The Maccabees in the Lord's Temple: Biblical Imagery and Latin Poetry in Frankish Jerusalem (original) (raw)

The Maccabees in the Lord's Temple: Biblical Imagery and Latin Poetry in Frankish Jerusalem

This chapter examines how the figures of the Maccabees were deployed within the context of the institutional concerns of the Templum Domini (erstwhile Dome of the Rock) amid the emerging religious and political landscape of the kingdom of Jerusalem. The prior of the community of canons at Achard of Arrouaise composed a poem to make the case to the Frankish king of Jerusalem that the treasures that were taken from the Templum Domini during the siege of Jerusalem ought to be returned. In the process, Achard evokes the Maccabean resistance against religious persecution, with a pointed reflection on the treasures taken from the Jewish Temple by Antiochus IV. Achard’s successor Geoffrey composed an entire poem that centered on the Maccabees, combining a versification of 1 and 2 Maccabees with a moral exegesis of the biblical text, in which he criticized the practice of simony, and also seems to warn against making political alliances motivated by greed. Both poems, while largely dealing with biblical subject matter, address pressing concerns of the authors’ own time and place.