http://www.revisionisthistory.org/page10/page10.html
ARIEL TOAFF
BLOOD PASSOVER
EUROPEAN JEWS AND RITUAL MURDER
[back cover]
BLOOD PASSOVER
This book courageously faces one of the most controversial topics in the
history of the Jews of Europe, one which has always served as a war-horse of
anti-Semitism: the accusation, leveled against the Jews for centuries, of
abducting and killing Christian children to use their blood in Jewish
Passover rites. Where Italy is concerned, nearly all the ritual murder
trials were held in the north-eastern regions, characterized by large
settlements of German-origin Jews (Ashkenazim). The most famous case of this
kind occurred in Trent, Italy, in 1475, as a result of which many local Jews
were indicted and sentenced to death for the murder of the boy who was to
become known as "Simon of Trent", and was venerated as a Saint for several
centuries, until only a few decades ago. An unprejudiced rereading of the
original trial
records, however, together with the records of several other trials, viewed
within the overall European context and supplemented by an exact knowledge
of the relevant Hebrew texts, throws new light on the ritual and therapeutic
significance of blood in Jewish culture, leading the author of the present
study to the reluctant conclusion that, particularly where Ashkenazi Jewry
was concerned, the "Blood Libel" accusation was not always an invention.
ARIEL TOAFF
Professor of Medieval and Renaissance History at Bar-Ilan University in
Israel, Toaff has written Wine and Bread: A Jewish Community in the Middle
Ages (1989; translated into English and French), Jewish Monsters: The
Imaginary Jew from the Middle Ages to the Early Modern Age (1996) and Eating
Jewish Style. Jewish Cooking in Italy from the Renaissance to the Modern Age
(2000).
PREFACE
Ritual homicide trials are a difficult knot to unravel. Most researchers
simply set out in search of more or less convincing confirmation of
previously developed theories of which the researcher himself appears firmly
convinced. The significance of any information failing to fit the
preconceived picture is often minimized, and sometimes passed over entirely
in silence. Oddly, in this type of research, that which is to be
proven is simply taken for granted to begin with. There is a clear
perception that any other attitude would involve hazards and involvements
which are to be avoided at all costs.
There is no doubt that the uniformity of the defendant's confessions,
contradicted only by variants and incongruities generally relating to
details of secondary importance, was assumed by the judges and so-called
"public opinion" to constitute "proof" that the Jews, characterized 3
by their great mobility and widespread dispersion, practiced horrible,
murderous rituals in hatred of the Christian religion. The stereotype of
ritual murder, like that of profanation of the Host and cannibal sacrifice,
was present in their minds from the outset, suggesting to both judges
and inquisitors alike the possibility of extorting symmetrical, harmonious
and significant confessions, triggering a chain reaction of
denunciations, veritable and proper manhunts and indiscriminate massacres.
While attempts have been made, in certain cases, to reconstruct the
ideological mechanisms and underlying theological and mythological
beliefs, with their theological and mythological justifications, which
rendered the persecution of the Jews possible as the practitioners of
outrageous and blood-thirsty rituals, particularly in the German-speaking
countries of Europe, little or nothing has been done to investigate
the beliefs of
p. 8]
the men and women accused -- or who accused themselves -- of ritual
crucifixion, desecration of the host, haematophagy [eating of blood
products] and cannibalism. On the other hand -- if an exception be made for
the first sensational case of ritual crucifixion, which occurred in
Norwich, England, in 1146, or the equally well-known "blood libel" case at
Trent, Italy, in 1475 -- the trial records and transcripts
(usually referred to under the generic term "historical documentation")
constitute, in actual fact, very poor and often purely circumstantial
evidence,
highly condensed in form and very sparse in detail, totally insufficient for
research purposes.
Perhaps for this very same reason, that which is missing is often
artificially
added, assumed or formulated as a hypothesis, in the absence of any explicit
probative evidence one way or another (i.e., in the desired
direction); in the meantime, the entire matter is immersed in a tinted bath,
from which the emerging image is superficial at best, enveloped in
a cloud of mystery, with all the related paraphernalia from a distant past,
and must remain forever incomprehensible to researchers intent on
examining these problems through the application of anachronistic
interpretive categories. These efforts -- obviously unreliable -- are
generally performed in good faith. Or, more exactly, almostalways in good
faith.
Thus, in Anglo-Saxon (British and American) historical-anthropological
research on Jews and ritual murder (from Joshua Trachtenberg to
Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia), magic and witchcraft traditionally feature among the
favorite aspects under examination. This approach, for a variety
of reasons, is enjoying an extraordinary rebirth at the present time (1).
But that which seems to obtain a high degree of popularity at the
moment is not necessarily convincing to meticulous scholars, not content
with superficial and impressionistic responses.
Nearly all the studies on Jews and the so-called "blood libel" accusation to
date have concentrated almost exclusively on persecutions and
persecutors; on the ideologies and presumed motives of those same
persecutors: their hatred of Jews; their political and/or religious
cynicism;
their xenophobic and racist rancor; their contempt for minorities. Little or
no attention has been paid to the attitudes of the persecuted Jews
themselves and their underlying patterns of ideological behavior - even when
they confessed themselves guilty of the specific accusations
brought against them. Even less attention has been paid to the behavioral
patterns and attitudes of these same Jews; nor have these matters
been considered worthy even of interest, attention or serious investigation.
On the contrary: these behavioral patterns and attitudes have simply been
incontrovertibly dismissed as non-existent -- as invented out of whole cloth
by the sick minds of anti-Semites and fanatical, obtusely dogmatic
Christians. Nevertheless, although difficult to digest, these actions, once
their
authenticity is demonstrated or even supposed as possible,
p. 9]
should be the object of serious study by reputable scholars. The
condemnation, or, alternatively, the aberrant justification of these rituals
cannot be imposed upon researchers as the sole, and banal, options. Scholars
must be permitted the possibility of attempting serious research
on the actual, or presumed, religious, theological and historical
motivations of the Jewish protagonists themselves. Blind excuses are just as
worthless as blindly dogmatic condemnation: neither can demonstrate anything
other than that which already existed in the mind of the
observer to begin with. It is precisely the possibility of evading any
clear, precise and unambiguous definition of the reality of ritual child
murders rooted in religious faith which has facilitated the intentional or
involuntary blindness of Christian and Jewish scholars alike, both
pro- and anti-Jewish.
Any additional example of the two-dimensional "flattening" of Jewish
history, viewed exclusively as the history of religious or political
"anti-Semitism" at all times, must necessarily be regretted. When "one-way"
questions presuppose "one-way" answers; when the stereotype
of "anti-Semitism" hovers menacingly over any objective approach to the
difficult problem of historical research in relation to Jews, any
research ends up by losing a large part of its value.
All such research is thus transformed, by the very nature of things, into a
"guided tour" conducted against a fictitious and unreal background,
in a "virtual reality show" intended to produce the desired reaction, which
has naturally been decided upon in advance (2).
As stressed above, it is simply not permissible to ignore the mental
attitudes of the Jews who were tried, tortured and executed for ritual
murder, or persecuted on the same charge. At some point, we must ask
ourselves whether the "confessions" of the defendants constitute
exact records of actual events, or merely the reflection of beliefs forming
part of a symbolic, mythical and magical context which must be
reconstructed to be understood. In other words: do these "confessions"
reflect merely the beliefs of Gentile judges, clergy and populace, with
their private phobias and obsessions, or, on the contrary, of the defendants
themselves? Untangling the knot is not an easy or pleasant task;
but perhaps it is not entirely impossible.
In the first place, therefore, we must investigate the mental attitudes of
the Jews themselves, in the tragic drama of ritual sacrifice, together
with the accompanying religious beliefs and superstitious and magical
elements. Due attention must be paid to the admissions which made
ritual murder appear "plausible" within a particular historical and local
context, identifiable within a succession of German-speaking
territories on both sides of the Alps, throughout the long period from the
First Crusade to the twilight of the Middle Ages. In substance, we
should investigate the possible presence of
p. 10]
Jewish beliefs relating to ritual child murders, linked to the feast of
Passover, while attempting to reconstitute the significance of any such
beliefs. The trial records, particularly the minutely detailed reports
relating to the death of Little Simon of Trent, cannot be dismissed on the
4
assumption that all such records represent simply the specific deformation
of beliefs held by the judges, who are alleged to have collected
detailed but manipulated confessions by means of force and violence to
ensure that all such confessions conformed to the anti-Jewish
theories already in circulation at the time.
A careful reading of the trial records, in both form and substance, recall
too many features of the conceptual realities, rituals, liturgical
practices and mental attitudes typical of, and exclusive to, one distinct,
particular Jewish world - features which can in no way be attributed
to suggestion on the part of judges or prelates - to be ignored. Only a
frank analysis of these elements can make any valid, new and original
contribution to the reconstruction of beliefs relating to child sacrifice
held by the alleged Jewish perpetrators themselves -- whether real or
imagined - in addition to attitudes based on the unshakeable faith in their
redemption and ultimate vengeance against the Gentiles, emerging
from blood and suffering, which can only be understood in this context.
In this Jewish-Germanic world, in continual movement, profound currents of
popular magic had, over time, distorted the basic framework of
Jewish religious law, changing its forms and meanings. It is in these
"mutations" in the Jewish tradition - which are, so to speak,
authoritative - that the theological justifications of the commemoration [in
mockery of the Passion of Christ] is to be sought, which, in
addition to its celebration in the liturgical rite, was also intended to
revive, in action, vengeance against a hated enemy continually
reincarnated throughout the long history of Israel (the Pharaoh, Amalek,
Edom, Haman, Jesus).
Paradoxically, in this process, which is
complex and anything but uniform, elements typical of Christian culture may
be observed to rebound -- sometimes inverted, unconsciously
but constantly -- within Jewish beliefs, mutating in turn, and assuming new
forms and meanings. These beliefs, in the end, became
symbolically abnormal, distorted by a Judaism profoundly permeated by the
underlying elements and characteristic features of an adversarial
and detested religion, unintentionally imposed by the same implacable
Christian persecutor.
We must therefore decide whether or not the alleged "confessions" relating
to the crucifixion of children the evening before Passover; the
testimonies relating to the utilization of Christian blood in the
celebration of the feast of the Passover, represent, in actual fact, mere
myths,
i.e., beliefs and ideologies dating far back
p. 11]
in time; or actual ritual practices, i.e., events which actually occurred,
in reality, and were actually celebrated, in prescribed and consolidated
forms, with their more or less fixed baggage of formulae and anathemas,
accompanying the magical practices and superstitions which formed
an integral part of the mentality of the Jews themselves.
In any case, I repeat, we should avoid the easy short-cut of considering
these trials and testimonies only as projections -- extorted from the
accused by torture and other coercive methods, both psychological and
physical -- of the stereotypes, superstitions, fears and beliefs of the
judges and populace. Such a method would trigger a process inevitably
leading to the dismissal of these same testimonies as "valueless
documents with little basis in reality", except as "indications of the
obsessions of a Christian society" which saw, in the Jew, merely a
"distorted mirror image" of its own defects. This task appears to have
seemed absolutely prohibitive to many scholars, even famous ones,
well-educated men of good will, having concerned themselves with this
difficult topic.
First, Gavin Lanmuir, who, starting from the facts of Norwich, England,
considers the crucifixion and ritual haemotophagia, which appear in
two different phases of history, as simply the cultivated and interested
inventions of ecclesiastical groups, denying the Jews any role at all
except a merely passive one, devoid of responsibility (3).
Lanmuir was later followed by Willehad Paul Eckert, Diego Qualiglioni,
Wolfgang Treue and Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia, who, although
examining the phenomenon of ritual child murder from different points of
view, intelligently and competently, starting with the late Middle
Ages, paying particular attention to the Trent trial documentation,
considered it all tout court and often a priori a baseless libel, an
expression
of hostility on the part of the Christian majority against the Jewish
minority (4).
According to the point of view adopted by these researchers, the inquisitor'
s interrogation methods and tortures served no purpose other than
to orchestrate a completely harmonious confession of guilt, i.e., of
adherence to a truth already existing in the minds of the inquisitors. The
use of leading questions and a variety of stratagems, including, in
particular, refined torture, were intended to force the defendants to admit
that the victim had indeed been kidnapped and tortured according to Jewish
ritual, and finally killed in hatred of the Christian faith. The
confessions are said to be obviously unbelievable, since the murders were
allegedly committed to permit the ritual use of Christian blood, in
violation of the Biblical prohibition against the ingestion
p. 12]
of blood, a prohibition scrupulously observed by all Jews. As to torture, it
is best to recall that its use in the municipalities of northern Italy,
at least from the beginning of the 13th century, was regulated, not only by
tractate, but by statute as well. As an instrument for determining
the truth, torture was permitted in the presence of serious and
well-justified clues in cases in which it was considered truly necessary by
the
podestà [magistrate] and judges. All confessions extorted in this manner, to
be considered valid, had to be corroborated by the inquisitor,
later, under normal conditions, i.e., in the absence of physical pain or
even the threat of renewed torture (5).
These procedures, while
unacceptable in our eyes today, were therefore in fact normal, and seem to
have been observed in the case of the Trent trials.
Israel Yuval, following in the footsteps of Cecil Roth's stimulating
pioneering study (6), is more critical and seems more open-minded.
Yuval stresses the link between the "blood libel" accusation and the
phenomenon of the mass suicides and child murders during the German
Jewish communities during the First Crusade. The picture which emerges is
one of Ashkenazi Jewry's hostile and virulent reaction against
surrounding Christian society, a reaction finding expression, not only in
liturgical invective, but above all, in the conviction that the Jews
themselves were capable of compelling God to wreak bloody revenge against
their Christian persecutors, thus bringing redemption closer
(7).
More recently, Yuval very relevantly demonstrated that the Ashkenazi
responses to ritual murder accusations were surprisingly weak.
These responses, whenever they were recorded, contained not the slightest
rejection of the probative evidence; rather, they consisted of a
mere tu quoque of the accusation against Christians: "Nor are you,
yourselves, exempt from guilt of ritual cannibalism" (8).
As Yuval wrote,
David Malkiel had already noted the manner in which phenomenal prominence
was given to the scene, described in a secondary Midrash
even in the illustrations of the Passover Haggadah of the German Jewish
communities, to the scene, of the Pharaoh taking a health-giving
bath in the blood of cruelly massacred Jewish children (9). The message,
which cast not the slightest doubt upon the magical, therapeutic
effectiveness of children's blood, seemed intended to turn the accusation
around. "It is not we Jews, or, if you wish, not just we Jews, who
5
have committed such actions; the enemies of Israel in history have been
guilty of these things as well, in which case it was Jewish children
who were the innocent victims".
Any showing that these murders, celebrated in the Passover ritual,
represented, not just myths, i.e., more or less consistently widespread,
consistent religious beliefs,
p. 13]
but, rather, actual rites, pertaining to organized groups and forms of
worship which were actually practiced, requires a respect for due
methodological prudence. The existence of this phenomenon, once it is
unequivocally proven, must be viewed within its historical, religious
and social context, not to mention the geographical environment in which it
is presumably said to have found expression, with all the related
and peculiar characteristics which cannot be replicated elsewhere. In other
words, we must attempt to search for the heterogenous elements
and particular historical-religious experiences which are alleged to have
made the killing of Christian children for ritualistic purposes appear
plausible, during a certain period, within a certain geographical area
(i.e., the German-speaking regions of trans-Alpine and Cisalpine Italy
and Germany, or wherever there were strong ethnic elements of German Jewish
origin, any time between the Middle Ages and the early
modern era), as the expression of collective adjustment of Jewish groups and
a presumed desire on the part of God in this sense, or as the
irrational instrument of pressure to reinforce that desire [on the part of
God], as well as in the mass suicides and child murders "for the love
of God", during the First Crusade.
In this research, we should not be surprised to find customs and traditions
linked to experiences which did not exist elsewhere: experiences
which were to prove more deeply rooted than the standards of religious law
itself, although diametrically opposed in practice, accompanied
by all the appropriate and necessary formal and textual justifications.
Action and reaction: instinctive, visceral, virulent, in which children,
innocent and unaware, became the victims of God's love and vengeance. The
blood of children, bathing the altars of a God considered to be
in need of guidance, sometimes, of impatient compulsion, impelling Him to
protect and to punish.
At the same time, we must keep in mind that, in the German-speaking Jewish
communities, the phenomenon, where it took root, was
generally limited to groups in which popular tradition, which had, over
time, distorted, evaded or replaced the ritual standards of Jewish
halakhah, in addition to deeply-rooted customs saturated with magical and
alchemical elements, all combined to form a deadly cocktail when
mixed with violent and aggressive religious fundamentalism. There can be no
doubt, it seems to me, that, that, once the tradition became
widespread, the stereotypical image of Jewish ritual child murder continued
inevitably to take its own course, out of pure momentum. Thus,
the Jews were accused of every child murder, much more often wrongly than
rightly, especially if discovered in the springtime. In this sense,
Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli, later Pope Clement XIV,
p. 14]
was correct in his famous report, in both his justifications and his
"distinctions" (10).
The records of the ritual murder trials should be examined with great care
and with all due caution. In connection with the witchcraft trials,
Carlo Ginzburg pointed out that the defendants (or victims), in a "show
trial" of this type,
"...ended up by losing all sense of their own cultural identity, as a result
of the acceptance, in whole or in part, by violence or apparently out
of spontaneous free choice, of the hostile stereotype imposed by their
persecutors [i.e., a sort of Medieval "Stockholm Effect"]. Anyone who
fails to conform by simply repeating the results of these findings of
historical violence must seek to work upon the rare cases in which the
documentation is not just formally set forth in question and answer form; in
which, therefore, one may find fragments relatively immune
from distortions of the culture which the persecution was intent upon
blotting out" (11).
The Trent trials are a priceless document of this very kind. The trial
records -- especially, the cracks and rifts in the overall structure
permitting the researcher to distinguish and differentiate, in substance,
not just in form, between the information provided by the accused and
the stereotypes imposed by the inquisitors -- are dazzlingly clear. This
fact cannot be glossed over or distorted by means of preliminary
categorizations of an ideological or polemical nature, intended to
invalidate those very distinctions. In many cases, everything the defendants
said was incomprehensible to the judges - often, because their speech was
full of Hebraic ritual and liturgical formulae pronounced with a
heavy German accent, unique to the German Jewish community, which not even
Italian Jews could understand (12); in other cases, because
their speech referred to mental concepts of an ideological nature totally
alien to everything Christian.
It is obvious that neither the formulae
nor the language can be dismissed as merely the astute fabrications and
artificial suggestions of the judges in these trials. Dismissing them as
worthless, as invented out of whole cloth, as the spontaneous fantasies of
defendants terrorized by torture and projected to satisfy the
demands of their inquisitors, cannot be imposed as the compulsory starting
point, the prerequisite, for valid research, least of all for the
present paper. Any conclusion, of any nature whatsoever, must be duly
demonstrated after a strict evaluation and verification of all the
underlying evidence sine ira et studio, using all available sources capable
of confirming or invalidating that evidence in a persuasive and
cogent manner.
p. 15]
The present study could not have been written without the advice, criticism,
meetings and discussions with Dani Nissim, a long-time friend,
who, in addition to his great experience as a bibliographer and bibliophile,
made available to me his profound knowledge of the history of the
Jewish community of the Veneto region, and of Padua in particular. The
conclusions of this work are nevertheless mine alone, and I have no
doubt that that the above named persons would very largely disagree with
them. I have engaged in lengthy discussions of the chapters on the
Jews of Venice with Reiny Mueller, over the course of which I was given
highly useful suggestions and priceless advice. Thanks are also due
to the following persons for their assistance in the retrieval of the
archival and literary documentation; for their encouragement and criticism,
to Diego Quaglioni; Gian Maria Varanini; Rachele Scuro; Miriam Davide;
Elliot Horowitz (our correction; the translators spelled his first name
"Ellioth");
Judith Dishon; Boris Kotlerman and Ita Dreyfus.
Grateful thanks are also due to those of my students who participated
actively in my seminars on the topic, held at the Department of Jewish
History at Bar-Ilan University (2001-2002 and 2005-2006), during which I
presented the provisional results of my research. First and
foremost, however, I wish to thank Ugo Berti, who persuaded me to undertake
this difficult task, giving me the courage to overcome the
many foreseeable obstacles which stood in the way.
--
6
NOTES TO PREFACE
1) J. Trachtenberg, Jewish Magic and Superstition. A Study in Folk Religion,
Philadelphia (Pa.), 1939; Id., The DeviI and the Jews,
Philadelphia (Pa.), 1961; R. Po-Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder. Jews
and Magic in Reformation Germany, New Haven (Conn.) -
London, 1988.
2) For example, the recent volume by S. Buttaroni and S. Musial, Ritual
Murder. Legend in European History, Crakow - Nuremberg -
Frankfurt, 2003, opens with a preamble which is, in its way, conclusive: "It
is important to state from the very beginning that Jewish ritual
murder never took place. Today proving such theories wrong is not the goal
of scientific research" (p. 12).
3) See, in particular, G.L. Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism,
Berkeley - Los Angeles (Calif.) - Oxford, 1990, containing his
major contributions in this field, reached in the previous years.
4) W.P. Eckert, Il beato Simonino negli "Atti" del processo di Trento contro
gli ebrei, in "Studi Trentini di Scienze Storiche", XLIV (1965),
pp. 193-221; Id., Aus den Akten des Trienter Judenprozesses, in P. Wilpert,
Judentum im Mittelalter, Berlin, 1966, pp. 238-336; D.
Quaglioni, I processi contro gli ebrei di Trento (1475-1478), in "Materiali
di lavoro", 1988, nos. 1-4, pp. 131-142; Id. Il processo di Trento
nel 1475, in M. Luzzati, L'Inquisizione e gli ebrei in Italia, Bari, 1994,
pp. 19-34; W. Treue, Ritualmord und Hostienschändung,
Untersuchungen zur Judenfeindschaft in Deuschland in Mittelalter and in der
frühen Neuzeit, Berlin, 1989; R. Po-Chia Hsia, Trent 1475. A
Ritual Murder Trial, New Haven (Conn.), 1992.
5) In this regard, see E. Maffei's recent Dal reato alla sentenza. Il
processo criminale in età communale, Rome, 2005, pp. 98-101.
6) C. Roth, Feast of Purim and the Origins of the Blood Accusations, in
"Speculum", VIII (1933), pp. 520-526.
7) I.J. Yuval, Vengeance and Damnation, Blood and Defamation. From Jewish
Martyrdom to Blood Libel Accusations, in "Zion", LVIII
(1993), pp. 33-90 (in Hebrew); Id., "Two Nations in Your Womb" Perceptions
of Jews and Christians, Tel Aviv, 2000 (in Hebrew).
8) Id. "They Tell Lies. You Ate the Man". Jewish Reactions to Ritual Murder
Accusations, in A. Sapir Abulafia, Religious Violence Between
Christians and Jews. Medieval Roots, Modern Perspectives, Basingstoke, 2002,
pp. 86-106.
9) D.J. Malkiel, Infanticide in Passover Iconography, in "Journal of the
Warburg and Courtauld Institutes", LVI (1993), pp. 85-99.
10) C. Roth, The Ritual Murder Libel and the Jews. The Report by Cardinal
Lorenzo Ganganelli (Pope Clement XIV), London, 1935. The
Ganganelli Report was recently republished by M. Introvigne, Cattolici,
antisemitismo e sangue. Il mito dell'omicidio rituale, 2004.
11) C. Ginzburg, Storia notturna. Una decifrazione del sabba, Turin, 1989,
p. XXVII.
12) The expressions in Hebrew (ritual and liturgical) appearing in these
depositions can usually be reconstructed with precision, fitting easily
into the context of the ideological and religious discourse of the world of
Ashkenazi Jewry to which these Jews belonged. There is, therefore,
no question of any Satanic language redolent of witchcraft, or
"pseudo-language" invented by judges to demonize the Jews, as suggested by
many writers (A. Esposito and D. Quaglioni, Processi contro gli ebrei di
Trento, 1475-1478, I: I processi di 1475, Padua, 1990: "The
introduction into the depositions of the Jews of curses against Christians
and their religion, rendered into transliterated Hebrew, more often in
pseudo-Hebrew, then translated into Italian, is thought to have had the
function of stressing the ritual nature of the infanticide on the one
hand, and of creating a thick fog of mystery on the religious practices of
the Jews and conveying the impression of an obscure witchcraft-like
and Satanic rite").
complete text in English:
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