Apologies to the Sadly,Nauts, who might not share my fascination with the topic, but the opportunity to ask a medievalist seldom comes up. I don’t often meet one at the pub (it is too full of Dutch academics and squirrels).

There should be a regular column. “Ask Mr. Mediaeval!”

Oaths, superstitions, or any form of shamanism is incongruous with Christianity as it is taught–for example, as it was to me.

“In vino veritas.”

That’s all, folks!

Ed

Lucy, I suspect the phrase “His blood be on us and on our children” (Matthew xxvii:25) is what this is referring to. A spot more research would be a good idea. Ridiculous, yes, but it is in the Bible.

p.s. I am an agnostic, so my use of the word God is contextual.

Really? Like ‘Mexicans are lazy’ and ‘I’d wish they’d stop coming over here and taking all our jobs’?

–

Jilian:

Sort of right. The top-down model of antisemitism probably doesn’t work well, and passion plays are far from the most virulent antisemitic medieval Xian works. On the other hand, antisemitism is a key engine of Mariolatry: see John of Garland’s Stella Maris for a paradigmatic example. The worst antisemitic stories were the ritual murder charge (originates in the mid 12th c., either in the Rhine Valley or in Norwich) and the Host Desecration charge (13th c.), neither or which were concocted by the “government.” Can’t quite recall who came up the the HD charge (think Miri Rubin’s Gentile Tales: The Narrative Assault on Late-Medieval Jews should tell you), but the R. M. charge likely derives from monks (see JJ Cohen’s “The Flow of Blood in Medieval Norwich,” Speculum 79 (2004): 26-65 and follow his bib if you need more). If there’s any government-sponsored antisemitism, it’s coin-clipping, which isn’t limited to Jews, but, in England, Jews were the primary group charged with it, and were executed in great numbers by Henry III and Edward I.

Christians did loan each other money with interest. How do you think Northern Italy got so rich? In England, The monks were the big moneylenders in the 12th c., as were “native” Anglo-Saxon merchants, and the richest moneylender in England in the late 12th c. was William Cade, a Xian. When Henry II ruined them, the Jews stepped into the place. Yes, the Crown often used Jewish debts to break the kneecaps, so to speak, of the lesser nobility, which certainly led to the York massacre of 1190 (that and the fact that there was a vacuum of authority, since Richard I had just left on crusade, and it wasn’t in Richard’s interest that ‘his’ Jews be killed). But that’s not necessarily linked directly to religious antisemitism or, especially, passion plays, since, iirc, none of the evidence for English passion plays predates the expulsion of Jews in 1290. As for the Continent, not sure.

David Nirenburg’s Communities of Violence: Persecution of Minorities in the Middle Ages is a good place to get a methodological overview, while Jeremy Cohen’s Living Letters of the Law is probably the best book in English right now on the discursive history of medieval antisemitism. The Rubin and JJ Cohen above are also useful.

Do I do this for a living? Why yes I do.

One of those Very Long Concept Albums, but worth a listen.

Passion plays depicted the execution of Jesus as taking place due to the instigation of Satanic, blood-crazed Jews, who bore direct responsibility for his death. They usually show one of the Roman characters placing Jews under a “blood-curse” for all time because of the responsibility they bear.

And the charming thing about Gibson’s movie is that last little (completely historically inaccurate, might I add) bit about the blood curse is in his film. When one of the Jewish groups to preview the film complained about it, he removed the subtitles – but the dialogue is still there.

And Mel Gibson is somehow not an anti-Semite. Right.

Alcohol does not make you schizophrenic.
Alcohol does not make you believe crazy shit.
Alcohol does not make you tell lies.
Alcohol does not make you want things you don’t normally want.
Alcohol does not make you hate things you don’t normally hate.

All alcohol does is lower your inhibitions, forget your standards of etiquette, and pay more attention to your own desire and less to the desires of others.

A guy who gets drunk and turns into sleazy Mr Grabby-Hands is not acting out of character. He is acting how he wants to act while sober, albeit perhaps on a subconscious level, but does not because of social conditioning, peer approval, not breaking the law, not hurting people’s feelings, etc. Deep inside, he’s always sleazy Mr Grabby-Hands.

Maybe Mel only spews anti-Semitic bile when drunk, but inside he’s always an anti-Semite, even while sober. He’s just good at hiding it, is all, maybe even from himself.

Trouble is, booze makes us want to stop hiding. It makes us arrogant and proud, yes, even proud of those things of which we whould be most ashamed.

The problem is, the Jewish people have ALL the stereotypes now. If we avoid the Shylock legacy, we fall under an entirely different stereotype that they’ll hate us for just as much.

So, yeah, fuck ‘em.

And the Passion sucked prison dick.

But please know from my heart that I am not an anti-Semite. I am not a bigot. Hatred of any kind goes against my faith.

Does anyone else think that he sounds like the stereotype of the “PC racist” who holds racist opinions but, having been taught that ‘ Racism is wrong’, cannot bring themselves to admit, even to themselves, that ‘I am a racist”.

Is there a Web site called melgibsonisanasshole.com? Because, God knows, there should be.

On the other hand, what makes Jew-hatred distinct from most other predjudice is that the Jews get blamed for everything – even things that are contradictory. Other racial stereotypes are relatively consistent, for example blacks are stereotyped consistently as specifically dumb and/or ill-disciplined, almost never as cunning manipulators behind brilliant plots. Jews, however, get blamed for being behind BOTH World Capitalism AND World Communism. When they are “stingy” they get blamed for being “covetous” but when they are generous they get blamed for trying to “buy” affection. So I feel Foxman, because I understand how it feels when you reach a point where you think “They WANT to hate me, so they will hate me no matter what I do…so fuck it”.