Iconography of buildings and the politics of Crusading: York Minster Chapter House at the eve of the Jewish expulsion

The centrally planned chapter house of York Minster, built from the late 1270s and completed by the mid-1290s, is part of a late 13th-century group of polygonal chapter houses. However, in addition to themes common to the whole group, York Minster Chapter House presented innovative design features and an innovative decorative programme. The iconography of the building structure can be traced from late Antiquity and related to contemporary groups of buildings in continental Europe. In this article the building’s iconography and its decorative programme will be interpreted arguing that, in addition to being a reference to the ‘classical tradition’ and thus the authority of Antiquity, it represented the sacred geography of Jerusalem. This will be discussed in the context of the late 13th- century preoccupation with Crusades at a time when Christendom was losing control over the Holy Land and of the role of the Church of York in promoting Edward I’s internal politics. Among the multiplicity of meanings connoted by this complex building, its visual impact on the landscape and part of its decorative programme may have been a cultural appropriation of a distant city, connected with preaching for a new crusade and the persecution of the Jews, culminating with their expulsion from England in 1290.