Blood to Ink, Bread to Dust: Transformative Jewish and Christian Legends of the Middle Ages

Elizabeth Herman, Southern Illinois University Carbondale

A prolific poet exploring diverse perspectives, Geoffrey Chaucer brought together sources from classical philosophy, biblical writings from both Hebrew and Latin paradigms, and folkloric conventions. His representation of the anti-Jewish sentiment that also flourished during his time, through the character known as the Prioress, retold an ancient and contemporary myth which stereotyped Jews as bloodthirsty villains. Ostensibly, Chaucer would have had no contact with a Jewish community, Edward I having expelled England's Jewish population in 1290 (Roth, "England" 754). Despite the difficult nature of Jewish medieval life, scholarly rabbis, in various parts of western Europe during the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, wrote Talmudic and kabbalistic commentaries and kept accounts of rare pilgrimages to the Holy Land (Adler), while everyday Jews told uplifting folktales (Schwartz, Miriam's Tambourine). This fruitful, creative activity included the beginnings of the legend of the Golem, which later became a mythic response to the blood libel, the destructive yet popular slander spread by many prejudiced people, with views similar to the Prioress's, all over medieval Europe.