The blood libel, an allegation that Jews murdered non-Jews for blood to make their Passover matzahs and for use in other rituals was one of the worse DEFAMATIONS and LIBELS in history. Untruths have the potential to become popular beliefs. These trumped up accusations were combined with the delusion that Jews were not human and had recourse to special remedies and magic in order to appear like other men. The blood libel led to many massacres of Jews and Jewish trials in the Middle Ages and the "blood libel" was again revived by the Nazis and has been used by anti-Zionists to defame the Jews.

The origin of blood myths have its roots in the primordial conception about special energy and strength attributed to blood and blood sacrifices were practiced by many pagan religions. However, blood is expressly forbidden in the Torah and Jews observe the law of meat-salting (melihah) to prevent even the least drop of blood remaining in food. There was a pagan and later Christian incomprehension of Jewish monotheism. Jews also do not used images or statues for their deity and this was incomprehensible, though Jewish Law forbids it: "Thou shall have no other Gods before me."

During Hellenism there was the allegation that Jews would kidnap a Greek and fatten him for a year and then sacrifice him eating his flesh which were all libels and propaganda to justify profanation of the Temple. The reason and motivation stems from a hatred of Jews and lack of understanding for the Jewish religion.

Like other libels there are no limits to which intentional instigators will go to weave their phantasmagoria which in the case of the "blood libel" resulted in the torture, murder and expulsions of hundreds of thousands of Jews.

In 1144 CE, an unfounded rumor began in eastern England, that Jews had kidnapped a Christian child, tied him to a cross, stabbed his head to simulate Jesus' crown of thorns, killed him, drained his body of blood and mixed the blood into Passover matzohs (unleavened bread).

The myth shows a complete lack of understanding of Judaism. Aside from the prohibition of killing innocent persons, the Torah specifically forbids the drinking or eating of any form of blood in any quantity. However, reality never has had much of an impact on blood libel myths. This rumor lasted for many centuries; even today it has not completely disappeared.

Pope Innocent IV ordered a study in 1247 CE.. The investigators found that the myth was a Christian invention used to persecute the Jews. At least 4 other popes subsequently vindicated the Jews. However, the accusations, trials and executions continued.

There are about 150 recorded cases of the charge of "blood libel" (ritual murder) against the Jews.

BLOOD LIBEL INCIDENTS

1144 CE: Jews in Norwich, England were accused of the ritual murder; Jewish leaders in the area were executed.

1171: Jews in Blois, France were accused of ritual murder. All of the Jews in that town (34 men, 17 women) were tortured and burned alive. A second source says that 31 were killed.

1181: More accusations at Bury, St. Edmund, England

1183: More accusations in Bristol, England

1192: More accusations in Winchester, England

1244: London Jews were accused of ritual murder and fined heavily.

1250: Jews in Saragossa, spain, were accused of ritually killing a child, San Domenichino de Val.

1255: The body of a little boy, Hugh, was found in a cesspool near the house of a Jew in Lincoln, England. He was tortured, confessed that he had engaged in ritual murder, dragged through the streets, and finally hung. 100 Jews were transported to London and charged with ritual murder. One was acquitted; 2 were pardoned; the rest were hanged, either with or without a trial.

1283-5: Following a series of ritual murder charges, 10 Jews were murdered by a mob in Mainz; 26 were executed in Bacharach, 40 in Oberwellil, and 180 in Munich.

1431: After ritual murder charges, several Jewish communities were destroyed in southern Germany: Ravensburg, Uberlingen and Lindau.

1451: Pope Nicholas V appointed John of Capistrano to organize the Inquisition of the Jews. John repeated the old charges of ritual murder and host desecration.

1541: John Eck, a Roman Catholic writer, wrote a pamphlet "Refutation of a Jewish Book." He repeated the ritual murder and host desecration myths.

1840: An elderly Italian monk-priest, Padre Tommaso, disappeared in Damascus, Syria, after having visited the Jewish quarter in the city. 12 Jewish leaders were arrested and tortured. Four died from the mistreatment; most of the rest confessed involvement in a ritual murder.

1870's: "With the rise of the modern antisemitic movement in the late 1870s, the traditional blood accusation merged easily with the new scientific racial arguments, serving as a lowest common denominator to unite its secular (and often anti-Christian), Catholic, and Protestant members." . Roman Catholic Bishop Martin of Pederborn, Germany, wrote that Jews ritually murdered Christian children.

1881: A Roman Catholic journal, Civilta Cattolica, started a series of articles which attempted to prove that ritual murder was an integral element of the Jewish religion. They argued that the ritual murders occurred at Purim rather than Passover. "It is in vain that Jews seek to slough off the weight of argument against them: the mystery has become known to all." (Not quite all. Historians have rejected the stories of blood libel as myth.)

1911-3: An allegation of ritual murder, the Beilis case, surfaced in Kiev, Russia. The story formed the plot of novel, "The Fixer" by Bernard Malamud.

1930's +: Hitler re-used the blood-libel myth as justification for the Holocaust. The Nazi periodical, Der Stürmer, often published special issues devoted to allegations of ritual murder by Jews. Hitler had asked that a film be made of the 1840 Damascus case. World War II ended before it could be made.

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From: Duncan Coons

Jewish Ritual Murder

The blood libel hardly, of course, needs to be refuted, but it's worth pointing out that the medieval Church often did so quite forcefully. In the passages that appear below one may observe that the Popes seem to understand the charge as primarily a pretext for theft. Hence the reference to "proper recompense" at the conclusion of the first passage.

Gregory X writing in 1271:

"It sometimes happens that certain Christians lose their Christian children. The charge is then made against the Jews by their enemies that they have stolen and slain these children in secret, and that they have sacrificed the heart and the blood. The fathers of the said children, or other Christians who are envious of the Jews, even hide their children in order to have a pretext to molest the Jews, and to extort money from them so as to pay their dues. They assert thereupon, most falsely, that the Jews have taken away these children and slain them, and have sacrificed the heart and the blood. Yet their Law expressly forbids the Jews to sacrifice or to eat or to drink blood: even though it be of animals which have the hoof cloven. This has been confirmed in our *curia* on many occasions by Jews converted to the Christian faith. None the less, on this pretext many Jews have frequently been seized and detained, against all justice."

"We decree that no Christian shall stir up anything new against [the Jews]. Moreover, if any one, after having known the content of this decree, should--which we hope will not happen--attempt audaciously to act contrary to it, then let him suffer punishment in his rank and position, or let him be punished by the penalty of excommunication, unless he makes amends for his boldness by proper recompense."

Innocent IV writing to the German Church in 1247

"We have received a mournful complaint from the Jews of Germany, telling how some princes, both ecclesiastical and lay, together with other nobles and powerful persons in your cities and dioceses, devise evil plans against them and invent various pretexts in order to rob them unjustly of their goods, and gain possesion thereof. This they do without stopping to consider prudently that it is from the archives of the Jews, so to speak, that the testimonies of the Christian faith come forth . . . [The Jews] are falsely accused that at [Passover] they make communion with the heart of a slain child. This is alleged to be enjoined by the Law, whereas in fact such an act is manifestly contrary to it. Moverover, if the body of a dead man is by chance found anywhere, they maliciously ascribe the cause of death to the action of the Jews. On this, and many other fictitious pretexts, they rage against the Jews and despoil them of their possessions, against God and Justice and the privileges mercifully granted to them by the Holy See."

Cited in *Chaucer Criticism: The Canterbury Tales*, ed. Richard Schoeck and Jerome Taylor (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960, 251-52, 257 n.7.

TheGolem