ESTER, HESTER. Esther is the heroine of The Book of Esther. When Queen Vashti refused to come when he called her, King Assuerus divorced her and chose Esther as his wife. Esther was very beautiful, and the king did not know that she was Jewish. Haman, the king's prime minister, persuaded him to issue an edict authorizing the death of all the Jews in the kingdom. Advised by her uncle Mordecai, Esther revealed her Jewish identity to the king, and he gave her leave to change the edict and thus save the Jews.

The medieval view of Esther emphasizes her beauty, her meekness, and her heroism. She represents a type of the Church in Jerome (c. 341-420), Commentariorum in Sophoniam Prophetam, I (PL 25: 1337); Isidore of Seville (c. 560-636), Allegoria quaedam Sacrae Scripturae (PL 83: 116, 147); and Rabanus Maurus (ninth century), Expositio in librum Ester III (PL 109: 646). Popular and devotional literature continued the association of Esther with a type of the Church. She is a femme de bon conseil or "a woman of good counsel," in Liber consolationis et consilii (The Book of Consolation and Counsel), by Albertanus Brixiensis (c. 1246), and in the adaptation by Renaud de Louens, Le Livre de Mellibee et Prudence (The Book of Melibee and Prudence), written after 1336.

Ester is a woman of good counsel, MerchT 1371-1374; Mel 1100. May is as meek as Ester, MerchT 1744-1745. The Man in Black laments Good Fair White, who was as debonaire and as witty as Ester, BD 985-990. Ester must lay down her meekness before Alceste, the paragon of conjugal love, LGW F 250, LGW G 204. [Assuer: Mardochee]

Ester, both ME and OF, appears initially, LGW F 250, LGW G 204, and medially, MerchT 1371. Hester, OF and Latin, occurs in Mel 1100 and medially, BD 988. Latin initial h was not pronounced; medial h in modern spellings is an addition.