Blood Libel by Magda Teter

Author:Magda Teter
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Harvard University Press

Creating a Defense Blueprint

One of the byproducts of the protracted trial of Viterbo in 1705–1706 was the consolidation of arguments in defense of Jews. Preparing their defense of Gioiello di Core and Josef Samen, Jewish leaders in Rome obtained copies of previous decrees condemning similar anti-Jewish accusations and presented them as legal precedents. It was not only that both secular and ecclesiastical leaders granted Jews general patents of protection against such accusations but also that in actual cases against Jews the authorities had found them innocent.

The most recent of those decrees was issued in April 1705 in Venice following the incident with the offensive painting on the Rialto. That decree, not surprisingly, directly referred to a Venetian precedent, the 1475 ruling by Doge Peter Mocenigo condemning accusations against Jews. But of the accusations of murder that resulted in an investigation and an exculpating decree, one of the most recent took place in Verona in 1602–1603 when a Jew, Giuseppe Abramino, was accused by a certain Bernardino Bretorio of abducting his son, and “either trying to take a Christian soul from the bosom of Mother Church and lead him to the Jewish perfidy and damnation,” or “killing him in mocking of the death of our Savior, and of taking the innocent blood.”71 Giuseppe Abramino “denied committing such a wicked crime,” and his lawyer demonstrated “with various passages from the Holy Bible” that Jews held “the shedding of blood in horror.” Indeed, the defense argued, “many princes considered the rumor of use of blood to be vain and false,” which they publicly conceded in many privileges, as did Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, the duke of Milan on March 29, 1479, and Pietro Mocenigo, the doge of Venice on April 22, 1475, and “finally, Frederick III, Charles V, and Maximilian II on May 8, 1566,” who drew on and affirmed earlier papal injunctions “to believe” such accusations. Based on this defense, the authorities in Verona decreed, “all suspicion of committing such a crime is annulled and thereby the illustrious podestà along with the most excellent Senate liberate the above mentioned Giuseppe.” The documents that served as the foundation for the defense of Jews and the exculpating decree in Verona were then inscribed in Verona’s official records and came to be more broadly known thanks to Richard Simon, Isaac Cardoso, and Isaac Viva.

Of the three documents mentioned in Verona, the 1479 decree by Bona of Savoy, the regent of Milan on behalf of Bona’s minor son, Giovanni Galeazzo Sforza, was perhaps one of the most powerful denunciation of anti-Jewish accusations issued by Christian authorities. It called the accusations “craziness” and stressed that Jewish law prohibited consumption of blood.72 Indeed, there were many baptized Jews “respected in their faith” all over Christendom, who would have revealed this “secret” crime if it were true. The decree dismantled the accusation with logic, pointing to the centuries of a Jewish presence in Rome to prove that these accusations were absurd. For hundreds of years, no one had ever found

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