Limit search to available items
Book Cover
E-book
Author Hsia, R. Po-chia, 1955- author.

Title Trent 1475 : stories of a ritual murder trial / R. Po-chia Hsia
Published New Haven : Published [by] Yale University Press in cooperation with Yeshiva University Library, [1992]
©1992

Copies

Description 1 online resource (xxv, 173 pages) : illustrations
Contents Foreword / Pearl Berger -- Ch. 1. The Prince-Bishop -- Ch. 2. The Jewish Community -- Ch. 3. The Inquest -- Ch. 4. The Torture Chamber -- Ch. 5. "Blessed Simon Martyr" -- Ch. 6. Theater of Death -- Ch. 7. The Apostolic Commissioner -- Ch. 8. An Ethnography of Blood -- Ch. 9. The Convert -- Ch. 10. The Women -- Ch. 11. Judgment in Rome -- Appendix: A Note on Sources
Summary On Easter Sunday, 1475, the dead body of a two-year-old boy named Simon was found in the cellar of a Jewish family's house in Trent, Italy. Town magistrates arrested all eighteen Jewish men and one Jewish woman living in Trent on the charge of ritual murder - the killing of a Christian child in order to use his blood in Jewish religious rites. Under judicial torture and imprisonment, the men confessed and were condemned to death; their women-folk, who had been kept under house arrest with their children, denounced the men under torture and eventually converted to Christianity. A papal hearing in Rome about possible judicial misconduct in Trent made the trial widely known and led to a wave of anti-Jewish propaganda and other accusations of ritual murder against the Jews. In this engrossing book, R. Pochia Hsia reconstructs the events of this tragic persecution, drawing principally on the Yeshiva Manuscript, a detailed trial record made by authorities in Trent to justify their execution of the Jews and to bolster the case for the canonization of "little Martyr Simon." Hsia depicts the Jewish victims (whose testimonies contain fragmentary stories of their tragic lives as well as forced confessions of kidnap, torture, and murder), the prosecuting magistrates, the hostile witnesses, and the few Christian neighbors who tried in vain to help the Jews. Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism
Analysis Blood accusation
Geschichte 1475
Jews Italy Trento Persecutions
Simon of d. 1475
Simon of Trent d. 1475
Trento Ethnic relations
Trento (Italy) Ethnic relations
Bibliography Includes bibliographical references (pages 141-167) and index
Notes In English
Online resource; title from e-book title screen (JSTOR platform, viewed October 7, 2016)
Subject Simon, of Trent, -1475
Simon, of Trent, -1475
Simon von Trient -1475
Simon (von Trient)
Blood accusation -- Italy -- Trento
Jews -- Persecutions -- Italy -- Trento
Blood accusation
Ethnic relations
Jews -- Persecutions
Pogrom
Judenverfolgung
Ritualmord
Falsche Verdächtigung
Juden
Bloedbeschuldiging.
Joden.
Processen (rechtspraak)
HISTORY / General.
Trento (Italy) -- Ethnic relations
Italy -- Trento
Trient
Juden.
Form Electronic book
Author Berger, Pearl, writer of foreword.
Mazal Holocaust Collection. TxSaTAM
LC no. 92004612
ISBN 9780300161892
0300161891