The persistence of the custom of ingesting dried blood in medicinal electuaries, widespread among the Ashkenazi Jews until modern times, is testified to in the response of Hayym Ozer Grodzinski (1863-1940), a respected rabbi of Vilna (Vilnius). Responding to a question (dated 1930!), relating to the lawfulness of medications based on dried animal blood to be administered to sick people who were not in peril of their lives, the Lithuanian rabbi recalled the tradition, rooted for generations among Ashkenazi Jews. "As to the problem of the lawfulness of administering animal blood to a patient who is not in danger, since the blood has lost part of its elements and has been dried, this is my response". Therefore, Grodzinski went on to explain:
"If the blood is completely dried, it must certainly be permitted [...] and, even in the case of true and proper blood, as long as it was watered down, permission may be granted, in an emergency. And yet, since it is easy to use dried blood, which is considered by all to be perfectly lawful, it is impossible to imagine a state of emergency which would permit the oral ingestion of blood dissolved in water" [330].
p. 107]
In conclusion, the Jewish custom in the Germanic territories, throughout history, of consuming potions and medications based on animal blood, without regard to ritual prohibition of the Torah, appears to be incontrovertibly confirmed by authoritative and significant Hebraic texts. As we have seen, the compendiums of segullot in many cases expanded the lawfulness of using human blood, to be administered dried and dissolved in another liquid, which was to be recommended, not only for therapeutic purposes, but in conjurations and exorcisms of all kinds [331]. The Trent defendants were perfectly well aware of this, and listed a long case history of it based on personal experience, even if, during the first moments of the trial, they may have considered it expedient to mention the Biblical prohibition against the ingestion of blood, which is well known to everyone, as if it were applied by them scrupulously in everyday reality. The records of the Trent trial were also to reveal, not only the generalized use of blood by German Jews for curative and magic purposes, but the necessity which the accused, according to their inquisitors, are alleged to have felt to supply themselves with Christian blood (and that of a baptized child, in particular), above all, in the celebration of the rites of Pesach, the Jewish Passover. In this case, all they had to do was turn to specialized, acknowledged retailers of blood, or itinerant alchemists and herb alchemists, to obtain the required goods; but it was necessary to ascertain that the object of purchase was actually that precious and much sought-after commodity, young Christian blood, despite the facility of falsification and adulteration. And this was not an easy thing to do, or something to be taken for granted.
During the trial for ritual child murder brought against the Jews of Waldkirch, a village a short distance from Freiburg, in 1504, the victim's father, Philip Bader, was later found to be the murderer of the victim, little Matthew, and therefore executed publicly, thus illustrating the perpetrator’s relations with Jews. In his deposition rendered to the Judge, Bader admitted obtaining a certain amount of blood from the child's neck, without intending to kill him, to sell the blood to the Jews, who, according to him, paid high prices for that type of merchandise. In this case, the Jews are said to have refused to buy it, saying that Bader intended to swindle them, offering them animal blood instead of the blood of a Christian child. For their part, the Jews of Waldkirch advanced the theory that the unnatural father had killed the child, probably during a clumsy attempt to take blood from the carotid artery and profit
p. 108]
from the sale [332]. In any case, it seems certain that, in the reality of the German territories, blood was frequently purchased and sold, at high prices, for the most diverse purposes, and that young human blood was certainly preferable to animal blood. It was, therefore, foreseeable that the ambiguous and equivocal sector of selling and purchasing human blood was rife with fraud and counterfeiting for the purpose of increasing one’s profits with the minimum of effort.
According to Trent defendants, their more alert clients had demanded that the resellers provide certificates of ritual suitability, signed by serious and acknowledged rabbinical authorities, as was customarily done for food products prepared according to the religious rules of the kashrut . No matter how paradoxical and improbable this fact may appear to our eyes -- so much so as make one believe that it was invented out of whole cloth by the judicial authorities of Trent -- we believe that this matter deserves a certain amount of attention and precise verification, where possible, of the underlying facts and particulars upon which it appears to be built.
Both Maestro Tobias and Samuele da Nuremberg, Angelo da Verona, Mosè "the Old Man" of Würzburg, and his son Mohar (Meir), all recalled having come into contact with these retailers of blood, often, according to them, equipped with written rabbinical authorizations.
Sometimes they even recalled their names and origins; in some cases, they described their physical appearance with numerous details.
Abramao (Maestro Tobias’s supplier), Isacco of Neuss, from the bishopric of Cologne, Orso of Saxony, Jacob Chierlitz, also of Saxony, are not names which mean a lot to us. These are the names attributed to these itinerant merchants, originating in Germany and traveling, with their leather purses with waxed and tin-plated bottoms, to the Ashkenazim communities of Lombardy and the Triveneto region [333].
“Old Man” Mosè da Würzburg assured the judges that, in his long career, he had always acquired the blood of Christian boys from trustworthy persons and retailers bearing the required written rabbinical guarantees, which he called "testimonial letters [334]. So as not to be too vague about it, Isacco da Gridel, cook in Angelo da Verona’s house, recalled the manner in which the wealthier Jews of Cleburg, a city under the domination of Filippo de Rossa, acquired the blood of Christian children from a rabbi named Simone, who lived in Frankfurt, then a free city [335]. This “Simone of Frankfurt” is certainly identical with Shimon Katz,
p. 109]
rabbi of the Jewish community of Frankfurt am Main from 1462 to 1478, the year of his death: Shimon Katz was also the chairman of the local rabbinical tribunal. Rabbi Shimon Katz maintained close relations with the spiritual leaders of the Ashkenazim communities of Northern Italy and maintained close relations and friendship with Yoseph Colon, almost undisputed religious head of the Italian Jews of German origin [336]. To consider him as a common trafficker in Christian blood, as Isacco the cook claimed, frankly impresses me as an oversimplification and not very believable, in the absence of other information in support of such a singular thesis.
Undoubtedly more serious and worthy of consideration, even if extorted by means of cruel coercive methods, was the related testimony of Samuele da Nuremberg, undisputed head of the Jews of Trent. Samuele confessed to his inquisitors that the itinerant peddler Orso (Dov) from Saxony, from whom he had obtained the blood, presumably that of a Christian child, bore credential letters signed by "Mosès of Hol of Saxony, Iudeorum principalis magister". There appear to be no doubt that this “Mosè of Hol” was identical with Rabbi Mosès, head of the yeshiva at Halle, who, together with his family, enjoyed privileges granted by the archbishop of Magdeburg in 1442 and later by Emperor Friedrich III in 1446, including that of adorning himself with the title of Jodenmeister, i.e., the principalis magister Judeorum, as Mosè is described in Samuele da Nuremberg’s deposition. We know that Mosè abandoned Halle (a particular apparently ignored by Samuele) as early as 1458 and had moved to Poznán in Poland, to pursue his rabbinical activity in that community [337].
330
H.O. Grodzinksi,
331
On the magical and necromantic practices of Medieval Ashkenazi Judaism, with particular reference to the creation of the Golem, the artificial anthropoid, see M Idel,
332
On the ritual murder at Waldkirch (1504), see F. Pfaff,
334
"Predictia quibus (dictus Moises antiquus) emit sanguinem pueri Christiani habebant litteras testimonials factas a suis superioribus, per quas fiebat fides quod portantes illas litteras erant persone fide et quod illud quod portabant erat sanguis pueri Christiani".[“…. (Moses the Old Man said) that those who sell the blood of Christian boys have testimonial letters prepared by their superiors, attesting that those who bear these letters are persons to be trusted and that that which they carried was the blood of Christian boys”]. Mosè da Würzburg added that, when he had been living at Monza fifty years before, he had used Christian blood from an authorized merchant named Süsskind of Cologne (cfr. ibidem, pp. 358-359).
335
For this testimony by Isacco, Angelo da Verona's cook, see G. Divina,
336
On the life and death of Rabbi Shimon Katz, head of the
337
On Rabbi Moshè of Halle and his rabbinical activity, see