6 - Witchcraft, Black Magic, and Ritual Murder

Summary

ACCUSATIONS AGAINST THE JEWS

IF we look at the actions brought against the Jews of Perugia and Umbria and the crimes of which they were accused in the period between 1320 and 1520 (see Table 5.1), we can see that 55 per cent of these accusations (105 out of a total of the 190 found), were concentrated in the second half of the fifteenth century, in the years immediately preceding and above all in those following the setting up of the first Monti di Pietà. In this halfcentury, marked by the extensive and virulent anti-Jewish polemics of the preaching friars in all the Umbrian cities, Jews were frequently brought to trial accused of having violated the rules governing the practice of moneylending, or of having continued to extend credit after this activity had been declared illegal by the local authorities. But there was also an increase in more insidious and threatening accusations, in particular of all manner of defamation of the Christian religion. Jews had previously been accused and found guilty of disrespectful behaviour towards Christianity: in February 1323, for instance, a Jew from Visso in the upper Valnerina was sentenced for having performed irreverent acts in connection with the cross. During the same period Abramo from Gualdo Cattaneo in the duchy of Spoleto, whom I have already had cause to mention (pp. 10-11), was the protagonist in a series of more sensational and bizarre events. He belonged by right to the world of the marginalized, not just because he was a Jew, but above all by virtue of his deviant behaviour, his systematic protests, and his provocative attitude towards the established order. His vicious jeering and vulgar mockery of the political and religious symbols of Christian society, and his unbridled sexual practices, including adultery and homosexuality, made Abramo an asocial being by vocation and choice; the fact that he was a Jew was neither here nor there. Within the brief span of one-and-a-half years, he was tried and sentenced four times for offences against the pope and the Christian religion, and for having adulterous and homosexual relations. The scandalized peasants of Montefalco reported that Abramo habitually burst into the churches of the region during Sunday mass, completely naked and wearing a bishop's mitre pulled down over his eyes, sowing confusion among the faithful.