Men-Struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions of Identity and Difference

Kerstin Mayerhofer Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions of Identity and Difference The generation and tradition of cultural narratives is one of the bases in the processofformation of identity.During the Christian Middle Ages, starting with Augustine’sdoctrineonthe Jews, the so‐called “hermeneutical Jew” was fashioned—afigure that assumed distinctive character,bodily characteristics, and narrative significanceinChristian thought and culture.¹ In dealing with the specific traits of this hermeneutical Jew, Christians sought to strengthen their owncorebeliefs and values,which they thought superiortotheir Jewish ‘Others.’ NarrativesofJewishfalse understanding of the Scripture, of theircus- toms,orofritual murder werediscussed and disputed widely. These narratives conveylargerdiscourses on Jewishhereditary inferiority vis-à-vis Christian spiritual and socio-culturalsuperiority.Various motifs support these narratives, from the Jew’sstubbornness and blindness to uncover the Scripture’strue and ulti- mate meaning,theireconomic wickedness as usurers and money-lenders,to the repeated claim of JewishusageofChristian blood for magical practice. The discourse of Jewish inferiority manifests itself alsoinasecond category of narrativesand motifs that focus on the ‘Jewish body.’ Following Paul’sdepic- tion of the Jews as carnal and in sharp contrast to the new and spirituallyad- vanced Christian who could free himself from fleshlydesires in his covenant with Christ,the Jews’ bodies were claimedtodiffer fundamentallyfrom the bodies of Christians. They weremarked by weakness and pallor,werediseased and distorted, especiallywith regards to their sex and gender. All of these somatic markers were considered areflection of the Jews’ spiritual impurity and inferiority.Pre-modern narratives and motifs surroundingthe ‘Jewishbody’ can be inter- preted as transmitting anotion of religious identity and difference that is not solelyrooted in culture. Rather,they point to the formationofproto-racial con- cepts of identity,which equated particular kinds of religious belief with particular kinds of bodies.² One of the motifsinthis canon is the “men-struating”³ Jew— Cf. J. Cohen, Living Letters of the Law:Ideas of the JewinMedieval Christianity (Berkeley:Uni- versity of California Press, 1999), 10 –19. This article uses the terms “proto-racial” and “proto-racist” followingthe example of M. L. Kaplan, Figuring Racism in Medieval Christianity (New York: OxfordUniversity Press,2019). The terms areused as adelineation fromthe modern understandingofraceand racism often OpenAccess. ©2021Kerstin Mayerhofer,published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110671995-008 136 Kerstin Mayerhofer anotion of aregular flow of blood that Jews wereconsidered to be afflicted with, marking theirreligious, social,and somatic difference. The motif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ was established and shaped during the twelfth and thirteenth century.Until the earlysixteenth century,these voices wereusuallyclerical, discussing the very idea of the ‘men-struating’ Jew. How- ever,alreadyinthe fourteenth century,contemporary medicalknowledge and scientificfindingshad broughtforth afirst somehow ‘scientific’ discussion of Jewish ‘male menstruation.’ The ‘men-struating’ Jewleft his purelyfigurative context and the doctrineofspiritual inferiority embodied in this figuresubse- quentlytranslatedinto social and legal spheres.The most prominent example can be found in the establishment of the concept of “purity of blood”⁴ at the Iberian Peninsula. Forced conversionsofJews (and Muslims) in Reconquista Spaintook place since the middle of the thirteenth century and intensified in connected to the history of the trans-Atlantic slave trade and to the notion of biological differ- ences between groups of people. Often times it is considered anachronistic to use the terms “race” and “racism” when dealingwith pre-modern sources and histories, based on the claim that the pre-modern understanding of diversity was rooted in culture rather than in nature. In order to avoid this contradiction,the usage of “proto-racial” and “proto-racist” is suitable as it still acknowledgesthe fact that,indeed, ancient and pre-modern racism is not solelyacultural concept.The present article operates with adefinition of racism and race that draws on the cre- ation of ahierarchybetween groups as its constitutional element.According to this definition, we can speak of racism and definingraceswhenever one group represents itself as superior to another group of people. This hierarchyispersistent as is the claim of subordination grounded in it.Other features, however,such as somatic markers or permanenceofphysiological and cultural traits of identity,might vary.B.Isaac has shown that the definingelement of ancient and pre-modern understandings of racial difference,rooted both in religion and nature, however,is the postulation of superiority and inferiority in relation to one another.Cf. B. Isaac, TheInven- tion of Racism in Classical Antiquity (Princeton:PrincetonUniversity Press,2004), 1–52. Proto‐racial distinctions can function both with and without biological referencesand notions about culture and nature do often intersect.According to A. Loomba, religion and theological doctrine, too, have always playedacentral roleinthe proto-racist formation of identity based on hierarchy. Cf. A. Loomba, “Race and the Possibilities of Comparative Critique,” New Literary History 40,no. 3(2009): 501–22. Isaac’sand Loomba’stheories on pre-modern constructions of race and on pre-modern racism and their continuation by Kaplan lie at the core of this article. The same theories applytogender as apre-modern category of determination and identity and both categories,race and gender,dostrongly intersect in the figure of the ‘men-struating’ Jew. The term “men-struation” was coined by Gloria Steinem in her famousessay “If Men Could Menstruate,” in Outrageous Acts and Everyday Rebellions (New York: New American Library, 1983). Cf. M. Diemling, “‘Mit Leib und Seele?’ Überlegungenzum Körperbild jüdischer Konvertiten in der Frühen Neuzeit,” Aschkenas 15,no. 2(2006): 411. Inferiority Embodied: The ‘Men-struating’ Jew and Pre-Modern Notions 137 the violence of 1391.⁵ The large number of “conversos” or “New Christians,” as the Jewishconverts were called, led to abelief thatJews wereinsincerein their conversion, and pressed for adelineation of boundaries between ‘Old’ and ‘New Christians.’ In this article, Itrace the Christian concept of Jewish hereditary inferiority mapped onto the Jews’ bodies using the example of the ‘men-struating’ Jew. I demonstrate how religion, physiology,sex, and gender as categories of social determination intersect to create anotion of identity and difference, which can be regarded as proto-racial. To do so, Iwill scrutinisethe imageofableeding Jewish man with regards to the formation of alargermotif of Jewish ‘male menstruation’ in sources from the thirteenth to the seventeenth century from theological, med- ical, and political backgrounds. What is Jewish ‘Male Menstruation’? Acorpus of texts from the twelfthtothe fifteenth century describes amale Jew sufferingfrom aspontaneous and anomalous bleeding that reappears at regular intervals. The bleeding is neither the result of injury nor of achronic illness. If physiological details are provided, they usually refer to the bleeding’ssource in the genital or anal region. Most of the sources associate this regular bleeding in Jewish men with menstruation and use abroad vocabulary and imagery to frame this notion. The associationitself can be bothexplicit,byreferringback to women or the biological process of menstruation, and implicit,byalluding to religio-culturalunderstandingsofsex and gender. The term Jewish ‘male menstruation’ itself wascoined by Salo W. Baron (1895–1989). In his magnum opus ASocial and Religious Historyofthe Jews, he addressed the account of a ‘men-struating’ Jewbythe Dominican Thomas de Cantimpré (1201–1270/2).⁶ Baron concluded that “few of Thomas’ readers doubted the existenceofsuch aJewish malady oftenappearingasasortof Jews on the Iberian Peninsula had experienced compulsory or forcedconversions already under Visigothic rule in the fifth century.P.Fredriksen’sarticle in the present volumesuggests that anotion of the Jews as an inferior ‘race’ is alreadyestablished in Visigothic canon law which had never fullyaccepted Jewish converts who, as aresult, would always rank on a lower legal and social level than “gothic” Christians.Cf. P. Fredriksen, “Divinity,Ethnicity,Iden- tity: ‘Religion’ as aPolitical Category in Christian Antiquity,” 101–20 of the present volume. Cf. Thomas Cantipratanus, Bonum Universale De Apibus,ed. G. Colvenere(Douai: Baltazar Beller,1627), II, 29. 138 Kerstin Mayerhofer male menstruation […].”⁷ Thomas indeed reports of the spontaneous effusion of blood from aJew’sbodythat he traces back to a “vein of evildoing,” a “congen- ital defect in the blood.”⁸ He established agenealogyofimpurity associated with the Jews’ alleged responsibility for the killing of Christ.AccordingtoThomas, all Jews are “tormented importunatelybythis [blood] flow without expiation.”⁹ The term ‘male menstruation,’ however,does not appear in the original source. Tho- mas onlyspeaksofa“macula sanguinis” (“stain of blood”)without referenceto (female) menstruation. Other sources provide us with amoredistinct

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