From Conversion to Ritual Murder: Re-Contextualizing the Circumcision Charge
In the 1230s, Christian authorities prosecuted Norwich Jews on charges of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old boy in an effort to convert him to Judaism. In the same decade, English chroniclers began to depict this case as an attempted ritual murder. According to Roger Wendover and Matthew...
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| Type de support: | Électronique Article |
| Langue: | Anglais |
| Vérifier la disponibilité: | HBZ Gateway |
| Journals Online & Print: | En cours de chargement...
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| Fernleihe: | Fernleihe für die Fachinformationsdienste |
| Publié: |
Brill
2018
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| Dans: |
Medieval encounters
Année: 2018, Volume: 24, Numéro: 4, Pages: 361-389 |
| Sujets non-standardisés: | B
Conversion
circumcision
ritual murder
blood libel
Norwich
anti-Judaism
childhood
jewish-christian relations
Matthew Paris
imitatio Christi
circumcision of Christ
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| Accès en ligne: |
Accès probablement gratuit Volltext (Verlag) |
| Résumé: | In the 1230s, Christian authorities prosecuted Norwich Jews on charges of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old boy in an effort to convert him to Judaism. In the same decade, English chroniclers began to depict this case as an attempted ritual murder. According to Roger Wendover and Matthew Paris, Jews circumcised the boy with the intention of crucifying him at Easter. This article explores what the near simultaneous development of these two intriguing and seemingly disparate narratives suggests about thirteenth-century Christian perceptions and portrayals of circumcision. In so doing, it ushers research on medieval Christian attitudes toward circumcision into new spheres, deepens understandings of thirteenth-century Christian anxieties about conversion to Judaism, and brings to light a marginal note in the autograph copy of Matthew Paris’ Chronica majora that may constitute evidence of evolving Christian views of the relationship between the bodies of Jews’ alleged victims and the body of Christ. |
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| ISSN: | 1570-0674 |
| Contient: | In: Medieval encounters
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| Persistent identifiers: | DOI: 10.1163/15700674-12340027 |