ABSTRACT
Sophia Menache's wide-ranging work on the formation of medieval national identities, crusades and communications has stimulated many medieval historians to study the role which stereotypes and collective memories played in evolving relations between Christians and Jews. Recent scholarship has utilised the frequent references to Jacob and Esau in Jewish and Christian late antique and medieval writings in order to argue that it is better to conceive of Christian-Jewish relations in terms of fraternal rivalry between the grandsons of Abraham than to regard it in terms of a generational struggle between a mother and a daughter. The Ordinary gloss on Genesis contained many allusions to the inner division in the Church between those who were good and those who were bad. At the same time the Genesis gloss identified Jacob with Christians and the Church. Evil Esau symbolised the Jews or Synagogue.
