Personification of the Jewish Religion (Synagoga)

Synagoga — the personification of the Jewish religion as a blindfolded or crown-falling woman — was a standard figure in medieval Christian visual theology, typically paired with Ecclesia (the Church) as her triumphant counterpart. The presence of this theologically pointed personification in the St. Ursula altarpiece ensemble suggests a broader programme connecting Ursula's legend to questions of religious identity and supersession. These allegorical figures derived from Romanesque and Gothic cathedral sculpture and were adapted into panel painting in the fifteenth century.

Synagoga's traditional attributes — a falling crown, a broken lance, a covered or blindfolded face — are rendered with the same technical precision as narrative or devotional subjects, even as their meaning is doctrinally programmatic.