37 pages • 1 hour read
Helmut Walser SmithThe Butcher's Tale: Murder and Anti-Semitism in a German Town
Nonfiction | Book | Adult | Published in 2002A modern alternative to SparkNotes and CliffsNotes, SuperSummary offers high-quality Study Guides with detailed chapter summaries and analysis of major themes, characters, and more.
Chapter 3Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Chapter 3 Summary: “History”
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:
- Jews killed Christian boys before Easter.
- They tortured the boys out of hatred for Christians.
- The killing imitates the killing of Christ.
- The Jews are a present threat to Christians.
- The murdered person becomes a martyr for the Christian community and performs miracles.
Smith places the ritual murder myth in the context of the cultural renaissance taking place in the High Middle Ages. As the Christian world rediscovered the learning of the classical era, and achieved a new sense of self through artistic works like the Gothic cathedrals, it increasingly hardened its stance toward non-Christians and other perceived social outsiders. The anti-Jewish persecutions accompanying the First Crusade (1096) signaled the birth of a new “persecuting society” as the flipside of the cultural renaissance.
Ritual murder charges increased in the ensuing centuries. They often included the accusation that Jews murdered Christian children and drained them of their blood for curative or religious use. Such Christian leaders as Emperor Frederick II and Pope Innocent IV declared the blood libel false and condemned the persecutions of Jews.
The ritual murder charge became tied with issues relating to the development of religious doctrine. Christian theologians began to define the sacrament of the Eucharist in a more realistic manner, as a literal transformation into the body and blood of Christ. As devotion to the Eucharist grew, so did fears for its possible desecration by unbelievers. Thus, claims that Jews desecrated the eucharistic host rose in popularity. This was reinforced by folk beliefs about the magical and life-giving powers of blood, the source of legends that Jews used Christian blood to prepare matzo for Passover. Rumors of eucharistic desecration gave rise savage outbreaks of violence against Jewish communities in towns in France and Germany. Well-known charges of ritual murder of infants included those of the “good Werner” in the 13th century, and Simon of Trent and Andreas Oxner in the 15th century.
In the wake of the Protestant Reformation and Humanism, more Christian theologians were able to read Hebrew and knowledge about Jewish religious texts increased. As a consequence, the blood libel myth began to wane. Still, a number of intellectuals continued to write about it and sustain the legend into the 18th and early 19th centuries. The ground for the myth shifted eastward into the Catholic territories of Poland, where most of the world’s Jewish population now lived. The ritual murder myth created a series of topoi (motifs or formulae) about the “murderous Jew” that Christian people learned and passed along through to the time of the Konitz case.
Chapter 3 Analysis
Smith’s main idea in Chapter 3 is that antisemitic thought throughout history has followed a similar “script” or narrative with common motifs, stereotypes, and images, resulting in Collective Narratives. In Chapter 2, Smith presented his concept of the Konitz case as a story or narrative driven by antisemitic mythology. In Chapter 3, Smith delves into the history of that mythology, stretching back to the late Middle Ages, and analyzes the symbolic motifs (topoi) underlying the myths of Jewish ritual murder and the theme of The Power and Symbolism of Blood.
At first, the accusations were laced with explicitly Christian elements. Jews were accused of torturing and murdering victims (especially children) in imitation of Christ’s crucifixion, and of desecrating the sacred host. The crimes often took place close to Easter, when religious passions were especially strong. To these elements was added the emphasis on the supposed ritual use of blood by the Jews.
An important insight of this chapter is that antisemitism was not as prominent during the early centuries of the Christian era, but came to the fore at the start of the second millennium. We are led to wonder at the fact that the growth of prejudice and exclusion grew along with the remarkable cultural achievements of the High Middle Ages.
The chapter highlights how antisemitic myths intersected with a number of developments within Christianity. One was the growing prestige and centrality of the Eucharist in Christian worship. The Eucharist draws attention to the body and blood of Christ, sacrificed for man’s sin. As theology came to define the Eucharist in more realistic terms, Christian believers became more protective of the sacrament. New accusations of desecration came out of this new atmosphere of reverence. Smith further suggests that some believers felt a subliminal discomfort with the realistic teaching on the sacrament—notably, the idea of literally consuming Jesus’s flesh—and that this caused them to transfer or project their unease onto the Jews, making them into cannibals.
Smith dwells on one particular case of ritual murder as emblematic and bearing similarities to the Konitz case. In 1891, in the town of Xanten, Germany, a five-year-old boy was found murdered in a barn, his throat slit. The townspeople—including the town’s Christian butcher—accused the town’s Jewish butcher of committing the murder. For Smith, the case shows the typical dynamics of ritual murder: “Starting with an initial denunciation, accusations amassed and became more and more concrete. As time went by, it also grew safer to go after one’s Jewish neighbor” (128). In both cases, unreliable or drunken witnesses were given the stand to deliver fantastical testimony against their Jewish neighbors.
For Smith, 1881 is a decisive year in the history of antisemitism leading up to the Holocaust. That year witnessed “the worst outbreak of anti-Jewish violence in modern history prior to the twentieth century” (119). In Ukraine, during Easter week, a series of pogroms broke out against Jewish communities inspired by the prevailing political and economic instability. Tens of thousands of Jews were killed, beaten, or left homeless. These and subsequent pogroms gave rise to the largest Jewish emigration in modern history, mainly to the Americas.
