Gentile Tales

by Rubin, Miri

• ISBN13: 9780812218800
• ISBN10: 0812218809
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2004-04-05
• Publisher: Ingram Pub Services

Summary

Beginning in Paris in the year 1290, Jews were accused of abusing Christ by desecrating the eucharist--the manifestation of Christ's body in the communion service. Over the next two centuries this tale of desecration spread throughout Europe and led to violent anti-Jewish activity in areas from Catalonia to Bohemia, particularly in some German-speaking regions, where at times it produced regionwide massacres and "cleansings." Drawing on sources ranging from religious tales and poems to Jews' confessions made under torture, Miri Rubin explores the frightening power of one of the most persistent anti-Jewish stories of the Middle Ages and the violence that it bred. She looks not just at the occasions on which massacres occurred but also at those times when the story failed to set off violence. She investigates as well the ways these tales were commemorated in rituals, altarpieces, and legends and were enshrined in local traditions. In exploring the character, nature, development, and eventual decay of this fantasy of host desecration, Rubin presents a vivid picture of the mental world of late medieval Europe and of the culture of anti-Judaism.

Author Biography

Miri Rubin is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge and Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture.

Table of Contents

List of Illustrations	ix
Acknowledgements	xi
1 Introduction	1	(6)
2 From Jewish Boy to Bleeding Host	7	(33)
3 Patterns of Accusation	40	(30)
The 'first' telling of the tale in a well-governed capital: Paris, 1290	40	(8)
Regional massacres: Rintfleisch 1298, Armleder 1336-8	48	(9)
A town and its precious miracles: Korneuburg, 1305	57	(8)
Local upheavals, a town and its hinterland: Pulkau, 1338	65	(5)
4 Persons and Places	70	(23)
The perpetrator: the (male) Jew	71	(2)
Women	73	(4)
Children	77	(1)
Priests, sextons and anti-clerical sentiment	78	(2)
Thieves and theft-plots	80	(4)
Converts	84	(4)
The crowd and its violence	88	(1)
Order restored: synagogue into chapel	89	(4)
Interjection: What did Pews Think of the Eucharist? According to Pews and According to Christians	93	(11)
5 Making the Narrative Work	104	(28)
Catalonia-Aragon: dynastic tensions and host desecration accusations	109	(6)
Venetian doubt: Crete 1451-2	115	(1)
Heresy, crusade and the logic of expulsion: Austria, 1421	116	(3)
Preaching and incitement: Wroclaw, 1453	119	(10)
Regional infection: the neighbouring dioceses of Regensburg and Passau in the 1470's	129	(3)
6 Violence and the Trails of Memory	132	(58)
Texts	134	(10)
Clerical parody and Jewish lament: Prague, 1389	135	(5)
Tales that exemplify	140	(4)
Images	144	(17)
Telling the tale	148	(6)
Miraculous emphasis and sacramental use	154	(1)
One among many: the universal tale	154	(5)
Processional afterlife: holy knife and sacred host in fifteenth-century Paris	159	(2)
Word and image: image and prayer	161	(20)
The Carew-Poyntz Book of Hours	161	(1)
The holy host of Dijon	162	(7)
Drama	169	(4)
Broadsheets and poems: Passau 1477, Sternberg 1492 and Deggendorf 1337	173	(8)
The fragility of memory: Brussels 1370, and later	181	(9)
Conclusion	190	(6)
Appendix: Rabbi Avigdor Kara: All the Afflictions (Et kol ha-tela'a)	196	(3)
Notes	199	(59)
Index	258