On the Construction of the “Murderous Jews” in the Empire around 1492

Intersectional Perspectives on Late Medieval Antisemitism

Abstract

In October 1492, 27 Jews were burned at the stake near the small town of Sternberg, and all remaining Jewish inhabitants were expelled from the county of Mecklenburg on the north-eastern periphery of the Holy Roman Empire, because of an alleged case of Jewish host desecration. This article argues that an intersectional approach may be helpful to better understand the persuasiveness of such an accusation made by Christian contemporaries against their Jewish neighbours. It shows that the category “Jew”, when used by non-Jews to stress Jewish alterity, is characterized by an intersectional entanglement of religion, culture, and race that enabled the idea of Jewish collective guilt and inherited anti-Christian hostility. This image of the “murderous Jews” was used to legitimize various forms of violence against Jews as measures to allegedly protect the hegemonic majority society. The article also demonstrates that the hegemonic position that produced this antisemitic image is better described as “goyish”, because, although rooted in Christian anti-Judaism, it went against the Christian doctrinal norm of the time.