<BLOOD LIBEL, the allegation that Jews murder
non-Jews especially Christians, in order to obtain blood
for the Passover or other rituals; a complex of deliberate
lies, trumped-up accusations, and popular beliefs about
the murder-lust of the Jews and their bloodthirstiness,
based on the conception that Jews hate Christianity and
mankind in general.
It is combined with the delusion that Jews are in some way
not human and must have recourse to special remedies and
subterfuges in order to appear, at least outwardly, like
other men. The blood libel led to trials and massacres of
Jews in the Middle Ages and early modern times; it was
revived by the Nazis. Its origin is rooted in ancient,
almost primordial, concepts concerning the potency and
energies of *blood.> (col. 1120)
[One has to consider that in former times there was no
free press, there was no free information, and there was
not even a telephone in former times. By this a stupid
story could spread up to a severe rumour and to severe
action of stupid people when no justice existed, and
mostly, there was no good justice, and until now justice
is manipulated, also with telephone, with TV, even
with the
internet justice is sometimes very stupid and not at all a
justice].
[Fact: Torah forbids
blood sacrifice - missing images and statues in Jewish
religion leads to accusations]
<Origins [defamations
in the Greek and Roman time].
Blood sacrifices were practices by many pagan religions.
They are expressly forbidden by the Torah. The law of
meat-salting (*melihah)
is designed to prevent the least drop of avoidable blood
remaining in food. Yet pagan incomprehension of the Jewish
monotheist cult, lacking the customary images and statues,
led to charges of ritual killing.
[The story about a
kidnapped Greek, fattened in the forest and hanged with
an oath against the Greeks]
At a time of tension between Hellenism and Judaism, it was
alleged that the Jews would kidnap a Greek (col. 1120)
foreigner, fatten him up for a year, and then convey him
to a wood, where they slew him, sacrificed his body with
the customary ritual, partook of his flesh, and while
immolating the Greek swore and oath of hostility to the
Greeks. This was told, according to "Apion, to King
"Antiochus Epiphanes by an intended Greek victim who had
been found in the Jewish Temple being fattened by the Jews
for this sacrifice and was saved by the king (Jos., Apion,
2:89-102).
Some suspect that stories like this were spread
intentionally as propaganda for Antiochus Epiphanes to
justify his profanation of the Temple. Whatever the
immediate cause, the tale is the outcome of hatred of the
Jews and incomprehension of their religion.
[The rumours about eating
of babies]
To be victims of this accusation was also the fate of
other misunderstood religious minorities. In the second
century C.E. the *Church Father Tertullian complained:
"We are said to be the most criminal of men, on the score
of our sacramental baby-killing, and the baby-eating that
goes with it."
He complains that judicial torture was applied to
Christians because of this accusation, for
"it ought ... to be wrung out of us [whenever that false
charge is made] how many murdered babies each of us has
tasted ... Oh! the glory of that magistrate who had
brought to light some Christian who had eaten up to date a
hundred babies!"
(Apologeticus,
7:1 and 1:12, Loeb edition (1931), 8, 36).
Middle Ages.
[The rumours against
Christian splinter groups - questions about the Jesus
body]
During the Middle Ages some heretical Christian sects were
afflicted by similar accusations. The general attitude of
Christians toward the holy bread of the Communion created
an emotional atmosphere in which it was felt that the
divine child was mysteriously hidden in the partaken
bread.
The popular preacher, Friar Berthold of Regensburg (13th
century), felt obliged to explain why communicants do not
actually see the holy child by asking the rhetorical
question,
"Who would like to bite off a baby's head or hand or
foot?"
[The rumours about
healing or damaging blood in Christianity - blood
accusations coming up]
Popular beliefs and imaginings of the time, either of
classical origin or rooted in Germanic superstitions, held
that blood, even the blood of executed malefactors or from
corpses, possesses the property of healing or causing
injury. Thus, combined with the general hatred of Jews
then prevailing, a charge of clandestine cruel practices
and blood-hunting, which had evolved among the pagans and
was used against the Christians, was deflected by
Christian society to the most visible and persistent
minority in opposition to its tenets.
As Christianity spread in Western Europe and penetrated
the popular consciousness [since 13th century by
inquisition], influencing the emotions and imagination
even more than thought and dogma, various story elements
began to evolve around the alleged inhumanity and sadism
of the Jews.
[Norwich in 1144: Rumour
about a boy on a crucifix - more processes about the
same theme until 1491]
In the first distinct case of blood libel against Jews in
the Middle Ages, that of *Norwich in 1144, it was alleged
that the Jews had
"bought a Christian child [the 'boy-martyr' William]
before Easter and tortured him with all the tortures
wherewith our Lord was tortured, and on Long Friday hanged
him on a rood in hatred of our Lord."
The motif of torture and murder of Christian children in
imitation of Jesus' Passion persisted with slight
variations throughout the 12th century (Gloucester,
England, 1168; Blois, France, 1171; Saragossa, Spain,
1182), and was repeated in many libels of the 13th
century.
In the case of Little Saint Hugh of *Lincoln, 1255, it
would seem that an element taken directly from Apion's
libel (see above) was interwoven into the Passion motif,
for the chronicler Matthew Paris relates,
"that the Child was first fattened for ten days with white
bread and milk and then ... almost all the Jews of England
were invited to the crucifixion."
The crucifixion motif was generalized in the Siete Partidas law
code of Spain, 1263:
"We have heard it said that in certain places on Good
Friday the Jews do steal children and set them on the
cross (col. 1121)
in a mocking manner."
[Rumours about the
motives of the child abuse of Christian children]
Even when other motifs eventually predominated in the
libel, the crucifixion motif did not disappear altogether.
On the eve of the expulsion of the Jews from Spain, there
occurred the blood-libel case of "the Holy Child of *La
Guardia" (1490-91). There, *Conversos were made to confess
under torture that with the knowledge of the chief rabbi
of the Jews they had assembled in a cave, crucified the
child, and abused him and cursed him to his face, as was
done to Jesus in ancient times. The crucifixion motif
explains why the blood libels occurred at the time of
Passover.
The Jews were well aware of the implications of sheer
sadism involved in the libel. In a dirge lamenting the
Jews massacred at Munich because of a blood libel in 1286,
the anonymous poet supposedly quotes the words of the
Christian killers:
"These unhappy Jews are sinning, they kill Christian
children, they torture them in all their limbs, they take
the blood cruelly to drink" (A. M. Habermann (ed.): Sefer Gezerot Ashkenaz
ve-Zarefat (1946), 199).
This ironical "quotation" contains an added motif in the
libels, the thirst of the Jew for blood, out of his hatred
for the good and true. This is combined in 13th-century
Germany with the conception that the Jew cannot endure
purity: he hates the innocence of the Christian child, its
joyous song and appearance.
This motif, found in the legendary tales of the monk
Caesarius of Heisterbach in Germany, underwent various
transmutations. In the source from which Caesarius took
his story the child killed by the Jews sings erubescat judaeus
("let the Jew be shamed"). In Caesarius' version, the
child sings the Salve
Regina. The Jews cannot endure this pure
laudatory song and try to frighten him and stop him from
singing it. When he refuses they cut off his tongue and
hack him to pieces.
About a century after the expulsion of the Jews from
England the cultural motif only became the basis of
Geoffrey *Chaucer's "Prioress' Tale". Here the widow's
little child sings the Alma
Redemptoris Mater while "the serpent Sathanas,
That hath in Jews herte his waspes nest" awakens
indignation in the cruel Jewish haeart:
"O Hebraik peple, allas! /
Is this to yow a thing that is honest, /
That swich a boy shal wacken as him lest /
In your despyt, and singe of swich sentence /
Which is agayn your lawes reverence?"
The Jews obey the promptings of their (col. 1122)
Satanic master and kill the child; a miracle brings about
their deserved punishment. Though the scene of this tale
is laid in Asia, at the end of the story Chaucer takes
care to connect Asia explicitly with bygone libels in
England, and the motif of hatred of the innocent with the
motif of mockery of the crucifixion:
"O younge Hugh of Lincoln, slayn also /
With cursed Jewes, as it is notable, /
For it nis but a litel shyel ago; /
Preye eek for us."
[The rumour that Jews
take Christian blood for making remedies]
In the blood libel of *Fulda (1236) another motif comes to
the fore: the Jews taking blood for medicinal remedies
(here of five young Christian boys).
The strange medley of ideas about the use of blood by the
Jews is summed up by the end of the Middle Ages, in 1494,
by the citizens of Tyrnau (*Trnava). The Jews need blood
because "firstly, they were convinced by the judgment of
their ancestors, that the blood of a Christian was a good
remedy for the alleviation of the wound of circumcision.
Secondly, they were of opinion that this blood, put into
food, is very efficacious for the awakening of mutual
love. Thirdly, they had discovered, as men and women among
them suffered equally from menstruation, that the blood of
a Christian is a specific medicine for it, when drunk.
Fourthly, they had an ancient but secret ordinance by
which they are under obligation to shed Christian blood in
honor of God, in daily sacrifices, in some spot or other
... the lot for the present year had fallen on the Tyrnau
Jews."
[More elements mixed into
the rumours - tortured Jews for centuries]
To the motifs of crucifixion, sadism, hatred of the
innocent and of Christianity, and the unnaturalness of the
Jews and its cure by the use of good Christian blood,
there were added, from time to time, the ingredients of
sorcery, perversity, and a kind of "blind obedience to a
cruel tradition".
Generation ofter generation of Jews in Europe was
tortured, and Jewish communities were massacred or
dispersed and broken up because of this libel (see
map).> (col. 1123)
MAP (col. 1125-1126)
[How the rumours were
spread: Agents, preachers, tales]
<It was spread by various agents. Popular preachers
ingrained it in the minds of the common people. It became
embedded, through miracle tales, in their imagination and
beliefs.
[The rumours become
superstition]
This caused in Moravia, in about 1343, "a woman of ill
fame to come with the help of another woman and propose to
an old Jew of Brno, named Osel, her child for sale for six
marks, because the child was red in hair and in face. The
Jew simulated gladness, immediately gave three marks to
the woman, and invited them to come with the child to a
cellar the next day, early in the morning, under the
pretext that he had to consult about the buying of the
child with the bishop of the Jews and the elders." The Jew
invited Christian officials, who imprisoned the women and
punished them horribly (B. Bretholz: Quellen zur Geschichte der
Juden in Maerchen (1935), 27-28).
[Fulda: Emperor Frederick
II blames all Jews - all Christians are torn into the
Fulda conflict - statement of the church - the Jewish
religion does not need any blood]
The majority of the heads of state and the church opposed
the circulation of the libel. Emperor *Frederick II of
Hohenstaufen decided, after the Fulda libel, to clear up
the matter definitively, and have all the Jews in the
empire killed if the accusation proved to be true, or
exonerate them publicly if false, using this as an
occasion to arbitrate in a matter affecting the whole of
Christendom. The enquiry into the blood libel was thus
turned into an all-Christian problem.
The emperor, who first consulted the recognized church
authorities, later had to turn to a device of his own. In
the words of his summing-up of the enquiry (see ZGJD), 1
(1887), 142-4), the usual church authorities
"expressed various opinions about the case, and as they
have been proved incapable of coming to a conclusive
decision ... we found it necessary ... to turn to such
people that were once Jews and have converted to the
worship of the Christian faith; for they, as opponents,
will not be silent about anything that they may know in
this matter against the Jews."
The emperor adds that he himself was already convinced,
through his knowledge and wisdom, that the (col. 1123)
Jews were innocent. He sent to the kings of the West,
asking them to send him decent and learned converts to
Christianity to consult in the matter. The synod of
converts took place and came to the conclusion, which the
emperor published:
"There is not to be found, either in the Old or the New
Testament, that the Jews are desirous of human blood. On
the contrary, they avoid contamination with any kind of
blood."
The document quotes from various Jewish texts in support,
adding,
"There is also a strong likelihood that those to whom even
the blood of permitted animals is forbidden, cannot have a
hankering after human blood. Against this accusation stand
its cruelty, its unnaturalness, and the sound human
emotions which the Jews have also in relation to the
Christians. It is also unlikely that they would risk
[through such a dangerous action] their life and
property."
A few years later, in 1247, Pope Innocent IV wrote that
"Christians charge falsely ... that [the Jews] hold a
communion rite ... with the heart of a murdered child; and
should the cadaver of a dead man happen to be found
anywhere they maliciously lay it to their charge."
[The Emperor and the Pope
are not heard by the other church authorities - stop of
the libel only in 1965]
Neither emperor nor pope were heeded.
Jewish scholars in the Middle Ages bitterly rejected this
inhuman accusation. They quoted the Law and instanced the
Jewish way of life in order to refute it. The general
opinion of the Jews is summed up thus:
"You are libeling us for you want to find a reason to
permit the shedding of our blood" (the 12th-13th centuries
Sefer Nizzahon
Yashan-Liber Nizzachon Vetus, p. 159, in: Tela Ignaea Satanae,
ed. J. Ch. Wagenseil, 1681). However, the Jewish denials,
like the opinion of enlightened Christian leaders, did not
succeed in preventing the blood libels from shaping to a
large extent the image of the Jew transmitted from the
Middle Ages to modern times. (It was only in 1965 that the
church officially repudiated the blood libel of *Trent by
canceling the beatification of Simon and the celebrations
in his honor).> (col. 1124)
