Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe. Paola Tartakoff

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Figure 3. Detail from the “Bible of Robert de Bello,” ca. 1240–53. London, British Library, Burney 3, fol. 90r.

      During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, a number of developments likely heightened the Christian sense that circumcision constituted reckless abuse. For instance, reports emerged from the Holy Land according to which Muslims forcibly circumcised Christians in orgies of bloodletting. In his account of the speech that Pope Urban II gave at Clermont in 1096 calling for the First Crusade, the author of the Historia Hierosolymitana (History of Jerusalem) reported: “The [Muslims] circumcise the Christians, and the blood of circumcision they either spread upon the altars or pour into the vases of the baptismal font. When they wish to torture people by a base death, they perforate their navels and, dragging forth the extremity of the intestines, bind it to a stake; then, with flogging, they lead the victim around until, the viscera having gushed forth, the victim falls prostrate upon the ground.”³³

      Circumcision’s associations with castration undoubtedly reinforced the Christian sense that circumcision was cruel.³⁴ During the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, castration served as a particularly humiliating form of retribution for sexual incontinence. Peter Abelard was castrated for his illicit love affair with his pupil Heloise, for example. He explained in his Historia calamitatum (History of Calamities) that Heloise’s uncle and kinsmen “cut off those parts of [his] body with which [he] had done that which was the cause of their sorrow.” Abelard, moreover, took his own revenge by having two of the men who were responsible for his castration genitally mutilated and by having their eyes gouged out.³⁵ Thirteenth-century French fabliaux (humorous narrative poems) described the castrations of lascivious priests.³⁶ The Lincolnshire Assize Rolls document a case of punitive castration that transpired in England in 1202. In this instance, a Christian couple—Alan and Emma—dragged a Christian man into their home and each cut off one of his testicles. As they were subsequently acquitted in court, it seems likely that the man whom they castrated had sexually assaulted one of their relatives.³⁷ In the same year, a Christian named Robert of Sutton accused a Jew from Bedford named Bonefand of having “wickedly had [Robert’s nephew Richard] emasculated” and thereby caused him to die.³⁸ It has been suggested that Bonefand in fact circumcised Richard in the context of converting him to Judaism.³⁹ To be sure, Christian sources sometimes blurred the distinction between circumcision and other types of genital mutilation. Given the currency of punitive genital mutilation during this period in England, however, a literal reading of this source seems warranted. It is likely that Bonefand had Robert’s penis and testicles removed in order to take revenge on him.⁴⁰ This would explain why Bonefand paid the king one mark for a trial before a jury, why the jury acquitted Bonefand, and why Robert was found guilty of a false appeal.⁴¹ Matthew Paris related yet another instance of punitive castration that transpired during the first half of the thirteenth century in England. In this case, a knight of Norfolk named Godfrey de Millers, who had entered the house of a certain John Brito to have sex with John’s daughter, was caught in a trap, hung upside down by his feet from the beams, castrated, and then thrown out.⁴²

      Attesting to thirteenth-century associations between circumcision and castration, the Passau Anonymous regaled his readers with a bawdy story that included both procedures and derided the centrality of genital mutilation to male conversion to Judaism. He told of “a certain monk” who “circumcised himself” and married a lascivious Jewish woman with whom he was infatuated. “On account of love for his [Jewish] wife,” the Passau Anonymous explained, this former monk long withstood pressure from his brother, a Christian prelate, to return to Christianity. Out of spite, the prelate eventually decided to compound his brother’s genital injuries. He had the former monk castrated, thereby inflicting a mirror punishment for both conversion to Judaism and sexual misconduct.⁴³ When, on account of this castration, the Jewish wife was no longer able to have sex with the former monk, she spurned him. At this point, having been rejected by his Jewish wife, the circumcised and castrated former monk returned to Christianity and the monastic life.⁴⁴

      Understood as a form of physical violence, circumcision was akin to many of the other acts of which thirteenth-century Christians accused Jews. Like murder, poisoning, and host desecration (understood as the desecration of the body of Christ), circumcision injured Christian bodies. The summary of the legal proceedings in the Norwich case foregrounded Edward’s description of his alleged circumcision and repeatedly stressed the physical harm that this procedure had caused. Punctuating the summary at regular intervals, the official of the archdeacon, the coroners, and the constable of Norwich all testified that, when they saw Edward shortly after his circumcision, his “cut member” was “enlarged,” “very swollen,” and “bloody.” When Matilda took the stand, she declared that Edward seemed so sick when she and her daughter found him that they “thought he would soon die.”⁴⁵

      The alleged violence in the Norwich circumcision case was compatible with contemporaneous Christian anti-Jewish sensibilities also in that its perpetrators were Jewish men—the typical culpable parties in anti-Jewish tales about ritual murder, poisoning, host desecration, and financial malfeasance. As noted above, Master Benedict singled out a certain “Jacob” as the principal malefactor in Edward’s alleged kidnapping and circumcision. According to the summary of Master Benedict’s testimony, “Jacob, a Jewish man, seized Edward, carried him into his home, and circumcised him,” and he “kept [Edward] in his home for one day and [one] night.” Master Benedict testified that, when he ultimately found his son, he discovered him “in the hands of the aforesaid Jacob.” Stressing that Jacob acted out of hatred for all things Christian, Master Benedict added that Jacob “did [all of] this wickedly and feloniously, In contempt of the Crucified One and Christianity, as well as [in contempt of] the peace of the lord king.” According to Master Benedict’s and Edward’s statements, moreover, Jacob did not act alone. Master Benedict named twelve additional Jewish men as accessories to the alleged crime, at least five of whom, as noted in the Introduction, were leading local money-lenders.⁴⁶ As Miri Rubin has observed, wealthy Jewish men, who were “in a position of economic power and patriarchal authority and bound to other men by ties of sociability and shared ill intent,” figured in Christian narratives as particularly menacing abusers.⁴⁷ The juxtaposition of a posse of grown men to a small child moreover, evoked a sense of danger, heightening the pathos of the tale and highlighting Edward’s vulnerability.

      Even the instrument with which the summary of the legal proceedings portrayed Norwich Jews as having circumcised Edward—“a small knife”—echoed Christian claims elsewhere about the ways Jews wounded Christians and harmed objects that Christians held sacred.⁴⁸ To be sure, small knives were in fact used in circumcisions. It is noteworthy, however, that these implements figured prominently in host desecration and ritual murder narratives, as well. According to a manuscript from the second half of the thirteenth century, for example, In 1183, Jews in Bristol used a small knife to cut off the nose and upper lip of a boy named Adam, whom they subsequently crucified in a latrine.⁴⁹ According to Matthew Paris, the Jews who tortured Hugh of Lincoln each pierced him with a small knife.⁵⁰ According to the chronicles of the abbey of Saint-Denis, when, СКАЧАТЬ