Blood libel

Blood libels are sensationalized allegations that a person or group engages in human sacrifice, often accompanied by the claim that the blood of victims is used in various rituals and/or acts of cannibalism. The alleged victims are often children.

Some of the best documented cases of blood libel focus upon accusations against Jews , but many other groups have been accused, including Christians, Cathars, Carthaginians, Knights Templar, Witches, Christian heretics, Roma, Wiccans, Druids, neopagans, Satanists.

History

The first blood libel recorded comes from Ancient Greece in which the Alexandrian grammarian Apion accused Jews of holding one Greek prisoner with their temple in Alexandria, feeding him until he would become supple and then killing him, drinking his blood and eating his body While such sentiments towards the Jews existed in the Mediterrain for centuries, further blood libels were not committed. In fact, it wasn't until over a thousand years later, in 1144 England that the first true blood libel was leveled against the Jews.

In 1144, a boy by the name of William of Norwich went missing and a former Jew, Theobald of Cambridge, who had recently converted to Christianity, declared that the boy had been kidnapped for a Jewish sacrfice that took place annually. Theobald claimed that the sarifice of a young Christian boy around Passover was part of a larger, world wide Jewish conspiracy. No evidence was ever found to support Theobald's claims, and no Jews were directly punished for the crime, but the incident left the idea that Jews participated in blood sacrifices in the minds of many Europeans, and in the following centuries blood libels became more and more common.

Possible Explinations

There are many possible explinations for the blood libel. Although the time frames do not match, there has always been a cannibalism taboo within Christianity, and it is feasible that the blood libel is based upon a misunderstanding of Hebraic tradition involving blood. Simple racism may be the cause, as the Jews have been persecuted for many centuries and it is customary for those who pursecute to asrcibe false charges against whom they are persecutting. For centuries there has been stories of creatures that drain people of blood and life energy, vampires from distant lands, and it is also possible that supersitious fears of such creatures may also have been somehow applied to the Jews.

Professor Israel Jacob Yuval of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem published an article in 1993 that argues that the blood libel myth 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 in acts of martyrdom rather than be subjected to forced conversions. (The Zealots on Masada and their reported mass suicide is perhaps the most famous example.) 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.

Blood and sacrifice are very important in Jewish tradition, and it is perhaps that misunderstandings, either literal or un-intentional, helped fuel blood libels. Animals were in fact sacrificed by ancient Jews, yet 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).

The kosher dietary laws, in which blood is properly drained from the animals before being consumed and covered with dirt(Lev 17:12-13) may have applied to the draining of blood from humans, but man is not considered a Kosher animal. In addition, the use of blood (human or otherwise) in cooking is prohibited by the Kosher dietary laws. 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). And finally, the Ten Commandments in the Torah forbid murder.

Since Jews have not been the only target of blood libels (but were in fact the most frequent and wide-known) it is more probable that the acqusation comes not from a misunderstanding of Judaism in general, but from the instinctual response to any religion, tradition or culture that is alien and exotic to the observer. Frequently, anyone associated with consuming either the blood, body or life-force of another human being is seen as evil and so blood libels are an easy vehicle to pursecute a group that does not conform to the majority rule.

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 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.

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. This method, with some variations, can be found in all the descriptions of alleged ritual murder by Jews.

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.

Accused Groups

Ancient Greek religion

When the Christianization of Greece occurred, there was an attempt to portray all sacrifices as blood sacrifices, but contrary to ancient Christian propaganda sacrifices to the Greek gods were typically in the forms of wealth. Human blood sacrifices were illegal in Greek cities. Early Christians spread propaganda about the children of Christians being abducted and having their throats slit in various temples^{[citation needed]}. Such propaganda bore similarity to blood libel accusations against Jews. Virtuvian blood sacrifices were seen by the Greek people as barbaric, and laws against them were believed to be part of what separated the Greeks from those they considered barbarians, even after Romanization occurred.

Jews

Drawing published in the antisemitic news-papers in 1882, after the death of the young Eszter Solymosi. The Jews were accused of a ritual crime

Blood libel against Jews is the most extensively researched case. Blood libels against the Jews were a common form of anti-Semitism during the Middle Ages. There are indeed rituals involving human blood in Jewish law or custom, such as circumcision. The first recorded instance of a blood libel against Jews was in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed Greek victims in the Temple. After this there are no existent records of the blood libel against the Jews until the 12th century legend surrounding William of Norwich, first recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle. The libel afterward became an increasingly common accusation. In many subsequent cases, anti-Semitic blood libels served as the basis for a blood libel cult, in which the alleged victim of human sacrifice was venerated as a Christian martyr. Many Jews were killed as a result of false blood libels, which continued into the 20th century, with the Beilis Trial in Russia and the Kielce pogrom in Poland. Blood libel stories persist in the Arab world.

Christians

During the first and second centuries, some Roman commentators had various interpretations of the ritual of the Eucharist and related teachings. While celebrating the Eucharist, Christians drink red wine in response to the words "This is the blood of Christ." Propaganda arguing that the Christians literally drank blood based on their belief in transubstantiation was written and used to persecute Christians. Romans were highly suspicious of Christian adoptions of abandoned Roman babies and this was suggested as a possible source of the blood.

In the Mandaean scripture, the Ginza Rba, a purportedly Christian group called the "Minunei" are accused of it against the Jews: "They kill a Jewish child, they take his blood, they cook it in bread and they proffer it to them as food." (Ginza Rba 9.1).

Notable instances

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

France 1171

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 .

England, 1255

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 the 31st of July. His body was discovered on the 29th of 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 some five weeks afterward, at the beginning of October, refused to carry out the promise of John of Lexington, and had Copin executed and ninety-one of the Jews of Lincoln seized and sent up to London, where eighteen of them were executed. The rest were pardoned at the intercession of the Franciscans (Jacobs, "Jewish Ideals," pp. 192-224).

Trentino, Italy, 1475

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.

Spain, 1491

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 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.

Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, 1690

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, 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. The revival of the cult in Belarus was cited as a dangerous expression of antisemitism in international reports on human rights and religious freedoms and were passed to the UNHCR.

Syria, 1840

In February, at Damascus, a Catholic monk named Father Thomas and his servant were murdered. In this instance, also, confessions were obtained only after the infliction of torture.

Kiev, Ukraine, Russia 1911

In Kiev, a Jewish factory manager, Mendel Beilis, was accused of murdering a Christian child and using his blood in matzos. He was acquitted by an all-Christian jury after a sensational trial in 1913.

Atlanta, Georgia, United States 1913

In a case very similar to the above, Leo Frank, a Jewish manager at a local pencil factory was accused of raping and killing 12 year old Mary Phagan. Though he was never accused of using her blood in any kind of ritual, there was a consistent yellow press campaign to portray Frank as a pervert and a sadist. After he was pardoned by the governor in 1915 Frank was lynched by a group calling themselves the Knights of Mary Phagan, which would become the kernel of a revived Ku Klux Klan. The Leo Frank lynching was also related to racist tensions and policies in Georgia, as many other people had been lynched in Georgia.

Kielce, Poland 1946

The Kielce pogrom against Holocaust survivors in Poland was sparked by an accusation of blood libel. The fundamental motivation for the Kielce pogrom, however, was that Jewish survivors of the Holocaust had returned to reclaim their land and property, which their Polish neighbors had stolen. The Poles would not relinquish their stolen goods and instead murdered the Jews.

Contemporary blood libels

Accusations of ritual murder are being advanced by different groups to this day. One claim stated that physicians in the People's Republic of China who perform abortions consider the fetus a delicacy and eat it. The story, reported from Hong Kong by Bruce Gilley, was investigated by Senator Jesse Helms, and gruesome artwork reminiscent of traditional depictions of blood libel was featured in several anti-abortion campaigns. [1] The only use for "human fetal tissue" is in the medical research field, particularly stem cell research. [2] [3]

Another contemporary blood libel in the United States alleges, falsely, that both neopagans and Satanists use human blood, sexual abuse, or ritual murder, especially of children, in their rituals. Often Satanism, all of the diverse neopagan religions, the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and sometimes Roman Catholicism and liberal or non-fundamentalist Christian denominations, are portrayed as expressions of one monolithic and ancient global conspiracy of Satan-worshippers. Mike Warnke (The Satan Seller), Bill Schnoebelen (Wicca: Satan's Little White Lie), Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith (Michelle Remembers), Jon Watkins [4], Bill Pricer, and Ken Wooden (Child Lures) are some of the voices of these libels.

Many Jewish groups were shocked by the publication in 2003 by the British newspaper The Independent of a cartoon depicting Ariel Sharon eating a baby. [5] The Israeli government complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the cartoon alluded to the blood libel of Jews eating the children of Christians; Dave Brown, the author, responded that the cartoon was in fact inspired by Francisco de Goya's painting Saturn Devouring His Son [6] and was not anti-Semitic in intent. The PCC accepted Brown's argument, stating "There is nothing inherently anti-semitic about the Goya image or about the myth of Saturn devouring his children, which has been used previously to satirise other politicians accused of sacrificing their own 'children' for political purposes." [7] The cartoon ultimately earned Brown the British Political Cartoon Society's Political Cartoon of the Year award.

Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in his failed bid for re-election in March 2006, said communists have a history of boiling babies. "I have been accused many times of saying communists eat babies," said Berlusconi at a rally of his Forza Italia party. "Go and read the Black Book on Communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but they boiled them to fertilise the fields." Despite Berlusconi's 2006 denial that he has ever said that 'communists eat babies,' in the 2001 campaign, Berlusconi said "I can organise a conference in which I will prove communists have really eaten babies and done even worse things. [8]

In Arab and Muslim nations

Blood libel stories have appeared a number of times in the state-sponsored media of a number of Arab and Muslim nations, their television shows and websites. Books alleging occurrences of Jewish blood libel are not uncommon.

• The Matzah Of Zion was written by the Syrian Defense Minister, Mustafa Tlass in 1986. The book concentrates on two issues: renewed ritual murder accusations against the Jews in the Damascus affair of 1840, and The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.
  • On October 21, 2002, the London based Arabic paper Al-Hayat reported that the book was undergoing its eighth reprint and was being translated into English, French, and Italian.
  • In 2001 an Egyptian film company produced and aired a film called Horseman Without a Horse, partly based on Tlass's book. The book was cited at a United Nations conference in 1991 by a Syrian delegate.

• Multiple branches of the Syrian government, including the Damascus Police Command and the Department of Antiquities and Museums, the security ministry, the culture ministry, created an anti-Semitic television TV series called Ash-Shatat ("The Diaspora".) This series originally aired in Syria and in Lebanon late 2003, and was broadcast by Al-Manar, a satellite television network owned by Hezbollah. This TV series is based on the anti-Semitic forgery The Protocols of the Learned Elders of Zion, shows the Jewish people as engaging in a conspiracy to rule the world, and presents Jews as people who murder Christian children, drain their blood, and use this blood to bake matzah.

• During a December 20, 2005, discussion among Iranian political analysts that aired on Jaam-e Jam 2 Iranian TV, Tehran Times contributor and author of the book The History of the Jews Dr. Hasan Hanizadeh alleged that "the Jews" had carried out "two horrendous incidents" in 19th century Europe:

In 1883, about 150 French children were murdered in a horrible way in the suburbs of Paris, before the Jewish Passover holiday. Later research showed that the Jews had killed them and taken their blood. ... A similar incident took place in London, when many English children were killed by Jewish rabbis. ..."

• King Faisal of Saudi Arabia made accusations against Parisian Jews which took the nature of a blood libel.

• In a twist on the libel of Jews using blood in matzah, a Passover food, in 2002, a Saudi newspaper claimed that Jews use blood in homentashn, triangular cookies eaten on the Jewish holiday of Purim. The story celebrated on Purim, recounted in the Book of Esther, takes place in ancient Persia (modern-day Iran).

• A 2004 story from Iran speaks of Jewish doctors stealing organs of Palestinian children in Israeli hospitals:

Some Arab writers have condemned these blood libels. The Egyptian newspaper Al-Ahram published a series of articles by Osam Al-Baz, a senior advisor to Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. Amongst other things, Osam Al-Baz explained the origins of the anti-Jewish blood libel. He said that Arabs and Muslims have never been anti-Semitic, 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.

In Russia

In early January 2005, some 20 members of the Russian State Duma publicly made a blood libel against the Jewish people. They approached the Prosecutor General’s Office, and demanded that Russia "ban all Jewish organizations.” They accused all Jewish groups of being extremists, and of being “anti-Christian and inhumane, which practices extend even to ritual murders”.^{[citation needed]}

Alluding to previous anti-Semitic 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 anti-Semitic 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 right-wing 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. 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.

Views of the Catholic Church

The Church's attitude towards these accusations and the cults venerating children supposedly killed by Jews varied. The church sometimes opposed them, but it generally did little to stop them, and in some cases gave its clear approval. Pope Benedict XIV permitted the continuation of the cult of Anderl von Rinn as a local cult, but refused to canonize him as a saint. On the other hand, Pope Gregory X issued a letter rejecting the blood libel accusations.

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Susanna Buttaroni, Stanislaw Musial: Ritualmord. Böhlau Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-205-77028-5 (German)
• Rainer Erb: Die Legende vom Ritualmord. Metropol 1993, ISBN 3-926893-15-X (German)
• Hannelore Fieg: Ritualmord und Satanskultbeschuldigungen in Spätantike, Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Christen und Juden, Ketzer und Hexen, Diploma thesis Universität Innsbruck 2000 (German)
• Gerhard Muller (Hrsg.): Theologische Realenzyklopädie Band 29, Religionspsychologie - Samaritaner. Walter de Gruyter, 1998, ISBN 3-11-016127-3 (entry Ritualmord, pg. 253-265) (German)

• Alan Dundes: The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore. The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992, ISBN 0-299-13110-6
• Jules Isaac, Die Genesis des Antisemitismus, Wien: Europa Verlag, 1969 (German)
• Stefan Rohrbacher, Michael Schmidt: Judenbilder. Kulturgeschichte antijüdischer Mythen und antisemitischer Vorurteile. Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-499-55498-4 (pg. 269-291: Ritualmord und Hostienfrevel; pg. 304-368: Die Barbarei längst verflossener Jahrhunderte)
• Johannes T. Groß: Ritualmordbeschuldigungen gegen Juden im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871-1914) Berlin: Metropol, 2002. ISBN 3-932482-84-0
• Alexander Baron: Jewish Ritual Murder: Anti-semitic Fabrication or Urban Legend? Anglo-Hebrew Publishing. 1994, ISBN 1898318360
• John M. McCulloh: Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth In: Speculum, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Juli 1997), S. 698-740
• Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia: The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany. Yale University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-300-04746-0 (englisch)

• Schmoger, Karl (1974) The Life of Anna Katherina Emmerich: Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishing: 1974: Volume 1: ISBN 0-89555-059-8

• Jewish Encyclopedia article on "Blood Libel"
• ISBN 0-87668-179-8 The Beilis Transcripts. The Anti-Semitic Trial that Shook the World. by Ezekiel Leikin
• R. Po-chia Hsia, "The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany" (New Haven: Yale UP, 1988). ISBN 0-300-04120-9 (cloth), ISBN 0-300-04746-0 (pbk.).
• Dundes, Alan (1991). The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 978-0299131142. 

External links

• Resources > Medieval Jewish History > Blood Libels
• Anti-Defamation League condemns Egyptian blood libel
• Blood libel in 1840 Syria
• Blood Libel, Host Desecration, and other Myths
• The Independent – info on Horseman Without a Horse
• Blood Feast Snopes.com Info page
• The JET report on murerous and cannabalistic Satanist allegations in the Broxtowe child abuse case.
• Anthony Julius: 'On Blood Libels' on the Engage website
• Resources > Medieval Jewish History > Blood Libels Jewish History Resource Center, Project of the Dinur Center for Research in Jewish History, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
• Urban Legends Reference Pages: Religion (Blood Feast)

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