From Conversion to Ritual Murder: Re-Contextualizing the Circumcision Charge
In: Medieval EncountersSearch for other papers by Paola Tartakoff in
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Abstract
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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From Conversion to Ritual Murder: Re-Contextualizing the Circumcision Charge
In: Medieval EncountersSearch for other papers by Paola Tartakoff in
Current site
Google Scholar
PubMed
Abstract
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.
| All Time | Past 365 days | Past 30 Days | |
|---|---|---|---|
| Abstract Views | 293 | 205 | 9 |
| Full Text Views | 1102 | 14 | 0 |
| PDF Views & Downloads | 1775 | 16 | 0 |
