Did medieval Christians see Esau as a villain in church art and sermons?
Research question: Did ordinary medieval Christians picture Esau as a villain, and how did church paintings and sermons show him?
The facts do not show how ordinary medieval Christians viewed Esau, and they say nothing about church paintings or sermons. They do supply a textual basis for a negative portrait: Hebrews calls Esau a profane person who sold his birthright for a single meal, a portrait medieval readers would have inherited 6, and says he was rejected even though he sought the blessing with tears 7. The Latin Vulgate text of Malachi 1:3 has God saying he hated Esau 5, and Romans 9:11–13 is cited to explain that God loved Jacob but hated Esau 2. Later sources went further, with a sixteenth-century musical drama portraying Esau as reprobate 3 and Calvinist readings depicting him as secretly motivated by profane desires 1. Since the newest fact is dated 2020 1, these sources cannot confirm what ordinary medieval audiences actually believed.
Sources
"Esau, meanwhile, even when he seems to be in the right (welcoming Jacob home with open arms, for instance), must in fact be secretly motivated by “profane” desires."Undermining the Elect Nation: King Lear and the Hebrew Patriarchs at the Court of James I (2020)
"For the children being not yet born, neither having done any good or evil, that the purpose of God according to election might stand, not of works, but of him that calleth;) It was said unto her, The elder shall serve the younger. As it is written, Jacob have I loved, but Esau have I hated."Undermining the Elect Nation: King Lear and the Hebrew Patriarchs at the Court of James I (2020)
"There was a sixteenth-century tradition of staging this story, including the sixth play in the Towneley cycle and a musical drama, possibly performed at the court of Edward VI by the Children of the Chapel Royal, with a prologue that several scholars have read as explicitly Calvinist: “But before Iacob and Esau yet borne were, / Or had eyther done good, or yll perpetrate: / As the prophet Malachie"Undermining the Elect Nation: King Lear and the Hebrew Patriarchs at the Court of James I (2020)
"Calvin condemned those who take the “short and easy method” of attributing “the origin and cause of election” to God’s foreknowledge of the “virtues and vices” of Jacob and Esau."Undermining the Elect Nation: King Lear and the Hebrew Patriarchs at the Court of James I (2020)
"Esau autem odio habui, et posui montes ejus in solitudinem, et hæreditatem ejus in dracones deserti."Malachi 1:1-6 [Latin Vulgate (Clementine)]
"μή τις πόρνος ἢ βέβηλος ὡς Ἠσαῦ, ὃς ἀντὶ βρώσεως μιᾶς ἀπέδετο τὰ πρωτοτόκια ἑαυτοῦ."Hebrews 12:13-18 [Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)]
"ἴστε γὰρ ὅτι καὶ μετέπειτα θέλων κληρονομῆσαι τὴν εὐλογίαν ἀπεδοκιμάσθη, μετανοίας γὰρ τόπον οὐχ εὗρεν, καίπερ μετὰ δακρύων ἐκζητήσας αὐτήν."Hebrews 12:13-18 [Greek New Testament (SBLGNT)]