Language:
English
Year of publication:
2008
Titel der Quelle:
Journal of Medieval History
Angaben zur Quelle:
34,2 (2008) 185-211
Keywords:
Jewish women History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Jews Medicine Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
History
;
Judaism and science History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Childbirth Religious aspects
;
Judaism
;
Jews
;
Jews
;
Judaism Relations
;
Christianity
;
Christianity and other religions Judaism
;
Antisemitism History Middle Ages, 500-1500
;
Jews Legal status, laws, etc.
Abstract:
Discusses the case of a Jewish midwife named Floreta who was accused of having caused the death in childbirth of a Christian woman named Garsendeta. This study is based on the extant record of the first stages of the investigation initiated in 1403 by the criminal court of the city of Marseille. This is the first known case of a malpractice trial of a midwife. The proceedings of the case open with a statement about the perils that arise when Jews are allowed to intermingle with Christians. Questions, therefore, whether this was actually a medical malpractice trial or a case of anti-Jewish persecution. The record ends with a ruling by the three judges that Floreta be tortured to elicit a confession; Floreta then filed an appeal against this ruling and that is where the record ends. The final outcome of the trial is not known. States that many of the more prominent accusations of medical malpractice in later medieval Mediterranean Europe involved Jewish practitioners treating Christian patients. Floreta's trial may also reflect the influence of new anti-Judaic sentiments disseminated by the itinerant Dominican preacher Vincent Ferrer (1350-1419) in the late 14th-early 15th centuries. Concludes that it was primarily religious difference and social antagonisms that went along with it that caused this death to flare up into a criminal trial.
DOI:
10.1016/j.jmedhist.2008.03.001
URL:
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