Ariel Toaff - Blood Passover

Cfr. R. Segre, The Jews in Piedmont , Jerusalem, 1986, vol. I, p. 286.

Cfr. Vauchez, La santità nel Medioevo , cit., pp. 99-100. In this regard, see, most recently, K.R.Stow's stimulating study, Jewish Dogs. An Image and Its Interpreters , Stanford (Calif.), 2006.

Cfr. F.S. Hattler, Katholischer Kindergarten oder Legende fur Kinder , Freiburg, 1806. See also Strack's argument, The Jew and Human Sacrifice , cit., pp. 184-185; F. Pauly, Zur Vita des Werner von Oberwesel. Legende und Wirklichtkeit , in "Archiv" für Mittelrheinische Kirchengeschichte", XVI (1964), pp. 94-109; Roth, Medieval Jewish Civilization , cit., p. 569.

Cfr. H. de Grèzes, Saint Vernier (Verny, Werner, Garnier) patron des vignerons en Auvergne, en Bourgogne et en Franche-Comptè , Clermont-Ferrand, 1889; A. Vauchez, Antisemitism e canonizzazione populare: San Werner o Vernier (1287), bambino martire e patrono dei vignaioli , in S. Boesch Gajano and L. Sebastiani, Culto dei santi, istituzioni e classi sociali in età preindustriale , L'Aquila-Roma, 1984, pp. 489-508.

Berner-Chronik, by G. Studer, Bern, 1871, p. 29. For the more older sources relating to this ritual murder, cfr. Strack, The Jew and Human Sacrifice, cit., pp. 186-188.

Cfr. Johann Rudolf von Waldkirch, Gründliche Einleitung zu der Eydgenössischen Bunds- und Staats-Historie , Basel, Thurneysen, 1721, vol. I, p. 135; J. Lauffer, Beschreibung helvetischer Geschichte , Zurich, Conrad Orell, 1706, vol. III. P. 108.

Cfr. "Monumenta Germaniae Historica. Scriptores", XXV, Hannover, 1896, p. 717; XLII, Hannover, 1921, p. 29.

Cfr. G.L. Langmuir, Thomas of Monmouth. Detector of Ritual Murder , in "Speculum", LIX (1984), p. 824.

Cfr. Th. Reinach, Textes d'auteurs grecs et romains relatifs au Judaisme , Paris, 1895, p. 121, no. 60.

Josephus, Contra Apion , II, 7-1: "et hoc illos facere singulis annis quodam tempore constituito. Et comprehendere quidem Graecum peregrinum, eumque annali tempore saginare et deductum ad quamdam silvam occidere quidem eum hominem, eiusque corpus sacrificare secundum suas solemnitates, et gustare ex eius visceribus, et iusiurandum facere in immolatione Graeci, ut inimicitas contra Graecos haberent, et tunc in quandam foveam reliqua hominis pereuntis abjicere", Cfr. Rheinach, Textes d'auteurs grecs et romains , cit. pp. 131-132, no. 63.

For an examination of the story of Damocritus and Apione on the ritual homicides committed by the Jews in the Temple of Jerusalem, see, among others, J. Parkes, The Conflict of the Church and the Synagogue , 1934, p. 16; D. Flusser, The Blood Libel against the Jews According to the Intellectual Perspectives of the Hellenistic Age , in Studies on Hellenistic Judaism in Memory of J. Levy, Jerusalem, 1949, pp. 104-124 (in Hebrew); Id., Moza 'alilot ha-dam ("The Origins of the Blood Accusation") in "Manhanaim", CX (1967), pp. 18-21; J.N. Sevenster, The Roots of Pagan Anti-semitism in the Ancient World , Leyden, 1975, pp. 140-142.

Cfr. Reinach, Textes d'auteurs grecs et romains relatifs au Judaisme , Paris, cit., pp. 196-197, no. 112.

Thus, the final passage of this haraita is translated by rabbi Dovid Kamenetsky, in the recent edition of the Babylonian Talmud, with a version in English ( Talmud Bavli, Schottenstein Edition, Tractae Ketubos, III , New York, 2000, c. 102b and no. 32): "for it once occurred that a boy was entrusted to those fit to inherit him, and they butchered (or: slew) him on Pesach eve".

"In the Latin translation of extracts from the Talmud contained in Latin manuscript 16558 B.N., which is the principal source of knowledge of rabbinical literature in the Christian world in the 13th century, the Ketubot treatise is not explicitly mentioned there [...]. It does not contain the passage which interests you ( Ketubot 102b ). I have never found it used in polemics; nevertheless, the link made between Pessach might very well have encouraged belief in 'ritual murder'; but the authors of the anti-Jewish accounts on this subject obviously know nothing about Jewish literature. [...]. Among the number of accusations made of ritual murder, I do not recall ever having found an argument based upon this Talmudic passage" [written communication dated 2 August 2001 from Professor Gilbert Dehan, to whom I wish to express my deepest thanks).

A. Steinzaltz notes, in this regard, that "in some later editions (of the Talmud), the Rosh Ha-Shanah (New Year's) version appears instead of Pesach , in the fear that this expression might constitute evidence to be used by those who accuse the Jews of ritual murder". ( Talmud Bavli, Ketubot , Jerusalem, 1988, vol. II, p. 457). And nevertheless, the first writer to use the text of Ketubot in this sense seems to be the famous Augusto Rohling, University professor and one of the more caustic Austrian anti-Semitic polemicists, author of Der Talmudjude (Munster, 1871). The passage of Ketubot 102b was revealed by him and publicized with ill-concealed satisfaction in a brochure entitled Ein Talmud fur rituelle Schächten , which saw the light in 1892. Hermann L. Strack replied to him, arguing passionately but only somewhat convincingly, in the fourth edition (London, 1892), of his classic essay on Jews and human ritual sacrifice ( The Jew and Human Sacrifice. Human Blood and Jewish Ritual , pp. 155-168).

Talmud Bavli , Vilna, Menachem (Mendele) Man e Simcha Zimel, 1835. It should be noted that this edition preceded by more than half a century the "revelations" of Rohling, in a act of surprising self-censorship. It is not impossible that the editors of the Vilna Talmud intended to respond to doubt and embarrassment within the Jewish world on the interpretation of this text in the original version, rather than reply to the external attacks which were still long yet to come.

In this regard, see Ch. Verlinden's now famous classic, L'esclavage dans l'Europe medievale , Brugge, 1955, vol. I, pp. 702-716. For a rather over-simplified interpretation of the role of the Jews in the slave trade, see B. Blumenkranz, Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidental (430-1096), Paris 1960, pp. 18-19, 184-211, to which the same Verlinden replied ( A propos de la place des juifs dans l'économie de l'Europe occidentale au IXème siècles. Agobard de Lyon et l'historiographie arabe, in Storia e storiograph. Miscellanea de studi in onore di E. Dupre - Theseider, Rome, 1974, pp. 21-37).

Cfr. Verlinden, A propos de la place des juifs , cit., pp. 32-35.

"Et cum precedens scedula dictata fuisset, supervenit quidam homo fugiens ab Hispanis de Cordoba, qui se dicebat furatum fuisse a quoda Judeo Lugduno ante annos IIti IIIor, parvum adhuc puerum, et et venditum. Fugisse autem anno presenti cum alio, qi similiter furatus fuerat ab alio Judeo ante annos sex. Cumque huis, qui Lugdunesis fuerat, notos quereremus et invenirem dictum est a quibusdam et alios ab eodem Judeos furatos, alios vero eptos ac venditos; ab alio quoque Judeo anno presenti alium puerum furatum et venditum; qua hora inventum est plures Christianos a Christianis vendi et comparari a Judeis, perpatrarique ab eis multa infanda que turpia sunt ad scribendum" (Epistolae Karolini aevi, in "Monumenta Germaniae Historica", III, Hannover, 1846, p. 185). For an analysis of this text, see, in particular, B. Blumenkrantz, Les auteurs chrétiens latins au Moyen Age sur les Juifs et le Judaisme , Paris, 1963, pp. 152-168; Id., Juifs et Chrétiens dans le monde occidentale , cit., pp. 191-195; Verlinden, A propos de la place des juifs , cit., pp. 21-25.