From 104670.3420@compuserve.com Mon Aug 26 08:50:40 PDT 1996
Article: 60060 of alt.revisionism
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From: "Duncan Coons" <104670.3420@compuserve.com>
Newsgroups: alt.revisionism
Subject: Re: Jewish Ritual Murder
Date: 26 Aug 1996 13:07:32 GMT
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tmw  wrote in article <4vpshm$ikm@thoth.nilenet.com>...


The blood libel hardly, of course, needs to be refuted, but it's worth pointing
out that the medieval Church often did so quite forcefully. In the passages
that appear below one may observe that the Popes seem to understand the charge
as primarily a pretext for theft. Hence the reference to "proper recompense" at
the conclusion of the first passage.

 Gregory X writing in 1271:

"It sometimes happens that certain Christians lose their Christian children.
The charge is then made against the Jews by their enemies that they have stolen
and slain these children in secret, and that they have sacrificed the heart and
the blood. The fathers of the said children, or other Christians who are
envious of the Jews, even hide their children in order to have a pretext to
molest the Jews, and to extort money from them so as to pay their dues. They
assert thereupon, most falsely, that the Jews have taken away these children
and slain them, and have sacrificed the heart and the blood. Yet their Law
expressly forbids the Jews to sacrifice or to eat or to drink blood: even
though it be of animals which have the hoof cloven. This has been confirmed in
our *curia* on many occasions by Jews converted to the Christian faith. None
the less, on this pretext many Jews have frequently been seized and detained,
against all justice.

. . . . . 


We decree that no Christian shall stir up anything new against [the Jews].
Moreover, if any one, after having known the content of this decree,
should--which we hope will not happen--attempt audaciously to act contrary to
it, then let him suffer punishment in his rank and position, or let him be
punished by the penalty of excommunication, unless he makes amends for his
boldness by proper recompense."


Innocent IV writing to the German Church in 1247:

We have received a mournful complaint from the Jews of Germany, telling how
some princes, both ecclesiastical and lay, together with other nobles and
powerful persons in your cities and dioceses, devise evil plans against them
and invent various pretexts in order to rob them unjustly of their goods, and
gain possesion thereof. This they do without stopping to consider prudently
that it is from the archives of the Jews, so to speak, that the testimonies of
the Christian faith come forth . . .  [The Jews] are falsely accused that at
[Passover]  they make communion with the heart of a slain child. This is
alleged to be enjoined by the Law, whereas in fact such an act is manifestly
contrary to it. Moverover, if the body of a dead man is by chance found
anywhere, they maliciously ascribe the cause of death to the action of the
Jews. On this, and many other fictitious pretexts, they rage against the Jews
and despoil them of their possessions, against God and Justice and the
privileges mercifully granted to them by the Holy See."

Cited in *Chaucer Criticism: The Canterbury Tales*, ed. Richard Schoeck and
Jerome Taylor (Notre Dame: University of Notre Dame Press, 1960, 251-52, 257
n.7. 

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