April Reber
“Whatever their fate in life, the burghers of Endigen succeeded in constructing a meaningful and moving story out of what would otherwise have been just another reminder of the violence and meaningless of life. Fragmented events now acquired a unifying structure in the ritual murder discourse; violence transformed into relics, tragedy into triumph, and death into life” (Hsia 40 The Myth of Ritual Murder). What exactly is the process of turning tragedy into triumph, meaningless suffering into sacrifice for deity? Often, religion seems to answer (or at least provide an explanation for) human suffering. Thus the question I hope to provide some explanation to is how suffering is turned into a religious sacrifice? Or, using ritual murders as a case study, how can the alleged murder of a small boy or poor family turned into martyrdom and used as evidence of God’s omnipotence and a proof of religious truth?
During Easter, 1475, in Trent, two and a half year old Simon was reported missing by his parents. His father accused Jews of kidnapping him to the local judge. The Jews in the area were quickly gathered. The leader of the local Jewish community, Samuel, was tortured and eventually burned at a stake. Pope Sixtus VI eventually became involved, and though he did not invalidate the trial, he did declare that no further harm should come to the Jews (remember, the nobles and popes often came to the aid of Jews after receiving large sums of money – the Jews often became their bankers). “In any event, popular piety rapidly overtook the legal scruples of the ecclesiastical authorities: miracles began to be attributed to the little martyr boy, Trent became a pilgrimage site, and Simon was beatified by the Curia” (Hsia 43,).
Present circumstance then triggers cultural memory, or tradition. In our case study, this means remembering Christ on the Cross, or the Holy Family in the stable, or the Christ child for Christians and for the Jews often Ester, when they were freed, or perhaps the Exodus when they were sent away. Christians would the Exodus when they were sent away. Christians would also remember all the crimes committed against Christianity, and Jews would remember all the crimes and persecutions Jews and Judaism had received. These were traditions, mere social memories. These particular circumstances triggered these social memories, the memories then interpreted the circumstance, instead of murder; they were martyrs for God, having suffered the same as their religious fathers, instead of hate of foreigners and outsiders, it was more than this, it was religious persecution and sacrifice, the same that the father before them suffered for God’s religion.
Memory and circumstance work like puzzle pieces: when connected even remotely well, they form a powerful duo. Memory gives circumstance meaning: it interprets circumstance, providing it with a framework of meaning. “Facts never speak for themselves; interpretations create knowledge” (Hsia 13). Tradition and memory can be the surest form of history. It is often what people “know.” Because this tradition is what is “known,” it is the interpreter of facts.
As powerful as memory and circumstance are, there must be confirmation, some went or experience that testifies of the tradition, particularly the tradition of suffering and persecution, especially in our case because persecution and suffering is the circumstance, and tradition in ritual murders in both communities. This confirmation can often be in the form of divine intervention, usually public, but regardless of form often creates intense feelings.
For instance, in Passau, some Jews were tried for stealing and attempting to desecrate the Host. But the attempt failed. Because of this failure, “Passau was meant to celebrate, of course, the triumph of the Eucharist; the episode also served to demonstrate the real presence of Christ in the Host. The very indestructibility of the sacrament testified to the triumph of Christ’s Crucifixion and Resurrection” (Hsia 55).
Confirmation experiences during ritual murders and Host desecration trials often used many, if not all, of the senses. Carline Walker Bynum argued, “To the medieval pilgrim, theologian, innkeeper, or Markgraf, it was the matter, the stuff, the object, that was the center of it all – a powerful and dangerous center” (Smith 83, 84 The Continuities in German History), and “To focus on the objects is rather to see the pain and danger in them,” “the blood is still there” (Smith 84). These confirmations were thus often through physical means, which testified of the accuracy of the experience and also the correct tradition. To feed this need for physical confirmation, both traditions provided pamphlets, woodcuts, and celebrations.
The process of transforming suffering into religious sacrifice is an interchange between memory and confirmation. “Present factors tend to influence – some might say distort – our recollections of the past, but also because past factors tend to influence, or distort, our experiences of the present” (Connerton 2 How Societies Remember). The communication between past and present is the determining factor in creating sacrifice in suffering.