Moneychangers Notecard

This notecard is at first an attractive medieval image. Upon closer inspection the story depicted tells a more sordid tale. Pulled from a book of gospels in the Morgan Library & Museum’s collection, this image illustrates Christ’s expulsion of Moneychangers at the Temple in Jerusalem.

Some ways of earning money were deemed immoral. The Gospels record that at the Temple in Jerusalem, Christ, wielding a whip, “overthrew the tables of the moneychangers, and the chairs of them that sold doves,” animals used as offerings. For Christ, the commercial transactions transformed the sacred place into a “den of thieves.” In the large roundel at the top of this miniature, Jesus drives two men away. One holds doves; the other carries coins. In this manuscript, New Testament events are juxtaposed with Old Testament parallels and examples from nature. Here, Christ is compared to Judas Maccabeus, the famed Jewish warrior who cleansed the desecrated Temple and adorned it with gold crowns.

This notecard is a product made to complement the exhibition Medieval Money, Merchants and Morality on view at the Morgan Library & Museum November 10, 2023 through March 10, 2024.