Trient 1475. History of a ritual murder trial

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Trient 1475. The story of a ritual murder trial is a historical study by Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia . The original edition was published in 1992 under the title Trent 1475: Stories of A Ritual Murder Trial . In 1997 the translation by Robin Cackett was published by S. Fischer Verlag .

In this work, Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia deals with the sad fate of a Jewish community in Trento in 1475 and shows how a myth came about. The Jewish residents of Trento were accused of ritual murder after a Christian boy named Simon von Trient was found dead in the basement of one of their households on Easter Sunday. All relevant persons were convinced from the beginning of the guilt of the Jews and made Simon a martyr .

Cognitive interest

Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia recognizes two central motifs in the tragedy of 1475, which he would like to examine more closely in the context of late medieval anti-Semitism. On the one hand, the connection between the construction of Christian identities and anti-Jewish ideas; on the other hand, the convergence of tendencies in the actions of the secular and ecclesiastical authorities and the anti-Semitic representations produced by the elites and the people. Pp. 23-24

Hsia based his work on eleven partly complete, partly partial copies of trial files. Two are written in German and eleven in Latin. Among them is the German Yeshiva manuscript from 1478 or 1479 about the ritual murder trial in Trento. It forms the core of his study and has been in the archives of Yeshiva University since 1988 . P. 179 The manuscript has 614 pages and was commissioned on p. 15 during a campaign to canonize the “little martyr Simon” . It contains selected legal documents from the ritual murder trial. These are hostile to Jews, full of contradictions and discrepancies. Pp. 13-22

Hsia proceeds chronologically and reconstructs the event based on the representation of the five different voices from the manuscript. These are the Christian witnesses, the author-editors, the Jews (15 men and four women), the judges and the writer. It begins with a detailed historical contextualization of the region. P. 18

István M. Szijárto assigns the work to Anglo-Saxon micro - history . According to Szijárto, this focuses more and more on a specific case and often disregards larger historical contexts and a further interest in knowledge, which is why their assignment to microhistory is controversially discussed. According to Otto Ulbricht , two aspects are characteristic of a widespread American understanding of microhistory. On the one hand, she often deals with ordinary people. On the other hand, it aims to tell. Works should be attractive to an interested public and thus spread historical knowledge.

Synopsis

The Principality of Trento formed the southern border of the Holy Roman Empire . Johannes Hinderbach had been the bishop since 1465 . In the 15th century, numerous German-speaking farming families and miners immigrated to Trento and all of Tyrol. P. 28 The Jewish community was also one of the immigrants. In 1461 the first Jewish settlers settled in Trento and began to form a community that in 1475 consisted of around 40 people. P. 36

After the body of an eight-year-old boy named Simon was found in the basement of a Jewish family on Easter Sunday 1475, the Jews of Trento were held responsible for his death. P. 58 According to Hsia, the anti-Jewish mood was probably already sparked by the fasting sermons of St. Bernard of Feltre . The Franciscan theologian came to the city at Easter 1475, railed against the usury of Jews and reprimanded the Christians for dealing with them. P. 49

The Jews of Trent were collectively accused of ritual murder and locked in the dungeon of Buonconsiglio . The judge wanted the Jews to confess that Simon was murdered and that they would use Christian blood in Jewish rites. The judge's verdict, however, was clear from the start, regardless of the confessions. The Jews were eventually tortured to make a confession. P. 60 The papal see sent an envoy to investigate, which delayed the delivery of the verdict, but did not stop it. P. 81

The trials against the women and servants were not allowed to continue, but the others were resumed. P. 91 Between June 21 and 23, 1475, nine men were burned alive on the execution site beyond the city gate. Two of the convicts asked for baptism in the face of the agony of their fellow believers in hopes of saving their lives. They were baptized, but beheaded the same day and then cremated. Pp. 98-99

Almost obsessed with the idea of canonizing 'Little Simon', the Prince-Bishop of Trento, Johannes Hinderbach, incited the outbursts of violence against Jews. Everyone of high standing in Trent took the extermination of the Jews for granted or even contributed to it. Pp. 101–103 Even if some disapproved of the dealings with the Jews and tried to stop the injustice, they were still far away and less determined than their opponents. Among them were Archduke Sigismund , the Doge of Venice , Pope Sixtus IV and above all the papal envoy Baptista Dei Giudici appointed by him. Pp. 111-112

In a letter from Siegmund, those responsible were authorized to interrogate the men and women who had been spared until then in a second wave of trials in the summer of 1475. P. 113 At the beginning of 1476 there were further executions. Two Jews were killed by the gallows. One was braided on the wheel as a 'thief', 'Christian blood eater and drinker', 'poisoner', 'traitor' and 'enemy of Christ' and then burned. Pp. 129-140

In 1476 Pope Sixtus IV sent a clear warning to Bishop Hinderbach on the basis of reports from his envoy Baptista: He should free the women and other prisoners from the dungeon and bring them to a safe and not unbearable place. Hinderbach followed suit, and with the end of the trials against Jewish women, things turned dramatically. A cardinals commission (a body consisting of cardinals ) was convened and Hinderbach's behavior in the ritual murder trial was investigated. P. 155

The "Simonskult" p. 172 spread in many communities in northern Italy and southern Germany. In 1588 Pope Sixtus V granted the local cult official consecration. the death of the “innocent child” on p. 172 was solemnly retold in poems, paintings and iconic representations in stone well into the 17th century. In fact, it was only officially abolished by a papal decree after the Second Vatican Council . Pp. 172-174

“For centuries, these images have given evidence of the official stories about Simon […] and the Jews of Trento, both wordlessly and eloquently. Today they have lost their magical power and have turned back to stone. ” P. 176

reception

praise

The critics of the work particularly praised Hsia's handling of the sources and his contribution to understanding the formation of myths. Julius H. Schoeps describes Hsia's entire narrative of the story of the ritual murder trial as simply brilliant. Christopher R. Friedrichs from the University of British Columbia praises Hsia's meticulous research in the local archives and his elaborately detailed reconstruction of specific court hearings in Endingen , Regensburg and Worms . Friedrichs calls Hsia's work a convincing attempt to explain the trend of the sharp increase in ritual murder trials in Central Europe in the late 15th and early 16th centuries and the sharp decline from the middle of the 16th century. According to Friedrichs, Hsia sheds light on the familiar interaction of legal proceedings with religious prejudice in a new context. According to Friedrichs, the work raises important questions about the relationship between church and state in the early modern period .

According to Volker Hunecke from the Technical University of Berlin , Hsia succeeded in particular in showing how accusations of attacks against Jews that are far apart in terms of space and time are related. According to Thomas Robisheaux of Duke University , the book serves as a contribution to understanding myth-making and the history of anti-Semitism .

criticism

Several recipients criticize different points in Hsia's work. Britta Schmid criticizes in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung that the work presupposes some knowledge of the 15th century. She criticizes the lack of introduction for laypeople on the causes of the religiously and economically motivated hatred of Jews. According to Schmid, there is no retrospective look at the church's programmatic exclusion of Jews in the 13th century.

Christine Magin from the Greifswald Research Center of the Academy of Sciences in Göttingen and Falk Eisermann from the Institute for Library and Information Science (Berlin) describe Hsia's work as selective, geographically unreliable and methodologically questionable. Robisheaux also criticizes Hsia's method. He criticizes the lack of anthropological theories about ritual beliefs and practices. This may have contributed to the difficulties Hsia encounters in placing the myth in the context of the lively debates about ritual behavior during this period, according to Robisheaux. According to Robisheaux, Hsia gained theoretical knowledge from post-structuralist literary theory . These could have helped Hsia to demonstrate the interlinking of law, literature and popular culture . In fact, however, according to Robisheaux, the effect was to separate the discourse on ritual murder from the community, life, and culture as a whole.

According to Robisheaux, readers have no access to the motives and behaviors of the people behind the language that Hsia uses in his book. Robisheaux admits that given the nature of the source, this is an understandable problem.

Furthermore, Robisheaus Hsias regards answers to the questions of what gives a myth meaning and legitimation and how a myth is questioned as not always convincing. Hsia's statement that the Reformation, with its attitude towards 'magic', led to the decline in popularity and spread of the ritual murder myth is too simplistic. The Protestant attack on 'magic' in Germany was an ambiguous and confusing process, according to Robisheaux. Hsia did not effectively challenge a whole host of other 'magical beliefs' and practices. Robisheaux suggests the demise of the myth was more likely part of a broader cultural and religious movement over ritual behavior. Religious ideas and ritual behavior in general, in general, must be researched. Robisheaux finds it unbelievable that the myth of ritual murder was in irreversible decline the moment others were better elaborated on 'witches', 'deranged women', 'criminals' and 'Indians'.

Robisheaux also questions that Hsia dropped his discussion of the piety of the Eucharist in this part of the book. Robisheaux regards this aspect of Christian piety in particular as central to the incipient promotion of the myth. Hsia should have studied the effect of the Protestant and Catholic debates about the nature of the Eucharist on the myth of ritual murder. Thus, according to Robisheaux , the Protestant challenge to the Catholic doctrine of the Eucharist might have contributed to the decline of the myth of ritual murder.

expenditure

  • English original edition: Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia: Trent 1475: Stories of A Ritual Murder Trial. Yale University Press, New Haven 1992, ISBN 0-300-05106-9 .
  • German translation: Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia: Trient 1475: History of a ritual murder trial. Fischer, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-10-062422-X .

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b Britta Schmid: Tortured confessors and simulated miracles. In: Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung. May 7, 1997, accessed July 31, 2019 .
  2. ^ A b Volker Hunecke: Review of Trient 1475. History of a ritual murder trial . In: Journal for Historical Research . tape 27 , no. 1 , 2000, ISSN  0340-0174 , p. 120-121 , JSTOR : 43569328 .
  3. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k l m n o p q r s t u v Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia: Trient 1475. History of a ritual murder trial . Fischer Verlag GmbH, Frankfurt am Main 1997, ISBN 3-10-062422-X .
  4. ^ Sigurður Gylfi Magnússon, István M. Szijárto: What is Microhistory ?, Theory and practice . Routledge Taylor & Francis Group, London / New York 2013, ISBN 978-0-415-69208-3 , pp. 181 .
  5. ↑ Otto Ulbricht: Micro history: people and conflicts in the early modern times . Campus Verlag, Frankfurt / New York 2009, ISBN 978-3-593-38909-7 , pp. 25-26 .
  6. ↑ Julius H. Schoeps: The blood suit against the Jews of Trient . In: The daily newspaper: taz . May 27, 1997, ISSN  0931-9085 , p. 13 ( taz.de [accessed on August 13, 2019]).
  7. ↑ Christopher R. Friedrichs: Review of The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany . In: Journal of Church and State . tape 32 , no. 2 , 1990, ISSN  0021-969X , pp. 428-429 , JSTOR : 23916985 .
  8. ↑ a b c d e Thomas Robisheaux: Review of The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany . In: Journal of Ritual Studies . tape 5 , no. 2 , 1991, ISSN  0890-1112 , pp. 133-135 , JSTOR : 44398757 .
  9. ^ Christine Magin, Falk Eisermann: Two Anti-Jewish Broadsides from the Late Fifteenth Century . In: Studies in the History of Art . tape 75 , 2009, ISSN  0091-7338 , p. 190-203 , JSTOR : 42622518 .