ABSTRACT
This chapter analyzes the perceptions of the Jews by the Dominican friars in late medieval Florence and focuses on the encounter between the Christian and Jewish worlds as it appears in the oral and visual traditions at the church of Santa Maria Novella. 1 The use of rhetoric and preaching, the interrelations between word and image and between works of art and sermons lie at its core. My intention is to examine the representations of Jews in a particular context, that of Italian urban society in the late fourteenth and early fifteenth centuries and especially in the context of mendi-cant activity by studying both mendicant preaching and art. An analysis of the visual sources would benefit from a parallel examination of sermon material from the same period, which would provide a full picture of the rhetorical modes used to disseminate anti-Jewish propaganda. Mendicant preaching placed central emphasis on anti-Jewish propaganda. This legacy was extended into the fifteenth century, with Dominican and Franciscan preachers continuing the tradition of the mendicants’ anti-Jewish sermons and openly objecting to a Jewish presence in Italian cities. 2 Visual images, too, proved to be an ideal medium which artfully constructed both Christian and Jewish identities.
