The blood libel—the totally irrational and groundless
belief that Jews murdered Christian children and mixed their fresh blood into
the matzoh and/or wine for magical and redemptive purposes to celebrate the
Passover—has a long history in England. It originated in a pogrom in 1144
after a Jew was charged with the ritual murder of a child. About one hundred
and fifty years later it was prominently featured in the Prioress’s Tale in
Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales even though Jews had been expelled from England for
generations. The Prioress passionately recounts the tale of a heinous crime: a
child’s throat is cut and the body thrown into a cesspit used by Jews to purge
their bowels. Because the "damnable race" is cursed, and justice demanded "the
blood cries upon your fiendish crime," the Jewish perpetrators were torn apart
by horses and hanged according to law. Later, during the Renaissance, when it was
widely held that Jewish males menstruated, the blood libel ritual was touted as
providing Christian blood to replenish that lost in menstruation. The Jews,
therefore, shared with the Irish the stigma of being classified as ‘essentially
feminine’ and bearing the taint for being a physically degenerative influence.
Later in 1840, after a friar Father Tomaso and his
servant disappeared without a trace in Damascus, the blood libel charge
resurfaced, leading to an inquisitorial de facto trial of prominent members of
the Jewish community including rabbis. Under brutal torture four men died:
reportedly, one of them as a result of five thousand lashes. Other confessions
extracted under torture were offered as evidence, and ten of the accused awaited
execution after being declared guilty by the Islamic viceroy of Egypt who
controlled Greater Syria. The physical
threat to Jews in Damascus, and the temporary seizure of sixty-three Jewish
children as hostages, so as to pressure their parents to reveal the location of
the stored blood, transformed a local matter into an international cause
celebre. What drove the months of interrogation was the support of most members
in the European consular community in Syria. The French consul in particular
remained convinced of the Jews’ guilt, both that they were murderers and that
human sacrifice was an integral part of Judaism. The English consul reported to
his superior, foreign secretary, Palmerston, that the Jews were unquestionably
guilty. Notwithstanding power struggles in the region and his support of the
Sultan in Constantinople over his subordinate in Alexandria, Palmerston,
repelled by the accusation and the tenor of irrationality surrounding the case,
officially denounced the blood libel allegation.
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| This painting of the blood libel adorns the Sandomierz Cathedral in Poland. Sociologists found that large numbers of rural Poles still believe in the blood libel |
While most English press argued that the condemned men were
victims of a medieval witch-hunt, the venerable Times, not only gave the case
extensive coverage, but also proclaimed that the charge and the guilt should be
an open question. Offering balance, the newspaper printed documents and letters
to support the charge, including a declaration, purportedly written by a former
Rabbi, that Holy Scripture required Jews to commit ritual murder. Under the
guise of impartiality, The Times provided an outlet for undercurrents of
bigotry that normally would not be expressed in a prestigious newspaper.
Ostensibly taking the high moral ground by keeping an open mind, their coverage
had more in common with the gutter press in France and the German states where
new press freedoms were being used to pander to the prejudices of a growing
reading public. For example, one newspaper, from the ultra-Catholic French
press, averred that even if the facts did not fully support the charge, the
Jews had conducted these ritual murders in the Middle Ages. For the reader
insensitive to nuance, the implication was that a people could never escape
their history and were likely to repeat historical crimes.
Although power politics may have entered into Palmerston’s
decision to support the Jewish community and condemn the allegation, the French
Government of Adolphe Thiers was motivated entirely by state considerations.
Thiers’ realpolitik was not going to permit the fate of a few tortured
individuals, even when he harbored no special animus toward the Jews, to
prevail over French national interest and the consolidation of its empire.
Unlike the clerical press, Thiers’ overriding goal was to strengthen the French
influence in the region by remaining an ally of the viceroy of Egypt in his
struggle against the Sultan of the Ottoman Empire. To that end, he refused to
repudiate his diplomats’ conviction of the Jews guilt. The viceroy interpreted
that decision as French support for his regime. Despite Thiers lack of
cooperation, an international committee, that included a prominent English and
French Jew, interceded to secure the release of the remaining prisoners. The
Viceroy’s decision, however, was coloured more by international pressures—the
threat of war from Britain, Austria and Russia which he feared would jeopardize
his power—than with a principled condemnation of the ritual murder charge,
any attempt to clear their reputations through a retrial or seek the real
culprits. Moses Montefiore, a British representative on the international
committee, received from the Sultan a written repudiation of the blood libel
charge and a promise that Jews would enjoy the same privileges as any other
religion. Nonetheless, what happened in
Damascus demonstrated that a rebroadcast of the ritual murder charge could
easily be accepted, not only in Paris but all over Europe. Despite the
disavowals by monarchs, Popes and scholars, the canard could not be permanently
laid to rest.
In large part the persistence of the blood libel can be
explained by the attitude of the Roman Catholic Church. Although in the early
1870s, the Vatican repudiated Catholic newspapers challenging it to prove its
allegation, in the last two decades of the century, through its newspapers and
leading spokesmen of the Church, it increasingly used shrill language to
denounce the alleged Jewish threat. In June 1881 a Jesuit periodical launched a
barrage of articles, one of which asserted that the Talmud commanded the Jewish race to kill Christians because they needed their blood at Passover
and cited as proof the case of Father Tomaso of Damascus. Despite the well-known
fact that the accused had confessed under grueling torture, subsequent articles
published testimony from the 1840 trial that had in his mind clearly
demonstrated the guilt of the accused Jews.
In the next decade, priests continued their assault on Jews
by incorporating racial anti-Semitism and keeping alive the canard of ritual
murder. Not only were they responsible for economic failures while amassing
most of the wealth in Italy through "constantly oppressing and robbing
Christians," they were hatching a conspiracy for world domination. But the
priest, a Father Rondina, reserved his greatest venom to demonstrate that Jews
were responsible for ritual murders, and that they took particular delight in
murdering children and draining their bodies of blood. At Passover so much
blood was needed for them to perform their diabolical rites that a child’s
blood could do. In his demonization of the Jews, however, he revealed his
relish in recounting their grisly details of torture and sadism. Accordingly, it was not enough for Jews to
murder children, but "for the health of the Jewish soul it is necessary for the
little child to die amidst torments" with the child being killed by “needles
struck into them, or were cut up piece by piece, or crucified.” When the last
drop of the boy’s blood was drained, it was “kept by the local Rabbi."
The preoccupation of the Vatican to malign Jews as ritual
murderers revealed itself whenever it commented on a trial of a Jew tried with
this heinous offence. Convinced of the Jew’s guilt ever before a verdict had
been reached, the Vatican daily could only explain acquittals as evidence that
the Jews had bribed the judges and that the “judiciary is entirely in the
synagogue’s control.” In another case where the accused was acquitted, the same
newspaper warned the Jews: “Content yourselves… with the Christians’ money, but
stop shedding and sucking of their blood.” When the chief rabbi of Rome wrote a
letter denouncing the charge of ritual murder, the Vatican editorialist acidly
commented that the rabbi might serve the “miserable race of Judah” if he told
his depraved people to stop concealing the fact that they “murder Christians to
use their blood for their detestable rites.” In the early 1890s, barely a day
went by without one of the Catholic dailies reporting or commenting on the
latest graphic details of a ritual murder, and many Catholic newspapers in
Austria, Germany, Italy and France reprinted extracts from them. One of the
shrillest purveyors of the ritual murder charge was the Milan Catholic daily
that repeatedly regaled its readers with gruesome descriptions of how Christian
children were murdered by Jews. When its director received a private audience
with the Pope Leo XIII, he reported to the press His Holiness’ “most beautiful
expressions of satisfaction.” The Pope’s blessing enhanced its influence among
anti-Semitic politicians in Germany and Austria who cited with approval the
paper’s editorial position when they addressed their own Parliaments on Jewish
ritual murder. The imprimatur of the Pope assured that the blood libel would
remain part of the public discourse in Catholic countries. But it continued to
surface also among non-Catholics.
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| The resurgence of the blood libel is evident in this cartoon that appeared recently in several Arab newspapers |
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