Raphael Levy
Raphael Levy (died 17 January 1670) was a Jewish inhabitant of the city of Metz who was burned at the stake, accused of having ritually murdered a Christian child. For some years after his execution, the Jewish community in Metz marked the anniversary of his death (25 Tevet) as a day of fasting.[1]
On 25 September 1669 (the eve of Rosh Hashanah) a small child went missing in the woods outside the village of Glatigny, about ten miles east of Metz. Levy had been seen riding towards Metz the same day, and was accused of having abducted the child, although he had an alibi for the time of the disappearance.[2] Charges were brought against Levy in the Parlement of Metz on 3 October. Even before the trial a child's body was found in the woods, partially eaten by animals, but it was too disfigured to be identified as that of the missing child.[3] Levy refused to confess to the crime despite torture, but was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death by the Parlement. Offered an opportunity to become a Christian, he declared that he had lived a Jew and would die a Jew.
The Parlement applied to Louis XIV to have the 95 Jewish families in Metz expelled from the province, but the king prohibited any further action in the matter.
References
- ^ Natalie Zemon Davis, Women on the Margins: Three Seventeenth-century Lives (Harvard University Press, 1995), p. 17.
- ^ Edmund Levin, The Exoneration of Raphael Levy, Wall Street Journal, Feb. 2, 2014. Accessed 10 October 2016.
- ^ Augustin Calmet, Histoire de Lorraine, vol. 6 (Nancy, 1757), 706-709.