Language:
English
Year of publication:
1998
Titel der Quelle:
Jewish History
Angaben zur Quelle:
12,1 (1998) 29-46
Keywords:
Pucellina of Blois
;
Jewish women History
;
Jews History 12th century
;
Jews Persecutions 12th century
;
History
;
Antisemitism History 12th century
;
Blois (France)
Abstract:
On 26 May 1171, 31 or 33 Jews (mostly women) were burned at the stake in the town of Blois. All of the Hebrew prose sources relate that the incident began when a Christian servant claimed that he saw a Jew throw a murdered Christian boy into the Loire, and his master used the story to avenge his dislike of a local Jewish woman formerly favored by the ruling count. The sources agree that she was one of the victims, a prominent Jewish woman named Pucellina (or Pulcellina). Based on these sources, Jewish historians have implied that the auto-da-fé was the result of a failed amorous relationship between Pucellina and Count Thibaut of Blois. Analyzes three Hebrew sources - a letter from the Jewish community of Orléans (the earliest source), the late 12th-century chronicle of Ephraim of Bonn, and Yosef ha-Cohen's "Emek ha-Bakha" (16th century). Shows how these accounts increasingly downplay Pucellina as a figure wielding political and economic power among Christians and Jews, although she may have been a moneylender, and how she is refashioned as a failed "Queen Esther" whose romantic attachment to the Christian ruler cannot save her people.
Note:
On three medieval Hebrew texts relating the events of the martyrdom of the Jews in Blois in 1171.
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