Blood libel

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Blood libel (also blood accusation[1][2]) refers to a false accusation or claim[3][4][5] that religious minorities, almost always Jews, murder children to use their blood in certain aspects of their religious rituals and holidays.[1][2][6] Historically, these claims have–alongside those of well poisoning and host desecration–been a major theme in European persecution of Jews.[4]

The libels typically allege that Jews require human blood for the baking of matzos for Passover. The accusations often assert that the blood of Christian children is especially coveted, and historically blood libel claims have often been made to account for otherwise unexplained deaths of children. In some cases, the alleged victim of human sacrifice has become venerated as a martyr, a holy figure around whom a martyr cult might arise. A few of these have been even canonized as saints.

In Jewish lore, blood libels were the impetus for the creation in the 16th century of the golem of Prague by Rabbi Judah Loew ben Bezalel. Many popes have either directly or indirectly condemned the blood accusation, and no pope has ever sanctioned it.[7] These libels have persisted among some segments of Christians to the present time, and recently Muslims as well.

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[edit] Descriptions of alleged ritual murder

Legend of the Jew calling the Devil from a Vessel of Blood. Facsimile of a woodcut in Boaistuau's Histoires Prodigieuses, published in 1560

In general, the libel alleged something like this: a child, normally a boy who had not yet reached puberty, was kidnapped or sometimes bought and taken to a hidden place (the house of a prominent member of the Jewish community, a synagogue, a cellar, etc.) where he would be kept hidden until the time of his death. Preparations for the sacrifice included the gathering of attendees from near and far and constructing or readying the instruments of torture and execution.[citation needed]

At the time of the sacrifice (usually night), the crowd would gather at the place of execution (in some accounts the synagogue itself) and engage in a mock tribunal to try the child. The boy would be presented to the tribunal naked and tied (sometimes gagged) at the judge's order. He would eventually be condemned to death. Many forms of torture would be inflicted during the boy's "trial", including some of those actually used by the Inquisition on suspects of heresy. Some of the alleged tortures were mutilation (including circumcision), piercing with needles, punching, slapping, strangulation, strappado and whipping, while being insulted and mocked throughout.[citation needed]

In the end, the half-dead boy would be crowned with thorns and tied or nailed to a wooden cross. The cross would be raised and the blood dripping from the boy's wounds, particularly those on his hands, feet, and genitals, would be caught in bowls or glasses. Finally, the boy would be killed with a thrust through the heart from a spear, sword, or dagger. His dead body would be removed from the cross and concealed or disposed of, but in some instances rituals of black magic would be performed on it. The earlier stories describe only the torture and agony of the victim and suggest that the child's death was the sole purpose of the ritual. Over time and as the libel proliferated, the focus shifted to the supposed need to collect the victim's blood for mystical purposes.[citation needed]

The story of William of Norwich (d. 1144) is the first case of alleged ritual murder that led to widespread persecutions. It does not mention the collection of William's blood nor of any ritual purpose to the alleged ritual murder. In the story of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln (d. 1255) it was said that after the boy was dead, his body was removed from the cross and laid on a table. His belly was cut open and his entrails removed for some occult purpose, such as a divination ritual. In the story of Simon of Trent (d. 1475) it was highly stressed how the boy was held over a large bowl so all his blood could be collected.[citation needed]

According to Walter Laqueur,

"Altogether, there have been about 150 recorded cases of blood libel (not to mention thousands of rumors) that resulted in the arrest and killing of Jews throughout history, most of them in the Middle Ages... In almost every case, Jews were murdered, sometimes by a mob, sometimes following torture and a trial."[8]

[edit] Actual Jewish practices regarding blood and sacrifice

The descriptions of torture and human sacrifice in the antisemitic blood libels run contrary to many of the teachings of Judaism. The Ten Commandments in the Torah forbid murder. In addition, the use of blood (human or otherwise) in cooking is prohibited by the kosher dietary laws. Blood from slaughtered animals may not be consumed, and must be drained out of the animal and covered with earth. (Lev 17:12-13) According to the book of Leviticus, blood from sacrificed animals may only be placed on the altar of the Great Temple in Jerusalem (which no longer existed at the time of the Christian blood libels). Furthermore, consumption of human flesh violates kashrut.[citation needed]

While animal sacrifice was part of the practice of ancient Judaism, the Tanakh (Old Testament) and Jewish teaching portray human sacrifice as one of the evils that separated the pagans of Canaan from the Hebrews.(Deut 12:31, 2 Kings 16:3) Jews were prohibited from engaging in these rituals and were punished for doing so (Ex 34:15, Lev 20:2, Deut 18:12, Jer 7:31). In fact, ritual cleanliness for priests prohibited even being in the same room as a human corpse (Lev 21:11).[citation needed]

[edit] Origins of the myth

Professor Israel Jacob Yuval of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published an article in 1993 that argues that blood libel may have originated in the 12th century from Christian views of Jewish behavior during the First Crusade. Some Jews committed suicide and killed their own children rather than be subjected to forced conversions. Yuval investigated Christian reports of these events and found that they were greatly distorted with claims that if Jews could kill their own children they could also kill Christian children. Yuval rejects the blood libel story as a Christian fantasy that was impossible due to the precarious nature of the Jewish minority's existence in Christian Europe.[9][10]

[edit] Notable instances

There have been many blood libel accusations and trials of Jews beginning in the 1st century and continuing through modern times. A few of them are discussed here.

[edit] Antiquity

The origin of the blood libel can be traced back to the Graeco-Egyptian author Apion, who claimed that Jews sacrificed Greek victims in their temple.[3] Apion repeated anti-Jewish slurs and "absurd calumnies" first made by Posidonius and Apollonius Molon in the 1st century BCE.[11] This resulted in an attack on Jews in Alexandria in 38 CE in which thousands of Jews died.[12][not specific enough to verify] Socrates Scholasticus (fl. 5th Century) reported that some Jews in a drunken frolic bound a Christian child on a cross in mockery of the death of Christ and scourged him until he died.[13]

[edit] Middle Ages

Jews of Norwich were accused of ritual murder after a boy, William of Norwich, was found dead with stab wounds. The legend was turned into a cult, with William acquiring the status of martyr and crowds of pilgrims bringing wealth to the local church. In 1189, the Jewish deputation attending the coronation of Richard the Lionheart was attacked by the crowd. Massacres of Jews at London and York soon followed. On Feb 6 1190, all the Norwich Jews were found slaughtered in their houses, except a few who found refuge in the castle. Jews would later be expelled from all of England in 1290 and not allowed to return until 1655. In 1171, Blois was the site of a blood libel accusation against its Jewish community that led to 31 Jews (by some accounts 40) being burned to death.[14]

An early blood libel appears in Bonum Universale de Apibus ii. 29, § 23, by Thomas of Cantimpré (a monastery near Cambray). Thomas wrote "It is quite certain that the Jews of every province annually decide by lot which congregation or city is to send Christian blood to the other congregations." Thomas also believed that since the time when the Jews called out to Pontius Pilate, "His blood be on us, and on our children" (Matthew 27:25), they have been afflicted with hemorrhages:

A very learned Jew, who in our day has been converted to the (Christian) faith, informs us that one enjoying the reputation of a prophet among them, toward the close of his life, made the following prediction: 'Be assured that relief from this secret ailment, to which you are exposed, can only be obtained through Christian blood ("solo sanguine Christiano").' This suggestion was followed by the ever-blind and impious Jews, who instituted the custom of annually shedding Christian blood in every province, in order that they might recover from their malady.

Thomas added that the Jews had misunderstood the words of their prophet, who by his expression "solo sanguine Christiano" had meant not the blood of any Christian, but that of Jesus—the only true remedy for all physical and spiritual suffering. Thomas did not mention the name of the "very learned" proselyte, but it may have been Nicholas Donin of La Rochelle, who in 1240 had a disputation on the Talmud with Yechiel of Paris, and who in 1242 caused the burning of numerous Talmudic manuscripts in Paris. It is known that Thomas was personally acquainted with this Nicholas.

The case of Little Saint Hugh of Lincoln is mentioned by Chaucer, and thus has become well-known. A child of eight years, named Hugh, son of a woman named Beatrice, disappeared at Lincoln on 31 July 1255. His body was discovered on 29 August, covered with filth, in a pit or well belonging to a Jewish man named Copin or Koppin. On being promised by John of Lexington, a judge, who happened to be present, that his life should be spared, Copin is said to have confessed that the boy had been crucified by the Jews, who had assembled at Lincoln for that purpose. King Henry III, on reaching Lincoln at the beginning of October, refused to carry out the promise of John of Lexington, and had Copin executed and 91 of the Jews of Lincoln seized and sent up to London, where 18 of them were executed. The rest were pardoned at the intercession of the Franciscans (Jacobs, Jewish Ideals, pp. 192–224).

At Pforzheim, Baden, the corpse of a seven-year-old girl was found in the river by fishermen. The Jews were suspected, and when they were led to the corpse, blood allegedly began to flow from the wounds; led to it a second time, the face of the child became flushed, and both arms were raised. In addition to these miracles, there was the testimony of the daughter of the wicked woman who had sold the child to the Jews. A regular judicial examination did not take place; it is probable that the above-mentioned "wicked woman" was the murderess. That a judicial murder was then and there committed against the Jews in consequence of the accusation is evident from the manner in which the Nuremberg "Memorbuch" and the synagogal poems refer to the incident (Siegmund Salfeld, Das Martyrologium des Nürnberger Memorbuches (1898), pp. 15, 128-130). At Weissenburg, a miracle alone decided the charge against the Jews. According to the accusation, the Jews had suspended a child (whose body was found in the Lauter river) by the feet, and had opened every artery in its body in order to obtain all the blood. Again, supernatural claims were made: the child's wounds were said to have bled for five days afterward, despite its treatment.

At Oberwesel, "miracles" again constituted the only evidence against the Jews. The corpse of the 11-year-old Werner is said to have floated up the Rhine (against the current) as far as Bacharach, emitting radiance, and being invested with healing powers. In consequence, the Jews of Oberwesel and many other adjacent localities were severely persecuted during the years 1286-89. Emperor Rudolph I, to whom the Jews had appealed for protection, issued a public proclamation to the effect that great wrong had been done to the Jews, and that the corpse of Werner was to be burned and the ashes scattered to the winds. The statement was made, in the "Chronicle" of Konrad Justinger of 1423, that at Bern in 1294 the Jews had tortured and murdered a boy called Rudolph. The historical impossibility of this widely credited story was demonstrated by Jakob Stammler, pastor of Bern, in 1888.[15] It has been speculated whether the Kindlifresserbrunnen ("Child Eater Fountain") in Bern might refer to the alleged ritual murder of 1294.

[edit] Renaissance

From an 18th-century etching from Brückenturm. Above: The murdered body of Simon of Trent. Below: The "Judensau."

Simon of Trent, aged two, disappeared, and his father alleged that he had been kidnapped and murdered by the local Jewish community. Fifteen local Jews were sentenced to death and burned. Simon was regarded as a saint, and was canonized by Pope Sixtus V in 1588. His status as a saint was removed in 1965 by Pope Paul VI, though his murder is still promoted as a fact by a handful of extremists.

Christopher of Toledo, also known as Christopher of La Guardia or "the Holy Child of La Guardia," was a four-year-old Christian boy supposedly murdered by two Jews and three Conversos (converts to Christianity). In total, eight men were executed. It is now believed[16] that this case was constructed by the Spanish Inquisition to facilitate the expulsion of Jews from Spain. He was canonized by Pope Pius VII in 1805. Christopher has since been removed from the canon, though once again, a handful of individuals still claim the validity of this case.

The story of Simon of Trent (1475), by Hartmann Schedels (1493)

In a case at Tyrnau (Nagyszombat, today Trnava, Slovakia), the absurdity, even the impossibility, of the statements forced by torture from women and children shows that the accused preferred death as a means of escape from the torture, and admitted everything that was asked of them. They even said that Jewish men menstruated, and that the latter therefore practiced the drinking of Christian blood as a remedy.

At Bösing (Bazin, today Pezinok, Slovakia), it was charged that a nine-year-old boy had been bled to death, suffering cruel torture; thirty Jews confessed to the crime and were publicly burned. The true facts of the case were disclosed later, when the child was found alive in Vienna. He had been stolen by the accuser, Count Wolf of Bazin, as a fiendish means of ridding himself of his Jewish creditors at Bazin.

[edit] Baroque

Fresco in St Paul's Church in Sandomierz, Poland, depicting blood libel

At Rinn, near Innsbruck, a boy named Andreas Oxner (also known as Anderl von Rinn) was said to have been bought by Jewish merchants and cruelly murdered by them in a forest near the city, his blood being carefully collected in vessels. The accusation of drawing off the blood (without murder) was not made until the beginning of the 17th century, when the cult was founded. The older inscription in the church of Rinn, dating from 1575, is distorted by fabulous embellishments; as, for example, that the money which had been paid for the boy to his godfather was found to have turned into leaves, and that a lily blossomed upon his grave. The cult continued until it was officially prohibited in 1994 by the Bishop of Innsbruck.[17]

The only child-saint in the Russian Orthodox Church is the six-year-old boy Gavriil Belostoksky from the village Zverki. According to the legend supported by the church, the boy was kidnapped from his home during the holiday of Passover while his parents were away. Shutko, who was a Jew from Białystok, was accused in bringing the boy to Białystok, poking him with sharp objects and draining his blood for nine days, then bringing the body back to Zverki and dumping at a local field. A cult developed, and the boy was canonized in 1820. His relics are still the object of pilgrimage. On All Saints Day, July 27, 1997, the Belorussian state TV showed a film alleging the story is true.[18] The revival of the cult in Belarus was cited as a dangerous expression of antisemitism in international reports on human rights and religious freedoms[19][20][21][22][23] and were passed to the UNHCR.[24]

[edit] Modern

Antisemitic flier in Kiev, 1910: "Christians, take care of your children!!! It will be Jewish Passover on March 17."

[edit] Contemporary

Alluding to previous antisemitic Russian court decrees which accused the Jews of ritual murder, they wrote that “Many facts of such religious extremism were proven in courts.” The accusation included traditional antisemitic canards, such as “the whole democratic world today is under the financial and political control of international Jewry. And we do not want our Russia to be among such unfree countries”.
This demand was published as an open letter to the prosecutor general, in Rus Pravoslavnaya (Russian: Русь православная, "Orthodox Russia"), a national-conservative newspaper. This group consisted of members of the ultra-nationalist Liberal Democrats, the Communist faction, and the nationalist Motherland party, with some 500 supporters. Тhe mentioned document is known as "The Letter of Five Hundred" ("Письмо пятисот").[28][29] Their supporters included editors of nationalist newspapers as well as journalists. By the end of the month this group had received stiff criticism, and retracted its demand.

[edit] Denunciations

In late 1553 or 1554, Suleiman the Magnificent, the reigning Sultan of the Ottoman Empire, issued a firman (royal decree) formally denouncing blood libels against the Jews.[36]

In 2003, the Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram published a series of articles by Osam Al-Baz, a senior advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Among other things, Osam Al-Baz explained the origins of the blood libel against the Jews. He said that Arabs and Muslims have never been antisemitic, as a group, but accepted that a few Arab writers and media figures attack Jews "on the basis of the racist fallacies and myths that originated in Europe". He urged people not to succumb to "myths" such as the blood libel.[37]

[edit] Views of the Catholic Church

The attitude of the Roman Catholic Church towards these accusations and the cults venerating children supposedly killed by Jews has varied over time. The papacy opposed them, although it had problems in enforcing its opposition.

[edit] References

  1. ^ a b Gottheil, Richard; Strack, Hermann L.; Jacobs, Joseph (1901-1906). "Blood Accusation". Jewish Encyclopedia. New York: Funk & Wagnalls. http://www.jewishencyclopedia.com/view.jsp?artid=1173&letter=B. 
  2. ^ a b Dundes, Alan, ed (1991). The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299131142. 
  3. ^ a b Turvey, Brent E. Criminal Profiling: An Introduction to Behavioral Evidence Analysis, Academic Press, 2008, p. 3. "Blood libel: A false accusation of ritual murder made against one or more persons, typically of the Jewish faith".
  4. ^ a b Chanes, Jerome A. Antisemitism: A Reference Handbook, ABC-CLIO, 2004, pp. 34–45. "Among the most serious of these [anti-Jewish] manifestations, which reverberate to the present day, were those of the libels: the leveling of false charges against Jews, particularly the blood libel and the libel of desecrating the host."
  5. ^ Goldish, Matt. Jewish Questions: Responsa on Sephardic Life in the Early Modern Period, Princeton University Press, 2008, p. 8. "In the period from the twelfth to the twentieth centuries, Jews were regularly charged with blood libel or ritual murder—false claims that Jews kidnapped and murdered Christian children as part of a Jewish religious ritual."
  6. ^ Zeitlin, S "The Blood Accusation" Vigiliae Christianae, Vol. 50, No. 2 (1996), pp. 117-124
  7. ^ Strack, Blut in Glauben and Aberglauben (Munich, 1900), 177 and v.
  8. ^ Walter Laqueur (2006): The Changing Face of Antisemitism: From Ancient Times to the Present Day, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0-19-530429-2. p.56
  9. ^ Lily Galili (February 18, 2007). "And if it's not good for the Jews?". Ha'aretz. http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/827036.html. Retrieved 2007-02-18. 
  10. ^ Two Nations in Your Womb: Perceptions of Jews and Christians in Late Antiquity and the Middle Ages by Israel J. Yuval; translated by Barbara Harshav and Jonathan Chipman, University of California Press, 2006
  11. ^ Feldman, Louis H. Studies in Hellenistic Judaism, Brill, 1996, p. 293.
  12. ^ Per Philo of Alexandria
  13. ^ "Blood libel in Syria". Jewishvirtuallibrary.org. http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/History/syriabloodlibel.html. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  14. ^ "The Martyrs of Blois". Chabad.org. 2006-06-16. http://www.chabad.org/library/article.asp?AID=112387. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  15. ^ "Katholische Schweizer-Blätter," Lucerne, 1888.
  16. ^ Reston, James: "Dogs of God: Columbus, the Inquisition, and the defeat of the Moors", page 207. Doubleday, 2005. ISBN 0-385-50848-4
  17. ^ Medieval Sourcebook: A Blood Libel Cult: Anderl von Rinn, d. 1462 www.fordham.edu.
  18. ^ Is the New in the Post-Soviet Space Only the Forgotten Old? by Leonid Stonov, International Director of Bureau for the Human Rights and Law-Observance in the Former Soviet Union, the President of the American Association of Jews from the former USSR)
  19. ^ Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2003 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor
  20. ^ Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2004 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
  21. ^ Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2005 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
  22. ^ Belarus. International Religious Freedom Report 2006 Released by the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor
  23. ^ "F:\WORK\RELFREE\2003\91075.000" (PDF). http://www.foreignaffairs.house.gov/archives/108/91075d.pdf. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  24. ^ UNHCR - U.S. Department of State Annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2006 - Belarus[dead link]
  25. ^ Effie Ambler, Russian Journalism and Politics: The Career of Aleksei S. Suvorin, 1861-1881 (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1972: ISBN 0814314619), p. 172.
  26. ^ Gerber, Gane S. (1986). "Anti-Semitism and the Muslim World". In David Berger ed.. History and hate: the dimensions of anti-Semitism. Philadelphia, PA: Jewish Publication Society. p. 88. LCCN 86-2995. ISBN 0827602677. OCLC 13327957. 
  27. ^ Frankel, Jonathan. The Damascus Affair: "Ritual Murder," Politics, and the Jews in 1840, pp. 418, 421. Cambridge University Press, 1997. ISBN 978-0-521-48396-4
  28. ^ "Письмо пятисот. Вторая серия. Лучше не стало". Xeno.sova-center.ru. http://xeno.sova-center.ru/45A29F2/5295297?pub_copy=on. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  29. ^ "Русская линия / Актуальные темы / "Письмо пятисот": Обращение в Генеральную прокуратуру представителей русской общественности с призывом запретить в России экстремистские еврейские организации". Rusk.ru. http://www.rusk.ru/tema.php?idaid=14. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  30. ^ "The investigation of the murder of five schoolboys in Krasnoyarsk was extended again (Regnum, August 20, 2007)". Regnum.ru. 2007-08-20. http://regnum.ru/news/872810.html. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  31. ^ ""Jewish people were accused with murder of children in Krasnoyarsk" ("Regnum", May 12, 2005)". Regnum.ru. 2005-05-16. http://regnum.ru/news/454284.html. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  32. ^ "Russian nationalistic publishers "Russian Idea", the article about the antisemitic movement "Living Without the Fear of the Jews.", June 2007: "...the murder of five children in Krasnoyarsk, which bodies were bloodless. Our layer V. A. Solomatov said that there is undoubtedly a ritual murder..."". Rusidea.org. http://www.rusidea.org/index.php?a=2001. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  33. ^ Hasids were accused in Krasnoyarsk children murder, the Beilis Affair was reanimated (Regnum, May 16, 2005)
  34. ^ Суб., 08.02.1431 Hjr / 23.01.2010, 21:08 по Джохару. "(September 21, 2006): "Are the burnt children the Hasid's victims?"". KavkazCenter. http://www.kavkazcenter.com/russ/content/2006/09/21/47126.shtml. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  35. ^ Islamic Movement head charged with incitement to racism, violence
  36. ^ Mansel, Phillip (1998). Constantinople : City of the World's Desire, 1453–1924. New York: St. Martin's Griffin. p. 124. ISBN 978-0312187088. 
  37. ^ Osama El-Baz. "Al-Ahram Weekly Online, January 2–8, 2003 (Issue No. 619)". Weekly.ahram.org.eg. http://weekly.ahram.org.eg/2003/619/focus.htm. Retrieved 2010-01-23. 
  38. ^ Pope Gregory X. "Medieval Sourcebook: Gregory X: Letter on Jews, (1271-76) - Against the Blood Libel". http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/g10-jews.html. Retrieved 2007-05-07. 

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