Cultural history of the blood

Early on, blood was seen as the carrier of life force. The observation of how when a person bleeds to death or when a slaughtered animal bleeds to death, the people can conclude that blood is a primal substance of life. Blood is also a food .

In ancient Greek and Germanic mythology , humans were therefore considered to have been created from the blood of the gods. This idea also shapes the Tanach : According to this, man consists of “flesh and blood”. This understanding of blood as the secret of the origin of life explains the special meaning of blood and the color red as a symbol of life and fertility. In political symbolism, for example on flags, on the other hand, red often symbolizes the blood of the fallen or generally stands for death.

Antiquity

In ancient Greece , fresh blood was seen in part as a cure for epilepsy . The idea behind this was that when the blood flows out, the soul leaves the body. The unconsciousness of the epileptics led to the assumption that their soul was slack and could regain strength with fresh blood. So the food of the shadows in Hades , i.e. the souls of the dead, in the Odyssey (11) consisted of ram's blood, which Odysseus put into a pit to attract the shadows. In the blood baptism of the Taurobolium , the blood of a sacrificed bull is seen as a power carrier.

Judaism

In the Torah there is the idea that blood equates with life or soul. ( Lev 17.11-14 EU ). The blood was a sacred element, an immediately divine element, because all life was from God. The blood of slaughtered animals was not allowed to be consumed, neither in profane life nor during a religious sacrifice ceremony ( Dtn 12.23 EU ; 1 Sam 14.31f EU ; Ez 33.25 EU ). The blood of every slaughtered animal had to be returned to the deity. When Deuteronomy banned the local places of worship where the animals had previously been slaughtered, the law had to introduce a distinction between slaughter and sacrifice, since animals slaughtered for normal use could no longer be brought to Jerusalem. But even in ordinary slaughter one should let the blood flow like water onto the earth (Deut 12:13). With this strict prohibition and precise use of blood, the law turns against the custom, which was common in antiquity, to consume living animals in the act of sacrifice with the aim of absorbing the sacred power of blood .

Later, the prohibition of the consumption of blood (including the selection and dressing of meat) was considered one of the fundamental laws and was binding as a command for Jews and proselytes . The early Christians also adopted these rules . The dispute as to whether Gentile Christians also had to adhere to it led to the so-called Apostle Decree .

Since the blood represents the life of the sacrificial animal and belongs to the Lord of Life, it is sprinkled around the altar at every burnt and meal sacrifice (Lev 1,5; 3,2; 7,2). As a sacred element, however, the blood has special power and the blood of the sacrificial animal serves to strengthen the community, for purification and for atonement. At the foundation of the covenant, Moses sprinkled half of the sacrificial blood over the altar and half over the people (Ex 24: 6-8) in order to establish communion between Yahweh and the people. The New Testament also speaks of the fact that Christians became holy persons by being sprinkled with the blood of Jesus Christ (1 Ptr 1,2).

But also in a broader sense, blood is given special importance. The blood of sacrificial animals has atoning and cleansing power (Lev 3; 16; 17). Blood painted on the door post repels the angel of death. ( Exodus 12). There are also figurative meanings such as blood equals human . ( Genesis 4.10; 9.5).

Even today, Jews observe a number of rules when preparing meat , including ensuring that no blood is consumed.

Christianity

The New Testament ties in with the ancient cult of blood and transfers the aspects of atonement and union through blood into Christian symbolism . The blood is now primarily important as the blood of Jesus ( Romans 3:25, Hebrews 9 : 7; 13:11). Through Christ's blood as a blood sacrifice, God's covenant with human beings ( Isaiah 53:12) is renewed. ( Luke 22:20). God offers man the forgiveness of his sins . ( Matthew 26:28 and Mark 14:24). In this sense, the blood of Christ is drunk at the Eucharist as a sign of the renewal of the covenant and the forgiveness of sins (also John 6 : 53f; 1 Corinthians 10:16). And precisely in seeing Christ's death as the last (one-time) sacrifice (Rom. 6:10; Heb. 7:27; 9:12; 10:10), the rejection of other, further sacrifices is justified ( Wolfgang Trillhaas ). In addition, this is (depending on the Christian understanding) a self-sacrifice or a sacrifice of God (who sacrifices his son) and implies the abolition of blood revenge .

The sacrament of the Eucharist

In addition, in the case of the Eucharist, drinking wine in which the blood of Christ is seen - especially in Eastern Church and modern Western theology - also means the union of man with God and participation in his divine being. With this understanding of the Lord's Supper (Michael Rau), one does not see the blood of atonement in the “Blood of Christ”, but rather, as in the Old Testament, the life of God or the Spirit of God.

Albrecht Altdorfer : Crucifixion (detail), 1515–1516

However, there were certainly analogies in the early church that saw atonement in the death of the righteous. (4th Maccabees 6.28ff; 17.22). Not least in this is the foundation of martyrdom , which is also called “ baptism of blood ” (with reference to Lk. 12.50; Joh. 19.32; 1st letter of John 5: 6 described in: Tertullian , de bapt. 16; Cyprian , Ep.73,22).

Blood Miracles and Blood Relics: Holy Blood, Precious Blood

Numerous (supposed) blood miracles of the Eucharist (e.g. in Bolsena ) or of martyrs (e.g. Januarius in Naples) also date from the Middle Ages . According to medieval belief, the martyr's mortal remains formed a deposit of his supernatural powers. Even after the soul had left the body, a supernatural power was still ascribed to the body, and blood was considered to be the most desirable carrier. The same applies to the Holy Blood relics (the Blood of Christ), which like other Christ relics ( crown of thorns , spear , nails, Cross ), discovered since the 4th century, were increasingly spent from about 800 to Europe. The height of the veneration of blood relics took place during the Crusades, but blood relics were brought to Europe from the Holy Land until the late Middle Ages. The veneration of blood relics rose again after the Thirty Years' War , when the suffering Christ gained importance as a motive for veneration. The legends of the blood relics tie in with the opening of the body of Christ, the preparation and embalming of the corpses by Joseph of Arimathia and Nicodemus and the participation of Mary and Mary Magdalene at the funeral. The holy blood cult became popular through pilgrimages to the blood relics and special indulgences .

The Holy Blood tablet from 1489 from the monastery church of Weingarten Abbey contains the oldest pictorial representation and the oldest vernacular translation of the Holy Blood story in the German-speaking area: “Here after volget die histori des hailgen pluotz cristi / like the zelest in dis willig gotzhus come sy. On the first / like the knight longinus our lord sin syten opens with the / and touches his finstri ougen with the flowed out / pluot cristi and wd Gesechind and vowed. item… ”(“ The following is the story of the Holy Blood of Christ, how the relic got into this worthy place of worship. First [one sees] how the knight Longinus opens the side of our Lord with the [spear] and his blind eyes with the touched the poured out blood of Christ and seeing and believing ”).

The holy blood relics are still venerated today, including in horse processions ( blood tread ).

Blood and nobility

The term blue blood for noble comes from the time of the Reconquista and has only been introduced beyond Spain since the beginning of the 19th century.

Blood and political ideologies

In the Nazi ideology of blood and soil , blood was associated with race and “ blood shame ” was introduced as a criminal offense. Analogous terms are blood and honor .

In the German nationality law , the ius sanguinis , the blood law of descent, was added to the ius soli (place of birth principle) as a justification for nationality .

The blood-and-iron policy, or the term blood revenge , is specifically related to killing, but implies a mythical transfiguration or at least a euphemism .

Blood in art

The Austrian artist Hermann Nitsch has placed the subject of blood and slaughter at the center of his work. In it he takes up elements of old blood rituals . Many musical projects are named after the blood, such as the Blood, Sweat & Tears , Bloodhound Gang or Blutengel . Angelina Jolie is said to have married in a shirt written in blood at her first wedding. Blood brotherhood is a ritual that can be found in many Karl May novels, among others . Further aspects of blood in the literature can be found in the relevant section. The blood cult in vampire tales and artistic implementations is particularly discussed.

Blood in literature and in storytelling traditions and legends

There are a number of legends in which blood and blood stains play a role (e.g. about the tower warden at the Moritzkirche or about Martin Luther). Epics, for example, attribute mythological significance to Siegfried's bath in the blood of the dragon he killed: "He bathed in the blood, and as a result he got a callus. Therefore no weapon wounds him." or the bleeding from the corpses there as in the Iwein epic.

In the fairy tale collections of the Brothers Grimm , the symbol blood z. B. in the fairy tales Sleeping Beauty or Snow White , whose lips were red as blood and an expression of their unique beauty. In addition, drops of blood also play a central role in The Goose Girl .

But also in William Shakespeare's The Merchant of Venice , the Jew Shylock asks the Christian Salarino: “If you stab us, won't we bleed?” But the red elixir is more than a prop for cultural workers. It represents the transience and life itself. Thus devil pacts such. B. signed by blood in the fist and Mephistopheles states: "Blood is a special juice."

In Eve Ensler's Vagina Monologues , she writes: “I had conversations with many women about menstruation. From this something like a choir slowly formed, a kind of passionate collective singing. The women echoed one another. So I let the voices bleed into each other and I got lost in the flow of blood. "Gudrun Schury quotes Thomas Mann in her cultural history of blood ( The swapped heads )" Blood steamed in the cranium that one of her hands brought to her mouth, blood spread at her feet - in a boat stood the terrifying one who swam on the sea of the sea of life on a sea of blood ”.

A theme of pure blood , pure descent, also runs through the Harry Potter novels. Animal blood is an ingredient in many magic potions or elixirs .

Blood is symbolically referred to as red ink in literature in connection with hunting or serious violent crimes, in which the clothing or fur is colored by the liquid. This comparison indicates a recent or current event.

Blood-sucking vampires

Blood is the main food for the vampire . The symbolic content as “the juice of life” comes to the fore here through the insatiable desire of a figure who no longer belongs to the living. In children's novels in this subject, this is at least partially replaced by milk or tomato juice. In the vampire film by Nosferatu , Dracula , Dance of the Vampires etc., garlic, crosses and wooden beams protect against the bloodsucking vampire bite. Theater blood or film blood is used in many works by modern directors .

Blood as a remedy

In the Middle Ages the idea existed to use alchemical processes to extract the “quintessence” of human blood as a remedy. First attempts to transfer blood to humans by blood transfusion for the treatment of anemia were made in the 17th century .

literature

Norbert Kruse (Ed.): 804-2004. 1200 years of the Holy Blood tradition . Catalog for the anniversary exhibition of the city of Weingarten, May 20 - July 11, 2004, Weingarten - City Museum in the Schlössle. Catalog. 1st edition. Eppe, 2004, ISBN 3-89089-075-X .
Gudrun Schury: Flood of Life - A Cultural History of Blood (= Reclam Library . Volume 20012 ). 1st edition. Reclam, Leipzig 2001, ISBN 3-379-20012-3 .
Thomas Stump, Otto Gillen: blood, Hl. In: Reallexikon zur Deutschen Kunstgeschichte . Volume 2, 1942, Col. 947-958 ( rdk.zikg.net ).
Gudrun Wegner: Blood taboo - making life taboo . A historical-cultural anthropological study of dealing with the feminine from Greek myths to the age of genetic engineering. Berlin 2001 ( dissertation at the Free University of Berlin 2001).
Peter Weingart , Jürgen Kroll, Kurt Bayertz : Race, Blood and Genes. History of eugenics and racial hygiene in Germany (= Suhrkamp-Taschenbuch Wissenschaft . No. 1022 ). 4th edition. Suhrkamp, Frankfurt am Main 2006, ISBN 3-518-28622-6 (first edition: 1992).
Heike Petermann: Blood - Myth, Magic, Medicine . Medical Scientific Publishing Company, Berlin 2014, ISBN 978-3-95466-104-6 .
Martin Schrenk: De sanguine. Blood magic and blood symbolism. In: Sigrid Schwenk, Gunnar Tilander , Carl Arnold Willemsen (eds.): Et multum et multa: Contributions to the literature, history and culture of the hunt. Festschrift Kurt Lindner. Berlin and New York 1971, pp. 329–339.
Martin Schrenk: Blood cults and blood symbolism. In: Karl-Georg von Boroviczény, H. Schipperges , E. Seidler (eds.): Introduction to the history of hematology. Stuttgart 1974, pp. 1-17.

Web links

Günter Neuenhöfer: Blood. The blood sacrifice as an essential feature of archaic cults

Individual evidence

↑ Michael Rau: There is life in blood! - A critical demand for the biblical justification of the theological thought pattern of the 'vicarious expiatory death'. In: Deutsches Pfarrerblatt. 3/2002, ISSN 0939-9771 , pp. 121-124, ( pfarrverband.de ).
↑ Johannes Heuser: Holy Blood in Cult and Customs of the German Cultural Area. Dissertation. Bonn 1948, p. 70 ff. (Mach.)
^ Norbert Kruse, Hans Ulrich Rudolf: 900 years of veneration of the Holy Blood in Weingarten 1094–1994. J. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1994, ISBN 3-7995-0398-6 , p. 17 f .; on the Holy Blood table see also image and text reproduction at Wikimedia Commons
↑ Quotation from: Heike Petermann: Blood - Myth, Magic, Medicine. Medical Scientific Publishing Company, Berlin 2014, p. 7.
↑ Quotation from: Heike Petermann: Blood - Myth, Magic, Medicine. Medical Scientific Publishing Company, Berlin 2014, p. 1.
^ Eve Ensler : Vagina Monologues. Piperverlag, Munich, ISBN 3-492-24350-9 , p. 39.
↑ Hans-Joachim Romswinkel: 'De sanguine humano distillato'. Medical-alchemical texts from the 14th century on distilled human blood. Medical dissertation Bonn 1974 (commissioned by Königshaus & Neumann, Würzburg).

[1] Michael Rau: There is life in blood! - A critical demand for the biblical justification of the theological thought pattern of the 'vicarious expiatory death'. In: Deutsches Pfarrerblatt. 3/2002, ISSN 0939-9771 , pp. 121-124, ( pfarrverband.de ).

[2] Johannes Heuser: Holy Blood in Cult and Customs of the German Cultural Area. Dissertation. Bonn 1948, p. 70 ff. (Mach.)

[3] Norbert Kruse, Hans Ulrich Rudolf: 900 years of veneration of the Holy Blood in Weingarten 1094–1994. J. Thorbecke, Sigmaringen 1994, ISBN 3-7995-0398-6 , p. 17 f .; on the Holy Blood table see also image and text reproduction at Wikimedia Commons

[4] Quotation from: Heike Petermann: Blood - Myth, Magic, Medicine. Medical Scientific Publishing Company, Berlin 2014, p. 7.

[5] Quotation from: Heike Petermann: Blood - Myth, Magic, Medicine. Medical Scientific Publishing Company, Berlin 2014, p. 1.

[6] Eve Ensler : Vagina Monologues. Piperverlag, Munich, ISBN 3-492-24350-9 , p. 39.

[7] Hans-Joachim Romswinkel: 'De sanguine humano distillato'. Medical-alchemical texts from the 14th century on distilled human blood. Medical dissertation Bonn 1974 (commissioned by Königshaus & Neumann, Würzburg).