JUDAICA - Wisdom In Torah

lood libel
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.
In the blood libel of *Fulda (1235) 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.” 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 after generation of Jews in Europe was tortured,
and Jewish communities were massacred or dispersed
and broken up because of this libel. 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. This caused in Moravia,
for instance, 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.” Yet the Jew invited
Christian officials, who imprisoned the women and punished
them horribly (B. Bretholz, Quellen zur Geschichte der
Juden in Maehren (1935), 27–28). 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 em-
peror adds that he himself was already convinced, through
his knowledge and wisdom, that the 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 (in about 1243) 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.” 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 Niẓẓaḥon 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.)
Modern Times
From the 17th century, blood-libel cases increasingly spread
to Eastern Europe, most notably to Poland and Lithuania).
The atmosphere at such trials is conveyed by the protocols of
the investigation of two Jews and a Jewess who were put to
torture in a blood-libel case at *Lublin in 1636: “Judge: ‘For
what purpose do Jews need Christian blood?’ Fegele: ‘Jews use
no Christian blood.’ Judge: ‘And are you a sorceress?’ Fegele:
‘No. I have nothing to do with this.’” She remained unbroken
under torture, even the threat of torture with a red-hot iron,
and bravely denied all allegations of sorcery and ritual use of
blood, and so did the other accused Jews, who insisted that
all Jews are innocent. Hugo *Grotius, the Protestant legal philosopher,
when told about the case expressed the opinion that
the blood accusation was simply a libel generated by hatred
of the Jews and recalled that the early Christians and later
Christian sectarians were accused in a similar way (Balaban,
in Festschrift S. Dubnow (1930), 87–112).
776 ENCYCLOPAEDIA JUDAICA, Second Edition, Volume 3