JESSE, TREE OF. — From the passage in Isaiah, “There shall come forth a shoot from the root of Jesse, and a branch shall grow out of his roots” (Is. 11:1), medieval iconography imagined the patriarch JESSE most often lying on a bed or asleep; from him rises a great tree whose branches support the kings descended from him, according to the genealogy in Mt. 1:1-17 or Lk. 3:23-32, down to Joseph, husband of Mary, and to Jesus Christ. Sometimes, especially in the 13th century, at the summit of the tree is the Eternal Father with the Child Jesus, as in the cloister of Silos; or the Blessed Virgin Mary with the Divine Infant (Psalter of Queen Ingeburga, now in the Condé Museum at Chantilly). On either side of the tree are often the Prophets, and sometimes also Virgil and the Sibyls, or even Moses and the Synagogue contrasted with Peter and the Church (Bible of St-Bertin of St-Omer: Bibliothèque nationale de Paris, ms. lat. 1647, fol. 7v).
In one of the stained-glass windows of St-Denis, commissioned by Abbot Suger in 1144, the seven doves hover above, symbols of the gifts of the Holy Spirit; the hand of God or the dove above the Prophets indicates their inspiration. This window still exists but is much restored (E. Mâle, L'art religieux en France, I, Paris 1925, p. 169, fig. 133). A copy was made about 1150 in one of the windows of Chartres Cathedral (op. cit., p. 170, fig. 134).
JESSE – JEUNESSE AGRICOLE CHRÉTIENNE (J.A.C.)
In England, in York Cathedral. In 1169 the Crusaders had the Tree of Jesse executed by the monk Ephrem in the church of Bethlehem, as learned from a 16th-century copy by the pilgrim Quaremius. Also in Bucovina the Tree of Jesse is painted on the exterior of the church of Suscevizza. — See pls. XXXVII-XXXVIII.