37 pages • 1 hour read
Helmut Walser SmithA modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
In this chapter Smith pulls back from the main narrative and explores the history behind the antisemitic ritual murder/blood libel charge.
Smith opines that the first millennium the Christian era was “filled […] with more sympathy than antagonism, more tolerance than tension” (91) between Christians and Jews, and that antisemitism and tales of Jewish ritual murder came to the fore only after 1100. In 1150, the British monk Thomas of Monmouth wrote The Life and Passion of Saint William the Martyr of Norwich, which contained the “first officially documented accusation of ritual murder” (91). The book described the murder of a young boy that took place in Norwich, England, in 1144, presenting it as a symbolic crucifixion. As elaborated later in the Anglo-Saxon Chronicle, the story displayed the main motifs of the antisemitic blood libel myth as it would exist for centuries:
Smith places the ritual murder myth in the context of the cultural renaissance taking place in the High Middle Ages.