Blood libel

Blood libels are allegations that a particular group kills people as a form of human sacrifice, and uses their blood in various rituals. The alleged victims are often children.

Jews are the most common target of blood libels, but many other groups have been accused, including Christians, Cathars, Carthaginians, Knights Templar, Witches, Christian heretics, Roma, Wiccans, Druids, neopagans, Satanists, and evangelical Protestant missionaries.

Blood libel 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 popular Christian myth sacrifices to the Greek gods were typically in the forms of wealth. Human blood sacrifices were exceedingly rare, and in most Greek cities, they were illegal. Early Christians spread myths about Christian children being abducted and having their throats slit in various temples. Such myths are similar to the blood libel accusations against Jews. Human blood sacrifices were seen by the Greek people as barbaric and laws against them were believed to be part of what separated the Greeks from those they considered barbarians, even after Romanization occurred.

Blood libel against Jews

Main article: Blood libel against Jews

Blood libels against the Jews were a common form of anti-Semitism during the Middle Ages, though there is no ritual involving human blood in Jewish law or custom. Though the first recorded instance was in the writings of Apion, who claimed that the Jews sacrificed Greek victims in the Temple, there are no existent records of the blood libel against the Jews from that period until the legend surrounding William of Norwich in the 12th century, but the libel afterward became an increasingly common accusation. In many cases, anti-Semitic blood libels served as the basis for a blood libel cult, in which the alleged victim of human sacrifice was worshipped as a Christian martyr, but the claim has pre-Christian origins. 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, and the persistence of blood libel stories in the Arab world.

Unfortunately, the blood libel resurfaced in the work of Anne Catherine Emmerich (1774-1824), a German Catholic nun and alleged visionary, when she commented (pp 547-8) in her biography that an elderly Jewish woman had told her that the blood libel was "true" and that Jews "did' steal Christian children for use in ritual sacrifices. Emmerich's The Dolorous Passion of Our Lord Jesus Christ was a key source for Mel Gibson's Passion of the Christ.

Blood libel against Christians

Main article: Blood libel 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 blood libel myths in the West

Accusations of ritual murder are being advanced by different groups to this day. In the United States, this is especially noticeable in certain branches of the anti-abortion movement, which has produced numerous charges against doctors performing the procedure.[1]

One claim stated that physicians in 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.[2] The only use for human fetal tissue is in the medical research field, particularly stem cell research. [3] [4]

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 and 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 [5], Bill Pricer, and Ken Wooden (Child Lures) are some of the voices of these libels.

In impoverished parts of Latin America, members of the Marxist group Shining Path tell rural villagers that Americans will kidnap and murder their children. The purported reasons for these supposed abductions/murders are human sacrifice and organs harvesting.

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. [6] The Israeli government complained to the Press Complaints Commission that the cartoon alluded to the blood libel of Jews eating Christian children; Dave Brown, the author, responded that the cartoon was in fact inspired by Goya's painting Saturn Devouring his Son 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]

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

Bibliography

• Karl Schmoger The Life of Anna Katherina Emmerich: Rockford, Illinois: Tan Books and Publishing: 1974: Volume 1: ISBN 0895550598

External links

• Anti-Defamation League condemns Egyptian blood libel
• Blood libel in 1840 Syria
• Blood Libel, Host Desecration, and other Myths (on religioustolerance.org)
• The Independent -- info on Horseman Without a Horse
• Blood Feast Snopes.com Info page
• Updated Blood Libel in Mideast Media
• The JET report on murerous and cannabalistic Satanist allegations in the Broxtowe child abuse case.