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Miri
Rubin.
Gentile Tales: The
Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews.
Philadelphia: Pennsylvania University Press, 2004.
The Middle Ages
series.
280pp.
Paperback.
ISBN 0812218809.
Publisher's
recommended price $26.50/£19.00
"What triggers landmark events in history,
Rubin explains, is often fictions that people believe, rather than
incidents that actually took place . . . With the flair of the
ethnographer, Rubin taps into those perennial transpositions and
transferences whereby groups of people are bonded together by invoking
an alien other who arouses fear and dismay . . . A powerful and moving
book." Lisa Jardine, New
Statesman
Beginning in Paris in the
year 1290, Jews were accused of abusing Christ by desecrating the
eucharist - the manifestation of Christ's body in the communion
service. Over the next two centuries this tale of desecration spread
throughout Europe and led to violent anti-Semitic activity in areas
from Catalonia to Bohemia, particularly in some German-speaking
regions, where at times it produced region-wide massacres and
"cleansings."
Drawing on sources ranging from religious tales and poems to Jews'
confessions made under torture, Miri Rubin explores the frightening
power of one of the most persistent anti-Jewish stories of the Middle
Ages and the violence that it bred. She looks not just at the occasions
on which massacres occurred but also at those times when the story
failed to set off violence. She investigates as well the ways these
tales were commemorated in rituals, altarpieces, and legends and were
enshrined in local traditions. In exploring the character, nature,
development, and eventual decay of this fantasy of host desecration,
Rubin presents a vivid picture of the mental world of late medieval
Europe and of the culture of anti-Judaism.
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