Background on the Ritual Murder Accusation
Ritual murder accuations are a medieval European invention; as far as we can tell, these types of fantasies about Jews did not exist in Europe prior to the middle of the twelfth century. 'Ritual murder' means the killing of a non-Jew by a Jew so that the purpose, manner, or form of the death has some special ritual significance. By this definition 'ritual murder' includes, but is not limited to, those fantasies of the type we know as 'blood libels,' the alleged murder of non-Jews by Jews in order to extract blood or body parts for religious, magical, or cannibalistic purposes. In addition, ritual murder accusations are generally characterized by the fact that the alleged victim is a child, and by the supposed involvement of a large number of Jews in an anti-Christian conspiracy. "Ritual murder" describes an irrational, fantastic belief held by some Christians about diabolical, secret Jewish practices. It does not describe something that any Jews actually did.
The first recorded instance of a ritual murder accusation is found in the biography of 'Saint' Willian of Norwich, written in the 1150s by Thomas of Monmouth, a monk at the cathedral priory of Norwich in eastern England. William was a twelve-year-old skinner's apprentice who in 1144 was found murdered in the woods outside the town. Although no evidence connected the boy's disappearance with the recently settled Jewish community of Norwich, William's uncle Godwin Sturt (a priest) accused the Jews of having killed him. The Jews were not prosecuted in court and it would seem that few people took Godwin's charges seriously. Nevertheless, the monk Thomas of Monmouth took an interest in the dead boy, whom he considered to be a martyr. To prove William's sanctity, Thomas concocted an elaborate hagiographical tale: the Jews of Norwich, with the consent of all the Jewish communities in Europe, had ritually crucified William during Easter week in mockery of Christ's passion. (It is significant to note that although Thomas's story eventually came to be widely circulated in England, attracting a reasonably active cult to the boy's shrine, no Jews were attacked or even arrested as a result. Popular violence against the Jews was for some reason not a feature of the twelfth-century crucifixion accusations, most of which essentially were literary creations from within monasteries written for hagiographical, rather than polemical purposes. The legend that Jews annually killed a Christian child in contempt of Christ resulted in several shrines to 'martyred innocents' but did not precipitate popular violence and only rarely led to official persecution.)
A second fantasy, the more familiar and dangerous 'blood libel,' arose among German burghers in about 1235 and spread rapidly on the continent, sparking riots and quasi-legal executions almost everywhere it appeared despite repeated condemnation of the libel by popes and secular rulers alike.
Unfortunately, the fantasy of Jewish ritual murder is not yet a dead issue; fresh accusations of ritual murder have appeared in this century in parts of Eastern Europe and Russia. Nor are such murmurings confined to technologically backward pockets and rural areas; rumours that Jews sacrifice children circulate today in Tokyo. And if educated Westerners today are free of the belief that contemporary Jews ritually kill Christian children, some are nevertheless reluctant to discount the possibility that at some time in the past such human sacrifices may have been carried out by some Jews...
...the origins of the fantasy are still more or less mysterious and troubling. The vast and tangled growth of the myth obscures the roots, allowing some people to suspect seeds of truth underneath it all. Theorizing about honest misunderstandings will illuminate nothing, but if we scrutinize the fantasies at their inception, laying bare the context and the specific factors surrounding the appearance of this or that accusation, we may come closer to understanding exactly why the first ritual murder accusations arose and how they came to be believed...
Finally, we should distinguish sharply between the early origins of the fantasy and its subsequent spread and exploitation. The origins may well be found in irrational projections or in the deliberate, self-serving lies of certain individuals. This is not to say, however, that everyone who ever believed in the myth of Jewish ritual murder was mentally disturbed or twisted by racial or religious hatred....By the end of the middle ages, stories of Jewish atrocities had been repeated and reinforced until they were part of Western culture. It would have been very unusual for a fourteenth-century Christian--someone who had grown up surrounded by frightening legends, art, songs, gossip, and sermons about a marginal, small, hellbound, and poorly understood group--not to accept and believe what his society told him about Jews...
If you are interested in the ritual murder topic and would like to read a bit more about it, you may follow these links to a couple of posts from H-Antis: Blood Libels Part 1 and Blood Libels Part 2. They are certainly not required.
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