RT Book
T1 Conversion, circumcision, and ritual murder in medieval Europe
T2 The Middle Ages Series
A1 Tartakoff, Paola 1978-
LA English
PP Philadelphia
PB University of Pennsylvania Press
YR 2020
UL https://ixtheo.de/Record/1696091985
AB Frontmatter -- Contents -- Note on Usage -- Introduction -- Chapter 1. Christian Vulnerabilities -- Chapter 2. From Circumcision to Ritual Murder -- Chapter 3. Christian Conversion to Judaism -- Chapter 4. Return to Judaism -- Chapter 5. Contested Children -- Conclusion -- List of Abbreviations -- Notes -- Bibliography -- Index -- Acknowledgments
AB In 1230, Jews in the English city of Norwich were accused of having seized and circumcised a five-year-old Christian boy named Edward because they "wanted to make him a Jew." Contemporaneous accounts of the "Norwich circumcision case," as it came to be called, recast this episode as an attempted ritual murder. Contextualizing and analyzing accounts of this event and others, with special attention to the roles of children, Paola Tartakoff sheds new light on medieval Christian views of circumcision. She shows that Christian characterizations of Jews as sinister agents of Christian apostasy belonged to the same constellation of anti-Jewish libels as the notorious charge of ritual murder. Drawing on a wide variety of Jewish and Christian sources, Tartakoff investigates the elusive backstory of the Norwich circumcision case and exposes the thirteenth-century resurgence of Christian concerns about formal Christian conversion to Judaism. In the process, she elucidates little-known cases of movement out of Christianity and into Judaism, as well as Christian anxieties about the instability of religious identity.Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe recovers the complexity of medieval Jewish-Christian conversion and reveals the links between religious conversion and mounting Jewish-Christian tensions. At the same time, Tartakoff does not lose sight of the mystery surrounding the events that spurred the Norwich circumcision case, and she concludes the book by offering a solution of her own. She posits that Christians and Jews understood these events in fundamentally irreconcilable ways, illustrating the chasm that separated Christians and Jews in a world in which some Christians and Jews knew each other intimately
CN BM585.2
SN 978-0-8122-9673-0
K1 Antisemitism : Europe : History : To 1500
K1 Blood accusation : Europe : History : To 1500
K1 Christianity and other religions : Europe : Judaism : History : To 1500
K1 Circumcision : Religious aspects : Christianity : History : To 1500
K1 Circumcision : Religious aspects : Judaism : History : To 1500
K1 Conversion : History : To 1500
K1 Judaism : Relations : Christianity : History : To 1500
K1 HISTORY / Medieval
K1 Religion / History
K1 Norwich circumcision case
K1 medieval conversion
K1 Jewish-Christian conversion
K1 thirteenth-century Europe
K1 HISTORY / Europe / Medieval
K1 History
K1 Jewish Studies
K1 Medieval and Renaissance Studies
K1 Religion
K1 Religious Studies
DO 10.9783/9780812296730