Conversion, Circumcision, and Ritual Murder in Medieval Europe. Paola Tartakoff
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same ways that were used in judicial punishments and reported of the bodily sufferings of saints. It is striking that, In the very same decade as the Norwich circumcision case, genital mutilation surfaced in an English ritual murder accusation: According to the Hampshire Eyre Rolls, In 1232, Winchester Jews gouged out the eyes and heart and “removed the testicles” of the boy whom they strangled.78 In sum, contemporaneous Christian perceptions of circumcision and trends in tales of ritual murder indicate that it is possible that some Christians imagined circumcision in the context of a ritual murder narrative as a characteristic form of Jewish abuse.
Wendover’s and Paris’s interweaving of circumcision and crucifixion also invites consideration of contemporaneous developments in Christian thought and devotional practices. As a prelude to crucifixion, circumcision could have powerful Christian meaning. In medieval Christian theology, the circumcision of Christ—which the Gospel of Luke portrays as the occasion for Christ’s naming (2:21)—was understood as demonstrating that Christ was fully human and as adumbrating, and even initiating, Christ’s passion.79 During the thirteenth century, In the context of increasing theological investment in Christ’s humanity and the flourishing of affective piety, Christ’s circumcision assumed heightened devotional importance. Alleged fragments of the foreskin of Christ were venerated as holy relics,80 and Christ’s circumcision began to figure in devotional meditation as the first of the seven sorrows of Mary.81 The collection of saints’ lives and verse homilies known as the South English Legendary (composed ca. 1270–85) presented the feast of Christ’s circumcision (January 1) as its first festal narrative, emphasizing that Christ was born into the Old Law even as he ushered in a new era in salvation history.82 Around 1260, Jacobus de Voragine affirmed in the Golden Legend that Christians celebrated the feast of Christ’s circumcision because it marked, among other things, the first time Christ shed his blood for humanity and, thus, the start of redemption.83 By the early fourteenth century, In texts and images, the arma Christi (instruments of Christ’s passion) had begun to include not only nails and pliers but also the knife used in Christ’s circumcision.84
Christians often imagined that, when Jews committed ritual murder, they sought closely to parody the passion of Christ. In addition to accusing Jews of crucifying their purported victims, they envisioned Jews as reenacting other aspects of Christ’s passion. The Anglo-Saxon Chronicle noted, for instance, In regard to the case of William of Norwich, that Jews tortured William “with all the tortures with which our Lord was tortured.”85 In his Chronica majora, Matthew Paris described the precise correspondence between the tortures that Jews allegedly inflicted on Hugh of Lincoln and those endured by Christ. Paris wrote that Lincoln Jews appointed one Jew to serve as a judge, “like Pilate,” and that the Jews scourged Hugh “till the blood flowed,” crowned him with thorns, mocked him, spat upon him, Insulted him, and, finally, crucified him and pierced his heart with a spear.86
In the context of a parody of Christ’s passion, circumcision could have served as a parody of Christ’s circumcision, understood as the first step in Christ’s passion. This is, In fact, how, In the late fifteenth century, the alleged circumcision of two-year-old Simon of Trent, whom Jews were accused of murdering, was explained in the Geschichte des zu Trient ermordeten Christenkindes (History of the Murdered Trent Christ Child, printed by Albertus Duderstadt/Albrecht Kunne in 1475). In this work, the text accompanying a woodcut depicting a Jew cutting Simon’s penis stated that the Jew performed a “circumcision” in mockery of Christ’s “first bloodshed.”87 In the thirteenth century, Wendover’s and Paris’s accounts of the Norwich circumcision case, too, could have been understood as casting circumcision as the first stage in a reenactment of Christ’s passion. This interpretation leaves questions unanswered, however. For instance, If, In the narratives of Wendover and Paris, circumcision was a parody of the first step in Christ’s passion, where were the other elements of the passion leading up to crucifixion? And why did Wendover, Paris, and other thirteenth- and fourteenth-century authors not cast Jews as circumcising other ritual murder victims, as well?
It is possible that Matthew Paris did imagine that Jews circumcised at least one other purported ritual murder victim. In the nineteenth century, In his edition of Paris’s Chronica majora, which is based on what may be the only autograph manuscript of the text, the historian Henry Richards Luard included the transcription of a now illegible note from the lower margin of the folio on which Paris described the tortures that Jews allegedly inflicted on Hugh of Lincoln. According to Luard, the note read: “the Jews … to circumcise … and to call the circumcised [child] ‘Jesus’” (Judaei circumcidere et circumcisum Jesum vocare).88 It seems that Paris wished to add that, at some point in the process of abusing Hugh, the Jews circumcised him and started to call him “Jesus.” The notion that Jews circumcised Hugh of Lincoln did not make it into the ballads that were later composed about Hugh or into Chaucer’s “Prioress’s Tale.” There may, however, be some evidence of awareness of Paris’s note across the ages. In the nineteenth century, the Scottish thinker Robert Chambers (d. 1871) wrote that Matthew Paris “state[d] that the Jews of Lincoln circumcised and crucified a Christian child in 1250 [probably meaning 1255] at whose tomb miracles were performed.”89
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