In the High and Late Middle Ages, Christians accused Jews of shedding Christian blood, and sometimes even their own, for ritual purposes. This project is interested in how Jewish and Christian perceptions of blood may have led to the formation of such myths. I begin my analysis by discussing the ways in which medieval Jews and Christians interacted with one another, thereby providing the opportunity for Christians to observe and interpret the behaviors of their Jewish neighbors. Furthermore, Judaism and Christianitys shared history and typological language would have facilitated an awareness of one anothers traditions. This paper, therefore, aims to demonstrate how interactions and common roots would have helped to shape Christian readings of Jewish practice. I argue that in observing and interpreting Jewish behavior towards blood, Christians applied their own concerns and values to make Jews active vehicles for Christian exegesis. Blood accusations stemmed from an awareness, observation, and interpretation of Jewish practices as filtered through the lenses of the medieval Christian Weltanschauung. In some cases, Christians even misinterpreted Jewish practices. To argue my thesis, I pair one type of bloodshed familiar to medieval Christians with one type of blood accusation made against Jews. The pairs are: the Crusades and ritual murder, menstruation and male menstruation, circumcision and ritual cannibalism, and the paschal lamb sacrifice and Host desecration. Each pair will be a case study in how Christians may have understood, or perhaps misunderstood, Jewish practice from a Christian perspective and how such a phenomenon contributed to the formation of blood accusations.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:PITT/oai:PITTETD:etd-04222010-180337 |
| Date | 03 June 2010 |
| Creators | Cohen, Amanda Bess |
| Contributors | Adam Shear, Jonathan Elukin, Hannah Johnson, Bruce Venarde |
| Publisher | University of Pittsburgh |
| Source Sets | University of Pittsburgh |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | text |
| Format | application/pdf |
| Source | http://etd.library.pitt.edu/ETD/available/etd-04222010-180337/ |
| Rights | unrestricted, I hereby certify that, if appropriate, I have obtained and attached hereto a written permission statement from the owner(s) of each third party copyrighted matter to be included in my thesis, dissertation, or project report, allowing distribution as specified below. I certify that the version I submitted is the same as that approved by my advisory committee. I hereby grant to University of Pittsburgh or its agents the non-exclusive license to archive and make accessible, under the conditions specified below, my thesis, dissertation, or project report in whole or in part in all forms of media, now or hereafter known. I retain all other ownership rights to the copyright of the thesis, dissertation or project report. I also retain the right to use in future works (such as articles or books) all or part of this thesis, dissertation, or project report. |
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