Author: R. Po-chia Hsia Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 0300051069 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 203
Book Description
"On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested all eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman living in Trent on the charge of ritual murder - the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. Under judicial torture and imprisonment, the men confessed and were condemned to death; their women-folk, who had been kept under house arrest with their children, denounced the men under torture and eventually converted to Christianity. A papal hearing in Rome about possible judicial misconduct in Trent made the trial widely known and led to a wave of anti-Jewish propaganda and other accusations of ritual murder against the Jews." "In this engrossing book, R. Pochia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tragic persecution, drawing principally on the Yeshiva Manuscript, a detailed trial record made by authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism."--BOOK JACKET.Title Summary field provided by Blackwell North America, Inc. All Rights Reserved
Author: R. Po-chia Hsia Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300068726 Category : Religion Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
Authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical.
Author: Magda Teter Publisher: Harvard University Press ISBN: 0674243552 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 561
Book Description
A landmark history of the antisemitic blood libel myth—how it took root in Europe, spread with the invention of the printing press, and persists today. Accusations that Jews ritually killed Christian children emerged in the mid-twelfth century, following the death of twelve-year-old William of Norwich, England, in 1144. Later, continental Europeans added a destructive twist: Jews murdered Christian children to use their blood. While charges that Jews poisoned wells and desecrated the communion host waned over the years, the blood libel survived. Initially blood libel stories were confined to monastic chronicles and local lore. But the development of the printing press in the mid-fifteenth century expanded the audience and crystallized the vocabulary, images, and “facts” of the blood libel, providing a lasting template for hate. Tales of Jews killing Christians—notably Simon of Trent, a toddler whose body was found under a Jewish house in 1475—were widely disseminated using the new technology. Following the paper trail across Europe, from England to Italy to Poland, Magda Teter shows how the blood libel was internalized and how Jews and Christians dealt with the repercussions. The pattern established in early modern Europe still plays out today. In 2014 the Anti-Defamation League appealed to Facebook to take down a page titled “Jewish Ritual Murder.” The following year white supremacists gathered in England to honor Little Hugh of Lincoln as a sacrificial victim of the Jews. Based on sources in eight countries and ten languages, Blood Libel captures the long shadow of a pernicious myth.
Author: R. Po-chia Hsia Publisher: Yale University Press ISBN: 9780300047462 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 260
Book Description
From the mid-fifteenth century to the early seventeenth, German Jews were persecuted and tried for the alleged ritual murders of Christian children, whose blood purportedly played a crucial part in Jewish magical rites. In this engrossing book R. Po-Chia Hsia traces the rise and decline of ritual murder trials during that period. Using sources ranging from Christian and Kabbalistic treatises to judicial records and popular pamphlets, Hsia examines the religious sources of the idea of child sacrifice and blood symbolism and reconstructs the political context of ritual murder trials against the Jews. "This volume combines clarity of thinking, elegance of style, and exemplary scholarly attention to detail with intellectual sobriety and human compassion."--Jerome Friedman, Sixteenth Century Journal "Hsia has... succeeded in turning established knowledge to illuminatingly new purposes."--G.R. Elton, New York Review of Books "This meticulously researched and unusually perceptive book is social and intellectual history at its best."--Library Journal "A fresh perspective on an old problem by a major new talent."--Steven Ozment, Harvard University R. Po-chia Hsia, professor of history at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, is also the author of Society and Religion in Münster, 1535-1618
Author: Ariel Toaff Publisher: Clemens & Blair, LLC ISBN: 9781734804218 Category : History Languages : en Pages : 352
Book Description
For centuries, Jews have been accused of something called "blood libel" or "ritual murder": the killing of non-Jews, often children, to use their blood in bizarre religious ceremonies or to make food. For centuries, this has been denied by Jews. But in fact there may be some truth to such claims after all.
Author: Margaret Meserve Publisher: JHU Press ISBN: 142144044X Category : Business & Economics Languages : en Pages : 452
Book Description
An exciting interdisciplinary study based on new literary, historical, and bibliographical evidence, this book will appeal to students and scholars of the Italian Renaissance, the Reformation, and the history of the book.
Author: Stephen D. Bowd Publisher: Mrts ISBN: 9780866984669 Category : Literary Criticism Languages : en Pages : 239
Book Description
The death of a small child called Simon in the town of Trent in 1475 was blamed on the local Jewish community who were accused of abducting, torturing, and strangling him as a way of obtaining Christian blood to use in their rituals. The prince-bishop of Trent orchestrated a campaign against the Jews: poets and humanists wrote about the case on the basis of first-hand knowledge or acquaintance with the trial records and provided detailed accounts of the supposed Jewish conspiracy and murder. The 'blood libel' against the Jews was familiar to most Europeans but the tales from Trent made available in English here for the first time were unprecedented in their detail, savagery of denunciation, and scope of circulation thanks to the new medium of print. As a result the story of Simon's 'martyrdom' and miracles, as well as the prosecution and execution of the Jews, resonated in the European consciousness for centuries.
Author: Patricia Healy Wasyliw Publisher: Peter Lang ISBN: 9780820427645 Category : Biography & Autobiography Languages : en Pages : 216
Book Description
Martyrdom, Murder, and Magic: Child Saints and Their Cults in Medieval Europe is a comprehensive history of child saints and their cults from late Antiquity to the end of the fifteenth century. The child martyrs of the persecutions, including the Holy Innocents, were the first child saints recognized by the Church and their cults spread throughout Europe in the early Middle Ages. Alongside these cults, medieval society also venerated child «martyrs», victims of political or domestic violence. The increasing role of the papacy in the canonization process after the tenth century resulted in the veneration of saintly child confessors in the high Middle Ages, but from the end of the twelfth century, most children worshipped as saints were the alleged victims of ritual murder by Jews. This book considers the formation and transformation of child saints and their cults in the context of popular belief and the history of childhood.
Author: Magda Teter Publisher: ISBN: 0674240936 Category : Anti-Jewish propaganda Languages : en Pages : 561
Book Description
Drawing on sources in eight countries and ten languages, Magda Teter tells the history of the antisemitic blood libel myth, whose long shadow extends from premodern monastic chronicles to Facebook. The vocabulary and images that crystallized and spread with the invention of the printing press are still with us, as are their pernicious consequences.
Author: R. Po-chia Hsia
Author: R. Po-chia Hsia
Author: Magda Teter
Author: R. Po-chia Hsia
Author: Ariel Toaff
Author: Paul Oskar Kristeller
Author: Margaret Meserve
Author: Stephen D. Bowd
Author: Patricia Healy Wasyliw
Author: Magda Teter