Medieval roots of the myth of Jewish male menses

Harvard Theological Review

Volumn 93, Issue 3, 2000, Pages 241-263

  Resnick, Irven M ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF TENNESSEE AT CHATTANOOGA   (United States)

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[No Author keywords available]

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EID: 60950117409     PISSN: 00178160     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1017/s0017816000025323     Document Type: Review

References (115)

1. Bernard Malamud, The Fixer (New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 1966) 93
2. Yakov Bok's character is based on Mendel Beilis, who was a victim of a blood libel charge in Kiev. Beilis was arrested in 1911 and spent almost two years in prison before trial. He was acquitted late in 1913. The prosecution, however, insisted that the crime was a religious one and that the draining of much blood from the victim's body pointed clearly to Jewish religious practice
3. For some of the documentary evidence, see Paul Mendes-Flohr and Jehuda Reinharz, eds., The Jew in the Modern World: A Documentary History (2d ed.; Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1995)367-71,412-13
4. Malamud, The Fixer, 139
5. Although the charge of the ritual murder of Christian children first appears in the twelfth century, it is repeated with growing frequency and finds an especially receptive audience during the Reformation and later among both Catholics and Protestants. Various attempts were made to explain why Jews sought to murder Christian children, but an indication of their inadequacy is expressed in Johannes Eck (d. 1543), Against the Defense of the Jews (Ains Judenbüechlins Verlegung, fol. G 3r), which proclaims simply that "the Talmud explicitly commands the Jews to kill Christian children."
6. See Heiko Oberman, The Roots of Anti-Semitism in the Age of the Renaissance and Reformation (trans. James I. Porterj; Philadelphia: Fortress, 1981) 36
7. The frequency of these ritual murder charges led the rabbi of Bamberg, Adolf Eckstein (d. 1935), to remark that in all likelihood there was not a single Jewish community in Europe that had not at least once been confronted with the charge of ritual murder
8. See Rainer Erb, "Zur Erforschung der europäischen Ritualmordbeschuldigungen," in idem, ed., Die Legende vom Ritualmord: zur Geschichte der Blutbeschuldigung gegen Juden (Berlin: Metropol, 1993) 12
9. Begun perhaps between 1150 and 1155, the work was completed in 1172-1173. The text is found in The Life and Miracles of St.William of Norwich by Thomas of Monmouth (trans. Augustus Jessopp and M. R. James; Cambridge: University Press, 1896)
10. For a very good study of the case of William of Norwich and the origins of the blood libel, see Gavin Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1990)
11. For a discussion of various approaches to the origins of the blood libel, see David Berger, "From Crusades, to Blood Libels, to Expulsions: Some New Approaches to Medieval Antisemitism," Second Annual Lecture of the Victor J. Selmanowitz Chair of Jewish History, Touro College Graduate School of Jewish Studies (March 16, 1997)
12. John M. McCuIloh provides a detailed and informative discussion of the twelfth-century origins of the ritual murder charge in "Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth," Speculum 72 (1997) 698-740
13. For the date of Thomas of Monmouth's Life, see pp. 706-9
14. For the popularity of the Norwich account, see also Friedrich Lotter, "Innocens virgo et martyr. Thomas von Monmouth und die Verbreitung der Ritualmordlegende im Hochmittelalter," in Erb, ed., Legende vom Ritualmord, 25-72
15. An account of the event from a Hebrew chronicle of Ephraim ben Jacob (1132-ca. 1200) appears in Jacob Marcus, The Jew in the Medieval World: A Source Book 315-1791 (Cincinnati: Union of American Hebrew Congregations, 1938) 127-30
16. For the death of Hugh of Lincoln, see Langmuir, Toward a Definition of Antisemitism, 242-66
17. Geoffrey Chaucer, "The Prioress's Tale," [ll. 684-85] in Canterbury Tales (ed. A. C. Cawley; London: Dent & Sons, 1984) 381
18. Chaucer's Hugh was slain because he annoyed the Jews with his constant repetition of the Alma redemptoris mater, a motif found also in Old French Marian devotional literature. See Peter-Michael Spangenberg, "Judenfeindlichkeit in den altfranzösischen Marienmirakeln," in Erb, ed., Legende vom Ritualmord, 169-70
19. Consider too the remark of Denise Despres ("Mary of the Eucharist: Cultic Anti-Judaism in Some Fourteenth-Century English Devotional Manuscripts," in Jeremy Cohen, ed., From Witness to Witchcraft: Jews and Judaism in Medieval Christian Thought [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1996] 376) that "anti-Judaism is integral to the development of an iconography of late-medieval Marian devotion."
20. William Jordan ("Marian Devotion and the Talmud Trial of 1240," in Bernard Lewis and Friedrich Niewöhner, eds., Religionsgepräche im Mittelalter [Wiesbaden: Harrassowitz, 1992] 61-76) has even suggested that it was perceived Jewish affronts to Marian devotion that stimulated the attacks on the Talmud in Paris in the 1240s
21. For a helpful survey of such uses, see Andreas Angerstorfer, "Jüdische Reaktionen auf die mittelalterlichen Blutbeschuldigungen vom 13. bis zum 16. Jahrhundert," in Erb, ed., Legende vom Ritualmord, 134-35
22. Léon Poliakov, The History of Anti-Semitism (trans. Richard Howard; 4 vols.; London: Elek Books, 1965) 1. 143
23. For the French edition, see Histoire de l'antisémitisme: du Christ aux Juifs de Cour (4 vols.; Paris: Calmann Lévy, 1955) 1. 160
24. From Cecco d'Ascoli's commentary on Sacrobosco's De sphaera (ca. 1324), cited by Peter Biller, "Views of Jews from Paris around 1300: Christian or 'Scientific'?" in Diana Wood, ed., Christianity and Judaism: Papers Read at the 1991 Summer Meeting and the 1992 Winter Meeting of the Ecclesiastical History Society (Oxford: Blackwell, 1992) 199
25. Angerstorfer ("Jüdische Reaktionen," 139, 143-47) provides useful evidence that Jews were aware of (and fashioned responses to) Christian accusations of ritual cannibalism
26. Sander L. Gilman, Jewish Self-Hatred: Anti-Semitism and the Hidden Language of the Jews (Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1986) 74-75
27. quoted in Willis Johnson, "The Myth of Jewish Male Menses," Journal of Medieval History 24 (1998) 273-74. I am grateful to Dr. Johnson for allowing me to read his work - from which I benefitted greatly -prior to its publication
28. Hildegard of Bingen, for example, explains that had Eve remained in Paradise, her veins would have remained hale and she would have averted this blood flow. See her Causae et Curae (ed. Paul Kaiser; Leipzig: Teubner, 1903) 3, 103
29. Adam's body also suffered a complexional imbalance once he was cast out of Paradise, so that "his descendants, therefore, born as they were from a corrupt ancestor, have all been corrupted and never afterward has perfect health been found in humans" (William of Conches [d. ca. 1150], A Dialogue on Natural Philosophy [Dragmaticon Philosophiae; trans. Italo Ronca and Matthew Curr; South Bend, IN: University of Notre Dame Press, 1997] 147)
30. The corresponding Latin text will be found in Ronca's critical edition, Guillelmi de Conchis Dragmaticon Philosophiae 6.13 (CCCM 152; Turnhout: Brepols, 1997) 227
31. Menstrua enim consuetudo mulieribus non aliqua culpa est, videlicet quia naturaliter accedit, sed tamen quod natura ipsa ita vitiata est, ut etiam sine voluntatis studio videatur esse polluta, ex culpa venit vitium, in quo se ipsa se qualis per judicium facta sit, humana natura cognoscat. ("For the monthly occurrence [of menstruation] among women is not itself sin, because it occurs naturally, but nevertheless nature itself is so corrupted that it seems to be polluted even without the inclination of the will, [and] from sin derives this imperfection by which human nature may understand what kind of nature has been made through [divine] judgment.") Gregory I Epistola 64 (PL 77: 1195D)
32. compare Bede Hist. eccl. 1.27.7 (PL 95: 64A)
33. Feminis namque et menstruus sui sanguinis fluxus aegritudo est. Gregory I Epistola 64 (PL 77: 1195C)
34. compare Bede, Hist. eccl. 1.27.7 (PL 95: 64A)
35. Cujus cruoris contactu fruges non germinant, äcescunt musta, moriuntur herbae, amittunt arbores foetus; ferrum rubigo corrumpit, nigrescunt aera: si qui canes inde ederint, in rabiem efferuntur. Rabanus Maurus De universo 6.1 (PL 111: 174B). Compare Hugh of St. Victor (?), De best. et al. 3.60 (PL 177: 131B)
36. and Innocent III De cont. mund. 1.5 (PL 217: 704C)
37. The source for this notion can be traced back through Isidore of Seville's Etymol. 11.1.141 to Pliny's Hist. nat. 7.15.64-65. It should be noted too that this depiction of menstrual blood as a dangerous poison assumes a rather prominent role in an argument against the Virgin birth in a thirteenth-century anti-Christian Jewish polemic
38. See Frank Talmage, "A Hebrew Polemical Treatise: Anti-Cathar and Anti-Orthodox," HTR 60 (1967) 341
39. Indeed, Albert the Great attributes morning sickness in pregnant women to the retention of menses. See his De animalibus 9.110 (ed. Hermann Stadler; Beiträge zur Geschichte der Philosophic des Mittelalters 15-16; Münster: Aschendorff, 1916-1920) 15. 719, ll. 9-10
40. For an English translation see Albertus Magnus's On Animals: A Medieval Summa Zoologica (trans. Kenneth F. Kitchell and Irven M. Resnick; 2 vols.; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1999)
41. Robert Grosseteste Expositio in epistulam sancti Pauli ad Galatas 3.3 (ed. J. McEvoy and L. Rizzerio; CCCM 130; Turnhout: Brepols, 1995)
42. Ps. Albert the Great Women's Secrets: A Translation of Pseudo-Albertus Magnus's De Secretis Mulierum with Commentaries (trans. Helen Rodnite Lemay; Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1992) 131
43. Albert the Great De animalibus 7.133; 15.553.22
44. See also, Albert the Great Quaestiones de animalibus 9.9, in Opera omnia (ed. Ephrem Filthau; 12 vols.; Cologne: Aschendorff, 1951) 12. 207, 238
45. The Quaestiones are Conrad of Austria's reportatio of Albert's 1258 lectures at Cologne, written ca. 1260
46. This tradition, however, can be traced back to Pliny Hist. nat. 7.13.63-65
47. Ps. Albert the Great Women's Secrets, 131
48. Per singulos menses gravia atque torpolentia mulierum corpora immundi sanguinis effusione revelantur. Quo tempore si vir coierit cum muliere, dicuntur concepti fetus vitium seminis trahere; ita ut leprosi, et elephantiaci ex hac conceptione nascantur. ("At each monthly period the gross and sluggish [nature of] bodies of women are revealed by an effusion of unclean blood. If a man has intercourse with a woman at this time, the fetuses that are conceived are said to receive a corruption of the seed, so much so that they are born leprous and subject to elephantiasis [a virulent form of leprosy] on account of this conception.") Rabanus Maurus Commentaria in Ezechielem 8.18 (PL 110:706C). Compare Rupert of Deutz De sancta Trinitate et operibus eius, In Leviticum 15 (ed. R. Haacke; CCCM 22; Turnhout: Brepols, 1972) 892
49. Ottavia Niccoli has pointed out that an important change occurs in this passage in 4 Esdr. 5:8 in Latin mss prior to the ninth century, since "the equivalent of the word menstruatae does not exist in the Arabic version, nor the Armenian, nor in the Ethiopian, nor in the Syrian; all derived, like the Latin, from the Greek translation of the text." See "'Menstruum quasi monstruum': Monstrous Births and Menstrual Taboos in the Sixteenth Century," in Edward Muir and Guido Ruggiero, eds., Sex and Gender in Historical Perspective (trans. Margaret A. Gallucci, Mary M. Gallucci, and Carole C. Gallucci; Baltimore, MD: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1990) 13-14
50. Ivo of Chartres remarks, Observet unusquisque ne menstruatae mulieri misceatur; hoc enim exsecrabile dicit lex Dei. ("Let each one take care not to have intercourse with a menstrual woman; the Law of God calls this an abomination.") Decretum 119 (PL 161: 688C). Compare Lev 18:19, where a man who has intercourse with a menstruating woman is cut off from his people, and Ezek 18:6, where avoidance of menstruating women is one of the seventeen virtues of a just man
51. Quilibet vir, qui cum uxore in consuetudine ejus menstrua rem habuerit, jejunet quadraginta dies. ("Any man who takes advantage of his wife at her menstrual period shall fast for forty days.") Egbert of York Poenitentiale 16 (PL 89: 405C)
52. compare Fragmenta ex collectoribus canonum 249 (PL 99: 971C)
53. Albert the Great appears exceptional in treating this as a venial sin. For a discussion, see Bruno Roy, "Un inédit d'Albert le Grand dans l'Unguentarius de Guillaume de Werda," in D. Jacquart, et al., eds., Comprendre et Maîtriser la Nature au Moyen Ages, Mélanges d'histoire des Sciences offerts à Guy Beujouan (Geneva: Libr. Droz, 1994) 171-80
54. Rabanus Maurus Poenitentiale 30 (PL 110:491B-C)
55. Burchard of Worms Libri Decretorum 5 (PL 140: 974C)
56. Ilia femina quae menstruum sanguinem suum miscuit cibo vel potui, et dedit viro suo, ut comederet . . . pro infirmitate vitanda, quali poenitentia sint plectendae? Rabanus Maurus Poenitentiale 30 (PL 110: 49IB)
57. compare Egbert of York Poenitentiale 16 (PL 89: 405C)
58. Quaedam mulieres . . . tollunt menstruum suum sanguinem, et immiscent cibo vel potui, et dant viris suis ad manducandum, vel ad bibendum, ut plus diligantur ab eis. Si fecisti, quinque annos per Iegitimas ferias poeniteas. Burchard of Worms Libri Decretorum 5 (PL 140: 974C)
59. On the relationship between carnal commerce and leprosy in the Middle Ages, see Danielle Jacquart and Claude Thomasset, Sexuality and Medicine in the Middle Ages (trans. Matthew Adamson; Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1988) 181-93
60. Peter of Poitiers (d. 1205) Summa de confessione 12.5 (ed. J. Longré; CCCM 51; Turnhout: Brepols, 1980)
61. Praeterea omnes vos [Iudaei] secundum Moysi legem immundi estis. Nullus enim in vobis est, qui mortuorum attactu pollutus non sit. Quae scilicet macula, nisi conspersione cineris vaccae rufae non deletur, quam cum ad praesens habere non possitis, ab immunditia liberari nequitis. Mulieres etiam vestrae omnes fluxu pollutae creduntur, cum pristini desint sacerdotes, quorum erat relictum judicio inter menstruam et sanguinis fluxus pollutam discernere, et filii de pollutione. ("Moreover all of you [Jews] are unclean according to the law of Moses. Not one of you is not polluted from contact with the dead. You are unable to cleanse this stain of uncleanness unless it is removed by scattering the ashes of a red heifer which, at the present time, you cannot obtain. Moreover, all your women are believed to be defiled by a flow [of blood], since the original priests, to whose judgment it was left to distinguish between menstrual [blood] and the pollution of a discharge of blood are all gone, and [your] children [come] from defilement.") Peter Alphonsi Dialogus (PL 157: 596D)
62. Et facti sumus ut immundus omnes nos, et quasi pannus menstruatae universae iustitiae nostrae (Isa 64:6, Vg; "And we are all become like one unclean and all our righteous deeds are like the garment of a menstruating woman.") Rupert of Deutz explicitly invoked this passage in his Dialogus inter Christianum et Judaeum (PL 170: 571B-D) to argue that Israel could not be cleansed of this defilement until there appeared the one who washes away menstrual impurity, namely Jesus himself
63. Facta est Ierusalem quasi polluta menstruis inter eos. (Lam 1:17; "Jerusalem is made like one defiled among them by menstrual [uncleanness].")
64. Paschasius Radbertus (d. 860) seems unusually clear on this point: 'Et facta est Hierusalem quasi polluta menstruis inter eos (Lam 1:17).' Quia sicut execrabilis est mulier eo tempore quo menstrua patitur ita et illi execrabiles erant, Iudei et sunt usque hodie tam nobis quam et hostibus suis. ("'Jerusalem is made like one defiled among them by menstrual [uncleanness] [Lam 1:17].' Because just as a woman is an abmomination at that time when she suffers menstruation, so too even these people were an abomination, just as are the Jews today both to us and to their enemies.") Expositio in lamentationes Hieremiae 1.17 (ed. B. Paulus; CCCM 85; Tumhout: Brepols, 1988)
65. Quod ex maledictione parentum currat adhuc in filios vena facinoris, per maculum sanguinis: Ut per hanc importune fluidam proles impia inexpiabiliter crucietur, quousque se ream sanguinis Christi recognoscat poenitens, et sanetur. Thomas of Cantimpré Miraculorum et exemplorum memorabilium sui temporis libri duo (Douai, 1605) 305
66. Again, Radbertus (d. 860) provides an unequivocal testimony: Et mira fiducia! Nam in lege si quis mulierem menstruam vel fluentem sanguinem, sive quodcunque ilia tetigisset, immunda erant. Haec vero: Si tetigero fimbriam vestimenti ejus, salva ero. Liquet igitur, quod eum Deum credidit, qui nullis coinquinatur sordibus, imo abstergit vulnera, emundat immunditias, et languores vacuat. ("Oh marvelous faith. For according to the Law if someone touched a menstruating woman or one with a bloody discharge, or anything she had touched, they were unclean. But truly this woman [thought], If I shall touch the edge of his garment, I shall be saved. Therefore it is clear that she believed him to be the God who is uncontaminated by filth but rather cleanses all wounds, heals all uncleanness, and eliminates all weaknesses.") Expositio in Matthaeum 9 (PL 120: 383D)
67. See Thomas of Celano Tract, de mir. beat. Fran. 15.148-49, in Analecta Franciscana 10 (ed. PP. Collegii S. Bonaventurae; Florence: ad Clares Aquas, 1926-1941)
68. 'In illa die erit fons patens domus [sic] David habitantibus in Hierusalem in ablutione peccatoris et menstruatae' (Zach 13:1). Fons quippe occultus est unigenitus Patris invisibilis Deus. Fons vero patens est idem Deus incarnatus. Qui fons patens recte domus David dicitur, quia ex David genere noster ad nos Redemptor processit. ("'On that day a fountain will be opened of the house of David for the inhabitants in Jerusalem for the cleansing of the sinner and one denied' [Zach 13:1]. Indeed the only begotten One of the invisible God the Father is a concealed fountain. The same God, incarnate, is truly an opened fountain. The house of David is correctly called an open fountain because our Redeemer came to us from the race of David.") Gregory I Homilia in Ezechielem 8 (PL 76: 1039D)
69. Expos. in Psalm, poen. 109.7 (PL 79: 64IA)
70. Compare Peter Damian Sermones: Homilia 51 (PL 144:789A)
71. Gamerius of St. Victor Gregorianum 8 (PL 193: 299D)
72. and Philippus de Harveng De inst. cler. 5.3 (PL 203: 844C)
73. See Ivan G. Marcus, "Images of the Jews in the Exempla of Caesarius of Heisterbach," in Cohen, ed., From Witness to Witchcraft, 247-56
74. Patri meo multum sum diIecta, qui in tantum custodit me, ut neque ego ad te, neque tu possis venire ad me, nisi in nocte sextae feriae, quae Pascha vestrum praecedit. Tunc enim Judaei laborare dicuntur quadam ifirmitate, que flux us sanguinis dicitur, circa quam occupati, aliis tunc minus intendere possunt. Caesarius of Heisterbach Dialogus Miraculorum (ed. Joseph Strange; 2 vols.; Cologne: H. Lempertz, 1851) 1. 92
75. Et percussit inimicos suos in posteriora, opprobrium sempiternum dedit illis
76. Et percussit inimicos suos in posteriora . . . Ita legitur (I Reg. 5) quod ebullierunt mures de terra, et percussit Dominus azotum in secretiori parte natium; et mures corrodebant prominentes extales eorum. Opprobrium sempiternum fuit, quia vilissima fuit huiusmodi infirmitas. Et dicunt quidam quod hoc opprobrium sustinent Judaei, quia in vindictam Dominicae Passionis patiutur fluxum sanguinis, et ideo sunt ita pallidi. Quoted in Johnson, "Myth of Jewish Male Menses," 281
77. Raymund Martini Pugio Fidei 3.3.c. 4, 11 (1687; reprinted Farnborough: Gregg Press, 1967)695
78. Compare Aristotle's Hist. animal. 521a19. 28-31; 587b33
79. See also Celsus De med. 2.8.15; 6.18.9; 7.30.3. This latter work dates from about 30 CE
80. See The Medical Aphorisms of Moses Maimonides: Maimonides' Medical Writings, trt. 22 (trans. Fred Rosner; Haifa: Maimonides Research Institute, 1989) 342-55
81. Maimonides' Treatise on Hemorrhoids ([trans. Fred Rosner; Haifa: Maimonides Research Institute, 1984] 120-52) was not available in Latin translation until the fifteenth century. His medical explanation for hemorrhoids relies heavily on Galen, but offers no indication that Maimonides thought that hemorrhoids were more common in Jews than in others. The same conclusion may be drawn from an examination of medieval Jewish medical texts translated by Ron Barkai in A History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages (Leiden: Brill, 1998) 96-222
82. See pp. 106 and 177 for treatments for hemorrhoids
83. For Avicenna, see his Liber canonis medicine 3.17.1.1-16 (1524; reprinted Farnborough: Gregg Press, 1971) 264-68
84. See G. Craig, "Alfred the Great: A Diagnosis," Journal of the Royal Society of Medicine 1 (1991) 303-5. Alfred died ca. 900
85. Haemorroidae causantur ex superfluitate sanguinis grossi, quia quando talis sanguis abundat in corporem descendit inferius, ubi est pluralitas venarum, scilicet in matrice, et tunc frequenter rumpitur una vena vel duae, et tunc fluit sanguis propter apertionem earum venarum aliquando. Unde illud maxime accidit viventibus ex nutrimento grosso et salso, sicut Iudeis, per naturam, et quia iste sanguis est grossus et naturae terrestris, ideo super fluxum eius non dominatur luna sicut super menstrum. Albertus Magnus Quaestiones de animalibus 9.7 (ed. Cologne; 12 vols.; Münster: Aschendorff, 1955) 12. 206. Elsewhere (De animal. 22.48 [33]), he identifies meats that are cold and dry as a cause for hemorrhoids. On the prevalence of hemorrhoids among Jews causing in them a menstrual flow, note too that this notion survived among physicians into the modern era, as evidenced by the fact that Abbé Grégoìre must refute it at the end of the eighteenth century
86. See the excerpt from his "An Essay on the Physical, Moral and Political Reformation of the Jews," in Mendes-Flohr and Reinharz, eds., Jew in the Modern World, 52
87. Ulterius quaeritur, utrum sola mulier patiatur menstruum. (1) Et videtur, quod non. Quia menstruum est superfluitas sanguinis; sed haec potest esse in viro sicut in muliere; ergo etc. Albertus Magnus Quaestiones de animalibus 9.6 [ET 12. 205]
88. Compare Albertus Magnus De animal. 3.149; 15.102, 107, 114
89. See especially Gilbert Dahan, "Juifs et judaisme dans la littérature quodlibétique," in Cohen, ed., From Witness to Witchcraft, 221-45
90. Consequenter queritur utrum iudei paciuntur fluxum. Arguitur quod non, quia xpistiani et aliqui iudei sunt eiusdem complexionis, ergo etc. Oppositum patet ex veritate quia illi leccatores paciuntur fluxum ut in pluribus. Ad quaestionem dicendum quod iudei habent fluxum sanguinis hemoreidarum. Et cause est prima quia dicunt medici quod fluxus sanguinis causatur ex sanguine grosso indigesto quern [MS reads que] natura purgat. Sed iste [MS reads istis] magis habundat in iudeis quia ipsi sunt melancolici ut in pluribus. Quia melancolicus fugit cohabitacionem et congregacionem et diligit loca secretaria vel solitaria; sed iudei naturaliter retrahunt se a societate et coniuncti [properly coniungi] cum aliis ut patet, ergo sunt melancolici. Item, pallidi sunt, ergo melancolice complexionis. Item, timidi sunt naturaliter et hec tria sunt [supra? MS] accidencia propria melancolicorum, ut dicit Ipocras. Sed ille qui multum est melancolicus multum habet de sanguine melancolico, et inde debet habere fluxum sanguinis, sed iudei sunt huiusmodi. Probo quia utuntur alimentis assatis et non elixatis non coctis, et hec sunt difficile digestibilia, ut dicitur Me[teorum or -telologicorum]. Item, utuntur assarem [properly assatam] pinguedinem scilicet in oleo etc. et hec sunt difficile indigestibilia [properly digestibilia], ut patet manifestum sens[i; manifestym sensui perhaps recte ubi supra], ideo etc. . . . Item, ipsi non minuunt, vel valde parum, ideo ipsi emittunt sanguinem per poros extrinsecos, ideo etc. This provisional edition of the quodlibet is found in appendix B of Biller, "Views of Jews from Paris around 1300." The translation is also Biller's and appears on pp. 192-93
91. For a very useful treatment, see especially Joan Cadden, Meanings of Sex Difference in the Middle Ages: Medicine, Science, and Culture (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995) 201-9, 212-15
92. Ps. Albert the Great Women's Secrets, 74. In its Latin original this work would presumably have had a limited readership. Nevertheless, its ninety-seven manuscript copies indicate its popularity. In addition, the Secrela mulierum circulated in medieval vernacular translations - for example, in French, under the title Secrés des dames, and in German
93. See Margaret R. Schleissner, "A Fifteenth-Century Physician's Attitude Toward Sexuality: Dr. Johann Hartlieb's Secreta mulierum Translation," in Sex in the Middle Ages, ed. Joyce Salisbury (New York: Garland, 1991) 110-25
94. and also her "'Secreta mulierum,'" Kurt Ruh, ed., Die deuische Literatur des Mittelalters: Verfasserlexikon (2d ed.; 10 vols.; Berlin: de Gruyter, 1978) 8. 986-93
95. For a discussion of the relationship between the Secreta mulierum and the Secrés des dames tradition, see Monica H. Green,"'Traittié tout de mençonges.' The Secrés des dames, 'Trotula,' and Attitudes toward Women's Medicine in Fourteenth- and Early-Fifteenth-Century France," in Marilynn Desmond, ed., Christine de Pizan and the Categories of Difference (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1998) 146-78
96. Iudei ut plurimum patiuntur fluxum haemorrhoid. propter tria, et quia communiter sunt in ocio, et ideo congregantur superfluitates melancholicae. Secundo, quod communiter sunt in timore et anxietate, ideo multiplicatur sang, melancholicus, iuxta illud Hipp. Timor et pusilanimitas si multum tempus habuerint, melancholicum faciunt hum. Tertio quia hoc ex ultione divina, iuxta illud. Et percussit eos in posteriori dorsi, opporbrium sempiternum dedit illis. Lilium medicine 5.21, fol. 77r. Compare Luke E. Demaitre, Doctor Bernard de Gordon: Professor and Practicioner (Studies and Texts 51; Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1980) 9. It should be noted that despite the influence of Bernard's text, its discussion of hemorrhoids was sometimes transmitted without any suggestion that hemorrhoids were in any special way a Jewish affliction
97. See for example John Ardenne (b. 1307) Treatises of Fistula in Ano, Hemorrhoids, and Clysters (ed. D'Arcy Power; 1910; reprinted London: Oxford University Press, 1968) 55-74
98. Ps. Albert the Great Women's Secrets, 71 (Commentary B). Italics mine. Note that although the text of Women's Secrets dates from the late thirteenth or early fourteenth century, the date of the commentary designated as commentary B is even more uncertain
99. R. B. C. Huygens, ed., Lettres de Jacques de Vitry (Leiden: Brill, 1960) 74, 1. 73. This letter dates from October, 1216
100. John Frederick Hinnebusch, The Historia Occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry (Fribourg: Fribourg University Press, 1972) 11. But compare Aubrey Stewart, who remarks rather unfairly that the "collection of fables and legends at the end of the 'Historia abbreviata' shows that he [Jacques] had an unbounded appetite for the marvellous, and no critical faculty whatever." Jacques de Vitry, [Excerpts from] The History of Jerusalem (trans. Aubrey Stewart; 1895; reprinted New York: AMS Press, 1971), vi
101. Only the Historia occidentalis has been critically edited. See Hinnebusch, Historia occidentalis of Jacques de Vitry. The Historia orientalis exists in the edition of F. Moschus (Douai: Battnazaris Belleri, 1597)
102. Alii autem Iudaei de quibus patres eorum clamaverunt: Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostras . . . Imbelles enim et imbecilles facti sunt quasi mulieres. Unde singulis lunationibus, ut dicitur, fluxum sanguinis patiuntur. Percusit enim eos Deus in posteriora et opprobrium sempiternum dedit illis. Postquam enim fratrem suum verum Abel occiderunt, facti sunt vagi et profugi super terram, sicut maledictus Cain, habentes caput tremulum, id est, cor pavidum, vite sue non credentes. Historia orientalis 82. 159-60. Italics mine
103. Claude Buridant, ed., La traduction de l'Historia orientalis de Jacques de Vitry (Paris: Klincksieck, 1986); for the date of MS Bibl. Nat. 17203, see p. 15. The Old French (81. 129) reads: "Li autre Juu des quels lor pere crierent/si com li Evangiles dist: 'Li sans Jhesu rist soit sor nous et sor nos enfans,' ki sunt espars par tout le monde, serf et treügagier, et ensi com li prophete dist: 'Lor force est tornee en flamesque,' et si ne se sevent aider d'armes, et ausi comme femes en cascunne lunison soefrent, et por ce est escrit: 'Percussit eos Dominus in posteriora et obprobrium sempitemum dedit illis.'"
104. Quare Judei patiuntur indifferenter hunc fluxum? Respondetur primo theologice quia ipsi tempore passionis Christi clamabant: Sanguis eius super nos et super filios nostros! Ideo dicitur in psalmo: Percussit eos in posteriora dorsi. Aliter respondetur et magis naturaliter quia Judei vescuntur cibariis flegmaticis et frigidis quia multe carnes bone in lege eorum sunt prohibite eis ex quibus carnibus generatur sanguis melanconicus qui per fluxum emoroidarum expurgatur. Secunda ratio naturalis est quia dicit Aristoteles in libro de caelo (fol. 17r) et mundo quia motus facit calorem, et motus est causa sanitatis, et calor causat digestionem, ut patet Aristotelem quarto Metheorum et secundo de anima. Sed quia Judei non sunt labore neque in motu neque in conversatione hominum et etiam quia sunt in magno timore quia nos ulciscantur [ulciscamur] passionem Christi redemptoris nostri, hec omnia faciunt frigiditatem et impediunt digestionem. Ideo in eis generatur multus sanguis melancolicus qui in ipsis tempore menstruali expellitur seu expurgatur. Problemata Varia Anatomica: MS 1165 The University of Bologna (ed. L. R. Lind; Lawrence, KS: University of Kansas Press, 1968) 38-39
105. Interestingly, however, the medieval Jewish author of The Treatise on Procreation, proclaims that although Jewish women have a complexion that is cold and wet (that is phlegmatic), Jewish men are cold and dry (that is melancholic), confirming thereby the determination of Christian medical texts. See Barkai, History of Jewish Gynaecological Texts in the Middle Ages, 217
106. Audivi a Judeis, quod quidam Judeorum, scilicet qui in passione Cristi clamaverunt coram Pilato: 'sanguis eius super nos et filios nostros,' quod omnes Judei, qui de eorum processerunt, singulis mensibus sanguine fluunt et dissenteriam sepius paciantur et ea ut frequencius moriuntur. Sanantur autem per sanguinem hominis Cristiani, qui nomine Cristi baptisatus est. Historiae Memorabiles (ed. Erich Kleinschmidt; Cologne: Bohlau, 1974) 65. One can only speculate regarding the identity of the Jews from whom Rudolph of Schlettstadt claims to have heard this charge. Perhaps from victims of the Inquisition?
107. For a brief discussion of the connection between a Jewish requirement for Christian blood and hemorrhoids, see Joshua Trachtenberg, The Devil and the Jews: The Medieval Conception of the Jews and Its Relation to Modern Antisemitism (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1943) 50, 148
108. Anton Bonfin, Rerum Hungaricum Decades, cited by Poliakov, History of Anti-Semitism, 1. 143, n. 13
109. See R. Po Chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1988) 21, 138
110. For several good illustrations from the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, see Heinz Schreckenberg, The Jews in Christian Art: An Illustrated History (New York: Continuum, 1996) 273-75
111. Thomas Calvert, The Blessed Jew of Morocco or A Blackmoor Made White (York: T. Broad, 1648) 20
112. See p. 30 for the claim that Jews also require Christian blood to suppress their own fetid odor. The Liber de adventu messiae praeterito was allegedly translated into Latin in the fourteenth century from an eleventh-century Arabic work attributed to Rabbi Samuel of Morocco. However, it is probably a Latin forgery from the hand of the Spanish Dominican, Alphonsus Buenhombre (d. 1353). The text can be found in PL 149: 333-68
113. Heinrich Kornmann, Opera curiosa (4 vols.; Frankfurt: Gensch, 1694) 1. 128-29
114. "A1 mal olor precedente juntan los mal intencionados à los Hebreos, que tienen cola, y les viene todos los meses sangre como à las mugeres su menstruo, y que por esso son quasi todos palidos, assi lo escrive Fray Vincente Ferrer gran persegnidor desta Nacion en un Sermon suyo, el Cantimpratense." Los excelencias y calumnias de los Hebreos (Amsterdam, 1679) 345. My thanks to my colleague, Prof. Pedro Campa, for his assistance with this text
115. On later appearances of this tradition, see David S. Katz, "Shylock's Gender: Jewish Male Menstruation in Early Modern England," The Review of English Studies, n.s. 50 (1999) 440-62