book identifi es Easter Term as starting the eighteenth day such an overt liturgical allusion as Shakespeare provides aft er Easter and ending the Monday aft er the Ascension. in the title Twelft h Night was certainly not a reference to Trinity Term began the Friday aft er Trinity Sunday and the religious nature of the feast, or even to a performance ended June 28. Michaelmas Term began October 9 or 10 date, but to the atmosphere of frivolous chaos that had and ended November 28 or 29. Hillary Term began January developed over the years. It is far more likely that the 23 or 24 and ended February 12 or 13. During term time, timing of these performances was based on ecclesiasti- the court did not sit on Sundays or on the feasts of the cal rules regarding secular entertainment during certain Ascension, John the Baptist, All Saints, or the Purifi cation seasons of the year. Th e penitential seasons of Advent of Mary. and Lent, for example, were inappropriate for theatrical amusements. Dramatic performances S o u r c e c i t e d and the liturgical year G a r d i n e r , S a m u e l . Th e Cognizance of a True Christian, or the Dramatic performances were oft en scheduled to coin- outward markes whereby he may be the better knowne , etc. cide with certain church seasons or feasts. Th is practice London : Th omas Creede, 1597 . was not new to the English Renaissance, however. Th e medieval mystery plays serve as a prime example of the F u r t h e r r e a d i n g long-standing connection between theater, religion, and B r y a n t , J a m e s C . Tudor Drama and Religious Controversy . holy days, and if the tradition of lively performances at Macon : Mercer UP, 1984 . the more festive times of the year continued in England B u t l e r , A l b a n . Butler’s Lives of the Saints . Ed. Herbert Th urston , under Elizabeth, it could be considered as much a contin- S. J. , and Donald Attwater . 4 vols. London : Burns and Oats , 1956 . uation of Catholic tradition as a uniquely early modern or F o x e , J o h n . Actes and Monuments, etc. Various printings by John Reformation phenomenon. Day, beginning in 1563 , and various editions since. Elizabethan and Jacobean court records do, however, H a s s e l , R . C h r i s , J r . Renaissance Drama and the English Church reveal a large number of masques performed in con- Year. Lincoln : U Nebraska P, 1979 . H e fl ing , Charles , and Cynthia Shattuck , eds. Th e Oxford Guide to nection with various feasts, particularly with Twelft h the Book of Common Prayer: A Worldwide Survey. Oxford : Oxford Night/Epiphany and Shrovetide. Whether the content UP , 2006 . of those masques had a direct correlation with the reli- R i c k a b y , J o h n , S . J . Th e Ecclesiastical Year . New York : Joseph gious meanings of the liturgical seasons is doubtful; even F. Wagner , 1927 .

92. Judaism and Jews B r e t t D . H i r s c h

ttitudes toward Judaism and Jews in in league with the devil but were his descendants. Belief Shakespeare’s England were complex and contra- in this diabolical kinship explained many of the demonic Adictory. For the original audiences of Th e Merchant physical characteristics and behaviors attributed to them. of Venice , Shylock’s announcement “I am a Jew” (MV Medieval and early modern Christian literature, art, and 3.1.46 ) was more than a statement of religious affi liation. popular culture frequently depicted Jews as physically Th e word “Jew” itself – whether employed as noun, adjec- abject and distinct, with large hooked noses, red or dark tive, or verb – was informed by a web of shift ing cultural, curly hair, goatlike beards, and dark skin and features, social, theological, and political associations. Th e Jews were through to more monstrous attributes such as cranial held to be God’s chosen people, keepers of the Hebrew lan- horns, prehensile tails, a foul sulfurous stench, and men- guage and exegetical traditions essential to a comprehensive struation in men. Actual Jewish practices such as male understanding of Christian Scripture, and a nation destined genital circumcision reinforced the belief in an embod- to convert to Christianity and thereby herald the Second ied Jewish diff erence. Jews were also perceived as socially Coming of Christ. Th e Jews could boast eminent scholars, aberrant, as evidenced by frequent accusations of the trusted court physicians, and state administrators among kidnap and crucifi xion of Christian children in mockery their number, as well as wealthy merchants whose inter- of Christ’s Passion, the ritual use of Christian blood, the national networks mediated commerce and trade between poisoning of wells and spread of infectious disease, the various states in Christian Europe and the Ottoman Empire. desecration of the Eucharistic Host, acts of cannibalism At the same time, Christian authorities from the New and sorcery, and the fi nancial exploitation of Christians Testament onward maintained that the Jews were not only through coin clipping and usury.

709 part x. Religion

important economic niche for the Jews to fi ll. Englishmen Jews as polarizers of all social ranks, from commoners to members of Since the fi gure of the Jew carried so much symbolic the court and clergy to the monarch himself, relied on potential in late medieval and early modern England, it Jewish loans to fi nance their ventures, from buying land is unsurprising that other social, political, and religious and building churches to waging war and fi ghting in the groups either aligned themselves with or maligned oth- Crusades. Increasingly, a system of credit became essential ers as Jews or “judaizers.” On the one hand, Orthodox to support the economic expansion of the age, and so the and unorthodox Christian groups on all sides of the con- Jewish practice of usury was tolerated as a necessary evil. fessional divide were derided by one another in terms Usury was a profi table enterprise for medieval English of Judaic recidivism. On the other hand, Calvinists and Jews, but fi nancial prosperity came at the cost of growing other Protestant minorities identifi ed with the Jews via the resentment and vilifi cation by their Christian dependents, notion of divine election and a shared experience of perse- culminating in outbreaks of violence and hostility. cution and survival in diaspora. English xenophobia also Despite the fact that Christians also practiced mon- frequently expressed the economic and political threats eylending, usury was understood as a peculiarly Jewish posed by aliens such as the Spanish, Portuguese, French, crime, with the terms “Jew” and “usurer” rendered syn- Dutch, and even the Ottoman Turks, in Jewish terms. onymous. So strong was this association in England that Th us the Jew – real, imagined, symbolic – was simul- it survived the expulsion of the Jews and the subsequent taneously a fi gure of intense fascination and fear, and this relaxing of restrictions against the Christian practice of uneasy dynamic of attraction and repulsion was regularly usury, made necessary by Jewish absence. In A Discourse played out on the stage and page and from the pulpit. vppon vsurye (1572), Th omas Wilson reminded his readers Th ese competing and contradictory impulses, informed that usury was the reason Jews “were hated in England, by centuries of anti-Semitic and philo-Semitic narratives, and so banyshed worthelye,” and called for Christian usu- shaped English attitudes toward the Jews before and aft er rers (termed “Englishemen . . . worse then Jewes”) to be their wholesale expulsion from England in 1290. In order similarly expelled (Wilson sig. F5v). to better understand the complexities of Shakespeare’s Since Jews and usurers were rendered one and the same representation of Jews and those of his contemporaries, as in the English imagination, the iconography of both fi gures well as the rich and varied preconceptions of their orig- was similarly shared. For example, the wolf, a traditional inal audiences and readers, it is necessary to trace the symbol of avarice, frequently became aligned with Jews origin, transmission, and adaptation of these narratives and usurers alike. Echoes of this association appear in Th e through late medieval and early modern English litera- Merchant of Venice , where Shylock is compared to a “wolf” ture, drama, art, and popular culture. (MV 4.1.73 ) with “wolfi sh, bloody, starved, and ravenous” (MV 4.1.138 ) desires on Antonio, the “tainted wether of the fl ock” (MV 4.1.114 ). As well as a wolf, Shakespeare’s Jews and usury repeated characterization of Shylock as a dog (MV 1.3.103 , Jews migrated to England in substantial numbers aft er the MV 2 . 8 . 1 4 , MV 3.3.6 , MV 3.3.7 , MV 3.3.18 , MV 4.1.129, MV Norman Conquest of 1066, and in many ways the experi- 4.1.133 , MV 4.1.287) throughout the play resonates with ence of medieval English Jewry was no diff erent from that early modern English debates about usury, in which the of their brethren in other parts of Christendom. Th eirs was practice was frequently likened to bestiality, cannibalism, ѹ שנ ך ,a life dogged by state- and church-sponsored sanctions, and unnatural breeding. Th e Hebrew word for usury popular suspicion and hostility, and social and economic (neshe ḳ  ), is derived from the root word meaning “to bite,” restrictions designed to humiliate and alienate, culminat- and this etymology was known to early modern English ing with their wholesale expulsion by Edward I in 1290. commentators such as Henry Smith, who reminded his Medieval English Jews were property of the Crown, readers that usury “hath her name of byting, and she may and although this special status aff orded them royal pro- wel signifi e byting: for many haue not onely bene bitten by tection, it eff ectively rendered them resident aliens whose it, but deuoured by it, that is, consumed all that they haue” rights and obligations were subject to the whims of the (Smith sig. A6v). Th rough “biting” interest and “eating” monarch. Restrictions were placed on Jewish ownership debts, usurers (and therefore Jews) fed on the livelihood of land, and Christian fear of competition resulted in the of good Christians. In Th e Merchant of Venice, these fears exclusion of Jews from the merchant and craft guilds. are given a chilling literalism through repeated allusions Unable to practice craft s, manufacture goods, or sell either to Shylock’s feeding on Christian fl esh ( MV 1.3.38–39 , MV in shops or the marketplace, Jews were compelled to pur- 1.3.52 , MV 1.3.158–60 , MV 2.5.14–15, MV 3.1.42–43). sue less desirable economic activities. Moneylending was a particularly attractive option fol- Other “Jewish” crimes lowing the decrees of the Th ird Lateran Council (1179), which expressly forbade Christians from practicing Like usury, off enses against the coins of the realm were usury under threat of excommunication and provided an similarly understood as peculiarly Jewish crimes. Th ese

710 92. Judaism and Jews • Brett D. Hirsch

off enses included “clipping” (cutting slivers off coins), arisen such confusion that no diff erences are noticeable. “washing” (sweating coins in acid), and “rounding” or “fi l- Th us it sometimes happens that by mistake Christians ing” (fi ling down the edges of coins), the results of which have intercourse with Jewish or Saracen women, and were melted into bullion or forged into counterfeit coins, Jews or Saracens with Christian women. Th erefore . . . and the debased currency was put back into circulation. we decree that these people of either sex, and in all Although Christians were also accused of clipping coins, Christian lands, and at all times, shall be easily distin- as the chief owners of currency in medieval England it was guishable from the rest of the population by the quality tempting for the Jews to indulge disproportionately in this of their clothes. form of unjust enrichment. Th e most signifi cant episode (qtd. in Grayzel 308–09) of Jewish coin clipping occurred in 1278, when Edward Th e precise shape, size, and color of the Jew Badge I ordered a house-to-house search of Jewish homes across varied from country to country. In medieval England, it the country. Over 600 Jews were arrested, the majority took the form of strips of white linen or parchment to imprisoned in the Tower of London, with roughly a third represent the Mosaic Tablets of the Law, whereas a yellow of that number subsequently tried, convicted, and hanged circle was the most common form of the Badge elsewhere for off enses against the king’s coin the following year. in Europe. Jews were later required to wear distinctive Th e debasement of English currency was a perennial horned hats (pileum cornutum ) following the Council of concern of the Crown aft er the expulsion of the Jews, with Vienna in 1267, which, like the Jew Badge, “was enforced the off enses made high treason by an Act of Parliament earlier and more consistently in England than in any other under Henry V (3 Hen. V. c. 6). When Mary Tudor issued country of Europe” (Roth 95). Shakespeare alludes to this her general Act of Repeal (1 Mar. sess. 1. c. 1), the harsh legislation in Th e Merchant of Venice , where Shylock refers penalties for these off enses were abrogated. Concerns to his “Jewish gaberdine” ( MV 1.3.104 ) and “the badge of all about the debasement of English currency resurfaced dur- our tribe” ( MV 1.3.102). ing the reign of Elizabeth I, who issued An Acte agaynst As laws were put in place to ensure that Jews could the clyppyng, washyng, roundyng, or fylyng of Coynes (5 be readily identifi ed through distinctive clothing and Eliz. c. 11) in 1563, which made “Clyppyng, washyng, roun- badges throughout Christian lands, works of literature, dyng, or fylyng, for wicked lucre, or gaynes sake, of any art, and popular culture reinforced the notion that the [of] the proper moneys or coynes of this Realme, or the Jews were otherwise physically abject and unmistakable. dominions therof” an act of treason. Chroniclers of the Jews were frequently depicted in medieval art with large time were keen to remind readers of the earlier Jewish hooked noses, red or dark curly hair, goatlike beards, and precedents of the crime. For instance, Raphael Holinshed’s darker skin and features than Christians. See for example Chronicles related how the “monie and coine” of the realm Figure 141 , a drawing from a fourteenth-century English “was fowlie clipped, washed, and counterfeited by those manuscript showing the persecution of three Jews. Th e naughtie men the Iewes” (Holinshed 6: 279). “Well into the Gospel of John maintained that the Jews were descended seventeenth century,” whether through usury or off enses from the devil (John 8.44), and medieval textual and visual against the coin of the realm, “Jews continued to be iden- representations routinely associated the Jews with the tifi ed with crimes that threatened the economic health of demonic, attributed with such fi endish attributes as cranial the nation” (Shapiro 100), and opponents of Jewish read- horns, prehensile tails, and a foul stench (foetor judaicus ). mission to England could readily draw on these fears to The belief that Jews were horned, visually reinforced by support their arguments. the horned Jewish hat they were required to wear, may have also derived from the common iconographic representation Ways to know a Jew Th e Crown and the guilds imposed strict economic controls, but successive ecclesiastical sanctions fur- ther restricted the social lives of medieval English Jews. Following the Th ird Lateran Council of 1179, Jews could not employ Christian servants or give evidence against Christians. England was also the fi rst country in Europe to vigorously enforce the wearing of the Jew Badge to visibly distinguish Jews from Christians, only three years aft er the Fourth Lateran Council had prescribed it in 1215 amid concerns about miscegenation and purity:

Whereas in certain provinces of the Church the diff er- 1 4 1 . Th e persecution of English Jews. Marginal drawing in Chronica ence in their clothes sets the Jews and Saracens apart Roff ense, Rochester, early fourteenth century. British Library MS from the Christians, in certain other lands there has Cotton Nero D. II, fol. 183v. © Th e British Library Board.

711 part x. Religion of Moses with horns. The Hebrew text of Exodus 34.29 might “extract a venome worse than anie serpents” (Nashe describing Moses’ descent from Mount Sinai with the sig. N1r). Th e Jews were so routinely accused of spreading -ḳi qaran ‘or panav , “the plague by poisoning Christian wells throughout medi ) כּי קרן עור פּניו Tablets of the Law is skin of his face sent forth beams [of light]”). The Hebrew eval Europe that “by the sixteenth century the idea that q-r-n ) may be translated as “shine” ( qaran, a verb) Jews tried to poison Christians was proverbial” (Shapiro ) קרן root or “horn” ( qeren, a noun). In the Vulgate, the Hebrew verb 96). Th us, in John Marston’s Th e Malcontent , when of the Exodus text was mistaken for the noun and mistrans- Mendoza asks, “Canst thou impoyson? canst thou impoy- lated as cornuta (“horns”). Many instances of the horned son?” Malevole replies “Excellently, no Iew, Potecary, or Moses iconographic motif appear in medieval English man- Polititian better” (Marston sig. H1r). uscript illuminations, stained glass, and sculpture, such as Even the Black Death that devastated Europe and Asia the twelfth-century statue of Moses from St. Mary’s Abbey in the fourteenth century was blamed on the Jews. Edward in York. Fenton’s Certaine Secrete wonders of Nature , adapted from Th e belief that Jews emitted a noxious scent (the foe- the original French of Pierre Boaistuau, described how the tor judaicus), in contrast to the aromatic odor of sanc- Jews were tity emanating from the saintly Christian body, and that “determined and fully resolued amongst them selues, to Jewish men menstruated, reinforced popular anti-Semitic extirp at one instant the name of Christians, destroying narratives linking the Jews to excrement and fi lth, plague them all by poyson” prepared as “an oyntment, with a and disease, and poison. One particularly famous exam- confection of the blood of mans vrine composed with ple is the tale of the Jew of Tewkesbury, an event reported certaine venemous herbes,” which “they nightly cast to have occurred in 1257 but frequently retold up to . . . into all the fountaines and welles of the Christians. Shakespeare’s day. According to John Foxe’s account in Whervpon this corruption engendred such contagious Actes and Monuments , diseases in all Europe , that there died wel nigh the A certain Jew . . . fell into a priuy at Tewkesbury vpon thirde person throughout the same.” a sabboth day, which for the great reuerence he had (Fenton fol. 27r–v) to his holy sabboth, would not suff er him selfe to be Th e accompanying woodcut depicts a Jew casting a bag of plucked out. And so Lord Richard Earle of Glocester, poison into a well, into which a statue of a devil is urinat- hearing therof, would not suff er him to be drawne out ing, next to the mutilated body of a crucifi ed child. on Sundaye for reuerence of the holy day. And thus the wretched superstitious Jewe remayning there tyll mon- daye, was found dead in the doung. J e w i s h d o c t o r s (Foxe, Actes sig. N1v) Th e Fourth Lateran Council (1215) expressly forbade Th e notion of the “excremental” Jew persisted long medical practitioners from attending to the sick without into seventeenth-century England, when belief in the Church approval, yet numerous instances of Jewish doc- foetor judaicus was evidently widespread enough for tors in the service of medieval and early modern popes, Th omas Browne to devote an entire chapter to refuting the bishops, monarchs, and courtiers across Europe suggest charge that “the Jews stinck naturally” in his Pseudodoxia that this injunction was not strictly enforced. Jewish doc- Epidemica (1646). Similarly, as Jonathan Gil Harris has tors were thought to be particularly adept at doing away insightfully shown, there is much literary, dramatic, and with their Gentile patients by poisoning, a belief routinely anecdotal material linking the fear of Jewish infi ltration featured in early modern English literature and drama. of the Christian body politic with enemas and sodomy. Barabas claims to have “studied Physicke” and to “poy- In Christopher Marlowe’s Th e Jew of Malta , for example, son wells” in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta (Marlowe sig. E2r) Barabas betrays the Christian city of Malta by “gain[ing] before he proceeds to poison the nuns of Malta onstage. In entry to the body politic through apertures that are sub- Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller, Doctor Zacharie’s botched tly coded as its anus” and leading the Ottoman troops attempt to poison the pope’s concubine results in banish- through the sewers (Harris 80). ment of all the Jews from Rome. Robert Greene’s Selimus According to medieval and early modern medical (1594) and Th omas Goff e’s Th e Raging Turk (1631), two Turk knowledge, miasmas or harmful vapors were under- plays of the period that dramatize the same series of his- stood to be the principal cause of epidemic diseases such torical events, stage the poisoning of the Turkish emperor as plague, capable of contaminating both persons and Bajazet by his Jewish doctor. objects. In Th omas Nashe’s Th e Unfortunate Traveller , for While fi ctional works portrayed Jewish doctors poi- example, Zadoch boasts that his Jewish “breath stinkes soning their clients across continental Europe and the so alreadie, that it is within halfe a degree of poyson” and Ottoman Empire, the sensational trial of Roderigo Lopez were he “crusht to death . . . there might be quintessenst in 1594 brought the reality closer to home. Th e chroni- out of me one quart of precious poyson,” and if he were to cler William Camden, writing of the event some three cut off his ulcerous leg “from his fount of corruption” he decades later, recounted that Lopez, personal physician

712 92. Judaism and Jews • Brett D. Hirsch

to Elizabeth I and “a Iewish Sectary,” was convicted along with other “Portugalls ” (Portuguese) of having “con- spired to make away the Queene by poyson” for “50 000 Crownes” from the king of Spain. At his execution, Lopez reportedly confessed “that he loued the Queene as well as Christ Iesus; which being spoken by a Iew, as it was, was but onely laughed at by the people” (Camden 103–05). Whether Camden’s report is historically accurate or not, contemporary commentators made much of Lopez’s Judaism – past and present – despite his outward profes- sion of Christianity. Th e Admiral’s Men revived Th e Jew of Malta to capitalize on the sensational trial, and Nashe’s Unfortunate Traveller , with its vicious portrayal of Doctor Zacharie, was similarly published the same year. It has been argued that in Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice, reference 142. Lopez compounding to poyson the Queene. Illustration to “a wolf . . . hanged for human slaughter” (MV 4.1.134 ) is from George Carleton, A Th ankfull Remembrance of Gods Mercy possibly an allusion to the Lopez aff air. Although such an (London: 1627), p. 164. © Trustees of the British Museum. allusion is possible, based on the wordplay of Lopez/lupus (“wolf”), more convincing explanations draw on the wolf But now a private horrid Treason view as a symbol of Jewish avarice and usury, the medieval Hatcht by the Pope, the Devil, and a Jew; and early modern criminal prosecution and execution of Lopez a Doctor must by Poison do animals, and the contemporary practice of hanging Jews What all their Plots have fail’d in hitherto: alongside dogs, wolves, and other animals elsewhere in What will you give me then , the Judas Cries; Europe. Full fi ft y thousand Crowns , t’other replies. More direct representations followed in the wake of Tis done – but hold, the wretch shall miss his hope, Jacobean nostalgia for Elizabeth I. In Th omas Dekker’s Th e Th e Treasons known, and his Reward’s the Rope. Whore of Babylon (1607), Lopez appears in the character (Carleton Popish Plots.) of “ Ropus a Doctor of Physicke,” otherwise called “Lupus” throughout the play text. Although otherwise silent about his Jewish origins, the play’s description of Lopez Demonic rituals as a traitor who “smels” and “stinckes” with a “diseas’d” soul (Dekker sig. H1v) certainly resonates with the popu- In addition to charges of poisoning, the Jews of Europe lar belief in the foetor judaicus . Likewise, the image of the were routinely accused of the desecration of the Eucharistic “excremental” Jew is promoted by the derisive reference Host, the ritual murder of Christian children, and the use to Lopez as a “Glister-pipe” (ibid.), the implement used to of Christian blood for ritual purposes. When the body of a administer enemas. twelve-year-old apprentice leatherworker named William A detailed account of the Lopez plot appears alongside was found in a wood near Norwich on the Eve of Easter in other failed attempts on Queen Elizabeth’s life in George 1144, the local Jewish community was accused of his tor- Carleton’s A Th ankfvll Remembrance of Gods Mercy, origi- ture and murder. It was alleged that the Jews, following a nally published in 1624. Th e enlarged third edition of 1627 synagogue service on the second day of Passover, lured the featured custom engravings, one of which shows Lopez boy into the woods in order to crucify him. Th is was the “compounding to poyson the Queene” (Carleton 164), fi rst documented case of what has come to be referred to playing on the word for the preparation of poison and the as the ritual murder accusation – the belief that the Jews fee demanded by Lopez as he asks his Spanish interloc- annually crucifi ed a Christian boy as a ritual sacrifi ce in utor, “ Quid dabitis” (“What will you give?”). In the bot- mockery of Christ’s Passion – over a quarter of a century tom right of the panel, Lopez is shown hanging from the before similar charges were recorded elsewhere in Europe. gallows with the inscription “Proditorum fi nis funis ” (“Th e Further English allegations were recorded at Gloucester end of traitors is the rope”). (See Figure 142 .) (1168), Bury St. Edmunds (1181), Bristol (1183), Winchester Th e Carleton engravings were adapted for use in a (1191), and London (1244). later seventeenth-century broadside, Popish Plots and Th e most famous English ritual murder case occurred Treasons . . . Illustrated with Emblems and explain’d in in 1255, when the body of a young Christian boy was found Verse. Th e verse accompanying the Lopez engraving in a well in Lincoln. Subsequent legends about the mar- emphasized his Jewish identity by reference to Judas, the tyrdom of Little St. Hugh of Lincoln served as a source for archetypal Jewish traitor, and drew on a web of negative Geoff rey Chaucer’s Canterbury Tales , in which the prior- associations between Jews and the devil, the pope, doc- ess describes the capture, torture, and brutal murder of a tors, and poison: young clergion by the Jews as he walks home. Like William

713 part x. Religion of Norwich and Little St. Hugh of Lincoln, the alleged vic- tims of ritual murder were venerated as saints and mar- tyrs until the Reformation, and stories of their martyrdom were retold and adapted in popular ballads, chronicles, and martyrologies, and depicted in stained glass, painted rood screens, and other decorations in churches and cathe- drals across England. By the sixteenth century, belief that the Jews crucifi ed Christian children was widespread and proverbial, as evidenced by the fl ippancy of Friar Jacomo’s remark about Barabas in Marlowe’s Jew of Malta: “What ha[s] he crucifi ed a child?” (Marlowe sig. G2r). Later adaptations of these allegations took on addi- tional implications of cruelty and depravity, combining the traditional charge of ritual murder with what has come to be known as the Blood Libel – the accusation that the Jews procured Christian blood for ritual purposes, medi- cine, and magic. Th e fi rst recorded accusation took place in 1235 when the Jews of the German town of Fulda were accused of killing fi ve Christian boys and drawing their blood ad suum remedium (“for remedial use”). Later accu- sations on the Continent were even more sensational, such as the abduction, forced circumcision, bloodletting, and ritual murder of Simon of Trent in 1475. News of these Blood Libel legends soon reached England and tainted the memory of the child martyrs. For 1 4 3 . A fi ft eenth-century painted rood screen depicting the ritual example, a fi ft eenth-century painted rood screen in Holy murder of St. William of Norwich. Holy Trinity Church, Loddon, Norfolk. Photograph courtesy of Dr. Katherine J. Lewis, University Trinity Church, Loddon, Norfolk, depicts the bloodletting of Huddersfi eld. of William of Norwich by the Jews as they crucify him – an aspect completely absent in earlier accounts of his mar- tyrdom. (See Figure 143 .) Th e Blood Libel narratives also In 1189, a delegation of English Jews bearing gift s was reinforced the perception of the Jews as cannibals, feast- barred from admission to the coronation of Richard I, ing fi guratively on Christian fi nances through usury and amid fears that they intended to harm the monarch by literally on the blood of Christian children. Early mod- sorcery and the evil eye. A crowd that had been aroused ern echoes of the cannibalism charge are found in the by their unwelcome presence beat several members of the repeated allusions to Shylock’s feeding on Christian fl esh delegation to death, and further outbreaks of violence in Th e Merchant of Venice (MV 1.3.38–39 , MV 1 . 3 . 5 2 , MV broke out across the country as exaggerated rumors of 1.3.158–60, MV 2.5.14–15, MV 3.1.42–43) and, more explic- the incident spread. Belief that Jews were capable of con- itly, in Th e Trauailes of the Th ree English Brothers, in which juring and conversing with demons found expression in Zariph the Jew prays that Sir Anthony Sherley will default many variations of the proto-Faustian Th eophilus leg- on his payment, since “the sweetest part / Of a Iewes feast, end, in which the monk Th eophilus is induced by a Jewish is a Christians heart” (Day, Rowley, and Wilkins sig. F1v). sorcerer to exchange his soul for favors from the devil. Moreover, “the Hebrew language, the tongue in which the sacred Scriptures were written, had achieved the status of S o r c e r y an especially eff ective magical medium in ancient times” Th e Blood Libel and ritual murder accusations drew on (Trachtenberg 61) and by the seventeenth century was and fused with earlier associations between the Jews and considered essential for Christian practitioners of natural sorcery. Readers of the Old Testament knew that Moses philosophy, alchemy, and other occult sciences. Th e use and Aaron had freed the Israelites by besting the Egyptian of Hebrew inscriptions on amulet charms, prepared and sorcerers, and Joseph was adept at interpreting dreams – owned by medieval and early modern Christians, further a service that Jews were known to sell in Roman times, attests to the perceived effi cacy of the language for magic. as the epithet qualiacunque voles Iudaei somnia vendunt Blood Libel narratives oft en suggested that Jews (“Th e Jew will readily sell you any dream”) in Juvenal’s obtained Christian blood to anoint the bodies of their Satires makes clear. Th e medieval belief that the Jews were dead, in the vain hope of redemption by proxy should in league with the devil explained their perceived magical Christ turn out to be the Messiah. Other charges sim- abilities and equated Jewish ritual with demonic magic in ilarly maligned the Jews as perfi dious in their outward the popular Christian mind. rejection of Christianity by pointing to acts that betrayed

714 92. Judaism and Jews • Brett D. Hirsch

their acknowledgment of Christian truth. Jews were sixteenth century were quick to tarnish their rivals with frequently accused of illicitly obtaining and torturing the same stigma of Jewishness. In short, the charge of the Eucharistic Host, simultaneously reenacting the judaizing was a convenient and popular epithet that could Passion and betraying belief in the Christian doctrine of be (and was) leveled at anyone, regardless of creed. transubstantiation. In much the same way that English Protestants stig- Likewise, charges that the Jews profaned icons and matized Catholic pomp and ceremony as a regression to relics revealed Jewish recognition of the Catholic doc- Judaism, the charge of judaizing also formed part of the trine of intercession and the saints themselves. Narratives polemic of denunciation of those Protestant minorities detailing Jewish desecration of the Host and abuse of seeking further reform of the English Church. Branded icons and relics were widespread throughout medieval as Precisians and Sabbatarians, these various groups were Europe, promulgated in sermon exempla, popular ballads, collectively confl ated as Puritans and maligned by vir- and religious drama, and frequently depicted in manu- tue of the perceived Jewish tendencies they shared – the script illuminations and in stained glass in churches and privileging of Old Testament values and espousing the cathedrals. Perhaps the most famous English example of literal interpretation of scripture. Unsurprisingly, these the Host desecration narrative is the fi ft eenth-century Puritans were frequently stigmatized as Jews on the early Croxton Play of the Sacrament , in which Jonathas and his modern stage. In addition to their hypocrisy, religious motley crew of fellow Jews subject the Host to a variety of fervor, and snobbery, stage Puritans were mocked for diff erent tortures – so outlandish that Jonathas manages their subscription to Jewish beliefs and practices, such as to sever his hand in the process – before burning it in an abstaining from pork or observing the Jewish Sabbath. oven, in which it explodes to reveal the transubstantiated Examples include “Rabbi” Zeal-of-the-Land Busy in Ben Christ. Th e play concludes with the miraculous restora- Jonson’s Bartholomew Fair , fi rst performed in 1614, or the tion of Jonathas’s hand and the baptism of the repentant Puritan fi gure appearing as part of the “anticke round of Jews, who then embark on a penitential voyage. dancers” in Robert Davenport’s A New Tricke to Cheat the Divell, who announces “I am a Puritan . . . one that will eate no Porke, / Doth use to shut his shop on Saterdayes, Figurative and former, / . . . A Iewish Christian, and a Christian Iew ” (Davenport covert and current Jews sig. F4v). Long aft er they were expelled from England in 1290, medi- Christian polemics confl ated the Jews with other “ene- eval narratives about the Jews continued to be circulated mies of Christ,” commonly resulting in the elision of dis- and adapted into diff erent media, ensuring that early mod- tinctions between Jews and Muslims, pagans, and heretics ern authors such as Shakespeare and his contemporaries in medieval and early modern English writing. Jessica is could draw on and engage with this rich cultural legacy. described as “Most beautiful pagan, most sweet Jew” (MV Developments in England and abroad provoked renewed 2.3.10–11 ) and an “infi del” (MV 3.2.217 ) in Th e Merchant interest in the Jews, who, although they remained fi gures of Venice. In Marlowe’s Th e Jew of Malta, Barabas is largely from narrative and fantasy rather than experience, described as “An Infi dell” (Marlowe sig. G4v), and an continued to play a role in the ongoing projects of build- extortionate tribute is exacted from him and his fellow ing an English national identity and negotiating Christian Jews “like infi dels” (sig. C1r). Th e confl ation between Jews identity in the face of diff erent cultures and civilizations. and Muslims – Turks, Saracens, or Moors – was particu- Reformation polemics on all sides of the confessional larly commonplace in the drama of the period. Jewish divide were ruthless in their attempts to denigrate the characters frequently swear by “Mahounde” – a pejorative beliefs and vilify the personalities of one another. Among corruption of the name of the Islamic prophet – in the sur- these heated exchanges, the charge of “judaizing” was sin- viving medieval liturgical dramas and mystery cycles. For gularly popular, simultaneously an accusation of Judaic example, Jewish characters repeatedly pray to “Machomet” recidivism and an invocation of the myriad negative asso- throughout the Croxton Play of the Sacrament, and Herod ciations of the Jews. Th e rituals and ceremonies of the variously swears to “Mahounde” in the York and Towneley Catholic Church were cited as evidence of judaizing by the cycles and the Digby plays. Th is confusion of Jew and Reformers, to whom the pope was not simply a monster – Muslim survived into the early modern drama, evidenced reinforced by numerous popular woodcuts and broad- by Robert Wilson’s Th e Th ree Ladies of London (1584), in sides – but the head of the “Synagogue of Satan.” Th e sheer which the Jewish usurer Gerontus swears “by mightie number of treatises against the ceremonies of the “Romish Mahomet” (R. Wilson sig. E3r). Synagogue” and the rituals of the “Synagogue of Satan” printed in early modern England testifi es to the lasting A l i e n s popularity and utility of the label. Catholic commenta- tors derided the scriptural literalism of the Calvinists and Economic threats, whether posed by foreign Christian the Lutheran liturgy as equally Judaic, just as the vari- merchants or native English usurers, were routinely ous Protestant minority groups that emerged during the described in terms that drew on the long tradition of

715 part x. Religion association between the Jews and usury and fi nancial of charitable bequests from individual benefactors for the ruin. In the last decade of the reign of Elizabeth I, unem- same, suggest that there was limited public confi dence in ployed laborers and returning soldiers –“masterless men the effi cacy of converting Jews in medieval England. Th e and vagabonds” – fl ocked to the capital in startling num- suspect status of converts was reinforced by the concom- bers in search of food, work, or relief. Th is infl ux strained itant reluctance on the part of medieval state and eccle- existing civic institutions and infrastructure, and popu- siastical institutions to fully erase the memory of their lar frustration was directed toward London’s immigrant former Jewish identities: although Jewish converts were communities. no longer required to wear the tabula-shaped badge that Anti-alien feelings were exacerbated in 1593 when, aft er had previously identifi ed them externally as Jews, at their a bill proposed to prohibit aliens – then predominantly baptisms they were given surnames like le convers (“the composed of Protestant exiles from France and the Low convert”) to signal their status as convert – and potentially Countries – from engaging in retail trade failed to pass current – Jews. through Parliament, merchants in London responded by Suspicion of the insincerity of Jewish converts gradu- issuing a series of broadsides threatening foreign artisans ally developed into the belief that Jews were simply inca- with violence unless they left England. One such broadside pable of eff ectively embracing Christianity. Central to this was affi xed to the wall of a Dutch church. Among the lit- was the notion of the Jewish body as constitutionally dif- any of charges leveled at the “strangers that doe inhabite in ferent, such that rejection of Christianity and the failure of this lande,” the “Dutch Church Libel” maligned London’s baptism were the result not of Jewish perfi dy but of tainted resident aliens as nefarious Jews who threatened the wel- Jewish blood and biology. On the Iberian Peninsula, the fare of the English state – “Your vsery doth leave vs all for status of Jewish converts was interrogated with infa- deade . . . / And like the Jewes, you eate us vp as bread” mous ferocity. Spain was full of cristianos nuevos (“New (qtd. in Freeman) – terms resonating “with the discourse Christians”) or conversos (“converts”) following waves of of host desecration on the one hand and, on the other, the mass conversions, both voluntary and forced, during the cannibalism associated with Jews in late sixteenth-century fourteenth and fi ft eenth centuries. Suspicions about the discussions of usury” (Shapiro 185). Likewise, English sincerity of these converts, now able to enjoy the freedoms Christians who engaged in the “Lazie Trade” of usury and opportunities aff orded Christians, led to the so-called were commonly derided as Jews who, according to Francis limpieza de sangre (“cleanness of blood”) laws, which Bacon, should have been made to wear “Orange-tawney excluded persons tainted by Jewish descent from positions Bonnets” to visually identify them as such since “they doe of honor and public offi ce. Iudaize ” (Bacon 239–40). Fears that converts might backslide and return to the faith of their former coreligionists, coupled with the desire to create a homogenous Christian nation in Spain, C o n v e r s i o n led to the expulsion of the Jews in 1492. Faced with the Even as usurers, resident aliens, and Christians of all grim prospect of conversion or exile, many Jews chose denominations in early modern England were variously to take baptism, which in turn only deepened suspicions stigmatized as judaizers, the issue of conversion continued about the status of converts and the need to root out secret to vex the question of Jewish identity. Despite the fervent Jews. Th e Spanish Inquisition, established by papal bull in belief held by many Christians that the Jews were destined 1478 to maintain Catholic purity and to root out heretics, to join Christendom and herald the Second Coming of took up the charge of ousting crypto-Jews or marranos (a Christ, Jewish converts to Christianity were treated as sus- derogatory term alluding to “pork”). Events in Portugal pect. In his study of Jewish converts in thirteenth-century shortly aft er only intensifi ed the problem when, follow- England, the historian Robert Stacey has shown that by ing an edict of expulsion in 1497, Jews in Lisbon expect- this time “there was clearly an irreducible element to ing ships bound for exile were confronted instead with Jewish identity in the eyes of many Christians, which monks and baptismal fonts. From that moment on, all no amount of baptismal water could entirely eradicate.” Jews in Portugal were considered Christians and, follow- In undergoing baptism, “converts from Judaism became ing the Spanish example, an Inquisition was established Christians, but this did not mean that they had entirely to root out crypto-Jews. ceased to be Jews in the eyes of their brothers and sisters in However, “rather than stamping out crypto-Judaism,” Christ” (Stacey 278). the Spanish and Portuguese Inquisitions “unexpectedly Th is is borne out in the records of the medieval English created and exported a new problem: the fear that some Jews who sought refuge in the Domus Conversorum, a hos- Christians were not really Christians,” in the process pice established in 1232 for the maintenance of converts revealing the disturbing reality that “faith was disguis- de judaica pravitate (“from Jewish depravity”). Th e reluc- able, religious identity a role one could assume or discard tance of the Crown to provide adequate funding for the if one had suffi cient improvisational skill” (Shapiro 17). As maintenance of these converts, and the wholesale absence a result, Spanish and Portuguese exiles were commonly

716 92. Judaism and Jews • Brett D. Hirsch

suspected of being crypto-Jews. English authors routinely of the titular character – the merchant Antonio or the usu- confl ated Iberian national identities, such that the inter- rer Shylock – since the play was entered in the Stationers’ changeable terms Spaniard, Portugall , and Portingale Register as “the Merchaunt of Venyce, or otherwise called became synonymous with marrano and crypto-Judaism. the Jewe of Venyce ” on July 22, 1598. For example, John Florio’s English-Italian dictionary defi ned the word marrano as “a Iew, an Infi dell, a ren- I n a l i e n a b l e J e w i s h n e s s egado, [and] a nickname for a Spaniard” (Florio 216). Th e English were also well aware of the events on the Iberian By the early modern period, “Jewishness” was clearly Peninsula and their disastrous aft ermath, evidenced by a category of diff erence founded on more than theolog- the crude jokes that were told mocking the Spanish and ical distinctions, and events elsewhere in Europe con- Portuguese as “discended of the fart of a Iew” (Copley tributed to the belief that the Jews were constitutionally sig. T1r), simultaneously maligning the Iberian nations unable to shed their Jewish identities through conversion. as Jewish and mocking their obsession with lineage and For a time, Martin Luther had been sympathetic toward blood purity as hypocrisy. Other jokes made light of the the Jews as natural allies against the idolatrous practices grim fate of those crypto-Jews caught by the Inquisitions of a corrupt Catholic Church. When the Jews failed to and burned as heretics at an auto-da-fé , jesting that con- embrace the purifi ed version of Christianity off ered by verts are unafraid to wade through any amount of water – the Reformation, Luther railed against them, rehearsing baptismal or otherwise – to avoid the fl ames (Copley the litany of traditional anti-Semitic charges with renewed sig. O3r). vigor. Since he believed that their diabolical nature ren- dered them physically and spiritually incapable of con- version, Luther called for the Jews to be burned to death Diasporas in their synagogues. Although they did not call for syna- Th e vast majority of convert and covert Jews left Spain gogues to be razed, English authors were similarly uneasy and Portugal for the relative toleration of the Ottoman about the ambivalent status of Jewish converts. In his ser- Empire, where they were free to openly practice their old mon celebrating the baptism of a Jew in 1578, John Foxe faith and where some rose to powerful state and admin- preached the millenarian belief that “all nations, as well istrative positions. Other Iberian crypto-Jews established Iewes” will be “vnited together in one sheepefold” under communities (or joined existing Jewish ones) in Italy, and Christ, while naturalizing Jewish obstinacy and “infi - later the Netherlands, Germany, and France. Th e loca- delitie” as an “inheritable disease . . . from their mothers tion dictated whether it was prudent for crypto-Jews to wombe, naturally caried through peruerse frowardnes, maintain the outward appearance of devout Protestant into all malitious hatred, & contempt of Christ, & his or Catholic exiles, or, as in the case of Venice and the Christians” (Foxe, Sermon sig. A1v, B3r). Ottoman Empire, if it was safe to profess their Judaism Th ere are no Jewish conversions represented as unam- openly. In England, small communities of crypto-Jews biguously sincere and eff ective in the extant English plays were established in London and Bristol, where they of the period. Th e effi cacy of the conversion of Jonathas passed as Catholics under Mary and then as Protestant and his brethren in the late medieval Play of the Sacrament exiles aft er her death. is conveniently untested when they are expelled from In addition to reiterating the legend of the Wandering their new Christian community at the close of the play. Jew, an important consequence of the diasporas initiated Marlowe’s representation of Abigail as “False, credulous, by the expulsion of the Jews from the Iberian Peninsula inconstant” (Marlowe sig. F3v) in her feigned initial con- was the development of mercantile networks, mediated version to gain access to her father’s gold and her later par- by Jews and crypto-Jews, which cut across and linked all roted professions of faith, and in Barabas’s empty promises of the rival seaborne Protestant, Catholic, and Islamic to be baptized, clearly question the sincerity and effi cacy empires. As with usury, international trade became closely of Jewish conversion in Th e Jew of Malta. So, too, in Th e aligned with the Jews in the early modern English imag- Merchant of Venice , where references to Jessica as an ination. Marlowe’s Jew of Malta begins with Barabas “ in “infi del” ( MV 3.2.217 ) and “stranger” ( MV 3.2.236) and to his Counting-house, with heapes of gold before him,” boast- Shylock as “the rich Jew” (MV 5.1.292) aft er both of their ing about his vast riches and exotic goods accumulated purported conversions suggest that their Jewishness has through trade with nations from the far-fl ung corners of the not been entirely eff aced by baptism. known world: Persians, “men of Vze ,” the Spanish, Greeks, A more strikingly overt example of Jewish converts Arabians, Moors, Indians, and Egyptians (Marlowe sig. retaining their essential Jewish identity postconversion B1v–B2r). Th e association between Jews and merchants comes from Robert Daborne’s A Christian Turn’d Turke , explains the confusion behind Portia’s question, “Which in which the character of Benwash – a Jewish merchant is the merchant here and which the Jew?” (MV 4.1.170 ), as who has converted to Islam to safeguard his wife against well as ongoing critical confusion over the precise identity the predations of the Tunisian Turks – is never once

717 part x. Religion referred to by other characters as a Muslim or a Turk but other Oriental languages at fi ve universities, including is instead consistently identifi ed as a Jew. Th is indelible Oxford, with posts at other universities shortly to fol- Jewish identity is evident not only in the performances low. Knowledge of Hebrew had always been central to the of these plays but also in the printed texts. Th e earliest humanist task of translating the Bible into the vernacu- extant text of Th e Jew of Malta , the 1633 Quarto, prints the lar, taken up with renewed vigor aft er the Reformation, prefi xes “Iew .” and “ Bar.” at diff erent points of the play to and the emphasis on the literal interpretation of scripture indicate Barabas’s speech. Th e 1600 Quarto and 1623 Folio championed by Lutherans and other Protestant groups texts of Th e Merchant of Venice are analogous cases, var- privileged the knowledge of hebraica veritas (“Hebrew iously printing “ Shy. ” or “ Shyl. ” and “ Iew.” or “ Iewe .” to truth”). Th e introduction of the printing press and the indicate Shylock’s parts. Benwash’s speeches in the 1612 use of Hebrew type allowed Christian Hebraists across Quarto of A Christian Turn’d Turke, however, are consis- Europe to disseminate and engage directly with the body tently marked with the prefi x “Iew .” of Jewish biblical scholarship and commentary now In Shakespeare’s England, where a single genera- accessible to them. tion saw the offi cial faith change back and forth between Th e “Great Matter” of Henry VIII stimulated inter- Catholicism and various forms of Protestantism, conver- est in Hebrew studies in England when the king hoped sion was not simply a matter of individual concern and to employ Hebrew scholarship to secure his divorce from topical interest but of life and death. Th e fi gure of the Catherine of Aragon. According to the Old Testament, Jew – fi xed and unchanging, unaff ected by conversion, the union between a man and his brother’s wife is cate- expulsion, or migration – projected the popular desire for gorically forbidden (Lev. 18.16) and elsewhere expressly stability in religious and national identity during a time prescribed as necessary to continue the family line (Deut. of uncertainty. As illustrated by the events in Spain and 25.5). With the help of Francesco Zorzi, a Venetian friar Portugal and the emergence of similar sentiments else- and Christian Hebraist, Henry VIII sought the opinion where in Europe, this was a period that saw the hardening of the Italian rabbis in the hope that it might support his of racial categories and the birth of modern, biologically case. Unfortunately for the monarch, rabbinical opinion infl ected, racism. Anti-Semitic narratives promoting the was against him and “worst of all, at this very period a levi- notion that the Jewish body was diff erent now imparted rate marriage took place in Bologna between a Jew and his a sense of permanence not previously emphasized. Jews brother’s widow,” which “completely discredited all argu- were no longer simply members of a misguided faith but a ments on the other side, and the breach between England race apart, whose bodies were radically diff erent and resis- and Rome was brought nearer” (Roth 146). English tant to conversion. Protestantism, nationalism, and Hebrew studies devel- oped concurrently in the period that followed, where pro- fi ciency in the language – culminating in the monumental Positive interest in Judaism publication of the King James Bible in 1611 – was frequently Th e seed of Christian doubts about the effi cacy of bap- linked with anti-Catholic, pro-English rhetoric. Hebrew tism and the sincerity of Jewish converts planted in the and other Oriental languages were also privileged in many Middle Ages, nurtured in part by the rise of nationalism of the occult philosophical systems that developed during and a concomitant hardening of racial and ethnic cat- the Renaissance. For fi gures such as Marsilio Ficino and egories on the one hand and the attendant crises of iden- Giovanni Pico della Mirandola, familiarity with esoteric tity of the various Reformations on the other, bore bitter Hebrew mystical literature – particularly the texts asso- fruit by the early modern period. Even so, it is all too ciated with the Kabbalah – was integral to the pursuit of easy to lose sight of the positive interest in Jews, Judaism, prisca theologia , the theory that universal Christian truth and Jewish culture in England and elsewhere in Europe was to be found in and confi rmed by the religions of antiq- during this period – interests that would eventually lead uity. Hebrew was believed to be the language of angels to the de facto readmission of the Jews to England in and demons, and by the seventeenth century profi ciency the 1650s. in the language was considered essential for practitioners Christians eager to convert the Jews, whether by com- of natural philosophy, alchemy, and other occult sciences. pelling them to attend sermons or to participate in pub- All of the most famous (and infamous) European occult- lic disputations, quickly realized that their cause was ists of the age – Johannes Reuchlin, Johannes Trithemius, greatly hindered by a lack of profi ciency in Hebrew and Heinrich Cornelius Agrippa, Paracelsus, John Dee, unfamiliarity with Hebrew Scripture and Jewish her- Giordano Bruno, Robert Fludd, Athanasius Kircher, and meneutics. Th is proselytizing urge, combined with an Francis Mercury von Helmont – adapted and synthesized increasing scholarly recognition of the importance of the literature and exegetical techniques of the Kabbalah in Hebrew Scripture and exegesis for the understanding of their own works of natural philosophy. Christianity itself, led to the 1312 decree of the Council Not all medieval and early modern representations of Vienne establishing lectureships in Hebrew and of Jews were pejorative. At the same time as Jews were

718 92. Judaism and Jews • Brett D. Hirsch depicted as monstrous aliens and murderers of Christian England. Th ese positive and negative associations ren- children, neutral and even positive images were pro- dered “Jewishness” a fl exible label in Shakespeare’s duced. Old Testament Jews in particular were frequently England, a symbolically potent, fl uid, and composite interpreted typologically as prefi guring Christ – whom, identity construct projected onto oneself and others to unlike contemporary Jews, they did not have the oppor- suit changing social, cultural, theological, national, and tunity to reject – and other New Testament personali- political agendas, with serious consequences for all Jews, ties. Tudor and Stuart monarchs promoted comparison real and imagined. to Old Testament kings – Henry VIII to David, Edward VI to Josiah and Solomon, Elizabeth I to Esther, and S o u r c e s c i t e d James I to David and Solomon – in order to reinforce the Bacon , Francis . “ Of Vsurie. ” Th e essayes or covnsels, civill and mor- notion of rule by divine right and to garner praise and all . London : 1625 . 239–46 . adoration by association with these mythic king-fi gures B r o w n e , Th omas. Pseudodoxia Epidemica . London : 1646 . of wisdom, learning, and peace. With the notable excep- C a m d e n , W i l l i a m . Tomus Alter, & Idem: Or Th e Historie of the Life tion of Cain – and in contrast to Herod, Judas, and the and Reigne of that Famous Princesse, Elizabeth . T r a n s . Th omas “Christ-killers” of the New Testament – when episodes Browne . London : 1629 . from the Old Testament were dramatized in medieval C a r l e t o n , G e o r g e . Popish Plots and Treasons . London : John Garret , mystery cycles and early modern biblical plays, the Jews c.1675–1698 . ———. A Th ankfvll Remembrance of Gods Mercy . 3rd ed. London : were portrayed as positive models or neutral (but relat- 1627 . able) fi gures. C o p l e y , A n t h o n y . Wits, Fittes, and Fancies . London : Richard Jones , Th e Reformation and the emergence of various 1595 . Protestant groups stimulated renewed interest in mille- D a b o r n e , R o b e r t . A Christian Turn’d Turke . London : Nicholas Okes , narian ideas concerning the discovery of the twelve lost 1612 . tribes of Israel and their subsequent reunion and general D a v e n p o r t , R o b e r t . A Pleasant and Witty Comedy Called, A New conversion to Christianity. Th ese ideas took a particu- Tricke to Cheat the Divell . London : 1639 . D a y , J o h n , W i l l i a m R o w l e y , a n d G e o r g e W i l k i n s . Th e Trauailes of lar hold in England, where some believed that the 1290 the Th ree English Brothers. London : 1607 . expulsion of English Jews had served only to hinder D e k k e r , Th omas . Th e Whore of Babylon. London : Nathaniel Butler, conversion eff orts and the prophesied reunion of the 1607 . “scatter’d Nation” (Marlowe sig. B3r), further delaying F e n t o n , E d w a r d . Certaine Secrete wonders of Nature . London : 1569 . Christ’s Second Coming. Th ese hopeful ideas, coupled F l o r i o , J o h n . A Worlde of Wordes . London : 1598 . with an emerging Protestant national identity and the F o x e , J o h n . Actes and Monuments . London : 1570 . belief that England was an elect nation, were encapsu- ———. A Sermon preached at the Christening of a certaine Iew . London : 1578 . lated in references to England as the “New Israel.” As Freeman , Arthur . “ Marlowe, Kyd, and the Dutch Church Libel .” God’s new chosen nation, England had defeated the English Literary Renaissance 3 (1973 ): 44 – 52 . Spanish Armada in 1588, and seventeenth-century com- G r a y z e l , S o l o m o n . Th e Church and the Jews in the XIIIth Century . mentators stressed the providential role that England 2nd ed. New York : Hermon , 1966 . was still to play in apocalyptic history by readmitting – H a r r i s , J o n a t h a n G i l . Foreign Bodies and the Body Politic: Discourses and converting – the Jews. of Social Pathology in Early Modern England . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1998 . Holinshed , Raphael . Th e Chronicles of England, Scotlande, and “Which [is] the Jew?” Irelande. London : 1587 . M a r l o w e , C h r i s t o p h e r . Th e Famous Tragedy of the Rich Jew of Malta . For Shakespeare’s original audiences, there were many London : 1633 . competing and contradictory answers to Portia’s ques- M a r s t o n , J o h n . Th e Malcontent . London : 1604 . tion, “which [is] the Jew?” ( MV 4.1.170 ). Anti-Semitic N a s h e , Th omas. Th e Unfortunate Traveller . London : Th omas narratives inherited from the medieval past or devel- Scarlett, 1594 . oped in response to contemporary events at home and R o t h , C e c i l . A History of the Jews in England. 3rd ed. Oxford : Clarendon , 1964 . abroad held that Jews were a monstrous race of usu- S h a p i r o , J a m e s . Shakespeare and the Jews. New York : Columbia UP, rers, poisoners, cannibals, and criminals who crucifi ed 1996 . Christian children and used Christian blood for ritual S m i t h , H e n r y . Th e Examination of Vsurie, in two Sermons . London : 1591 . purposes, threatening church and state in league with S t a c e y , R o b e r t . “ Th e Conversion of Jews to Christianity in the devil, Muslims, pagans and other heretics, and later Th irteenth-Century England .” Speculum 67 . 2 ( 1992 ): 263–83 . the pope. More positive attitudes toward the Jews, aris- T r a c h t e n b e r g , J o s h u a . Th e Devil and the Jews: Th e Medieval ing out of philosemitic interest in Hebrew and Jewish Conception of the Jew and Its Relation to Modern Anti-Semitism . New Haven : Yale UP , 1943 . biblical scholarship, millenarian expectations, interna- W i l s o n , R o b e r t . A right excellent and famous Comoedy called the tional trade, or typological comparison to Old Testament three Ladies of London . London : 1584 . fi gures, were simultaneously pervasive in early modern W i l s o n , Th omas. A Discourse vppon vsurye . London : 1572 .

719 F u r t h e r r e a d i n g Hirsch , Brett D. “ Counterfeit Professions: Jewish Daughters and the Drama of Failed Conversion in Marlowe’s Th e Jew of Malta and A d e l m a n , J a n e t . Blood Relations: Christian and Jew in Th e Merchant Shakespeare’s Th e Merchant of Venice. ” Embodying Shakespeare . of Venice . Chicago : U of Chicago P , 2008 . Ed. David McInnis and Brett D. Hirsch . Early Modern Literary B a l e , A n t h o n y . Th e Jew in the Medieval Book: English Antisemitisms, Studies , spec. issue 19 ( 2009 ): 4.1–37 . 1350–1500 . Cambridge : Cambridge University Press , 2007 . Kaplan , M. Lindsay . “ Jessica’s Mother: Medieval Constructions of B e r e k , P e t e r . “ Th e Jew as Renaissance Man .” Renaissance Quarterly Jewish Race and Gender in Th e Merchant of Venice . ” Shakespeare 51 . 1 (1998 ): 128–62 . Quarterly 58 . 1 ( 2007 ): 1 – 30 . B o d i a n , M i r i a m . “ M e n o f t h e N a t i o n ” : Th e Shaping of Converso K a t z , D a v i d S . Th e Jews in the History of England, 1485–1850 . Oxford : Identity in Early Modern Europe.” Past and Present 143 Clarendon , 1994 . ( 1994 ): 48 – 76 . L a n g m u i r , G a v i n I . Toward a Defi nition of Antisemitism . Berkeley : U B u r t o n , J o n a t h a n . Traffi c and Turning: Islam and English Drama, of California P, 1990 . 1579–1624. Newark : U of Delaware P, 2005 . M e l l i n k o ff , Ruth . Outcasts: Signs of Otherness in Northern European Edelman , Charles . “ Which Is the Jew that Shakespeare Knew? Art of the Late Middle Ages . 2 vols. Berkeley : U of California Shylock on the Elizabethan Stage .” Shakespeare Survey 5 2 P, 1993 . ( 1999 ): 99 – 106 . R u b i n , M i r i . Gentile Tales: Th e Narrative Assault on Late Medieval G r e g g , J o a n Y o u n g . Devils, Women, and Jews: Refl ections of the Jews . New Haven : Yale UP , 1999 . Other in Medieval Sermon Stories . Albany : State U of New York Strickland , Debra Higgs . Saracens, Demons, and Jews: Making P, 1997 . Monsters in Medieval Art . Princeton : Princeton UP , 2003 .

93. Witchcraft S a r a h K e n n e d y

y the time Shakespeare created his three weird One of the earliest witch trials in Europe was held, sur- sisters for Macbeth about 1606 (see Figure 144 ), the prisingly, at the far margin of the continent, in Kilkenny, Bwitchcraft hysteria in Europe had already waxed Ireland, in 1324. Church and civic leaders in Ireland, for and waned a number of times. England’s spectacular and the most part, showed little interest in witches throughout melodramatic trials had only recently begun, as England the early modern period, but Alice Kyteler was tried aft er before Elizabeth I had been relatively free of this partic- her husband, having found “fl ying ointment” and some ular cultural plague. Th e playwright would have had a bread that resembled communion wafers in her cupboard, wealth of information by the turn of the century from accused her of trying to murder him through sorcery. Th e pamphlets and other popular accounts of trials from Italy well-to-do Alice, aft er a protracted legal battle, fl ed to to Scotland. Sadly, aft er the death of William Shakespeare, London, but her maid, Petronilla de Midea, was convicted the seventeenth century was to witness one of the fi ercest and executed somewhere in the vicinity of Kilkenny. and bloodiest periods in this dismal chapter of European history, and many of these later trials would be held in England. Witch-hunts: the first phase Th e Kyteler trial, though well publicized (its site remains a tourist draw in Kilkenny), did not initiate a series of accu- sations. Th e witch-hunts of the early modern period begin, for all practical purposes, with Pope Innocent VIII’s Summis Desiderantes , or, as it is commonly known, the “Witch-bull,” of 1484. Th e intellectual ground had been laid by Th omas Aquinas (1225–1274) in Th e Summa Contra Gentiles; in this long philosophical inquiry, Aquinas sys- tematized thought about the nature of evil as part of a larger ontological structure and provided logic for its force in the human world. Before Aquinas, attention to witchcraft had been intermittent and unsystematic. Pope Alexander had, in 144. Macbeth and the Witches, Raphael Holinshed, Chronicles of 1258, published a papal letter that allowed the Inquisition England, Scotland, and Ireland (London: 1577). By permission of the to make arrests for heresy, which might include witch- Folger Shakespeare Library. craft . Th e Inquisition of Toulouse sometime in the early

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