared for in] cared for by (18632 ).
Epigraph [3] merciful bowels: bowels are (as Cruden’s Concordance puts it) ‘used often in Scripture for the seat of pity or kindness’; see e.g. Jeremiah iv 19.
Epigraph [4] a crumb at least from her conspicuous table: cp. Matthew xv 22–7: ‘And behold, a woman of Canaan came out of the same coasts, and cried unto him, saying, Have mercy on me, O Lord, thou Son of David; my daughter is grievously vexed with a devil. But he answered her not a word. And his disciples came and besought him, saying, Send her away, for she crieth after us. But he answered and said, I am not sent but unto the lost sheep of the house of Israel. Then came she and worshipped him, saying, Lord, help me. But he answered and said, It is not meet to take the children’s bread, and to cast it to dogs. And she said, Truth, Lord: yet the dogs eat of the crumbs which fall from their masters’ table.’ The passage is used ironically here; the Jews are placed in the position of the woman of Canaan, but where she sought Jesus’s help, they are being forced to pick up the ‘crumbs’ from the Christians’ table.
Epigraph [6] famishing dogs, under-trampled and bespitten-upon: cp. Shylock in The Merchant of Venice: ‘You call me misbeliever, cut-throat dog, / And spat upon my Jewish gaberdine … You, that did void your rheum upon my beard, / And foot me as you spurn a stranger cur / Over your threshold’ (I iii 111–12, 117–19). For another parallel with this scene, see l. 20n.
Epigraph [8.] besotted, blind, restive] besotted blind restif (1868–88).
Epigraph [9] ready-to-perish Hebrews: cp. Deuteronomy xxvi 5: ‘A Syrian ready to perish was my father, and he went down into Egypt, and sojourned there with a few, and became there a nation, great, mighty, and populous’; as Melchiori (headnote, Sources) notes, this allusion conceals ‘behind the belittling adjective … a reference to the two great hopes of the Jewish people; the promised land, and that they shall be honoured “high above all nations” ’ ( p. 26).
Epigraph [9] paternally] maternally (1863–88).
Epigraph [10] for He saith, “Compel them to come in”: in Luke xiv Jesus tells the story of a man who invites his neighbours to a great supper. When they refuse to come he calls instead for ‘the poor, and the maimed, and the halt, and the blind’: ‘Go out into the highways and hedges, and compel them to come in, that my house may be filled’ (vv. 21, 23). The Secretary interprets the parable as implying that compulsion is justified in order to allow people to ‘partake of the heavenly grace’.
Epigraph [10] haled: hauled.
Epigraph [11–12] obstinate hearts … awakening: Oxford cites Deuteronomy ii 30: ‘the Lord thy God hardened his spirit, and made his heart obstinate’. The language used is (anachronistically) redolent of evangelical Christianity.
Epigraph [13–14] working of a yeasty conscience: either ‘working of an underdeveloped conscience’ or ‘working of a conscience just planted in them’; cp. Charles Kingsley’s novel Yeast (1848) and Galatians v 9: ‘A little leaven leaveneth the whole lump’, a text B. cites in Old Pictures 129 (p. 419).
Epigraph [16] incontinently: immediately.
Epigraph [16–17] though not to my lord be altogether the glory: cp. 1 Corinthians x 31: ‘whatsoever ye do, do all to the glory of God’, and the motto of the Knights Templar: ‘Non nobis Domine, non nobis, sed nomine tua da gloriam’, the Latin version of Psalm cxv: ‘Not unto us Oh Lord, not unto us, but to Thy name give glory’.
Epigraph [19] Though what the Jews] What the Jews (H proof [but not H proof 2], 1865–88). It is rare for a variant after 1855 to revert to the proof reading.
1. Fee, faw, fum: cp. Lovers’ Quarrel 131–3 (p. 383); also Ring v 585. The phrase is used here as a playful way of undermining the pretensions of a tyrant; cp. Southey’s satire on Napoleon’s retreat from Moscow: ‘And Counsellor Brougham was all in a fume / At the thought of the march to Moscow: / The Russians, he said, they were undone, / And the great Fee-Faw-Fum / Would presently come / With a hop, step, and jump unto London’ (‘The March to Moscow’, ll. 36–41). On the use of similar fairy-tale material in B.’s poetry see headnote to Childe Roland (p. 350). bubble and squeak: a dish of meat and cabbages fried together; presumably the kind of thing eaten on Thursdays (see l. 2 and note).
2. Blessedest: a translation of the Italian ‘santissimo’. the fat of the week: Giovedi Grasso (fat Thursday), the last Thursday before Lent, but by extension, because Friday is a weekly fast-day, any Thursday (as a day of gluttony).
3. Rumble and tumble: cp. Pied Piper of Hamelin 103–4 (p. 178); Melchiori (see headnote, Sources) points out that the description of the Jews here resembles the description of the rats in the earlier work.
4. smug: ‘Nice; spruce’ (J.) gruff: ‘sour of aspect, harsh of manners’ (J.).
8–12. The implication is that Solomon is eager to get to the church ahead of the others, since he will then have an opportunity of becoming one of the converts, and thus secure for himself an easy livelihood (see ll. 34–6). But this idea of a ‘race’ for the church (from the ‘line’ of l. 12) is inconsistent with the later statement that the converts have already been chosen by lot (ll. 31–6).
10. handsel: ‘To use or do anything the first time’ (J.); any converts would be expected to shave off their hair, which some orthodox Jews allow to grow long. See ll. 39–40n.
11. Fair play’s a jewel: OED notes that this phrase is used by Sir Walter Scott in Redgauntlet (1824), ch. xx.
13–16. Melchiori (headnote, Sources) cites a nursery rhyme beginning ‘Higgledypiggledy / Here we lie, / Picked and plucked / And put in a pie’ (p. 30). The rhyme is a charade whose two elements ‘cur’ and ‘rants’ give ‘currants’. Fowler (headnote, Sources) compares Gratiano’s observation in The Merchant of Venice that Shylock is enough to make one believe ‘[that] souls of animals infuse themselves / Into the trunks of men.’ (IV i 132–3).
17–18. Cp. Christmas-Eve 807–14 (III 79), where, however, the ‘Professor’ at Göttingen is not a contemptible figure like the Bishop, and in his case the audience’s reactions are sincere; the Jews here are only pretending to be attentive. ‘Hist!’ in l. 17 has the effect of ‘Hark!’ or ‘Look out!’
19. ‘The dog is barking—give him something to shut him up’ (the Jews wish they could stop the Bishop’s tedious speech). Cp. (noting the rhyme word in the next line) the nursery rhyme beginning: ‘Bow-wow, says the dog, / Mew, mew, says the cat, / Grunt, grunt, goes the hog’; again the implication is one of scornful belittlement of the ceremony.
20. acorned hog: a pig fed with acorns; the speaker’s derogatory description alludes to Jewish dietary laws which forbid the eating of pigs; see l. 24. Rowena Fowler points out that ‘[the] sexual connotations of [this phrase] … are brought to the fore in the juxtaposition with Shakespeare’s Iachimo who “Like a full-acorn’d boar … Cried ‘O!’ and mounted” (Cymbeline, II v 16–17)’; SP xcv (1998) 333–50. Cp. also Shylock in The Merchant of Venice, refusing to dine with Bassanio: ‘Yes, to smell pork; to eat of the habitation which your prophet the Nazarene conjured the devil into’ (I iii 33–5).
21–2. With this suggestion of homosexuality in the Catholic Church cp. Fra Lippo 8–11n. (p. 484).
22. my lord’s hour-glass: presumably to time the sermon (with an indecent innuendo).
23. so lithe a chine: ‘chine’ is an archaism for ‘spine’.
27–30. The speaker feigns ignorance of Catholic ritual. The ‘purse with the tassel and knob’ is the receptacle handed round the congregation during the collection. The bishop’s ‘reading [of ] his text’ is probably the reading from the Gospels, after which he will genuflect (or ‘curtsey’) in reverence. EBB. uses ‘curtsey’ in this sense in a letter to Arabella of 15–17 Apr. 1848 (Correspondence xv 59).
31–6. The speaker implies that the Jews have agreed amongst themselves who will be ‘converted’ by the sermon; and also perhaps that the leaders have manipulated the draw (l. 35) to rid themselves of undesirable elements.
32. cog nor cozen: both words are archaic terms meaning ‘cheat, deceive’.
34. sparely.] emended in agreement with H proof; 1855 has no punctuation; 1863–88 have a semi-colon.
37. Give your first groan: an imaginary instruction to the ‘converts’; Oxford compares Romans viii 23: ‘even we ourselves groan within ourselves, waiting for the adoption, to wit, the redemption of our bodies’. compunction: ‘pricking or stinging of conscience’ (OED), a traditional Christian term for the feeling of remorse at one’s sins.
38. from a Jew you mount to a Turk: i.e. you rise up the scale of the heathen from a Jew to a Muslim (from a Christian point of view). Cp. Childe Roland 137–8 (p. 362).
39–40. implying that some of the Jews have already been ‘converted’ several times.
41. The practice of shaving the Jews as a sign of conversion, referred to at ll. 9–10 above; Oxford compares Numbers vi 5, and Judges xiii 5.
42. hanging-face: cp. Fra Lippo 307 (p. 501).
47. I meddle … of trades—] To meddle … of trades! (1880). the worst of trades: usury in money-lending, a traditional Jewish role in Christian societies. The bishop is presumably preaching hypocritically against this practice. Given what he is going to use the money for (see next line), the speaker may also mean that he is not going to act as a pandar.
48. The speaker implies that he has lent the bishop money in the past to pay for his sexual dissipations (euphemistically referred to as his ‘serenades’).
51–4. Under the heading ‘ “Corse” degli ebrei durante il Carnevale’ [‘ “Races” of the Jews during Carnival’], Blustein (see headnote, Sources) cites a contemporary observer writing in 1583: ‘On Monday, as usual, eight naked Jews ran to obtain a prize, favoured by the rain, the wind and the cold as the infidels deserved; and after these two-legged beasts, ran others with four legs’ (p. 138). This custom pre-dated the persecutions of the sixteenth century; it is mentioned as early as 1466.
53. sweat and blood: cp. Luke xxii 44: ‘And being in an agony he [ Jesus] prayed more earnestly: and his sweat was as it were great drops of blood falling down to the ground.’
54. Carnival precedes Lent, the month during which Christians are supposed to do penance in preparation for Easter.
55. It: i.e. the feeling which is ‘a-work’ in the Jews, and which eventually ‘overflows’ (l. 59) in ‘Ben Ezra’s Song of Death’ (l. 66).
55. the hangman: as Oxford notes, the public hangman might be engaged in other works of punishment or persecution (e.g. the burning of books); but the use of this term would have a particular resonance for Jews because of the biblical story of Esther, in which the wicked Haman tries to have Mordecai hanged, but ends up being hanged himself. our bounds: the area of the ‘ghetto’ within which Jews were forced to live; see headnote.
56. pricked: urged forward, goaded. this church] his church (1863–88, except 18632 which agrees with 1855).
58. gutted: emptied.
60. Cp. ll. 47–8n.
61. scapegoats: cp. Leviticus xvi 8–10: ‘Aaron shall cast lots upon the two goats; one lot for the Lord, and the other lot for the scapegoat. And Aaron shall bring the goat upon which the Lord’s lot fell, and offer him for a sin offering. But the goat, on which the lot fell to be the scapegoat, shall be presented alive before the Lord, to make an atonement with him, and to let him go for a scapegoat into the wilderness.’ The converts play the role of the ‘scapegoats’ in this exercise.
66. Ben Ezra’s Song of Death: This seems to be B.’s invention; for the identity of ‘Ben Ezra’ see headnote, Sources.
67–120. With Ben Ezra’s deathbed homily, contrast Tomb at St. Praxed’s (p. 232), whose dying speaker is a corrupt Renaissance bishop very like the one represented in this poem.
72. In one point only we sinned: by failing to acknowledge Jesus as the Messiah: see ll. 91–6.
73–82. A close paraphrase of the prophecy in Isaiah xiv 1–2, which envisages the Jews returning to the Promised Land from exile and ‘[ruling] over their oppressors’.
74. On this suggestion of the restoration of Israel as a temporal realm see head-note, Sources. Melchiori (headnote, Sources) notes that the term ‘border’ is not in Isaiah, and suggests that B. might have interwoven this passage with a similar one in Jeremiah: ‘And there is hope in thine end, saith the Lord, that thy children shall come again to their own border’ (xxxi 17).
85–90. This passage uses a number of phrases from Mark xiii 32–7.
88. the Christ: the Messiah, literally ‘the anointed one’; Rowena Fowler (head-note, Sources) notes that ‘no professing Jew would use the name of Christ in a messianic sense’, as Ezra seems to do here. Ben Ezra’s words may, however, be sung by the Jews at this point because the sermon they were forced to attend was ‘usually an exposition of some passage from the Old Testament, and especially those relating to the Messiah, from the Christian point of view’ (Hillard, Six Months in Italy, II 51; cited DeVane, Handbook 260). Till the Christ] Till Christ (1863–88, except 18632 which agrees with 1855).
89. By his servant Moses the watch was set: Melchiori (headnote, Sources) suggests that this is a reminiscence of Malachi iv 4–5: ‘Remember ye the law of Moses my servant, which I commanded unto him in Horeb for all Israel, with the statutes and judgements. Behold I will send you Elijah the prophet.’ Jesus is repeatedly compared to, and occasionally identified with, Elijah (or ‘Elias’); see, e.g., Mark vi 15, Luke ix 19. He is not, however, accepted as the promised saviour by the Jews in the poem (who ‘keep [their watch] yet’).
91–108. Ben Ezra, addressing Jesus, concedes that he might indeed have been the Messiah, despite coming at an unexpected time (‘at mid-watch … by the starlight’) and not identifying himself clearly enough (‘naming a dubious Name’). However, Ben Ezra goes on, even if the Jews mistook Christ’s real nature, they themselves are now persecuted as he was, and are therefore his natural allies.
93. And if we were] And if, (1863–88, except 18632 which agrees with 1855).
100. dogs and swine: Ben Ezra describes the Christians, who profess to follow Christ’s teachings in theory but deny them in practice, in the terms used by the diarist to abuse the Jews themselves.
103. withstood: stood against; denied; cp. Any Wife to Any Husband 8–9 (III 648).
104. Barabbas was the murderer released at the request of the Jews instead of Jesus (Mark xv 6–14); he is now the symbol of the Christian persecutors themselves.
106. ‘To have called our present persecutors Christians would have been a real “outrage” against the Messiah.’
107. defiance to them] defiance of them (18632).
108. ‘Let our present defiance of the Roman Catholic Church make amends for our part in the crucifixion.’
109–120. Ben Ezra invokes the sufferings of the Jewish people as evidence of their determination to ‘wrest Christ’s name from the Devil’s crew’ and carry it back with them to the Promised Land. On the possible ‘conversionist’ background to this notion, see headnote, Sources.
111–12. On the indignities inflicted on the Jews of Rome, see headnote.
113–14.] Each heavier to us as these braggarts waxed, / Each lighter whenever their power relaxed—(H proof.) B. wrote and then cancelled an alternative version of these lines on the envelope of a letter from Bryan Waller Procter dated 2 Oct. 1855 (MS at University of Chicago): ‘By the branding iron, the hangman’s whip / And the summons to Christian fellowship.’ ‘Iron’ has subsequently been altered to ‘tool’. This is closer to 1855 than H proof; the change from ‘hangman’s whip’ to ‘bloody whip’ may have been prompted by the earlier appearance of the figure of the hangman (at l. 55). (We are grateful to Philip Kelley for this information.) Although Holy-Cross Day is, overall, one of the most lightly revised poems in M & W, this local instance is one of the most radical changes made to the text in proof. (The next revision, at l. 115, comes in with pleasing aptness.)
115. our proofs] our proof (1863–88, except 18632 which agrees with 1855).
116. Would wrest] Could wrest (18632). from the Devil’s crew: Melchiori (head-note, Sources) suggests an allusion to I Corinthians x 20–1, placing the Christians in the position assigned by St Paul to the ‘Gentiles’: ‘But I say, that the things which the Gentiles sacrifice, they sacrifice to devils, and not to God: and I would not that ye should have fellowship with devils.’
117–18. ‘No matter how badly they obscured or distorted your image, we continued to fight them in your name, with the help of God.’
119. a band] Thy band (1863–65); thy band (1868–88).
120. Cp. Jeremiah iii 18–19; Ben Ezra clearly thinks of the ‘Pleasant Land’ as the biblical land of Israel, which lies ‘South’ and ‘East’ of Rome.
Author’s note. The present Pope] The late Pope (1880); Pope Gregory XVI (1888). this bad business of the sermon.] this bad business. (H proof); this bad business of the Sermon. (1888). The ‘present Pope’ in 1855, and the ‘late Pope’ in 1880, was Pius IX, who abolished both ‘the insults against [the Jews], normal in the annual comedies of the Carnival’, and ‘the sermons to convert them’ on his assumption of the Papacy (Owen Chadwick, A History of the Popes 1830–1914 [Oxford 1998] 129–30). B. seems, however, to have been informed subsequently that it was in fact Pius’s predecessor Pope Gregory XVI who eliminated this practice, and modified his note accordingly.