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'Blood libels' are sensationalized allegations that a person or group engages in human sacrifice, often accompanied by the claim that the blood of victims is used in various rituals and/or acts of cannibalism. The alleged victims are often children.
Some of the best documented cases of blood libel focus upon accusations against Jews, but many other groups have been accused, including Christians, Cathars, Carthaginians, Knights Templar, Witches, Christian heretics, Roma, Wiccans, Druids, neopagans, and Satanists.

Contents

Against followers of Ancient Greek religion

Against Jews

Against Christians

Contemporary usage in Western societies

The decline of belief in ritual murder

See also

Literature and references

External links

External links

Against followers of Ancient Greek religion

When the Christianization of Greece occurred, there was an attempt to portray all sacrifices as blood sacrifices, but contrary to ancient Christian propaganda sacrifices to the Greek gods were typically in the forms of wealth. Human blood sacrifices were illegal in Greek cities. Early Christians spread propaganda about the children of Christians being abducted and having their throats slit in various temples. Such propaganda bore similarity to blood libel accusations against Jews. Blood sacrifices by other peoples were seen by the Greek people as barbarous, and laws against them were believed to be part of what separated the Greeks from those they considered barbarians, even after Romanization occurred.

Against Jews

Main articles: Blood libel against Jews

Blood libel against Jews is the most extensively researched case. Blood libels against the Jews were a common form of anti-Semitism during the Middle Ages. There are indeed rituals involving human blood in Jewish law or custom, such as circumcision. The first recorded instance of a blood libel against Jews was in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed Greek victims in the Temple. After this there are no existent records of the blood libel against the Jews until the 12th century legend surrounding William of Norwich, first recorded in the Peterborough Chronicle. The libel afterward became an increasingly common accusation. In many subsequent cases, anti-Semitic blood libels served as the basis for a ''blood libel cult'', in which the alleged victim of human sacrifice was venerated as a Christian martyr. Many Jews were killed as a result of false blood libels, which continued into the 20th century, with the Beilis Trial in Russia and the Kielce pogrom in Poland. Blood libel stories persist in the Arab world.

Against Christians

During the first and second centuries, some Roman commentators had various interpretations of the ritual of the Eucharist and related teachings. While celebrating the Eucharist, Christians drink red wine in response to the words "This is the blood of Christ". Propaganda arguing that the Christians literally drank blood based on their belief in transubstantiation was written and used to persecute Christians. Romans were highly suspicious of Christian adoptions of abandoned Roman babies and this was suggested as a possible source of the blood.
In the Mandaean scripture, the Ginza Rba, a purportedly Christian group called the "Minunei" are accused of it against the Jews: "They kill a Jewish child, they take his blood, they cook it in bread and they proffer it to them as food." (Ginza Rba 9.1).

Contemporary usage in Western societies

Accusations of ritual murder are being advanced by different groups to this day.
One claim stated that physicians in the People's Republic of China who perform abortions consider the fetus a delicacy and eat it. The story, reported from Hong Kong by Bruce Gilley, was investigated by Senator Jesse Helms, and gruesome artwork reminiscent of traditional depictions of blood libel was featured in several anti-abortion campaigns. [1] The only use for "human fetal tissue" is in the medical research field, particularly stem cell research. [2] [3]
Another contemporary blood libel in the United States alleges, falsely, that both neopagans and Satanists use human blood, sexual abuse, or ritual murder, especially of children, in their rituals. Often Satanism, all of the diverse neopagan religions, the role playing game Dungeons & Dragons, and sometimes Roman Catholicism and liberal or non-fundamentalist Christian denominations, are portrayed as expressions of one monolithic and ancient global conspiracy of Satan-worshippers. Mike Warnke (''The Satan Seller''), Bill Schnoebelen (''Wicca: Satan's Little White Lie''), Lawrence Pazder and Michelle Smith (''Michelle Remembers''), Jon Watkins [4], Bill Pricer, and Ken Wooden (''Child Lures'') are some of the voices of these libels.

Many Jewish groups were shocked by the publication in 2003 by the British newspaper The Independent of a cartoon depicting Ariel Sharon eating a baby. [5] The Israeli government complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the cartoon alluded to the blood libel of Jews eating the children of Christians; Dave Brown, the author, responded that the cartoon was in fact inspired by Francisco de Goya's painting ''Saturn Devouring His Son'' [6] and was not anti-Semitic in intent. The PCC accepted Brown's argument, stating "There is nothing inherently anti-semitic about the Goya image or about the myth of Saturn devouring his children, which has been used previously to satirise other politicians accused of sacrificing their own 'children' for political purposes". [7] The cartoon ultimately earned Brown the British Political Cartoon Society's Political Cartoon of the Year award.
Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, in his failed bid for re-election in March 2006, said communists have a history of boiling babies. "I have been accused many times of saying communists eat babies," said Berlusconi at a rally of his ''Forza Italia'' party. "Go and read the Black Book on Communism and you'll find that under Mao's China they didn't eat babies but they boiled them to fertilise the fields." Despite Berlusconi's 2006 denial that he has ever said that 'communists eat babies,' in the 2001 campaign, Berlusconi said "I can organise a conference in which I will prove communists have really eaten babies and done even worse things. [8]
In 2007, articles by the right-wing American World Net Daily repeated stories of Muslims in Iraq allegedly baking children and eating them. [9][10].
In 2007, Al-Qaeda in Iraq became such a target in a widely disseminated told by an Iraqi official to an American journalist. [11]
[12]
[13]
[14]
[15]

The decline of belief in ritual murder

Belief in ritual murder has gradually disappeared from mainstream Christianity, and child-martyrs have been purged from the official Catholic calendar of saints. Nevertheless, similar accusations are still being made by some Muslim groups against the Jews, and the same accusations were defended by Nazism and related movements in the twentieth century.

See also

★ Vampirism

★ Witch hunt

★ Host desecration

★ Child cannibalism

Literature and references

;General

★ Susanna Buttaroni, Stanislaw Musial: ''Ritualmord.'' Böhlau Verlag 2002, ISBN 3-205-77028-5 (German)

★ Rainer Erb: ''Die Legende vom Ritualmord.'' Metropol 1993, ISBN 3-926893-15-X (German)

★ Hannelore Fieg: ''Ritualmord und Satanskultbeschuldigungen in Spätantike, Mittelalter und früher Neuzeit. Christen und Juden, Ketzer und Hexen'', Diploma thesis Universität Innsbruck 2000 (German)

★ Gerhard Muller (Hrsg.): Theologische Realenzyklopädie Band 29, ''Religionspsychologie - Samaritaner''. Walter de Gruyter, 1998, ISBN 3-11-016127-3 (entry ''Ritualmord'', pg. 253–265) (German)
;Blood libel against Jews

★ Alan Dundes: ''The Blood Libel Legend: A Casebook in Anti-Semitic Folklore.'' The University of Wisconsin Press, 1992, ISBN 0-299-13110-6

★ Jules Isaac, ''Die Genesis des Antisemitismus'', Wien: Europa Verlag, 1969 (German)

★ Stefan Rohrbacher, Michael Schmidt: ''Judenbilder. Kulturgeschichte antijüdischer Mythen und antisemitischer Vorurteile.'' Rowohlt, Reinbek 1991, ISBN 3-499-55498-4 (pg. 269–291: ''Ritualmord und Hostienfrevel''; pg. 304–368: ''Die Barbarei längst verflossener Jahrhunderte'')

★ Johannes T. Groß: ''Ritualmordbeschuldigungen gegen Juden im Deutschen Kaiserreich (1871–1914)'' Berlin: Metropol, 2002. ISBN 3-932482-84-0

★ Alexander Baron: ''Jewish Ritual Murder: Anti-semitic Fabrication or Urban Legend? Anglo-Hebrew Publishing.'' 1994, ISBN 1898318360

★ John M. McCulloh: ''Jewish Ritual Murder: William of Norwich, Thomas of Monmouth, and the Early Dissemination of the Myth'' In: Speculum, Vol. 72, No. 3 (Juli 1997), S. 698–740

★ Ronnie Po-Chia Hsia: ''The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany.'' Yale University Press, 1990, ISBN 0-300-04746-0 (englisch)
;Case studies

★ Schmoger, Karl (1974) ''The Life of Anna Katherina Emmerich'': Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishing: 1974: Volume 1: ISBN 0-89555-059-8

External links

★ Stevenson, Mark (2006) "Evidence May Back Human Sacrifice Claims", Associated Press news story, accessed September 18, 2006.

External links

★ Resources > Medieval Jewish History > Blood Libels

★ Anti-Defamation League condemns Egyptian blood libel

★ Blood libel in 1840 Syria

★ Blood Libel, Host Desecration, and other Myths

★ The Independent – info on ''Horseman Without a Horse''

★ Blood Feast Snopes.com Info page

★ The JET report on murerous and cannabalistic Satanist allegations in the Broxtowe child abuse case.

★ Anthony Julius: 'On Blood Libels' on the Engage website