A Blood Accusation

New Zealand Tablet, Volume XXXI, Issue 25, 18 June 1903, Page 2

A Blood Accusation

One of tho most pestiferous of the microscopical things that sap the leaning walls of human life is gifted with sftch marvellous vitality that it survives after being frozen for months in solid blocks of ice, crushed under a pressure that should reduce it to lifeless pulp, and boiled at a temperature that should convert it into jelly. History tells us of a few odd hundreds of lies that are gifted with an almost equal power of resistance to destruction. One of these is the monstrous calumny which charges the Jewish people with having, from time to time, slain Christian children in order to use their blood for ritual purposes. During long ages the Jew was to the ignoble herd of avaricious or over-credulous Christians what the ' Jesuit in disguise ' is to this day among the rag-tag-and-bobtail writers of no-Popery fiction. Avarice was ever the chief weapon of the crusade against the Hebrew people in Christian times and countries. And falsehood was the handle that fitted it. The German Catholic historian Alzog says that, in order to justify the plundering of the Jews as far back as five centuries ago, they ' were accused of being at the bottom of all public calumnies, of causing pestilence and earthquakes, and were charged of being guilty of vices the most infamous, and of committing crimes the most horrid, among which were poisoning wells, murdering Christian children and drinking the blood at their pascal festivals, bewitching the atmosphere, and others equally absurd, if less atrociofus. In this way,' he adds, ' was popular feeling roused against them.'-

A large class of no-Popery fictions has been (to use Macaulay's saying) ' abandoned by statesmen to aldermen, by aldermen to clergymen, by clergymen to old women, and by old women to Sir PTarcourt Lees,' the cmbodriment of the unquestioning and open-mouthed gullibility of the Orange lodge. Jt is, heaven knows, high time that the charge of ritual murder against the .Jewish people should ' gang the same gait ' But ' Alas ' for the rarity Of Chirstian charity Under the sun ' there are still people who — like the Queen in Alice's adventuies — believe 'as many as six impossible things before breaklast ' and who swallow — or pretend to swallow — the story of the blood accusation against the people of Isiael ;is they do that of the ' Popish Plot ' and the ' disclosmes ' of Maiia Monk or Maigaret Shopherd A cable message f1 om London published in the daily papers ol New Zealand tow aids tho dose ol last week, goes to show that, despite frequent and ti nmiphant exposmes, the charge of ritual murder still lives and plagues the earth like a per unions miuobe. The message just refer le-d to 1 mis as follows. 'The llight lion Sir 1 Hoi ace Kumbold, t'oi nier ly Ambassador to Austria, in a letter to the " Times," uiges that efforts lie made to secure from the C/ar and the Pope a public and official reprobation of the tables legarding Jewish human sacrifices.' From this it would appear tli.it this atrocious calumny has been pl,i>inp; an active pa it in the s,\\age and inhuman persecutions to winch the Jews have been recently subiected in Southern Kussia

In the ro-d and struggling da\s of the infant Chinch, a similar deed of blood was laid to the charge ol the early Christians in pagan Koine. Nearly lour j cars ago we told the melancholy history of the woe and desolation which, from time to timo, the evil tale of ritual murder has brought upon the Jewish people For the present let it suffice lor us to slate that it has met with ' public and official rcproivit ion ' f i om no fewer than seven Popes Five ol these condemn* d it by Bull — namely, Gregory IX Innocent IV in 1217, Gregory X. in 3272, Martin IV m 112."5. and Paul 111. in I.'ild One. of these Bulls is to be found in the woik of the contrnuators of Baronuis. The remainder aie m the Papal Kegesta and the archives of the Vatican Most, if not all of them, were published m full, with an English

translation, in the 'Jewish Chronicle ' about three years ago. To the list of the Popes mentioned above we might add the name of Benedict XIV., who sent Cardinal Ganganelh (afterwards Clement XIV.) as Papal Commissioner to investigate certain charges of ritual murder in Poland towards the close of the eighteenth century. Cardinal Ganganelli's report is a luminously clear and closely reasoned document, and it completely clears the Jewish people from the odious accusations which had been levelled against them. In this connection there is one fact that is worthy of special note : The authors of all these documents strongly insisted on the fact that it was v fundamental law of the people of Israel, and a practice that was intimately bound up with the details of their daily life, to shrink from contact with blood — above all from contact with human blood. For this reason, coupled with the complete lack of any trustworthy evidence of ritual murder, Pope Gregory X. issued a decree forbidding the receiving of the evidence of Christians in connection with this accusation unless corroborated by unexceptionable Jewish testimony, and ordering that persons of Jewish faith should not be arrested or detained on the charge of killing a Christian child ' unless, perchance — which we do not believe possible — they should be caught in the act.' No God-fear-ing man would cuff a child or hang a dog on the ' evidence ' which has been adduced against the unhappy victims of this insane legend of ritual murder. And yet, to the discredit of our common humanity, it lives and does its foul work even to this day.