Anti-Jewish Iconography: Collective Memories of Medieval Echoes

For centuries, Jewish people have been visually marked through specific attributes intended to distinguish them from the surrounding population. When prior to the tenth century in early medieval Christian art Jewish people were not portrayed with identifiable markers, the “Jewish hat” emerged as a distinguishing feature shortly thereafter. Initially, this headwear was not designed to vilify or emphasise religious difference. By the thirteenth century, with the growing force of religious anti-Judaism and the accusation that ‘Jews’ were collectively responsible for the death of Jesus Christ visual representation shifted: Jewish figures were routinely depicted in caricatured form, mostly marked by grotesque facial features - notably the hooked nose and pointed beard as well as the hat. These visual tropes embedded anti-Jewish stereotypes deeply into European cultural memory and shaped enduring frameworks of collective remembrance. This paper examines the legacy and memory of such iconography, tracing its evolution from religious to racialised forms, and ultimately to modern political antisemitism. By exploring how these motifs persist in both historical consciousness and cultural memory, it is revealed how medieval artistic conventions continue to shape contemporary visual codes of exclusion and hostility, sustaining perceptions of ‘the Jew’ as a symbolic embodiment of ‘evil’.