Gentile Tales | Miri Rubin

Subtitle: The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews
Author: Miri Rubin
Publisher: University of Pennsylvania Press (2004)
ISBN-10: 0812218809
ISBN-13: 9780812218800
Condition: Very Good. The front cover has some light scratches and slight creasing across the top front cover corner
There is a very slight crease across the top front cover corner. The cover has some light scratches. Else a clean, well bound, unsold copy.
Binding: Softcover
Pages: 266
Dimensions: 22.5 x 15 x 1.5 cm
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by Miri Rubin
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Beginning in Paris in the year 1290, Jews were accused of abusing Christ by desecrating the Eucharist - the manifestation of Christ's body in the communion service. Over the next two centuries this tale of desecration spread throughout Europe and led to violent anti-Jewish activity in areas from Catalonia to Bohemia, where at times it produced region-wide massacres and "cleansings."

Drawing on sources ranging from religious tales and poems to Jews' confessions made under torture, Miri Rubin explores the frightening power of one of the most persistent anti-Jewish stories of the Middle Ages and the violence that it bred. She looks not just at the occasions on which massacres occurred but also at those times when the story failed to set off violence.
In exploring the character, nature, development, and eventual decay of this fantasy of host desecration, Rubin presents a vivid picture of the mental world of late medieval Europe and of the culture of anti-Judaism.