IN 1756, only three years after the trial in Żytomierz and a year after Pope Benedict XIV issued his bull, Beatus Andreas, another accusation erupted, also with the open support of a bishop, this time in Jampol in the Łuck diocese. In response, Polish Jews again sent an emissary, Eliyakim ben Asher Zelig of Jampol, also known as Jacob Selek or Zelik, on a mission to Rome.1 With help from Italian Jews, especially the Roman Jewish community and its rabbi Shabbatai Fiani, in early 1758 Zelig succeeded in receiving the attention of the highest Church officials, although not an audience with the pope himself.2 This time, perhaps thanks to some Italian Jews’ high-profile connections, the matter was sent to the Holy Office of the Inquisition for further examination.3 The Holy Office considered not only the trial in Jampol but also reviewed the 1753 Żytomierz case that had been earlier rejected from consideration by the apostolic nuncio in Poland and the secretary of state.
The charge before the Holy Office was to investigate whether “oppressions, harassments, incarcerations, aggravations, and torments to which the poor [Jews] are frequently subjected” were in fact “based on the claim that their famed unleavened bread is adulterated with human blood and especially that of Christians.”4 This was an advantageous phrasing—for the Jews; had the argument presented to the Holy Office been centered on killing Christians “in hatred of Christianity,” with Benedict XIV, the author of Beatus Andreas, still alive, the supplication may not have even been considered at all.5
Almost two years after the Jews’ supplication reached Rome, the Holy Office of the Inquisition voted on December 24, 1759, to approve an extensive report written by the newly minted cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli, condemning the frequent accusations that Jews killed Christian children to obtain their blood for Passover matzah. In early February 1760, that report, which had been approved a month earlier by Pope Clement XIII, who succeeded Benedict XIV after his death in May 1758, was communicated to the newly appointed papal nuncio to Poland, Antonio Eugenio Visconti.6 Though lauded by scholars as a vigorous condemnation of anti-Jewish accusations, the report, which appears to have remained unknown until the nineteenth century, is more complex than that, with its intricate genealogy and content and with its author, Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli, trying to navigate a dangerous terrain. On the one hand, from the thirteenth century, the popes had indeed condemned blood accusations against Jews—at least until 1540. On the other hand, some popes before, including Pope Gregory XIII in 1583, Pope Sixtus V in 1588, and Pope Benedict XIV, Ganganelli’s contemporary, sanctioned popular shrines celebrating the alleged child victims of the Jews in Trent and near Innsbruck. The Ganganelli report shows that beyond anything else his prime task was to consider matters of faith, and to affirm papal authority. The structure of the report and its supporting sources point to Ganganelli’s dependence on arguments articulated by Tranquillo Vita Corcos, the Roman rabbi defending Jews in the aftermath of the Viterbo affair in 1705–1706.7
An internal report dated March 21, 1758, which has been preserved in the archive of the Congregation for the Defense of Faith, as the Holy Office is now known, provides a glimpse of the issues at play when Zelig’s supplication first reached Church authorities in Rome.8 Although this internal report included elements that would be found in the final version approved on Christmas Eve, 1759, it focused on different questions: “The first if such examination belongs to the Holy Office and if the Holy Roman See should be interested in offering any measures in response to this mentioned aggravation. If so [quatenus affirmative], then secondly, should [the Congregation] consider proposing any remedy aimed at correcting the divisive [divisato] lawlessness.”
Ganganelli methodically laid out the reasons why the Congregation should indeed take action in response to the supplication, while acknowledging there were sound arguments for them to refuse to do so. The first objection was there was no Inquisition in Poland. Thus, the question became whether the Holy Office could even act. Second, when in June 1705 Jews were accused of attempting to kill a Christian boy in Viterbo, “the Jewish community of the ghetto in Rome presented a supplication to the Holy Office, which sought to convince it to take steps in such a case. But having examined the aforementioned supplication, on August 24, [the Holy Office] noted—Causam non spectare ad S. Officium [the case does not belong to the Holy Office].”9 Therefore, Ganganelli continued, if a similar case had already been rejected by the Holy Office, then the Holy Office should treat the current supplication of the Polish Jews the same way. Such a decisive rejection, Ganganelli wrote, would end the hope of the Polish Jews and would save him “from having to write on this matter.” Although it would have been easier simply to reject the supplication, Ganganelli thought it did in fact belong to the purview of the Holy Office. Empathy might have also played a role in an anonymous Church official’s decision to forward the petition to the Holy Office: “The aforementioned humble supplication to His Holiness Our Father Benedict XIV contains the following annotation to the Congregation of the Holy Office: ‘Having said that, I would have no courage any more to proclaim: Non spectare ad S. Officium.’ ”
But in Church bureaucracy, with its complex set of rules of canon law and legal precedents, empathy would not have been a sufficient reason to respond to the supplication by Polish Jews if there was no legal justification to do so. Thus, to handle the Viterbo precedent, which, though not considered by the Holy Office, was resolved by the Sacra Consulta, Ganganelli drew a sharp contrast between that case and the wave of accusations in Poland. If the issue in Poland had indeed been that of a simple homicide, as it seemed to have been in Viterbo, he argued not quite correctly, then the Holy Office should reject the case, as it did in the case of murder in Markowa Wolica in 1753 in Żytomierz precisely because the nuncio’s report did not suggest anything but a murder. But a case of “homicide for superstitious ends, seeking to offer a sacrifice in honor of God, and presenting as the offering to Him the blood of a sacrificed Christian, considered by [Jews] the enemies of their Law of Moses … would certainly be a case to discuss and adjudicate in the Holy Office,”10 because that was clearly a religious matter. Ganganelli then contrasted the Viterbo case of 1705 with another case in the Papal States, in Ancona in 1711, where rumor had it that “a Christian boy was bled and killed by them for superstitious purposes related to their unleavened bread.”11 When in that case Jews turned to Pope Clement XI for help, the pope forwarded the supplication to the Holy Office, which in fact took it up.
Having proven that on the basis of precedent the case did belong to the Holy Office, Ganganelli then needed to address the objection regarding jurisdiction of the Holy Office over Poland, “where there is no established Inquisition.” To do so, he turned to a statement Pope Paul III had made when establishing the Inquisition itself: “the supreme inquisitors have jurisdiction over all patriarchs, archbishops, bishops, and any lay princes, as well as any other people.”12 And, in 1554, Pope Julius III affirmed the “unlimited jurisdiction of the Suprema in any place, and especially in cases dealing with Jews.” Ganganelli’s choice of sources signaled without any doubt an attempt to assert Rome’s jurisdiction over a wide variety of matters and to claim universal authority—a centralizing vision that had been embraced by the recently deceased Pope Benedict XIV.
It now remained to decide what sort of measures the Holy Office should propose. What followed was a historical survey of responses by various church and secular authorities to blood accusations against Jews: Bernard of Clairvaux and his response to “Monk Radulph,” the 1247 papal bull by Innocent IV, and a list of decisions by secular authorities on the Italian peninsula, including those in 1479 in Milan, in 1475 and 1705 in Venice, and in 1603 in Verona. The cardinal also added imperial condemnations, especially the 1566 imperial decree that specifically referred to papal injunctions against such accusations. And he extensively quoted the 1664 letter sent by the general of the Dominican Friars to Poland prohibiting Polish friars from preaching about “the various calumnies and malicious imputations” that Jews use Christian blood in their Passover bread. The cardinal then went on to discuss a number of books by Catholic, Jewish, and even Protestant writers who debunked the accusations over centuries. This section found its way into the final report voted by the Congregation on Christmas Eve in 1759 and subsequently passed on to Pope Clement XIII for approval. It would not be an exaggeration to say that this section was derivative, almost verbatim, of the treatises by Rabbi Tranquillo Vita Corcos published during the Viterbo affair in 1705–1706. Ganganelli used exactly the same documents Corcos quoted and published, all of which were in the possession of the Holy Office. (Corcos, for his part, had used some of the arguments presented in earlier published treatises by Richard Simon, Isaac Cardoso, and Isaac Viva.)
In the closing statements of his March 1758 report, Ganganelli listed two reasons why the Holy See should respond to the Jews’ supplication: on account of carità or brotherly love, “the zeal as not to permit Christians an opportunity to oppress the unfortunate unjustly,” and “finally, on account of religion, as not to render [the Catholic religion] odious to the infidels because of false suppositions, and thus to discourage them from embracing it.”13 Yet, Ganganelli was surely aware that Pope Benedict XIV, then in his last months of life, would likely be reluctant to take up the issue. Just three years earlier, in February 1755, Benedict had issued the lengthy bull, Beatus Andreas, affirming the cult of Andreas of Rinn who was, in Benedict’s words, “slaughtered by Jews most cruelly before the completion of the third year of [his] life in the year 1462 out of hatred toward the Christian Faith.”14
Another of the pope’s statements that was difficult to ignore was his 1751 encyclical A quo primum, addressed to the bishops and archbishops of Poland in which the pontiff lambasted what he considered conditions that were too favorable for Jews. He singled out Jews’ involvement in business relations with the clergy and their protection by Polish lords among many other violations of the canon law. Aware of Benedict’s attitudes toward Jews and his past policies, Ganganelli pleaded, even if “His Holiness did not believe in having to renew the paternal words [insinuazioni] to the prelates and magnates of Poland, like those Pope Innocent IV had given to the prelates of Germany and France,” at least he asked the pontiff “to agree graciously to charge the Apostolic Nuncio not to permit any burden [aggravio] and oppression of the Jews in this Kingdom based on the unsustainable supposition that Christian blood is mixed into their Passover bread.”15 Concluding his report, Ganganelli referred directly to A quo primum, conceding that indeed the social and economic position of the Jews in Poland was in violation of many church statutes and thus a “burden much injurious to the Christian religion.” And for that reason, “Jews in Poland are not worth to expect such compassion, which they may have received, had they not forgotten that they are in position of servitude,” but “because the Holy See does not behave according to the precepts of vengeance [vendetta], but rather according to the sentiments of piety, I would believe that [His Holiness] could take some of the above mentioned measures.”
On the same day Ganganelli submitted his preliminary report, March 21, 1758, the Congregation voted unanimously to agree with his recommendations. In addition to requesting more information from the nuncio in Poland, the members of the Holy Office added this clause: “It is true that Jews in Poland, who are considerably powerful and who oppress the poor Catholics in some areas, do not deserve great compassion from the Apostolic See. Nonetheless, it is not justifiable for Catholics to persecute Jews unjustly for this reason, and thereby render our holy religion odious.”16 Niccolò Serra, the papal nuncio in Poland, was now charged with obtaining more information.
It took nuncio Niccolò Serra several months to respond. In late October 1758, he finally forwarded to Rome two letters: one from the bishop of Kiev, Kajetan Sołtyk, who was involved in the Markowa Wolica affair that had led to the gruesome executions of Jews in Żytomierz, and one from the bishop of Łuck, Antoni Erazm Wołłowicz, who was an actor in the Jampol affair. Serra added a note saying that such accusations against Jews had occurred in the past and had not merited intervention. Still, Jews continued to seek intercession “with great importunity.”17
The letters from the two Polish bishops were defiant and focused on defending their roles in the accusations. Wołłowicz, the bishop of Łuck, opened his letter by stating that “the perfidious Jews” had left in Poland enough evidence about their “cruelty for the sake of Christian blood”—it could be found in printed books and many court decrees issued in cases of infanticide “from the year 1400 until this time.”18 And so when an accusation against them sprang up in Jampol in the Łuck diocese, after a Christian servant to Jews was found dead, the bishop “requested” justice from Michał Kazimierz Radziwiłł, the Hetman of Lithuania and the palatine of Wilno, as well as the owner of the town. Somewhat apologetically, perhaps sensing Rome’s concern with the legality of the process, the bishop claimed that he had only followed the customary legal channels, taking the body to the castle and requesting that “the basis of criminal allegation” be investigated (requisivi ut realitatem objecti criminii indagare). If the Jews turned out to be the killers, then serious punishment should be applied. Yet, the bishop remained silent on the fact that in this case Prince Radziwiłł had ordered an investigation on his own and found the Jews innocent. Despite Prince Radziwiłł’s conclusion, the bishop, encouraged by local clergy, reopened the accusation and escalated the case to Warsaw, the capital city of Poland-Lithuania. Fifteen Jews were arrested and tortured, some of whom died.19 While not revealing the details of the Jampol case, the bishop mentioned the case tried in Żytomierz, “a mere 50 miles” from the seat of his bishopric, and pointed to the printed materials related to that trial as evidence of Jews’ guilt.
Much longer was the letter from Kajetan Ignacy Sołtyk, the bishop of Kiev.20 Sołtyk had played a role in the arrest of thirty-one Jews following the death of a three-and-a-half-year-old boy, Stefan Studziński in Markowa Wolica. The letter forwarded by the nuncio was both a summary of the “killing by Jews of an infant Stefan Studziński in the diocese of Kiev” and an apologetic, if defiant, treatise on the bishop’s role in the affair in 1753, which was already known in Rome. Sołtyk claimed that the body had been found with many wounds, a clear sign that the three-year-old boy had not died of natural causes but “violently.” Right away, it was broadly believed that Jews were guilty, this suspicion “powerfully” bolstered by the fact that some Jews fled the town. Parents, relatives, and friends of the boy soon came to Sołtyk “exposing the injury done to the Christian name and blood, blaming the impudence of Jews, and imploring” him to help. And so, aware of other examples of “Jewish malice” and fearing that more Jews would flee, be protected by the magnates or others “corrupted with their money,” the bishop decided to intervene, sending the matter “for investigation of the truth of the crime.” The arrested Jews were interrogated both “freely” and under torture. All was done according to law, Sołtyk insisted, because he was well aware that “this was a blood case,” which did not belong to his jurisdiction but squarely to the secular court, “namely the Castle Court of the Palatine.” Indeed, the highly competent secular court convicted Jews justly, after “oral and corporal interrogations,” with no influence “whatsoever” of the bishop or his office.21
If Bishop Sołtyk had to deny that he or his office had exerted any influence on the secular court, he also had to address the “calumnies” that he had cunningly accepted money from Jews as a bribe to free them. It was true, he admitted, that he had received from Jews some thousand zloty in Hungarian coins, but the money was from the Jews who were leasing breweries in a town that belonged to the “episcopal table,” and five hundred was immediately paid back, according to a promissory note (chirographum).22 It was therefore false, defiantly stated the bishop known for his gambling and resulting indebtedness, to imply that this money was in any way related to the trials and that it was a bribe to help release the arrested Jews.23 The money, in fact, was partly related to the lease, partly a donation customarily offered to the bishop by Jewish inhabitants of episcopal domains, and partly an ordinary fee paid for the privilege to restore an old synagogue or build a new one. Such privileges, the bishop clarified, were granted “not for free,” but were meant as a “monetary penalty.”24 The money was then used for “pious uses” determined by the bishop himself. In this case, the money was to serve “the good of the diocese” and fund the building of a new seminary.
That there was a legitimate explanation for accepting money from Jews was not the only reason why the charge of bribery was preposterous, Bishop Sołtyk argued. “Would he, indeed, who has no power to mete out corporal, let alone, capital punishment be able to redeem life?” In turning to a legal argument over jurisdiction and the distinction between secular and ecclesiastical powers, Kajetan Sołtyk emphasized that it would have been futile to bribe a bishop in this case, because he had no power over such matters. Such power belonged to a secular court that was not at all “dependent on the bishop.” Would it not have been wiser, the bishop pondered, “if the said money given to a bishop” to help release the Jews had been given to “secular judges to whom belongs the sole and arbitrary power to punish or absolve them of the crime?” Moreover, there could not be any doubt that “Jews living among us know very well” that according to Church law clergy were not allowed to be involved in “blood cases.” Thus, they would have been imprudent to “solicit imaginary protection from him who can never condemn criminals to death.”
Sołtyk also took the opportunity to address another “absurd imputation”—that he ordered the kidnapping of Jewish children in order to convert them. A charge of the use of such violent methods could apply to the “barbarity” and “inhumanity” of Tatars and Turks, but not “to Christians, let alone their pastors.”25 All the rumors that circulated about the bishop were thus outlandish. They were spread, he argued, by his enemies, particularly Joseph Augustynowicz, an apostolic notary, who disseminated “injurious” and defamatory information. There was a grain of truth in what Sołtyk was saying. In January 1754, following the 1753 trial in Żytomierz, Augustynowicz indeed received Jewish delegates from Podolia in his office in Warsaw to take their deposition against Bishop Sołtyk and his role in propagating “the calumny” of Jewish infanticides.26 And perhaps Augustynowicz was responsible for forwarding some of the information to Rome.
Bishop Sołtyk clearly felt beleaguered, his reputation damaged. He was known for gambling, but now those “rumors” had clearly made their way to Rome. Seeking to repair his standing, he used the letter not only to support the accusations against Jews and justify his role in the trial but also to address any allegations that he might have personally profited from Jewish money. Yet, no matter the “pious uses” Sołtyk claimed to have had in mind, by defending his acceptance of money from Jews, he inadvertently admitted to engaging in business relations with Jews in a flagrant violation of Benedict XIV’s 1751 encyclical A quo primum.
The letters from the two bishops were not the only evidence provided to the Holy Office. If the bishops emphasized court evidence as proofs of Jewish crimes, Jews themselves delivered a decree from another trial that took place in April 1753 in Krzemieniec, where a girl was found seriously wounded and nearly dead and the Jews were again suspected of the crime. But after further investigation it turned out that it was the girl’s own father who had cut the child with a knife and dumped what he must have thought was her dead body in a sack, near the house of a Jew, Merch Leyzorowicz. The next day, the father changed his mind and decided to take the body and drop it next to a hospital run by the Franciscan friars. He then left town. But the child survived and blamed her father for the crime, removing suspicion from the Jews.27
With these documents in hand, on September 24, 1759, the officials of the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition met to discuss the matter.28 Two months later they would take a vote on the final report.
While Ganganelli and the Holy Office were preparing the materials to deliberate on the blood accusations in Poland, a new development took place in the spring of 1759. A heretical Jewish group, later known as Frankists after its leader Jacob Frank—with roots in the seventeenth-century Sabbatian messianic movement—charged that the Talmud, an ancient compendium of Jewish law and stories that had in fact been condemned to flames by the Catholic Church, affirmed the need for Christian blood.29 Thus, they claimed that Jews who, in contrast to the Frankist sect, accepted the authority of the Talmud did indeed require Christian blood for their rituals.
The group openly emerged in Poland in 1755, when Jacob Frank arrived in the Polish territories, and in February 1756, Polish rabbis began to push back, enlisting the help of Polish Church authorities, who began to investigate the rabbis’ allegations of Jewish heresy.30 But this approach soon backfired. As the sectarians professed their belief in Christian dogmas, such as the Trinity, and embraced Christian religious symbols, they endeared themselves to Church authorities, who were now hopeful, if still somewhat apprehensive, about the group members’ prospects as potential converts. Gaudenty Pikulski, a Bernardine theologian who composed a lengthy report about the affair, noted that it was easier to discuss Christianity with a Kabbalist or a Sabbatian than a “Talmudist,” because the former “can more easily understand the Mystery of the Holy Trinity.”31
Seizing the window of opportunity, the Frankists challenged the rabbinic Jews to a debate before the Christian authorities. Presenting themselves as opponents of the Talmud, they became known as “anti-Talmudists” or “counter-Talmudists.” This was a shrewd move on their part, one that temporarily shifted the balance of power in their favor. As Paweł Maciejko has noted, the Frankists cast their case in “the broader framework of the Catholic polemics against the Talmud.”32
Hearings before Church authorities started in 1756, culminating in two major debates in 1757 and in 1759. The first debate in Kamieniec in 1757 was to decide whether the accused “counter-Talmudists” followed the law of Moses or, as the Jews claimed, they did not. The debate ended in favor of the sectarians.33 Bishop Mikołaj Dembowski issued a decree favorable to them, in which he took the opportunity to outline the parameters of Church authority over both Jews and heretics, quoting earlier decrees by Popes Gregory XIII and Clement VIII, as well as the more recent by Pope Benedict XIV.34 Although the “counter-Talmudists” did not raise the question of blood in the Talmud at this time, the bishop did not shy away from discussing Jews’ hostility to Christians and alluding to Jews’ killing of Christian children. Referring to printed chronicles, he mentioned William of Norwich, the expulsion of Jews from Spain, and from France, which he dated, incorrectly, to 1180; he turned to the work of Marquardus de Susannis and its examples of Jewish “hostilities” such as “kidnapping and crucifying children” and spreading “pestilence” around Europe.35
Because the rejection of the Talmud became one of the centerpieces of Frankist identity, Bishop Dembowski was emboldened to examine Church teachings about this work and took the opportunity to condemn it. Given the Talmud’s “impious, erroneous, scandalous speculations and blasphemies, offensive to pious ears” how could this work not be bad?36 It had already been condemned to the fire by many popes, among them Gregory IX in Paris in 1242, Julius III in 1553 in Italy, and then again in Italy by Pius V in 1566.37 In line with the popes, Dembowski condemned the Talmud in his diocese. Because the sectarians presented themselves as Jews following the “Old Testament” and not the Talmud, the bishop became particularly predisposed to them and ready to vilify rabbinic Jews, who now became the guilty party.38
Nuncio Serra was informed about the first debate the same year in which it occurred by a Jewish emissary, Barukh Mi-Ereẓ Yavan, who appealed to the nuncio for help.39 But the event itself and even Dembowski’s decree do not appear to have been reported to Rome until July 1758, by then the affair had progressed further.40
Seven months later, in February 1759, the most dramatic and dangerous charge by the Frankists was voiced. In formal, printed—and one assumes widely distributed—supplications to the king and the primate of Poland, Archbishop Władysław Łubieński, the sectarians publicly expressed their desire to convert to Catholicism.41 But they set certain conditions for this major step—before converting they wanted again to debate with “the Talmudists” and, through that debate, to prove not only their sincerity to convert but also “to open the eyes” of the “Talmudists [who were] hardened by their errors, and chuffing with unheard-of and terrible blasphemies against God Himself.”42 The sectarians presented themselves as “the Israelite nation returning by God’s grace to their Messiah.”43 In April, nuncio Serra informed Rome about this new movement among Jews, whom he called “the Karaite Jews,” and forwarded a copy of the supplication printed in Latin.44 The Church officials in Rome must have been very pleased: not only did the sectarians profess their belief in Jesus Christ and express their desire to convert but they also declared obedience “to the Messiah’s Vicar on Earth, the Roman Pontiff, and his legitimate successors.”45 Rome was anxiously awaiting the results of the second debate, hoping that “this affair will end to the glory of God” to be “remembered in the History of the Church” and to serve as a “consolation to Christianity.”46
In May, the sectarian Jews, now increasingly known as “anti-Talmudists,” again approached the king and the primate for assistance, pleading, among other things for support in the face of their enemies, the rabbinic Jews, and asking for a safe territory to settle.47 A few days later, they prepared a detailed manifesto outlining the points of the debates, which was then inscribed in the records of the Lwów Consistory on May 25, 1759, printed in Latin, and distributed.48
Seven points were listed for the debate, six of which dealt with the question of the Messiah. But the seventh charged bluntly, “The Talmud teaches the need for Christian blood, and he who believes in the Talmud is required to use it.”49 The debate, initially scheduled for July, was postponed to September, and Jews seem to have been forced to participate under the hefty monetary penalty of some one thousand zloty.50 Even if the local Church authorities might have been thrilled about this debate and the potential conversions, the papal nuncio Niccolò Serra was a little apprehensive. He did not like the fact that Jews were reportedly compelled to participate and expressed doubts about the catechumens, because to his taste their leader Jacob Frank was “held in excessive veneration.” To Serra, it all had markings of an emerging sect. Thus, he warned, one needed to “proceed with all possible caution.”51
Other Church officials also seemed uneasy about the seven points of the proposed debate, particularly the seventh one affirming the verity of blood accusation.52 With the points of the debate printed in the manifesto, the Jews, Serra reported, were able to prepare well for the debate, at least the first three points to which they responded proficiently. But three other points were controversial because answers to them might have potentially been deemed offensive to the Catholic Church. And so, the Jews demurred. In regard to point five, for example, which addressed the cross as the sign of the Holy Trinity and the “seal” of the messiah, they refused to respond on the grounds that “it was not proper for us to speak against the Catholic religion.”53 The seventh point was particularly charged, for it alleged that the Talmud mandated the use of Christian blood. Since the sectarians’ manifesto was printed, it was now out in the open—in print—that a Jewish group seemingly validated the notorious anti-Jewish accusations. Indeed, the nuncio wrote, should it be verified that “the need of Christian blood was a religious principle,” then this would lend credence to “the cases of killings of Christians of which Jews have been so many times accused in the courts of this Kingdom.”54
The rabbis’ defense, preserved apparently “in accordance with the original response submitted by them” in Gaudenty Pikulski’s work, challenged the “anti-Talmudists”’ proficiency in Hebrew, their selective choice of passages that were often taken out of context, and their manipulation and mistranslation of texts. The defense also highlighted non-Jewish authorities who had denied that Jews ever committed the imputed crimes, among them the “Catholic” Hugo Grotius.55 They argued that in other countries, “Germany, the Empire, Italy, and Turkey” no credence was given to this “tall tale.”56 Similar arguments would be repeated years later in one of the last trials of the Jews in Poland.
Nuncio Serra continued to send dispatches on the question of whether the need for blood was indeed mandated by the Talmud. Though the question remained unresolved, it did touch on the very issue that was simultaneously under consideration in the Holy Office. Still, Rome expressed little interest, its attention focused on the Frankist conversions and their aftermath. Secretary of State Cardinal Torrigiani addressed the question of blood directly only in November, nearly two months after the Holy Office had already discussed the supplementary documents delivered in connection to Jacob Eliyakim Zelig’s supplication and nearly two months after Serra had sent his reports.57 On November 17, 1759, Torrigiani wrote that “even though here it interests us little to know if the texts taken from the Hebrew books and the Talmud are true or false, or approximate” because so many errors were contained in the Jewish books, still, it would be useful to have the matter examined by Catholic experts in the Hebrew language.58 On December 5, Serra confirmed that it was indeed difficult to “verify the existence of such teaching in Talmudic books” because of the “profound uncertainty of meaning of the texts brought up in the last session held in Lwów.” Nothing could, in fact, be concluded, given the lack of scholars fluent “in the dead language,” that is, in Hebrew and Aramaic.59 The confusion reported by the nuncio was likely grounded in the rabbis’ defense that consistently focused on the misuse and misunderstanding of the texts the anti-Talmudists had singled out during the debate.60
In his December 12 dispatch, Nuncio Serra attached, among documents related to the new converts, evidence they provided “to verify the teaching of the Talmud concerning the use of Christian blood.”61 From then on, the topic of the use of Christian blood dropped out of the correspondence. Instead, subsequent dispatches from Serra about Jews and the new converts focused on concerns about the converts’ sincerity, whose goal in conversion seems to have been to obtain “in this Kingdom land to inhabit.” From January 1760 on, the topic of the arrest of the then-baptized Jacob Frank on suspicion of heresy was added.62 It took about two to three weeks for dispatches from Warsaw to reach Rome. Thus, by the time Serra’s December 12 dispatch reached Rome, the Ganganelli report had already been presented to and voted on by the Congregation of the Holy Office. It was now waiting to be presented to Pope Clement XIII.
Even though Nuncio Serra’s last dispatch touching on the Frankist blood accusations did not reach Rome in time for Cardinal Ganganelli to consider it in his report, by the time the Cardinal finished it, the sensationalistic allegations by the Frankists about the use of blood would have certainly been known in Rome. Yet, in his report, Ganganelli mentioned nothing about the charges made in the disputation in Lwów. The silence is deafening, but perhaps the cardinal, unable to verify the accuracy of the allegations and the Jewish responses, may have preferred not to consider the issue raised at the Lwów disputation. Or perhaps based on the strong evidence from Jewish sources supplied in 1706 by Tranquillo Vita Corcos in his treatises in defense of Jews and sanctioned by the premier Vatican Hebraist and theologian Giovanni Pastrizio, Ganganelli was confident that Jewish texts did not support the use of Christian blood. But Ganganelli simply may not have wanted to complicate matters further by engaging in a debate about statements made by the highly controversial group of converts about the Talmud, a work that, after all, had been banned by the pontiffs. And so, by focusing on the two specific trials that brought Jacob Eliyakim Zelig to Rome, and basing his report on the historical evidence—not Jewish texts—and on the documents requested by the Holy Office from the nuncio following the initial vote in March 1758, Ganganelli avoided becoming involved in the increasingly notorious issue of Frank and his followers, an issue with which the Holy Office would have to deal separately.
By the time Ganganelli finished his report, Clement XIII was pope, who, though respectful of his predecessor Benedict XIV, did not carry the same baggage of writings about Jews. In a tactful but explicit way Ganganelli condemned the Polish bishops for their uncritical acceptance of anti-Jewish accusations. “May God guard me,” the newly appointed cardinal wrote, “from simply suspecting that the two Polish bishops, and the apostolic nuncio wished to conceal the truth in a contrived way, or that they sent here fraudulent information. Still, it could be that they themselves were not deceivers but rather deceived.”63
In addressing directly the two reports by Bishop Wołłowicz of Łuck and Bishop Sołtyk of Kiev (by then the bishop of Cracow), Ganganelli once again took the opportunity to lambast the bishops and affirm papal authority. He cut to the chase, dismissing Sołtyk’s report outright as “an apology for his conduct” and a defense of “his greed” for gold.64 As for the bishop of Łuck, he “has shown himself too prone to believe what cannot be true”65—not only because he apparently did not have his historical facts straight but also, more importantly “if the Supreme Pontiffs Gregory IX and Innocent IV judged such accusations to be baseless (as I have already shown), and if the Jews were declared innocent in the tribunals of Italy, I cannot see how they can be considered guilty of such a crime in Poland alone.” As if not to leave any doubt, the cardinal stressed, “I would desire that Mgr. the Bishop of Łuck, in order to undeceive himself [per suo disinganno], should read the decretal of Innocent IV, cited by me, which can be found in the works of Rinaldi, who continued the work of Baronio. There he would be able to see the same accusations with which he now persecutes the Jews, and would find a complete defense by the esteemed pontiff.”66 Citing Rinaldi was a risky move, because even though he mentioned Innocent’s decree, he also included examples of children “most cruelly killed” by Jews. In fact, Lorenzo Virgulti, an eighteenth-century Dominican preacher in Rome, directly referred to Rinaldi’s work to justify his preaching against Jews and his discussion of Jewish “hatred of Christians and the Christian religion,” poisoning of wells, and infanticides.67 Some later chronicles, including abridged versions based on Baronio and Rinaldi, included even more stories about Jewish infanticides while omitting any mention of the popes’ intervention in defense of the Jews.68
Even if Ganganelli may have felt freer, with the death of Pope Benedict XIV, to condemn more explicitly the accusations that Jews killed Christians to obtain their blood for Passover matzah, defending the Jews was not the only goal of his exposition. In fact, his final report was not just a condemnation of the accusations but also a strong affirmation of papal authority in the Church hierarchy, a major issue at the time that was not limited to dealings between Rome and the Polish clergy; it had clearly been on Ganganelli’s mind when he wrote his preliminary presentation in 1758. Last but not least, Ganganelli’s dissertation also repeatedly affirmed the Church’s ultimate hope that Jews would convert to Catholicism, a topic central to Italian anti-Judaic polemic and certainly one actively discussed among Church officials in Poland and in Rome because of the Frankists, and one that was of particular interest to the recently departed Benedict XIV.69
In this final report Ganganelli expanded on the arguments both in support of the accusations and against them that he had outlined in March 1758. The purpose of presenting both sides was, the cardinal wrote, “to estimate the probability and credibility of the information … that has come from Poland concerning the matter under discussion.”70 There were many arguments in support of the accusations—precisely those that the Polish bishops brought to their own defense: “this crime is imputed to the Jews by so many nations, in nearly every period and place (even where they are subjected to strict control).” Moreover, “if it is imputed to them by so many writers with evident proofs, it is possible for everyone to see on what basis of truth the reports [informazioni] from Poland on this subject must rest.”71 Ganganelli methodically addressed—one by one—the arguments that supported the accusations. He demonstrated “the unsubstantial character of the authorities cited with regard to the object at issue,” championing at the same time the proper hierarchy of the Catholic Church, with the pontiff at its head.
The cardinal reached back in time to the twelfth century, when violence against Jews during the Second Crusade in 1145 was promoted by one “Monk Radulph in Mainz, to repress the audacity of Jews against Christians.”72 Monk Radulph, Ganganelli wrote, “considered it his special duty to preach to the Christian people and excite in them a just resentment against Jews, eager for Christian blood. In fact, the Christians in Mainz, emboldened by the zeal of this monk, were stirred and made a great massacre of the Jews.” The chronicler Odorico Rinaldi, Ganganelli continued, also told of “the just resentment of the Princes of Germany and of the King of France in the thirteenth century against the same Jews, who were consequently subjected to corporal and pecuniary punishments.” The reason for this was “the same as that for which they have been justly punished in Poland, that is: ‘That in the same solemnity [unleavened bread] they make communion with the heart of a slain child … and have laid their charge the corpse of a dead man.’ ” But Monk Radulph was condemned by Archbishop Henry of Mainz, who, in turn, informed “the glorious St. Bernard [of Clairvaux]” about Radulph’s actions. In his letter responding to the archbishop of Mainz, St. Bernard strongly denounced Radulph and undermined his legitimacy:
That man of whom you speak in your letter [Brother Radulph] is sent neither by man, nor as man, nor for man, nor yet by God. For if he boasts of being a Monk or a Hermit, and from this takes upon himself the liberty or office of preaching, he may and ought to know that a Monk has not the office of one who teaches, but of one who laments; for indeed to him a city should be a prison and solitude Paradise. Yet this man on the contrary holds solitude to be a prison and a city Paradise.… Truly three things in him are highly blameworthy: “the usurpation of preaching” (with which he stirred up the people to massacre the Jews): “contempt of the Bishops” (who regretted the slaughter of these unhappy people); and “license of approving murder” (by promoting and approving of the extermination of the unfortunates).73
Though the letter cited here had been discussed by Richard Simon in the aftermath of the Metz affair in 1670 and was reproduced in Tranquillo Vita Corcos’s 1706 treatise in defense of the Jews, Ganganelli used it for slightly different purposes.74 By citing St. Bernard’s letter and interjecting his own comments, Ganganelli sought to put a dent in the argument that if a churchman, such as “monk Radulph,” supported and promoted violence against Jews, then this very fact justified such violence and suggested that the Church supported it as well. Wanting to differentiate levels of status within the church hierarchy and make that part of his argument against anti-Jewish violence, Ganganelli thus juxtaposed the questionable monk against some of the highest church figures: a saint and an archbishop.
Pushing the argument further, Ganganelli addressed support for the accusations from some high-profile lay authorities, such as “the King of France and the Princes of Germany.” Against them, he presented “a judge whom none can consider suspect”—Innocent IV, “the Supreme Pontiff,” who in 1247 issued a strong condemnation of similar anti-Jewish accusations.75 For Ganganelli there was no question whose authority was the highest. Indeed, no one, the cardinal claimed, could accuse him of relying “on very weak and unsubstantial proofs.”76 And thus because Innocent IV and other popes thereafter condemned accusations against Jews and offered protection to them, their condemnation superseded any secular authority.77 And when Ganganelli did quote secular rulers, it was only in cases when they “affirmed that in the past the Supreme Pontiffs have forbidden men to believe the accusation of the alleged impious abuse of Christian blood.”78
True, there were many trials against Jews in many places, as the Polish bishops had pointed out but, Ganganelli stressed, Jews were in fact acquitted in Christian courts and justice was served. In Verona, for example, the “pure love of truth” guided the court. Indeed, there “it was a question of condemning Christian coreligionists and doing justice to Jews.”79 Against these natural “blood-ties,” justice was achieved and Jews were acquitted, precisely because the Verona podestà “considered that ‘it was forbidden by the Supreme Pontiff to believe in the accusation of the alleged impious abuse of Christian blood.’ ”
Just as there were many trials resulting in condemnations and acquittals, so too, many books could be found both supporting and refuting the accusations. Ganganelli noted that, although supporters of the accusations pointed to certain Jewish converts who confirmed the charge, one had to consider their character with caution. Here the cardinal may have been alluding to Frankists, but he said nothing about them. Instead, he singled out Giulio Morosini, a seventeenth-century convert, “first a rabbi among his own people, and afterwards a writer among us,” and Paolo Sebastiano Medici, “another neophyte, personally known by me,” who “put forth various accusations against the Jews.” Yet, claims by the two were effectively refuted in print by Jews in Rome.80 Moreover, the cardinal warned, perhaps alluding again to the Frankists, one had to deal with converts cautiously because “there is wont to occur a certain transport against their own nation, by reason of which they not seldom go beyond the limits of truth.”81
Still, not all converts were untrustworthy, and those who were more reputable than others had, in fact, refuted claims that Jews needed Christian blood. One such convert was Paul of Burgos, “formerly a Jewish doctor, and afterwards a Catholic and raised to the Bishopric of Burgos,” Ganganelli wrote following Corcos’s treatise.82 Paul of Burgos saw anti-Jewish accusations as one of the chief reasons preventing Jews from accepting Christianity, “for they think that we invent lies against them, which presents no small obstacle in our making them believe us.” Ganganelli also mentioned Nicolas of Lyra, “of my Order,” and Ludwig von Sonnenfels of the University of Vienna among trustworthy “neophytes.” (He mistakenly included in this category also Leone Modena, perhaps because of Modena’s publications in Italian.) These three examples once again affirmed the authority of the Church: Paul of Burgos was a bishop; Nicolas of Lyra, a Franciscan friar; and Ludwig von Sonnenfels, a professor of a university whose Catholic orthodoxy could not be questioned.
Having ascertained that all reputable authorities denied accusations that Jews killed Christian children, Ganganelli was left with two cases that seemed to undermine his argument—those of Simon of Trent and of Andreas of Rinn, both of which seem to have had an impact on the rise of anti-Jewish accusations in Poland and both of which were sanctioned by popes. Ganganelli was thus forced to admit “as true the fact of the Blessed Simon, a boy three years old, killed by the Jews in Trent in the year 1475 in hatred of the faith of Jesus Christ” and “the truth of another fact, which happened in the year 1462 in the village of Rinn, in the diocese of Brixen, in the person of the Blessed Andreas, a boy barbarously murdered by the Jews in hatred of the faith in Jesus Christ.” The two cases, however, were not automatically accepted, the cardinal argued. They were “proven by authentic proofs after much diligent search and considerable lapse of time.”83 (This could not be said about the trials in Poland.) The cardinal continued, “It should then be concluded that, among so many infanticides in hatred of our Holy Faith imputed by writers to the Jews, only two can be said to be true.”84 Still, even after “admitting the truth of the two facts in Brixen and in Trent” one could not contend that they applied to the whole “Jewish nation.” These were but “two isolated events.” Indeed, the cardinal dismissed other cases of alleged child victims of the Jews included by the Bollandists in their Acta Sanctorum. All these cases, Ganganelli stated, citing the bull Beatus Andreas, were not “beatified by the Holy See … and much less can they be canonized, no suit having been formed, or sent to Rome to the Roman Pontiff in order that he might approve it.”85
The cases of Simon of Trent and Andreas of Rinn allowed Ganganelli to establish the channels of transmission of papal authority that linked the two cases. Both boys bore the title beatus or blessed, and their cults were officially sanctioned by the pontiffs, if not immediately. In Simon’s case, Pope Sixtus IV had serious objections to the Trent trial and the emerging cult. He, in fact, “forbade the devotion that was paid to the aforesaid Blessed Simon.” It took more than a hundred years before Pope Sixtus V “conceded the Office and Proper Mass in honor of the Blessed Simon, adding to these a Plenary Indulgence to any person who, having confessed and communicated, visited on his feast [March 24] the church in which his relics are to be found.”86 Sixtus IV’s breve, Ganganelli noted, was cited “in the immortal work On the Canonization of Saints by Benedict XIV of glorious memory,” whereas Sixtus V’s work was mentioned in Bonelli’s Apologetic Dissertation. Benedict XIV in turn in December 1752 granted the diocese of Brixen the “Office and the Mass” for Andreas of Rinn, in January 1753 the plenary indulgence similar to that conceded to Simon of Trent, and finally and crucially, in February 1755, he issued the bull Beatus Andreas. (Beatus Andreas remains one of the most powerful affirmations of anti-Jewish accusations ever issued by a prominent Church leader, one that would have strong reverberations for the subsequent defense of Jews.87)
Given the stature of Benedict XIV as a pope and canon lawyer, and the fact that he had addressed the issue of child victims so recently, Ganganelli could not have ignored either Simon or Andreas. But the way Ganganelli handled these papal endorsements of cults of alleged child victims allowed him to condemn anti-Jewish accusations coming out of Poland without undermining papal authority, indeed affirming it. Earlier papal condemnations of accusations that Jews killed Christian children to obtain their blood were not at all contradicted by Sixtus V and Benedict XIV—the cases they sanctioned were murders “in hatred of the faith,” not “blood accusations.” This distinction allowed Ganganelli to remain consistent in his argument. The popes did indeed clear Jews of the latter accusation, but as the cases of Simon and Andreas showed, the popes allowed the possibility of the former. Yet Ganganelli’s claim was not quite forthright. True, Benedict XIV referred to both cases as killings “in hatred of Christian faith,” but blood was an important motif in the story of Simon of Trent, if less so in the case of Andreas of Rinn.
The last papal condemnation of blood accusations against Jews was issued in 1540 by Pope Paul III and then soon forgotten.88 After that, given Rome’s refusal to renew it or to issue a new one, Jews had to resort to invoking either centuries-old papal decrees in their defense or statements by lesser church figures. Although Ganganelli noted that other church officials also intervened on Jews’ behalf, as if to underscore the broad scope of the defense of Jews, he neglected to mention the real reason why Jews had to turn to them. On behalf of Jews in Poland, Ganganelli wrote—again drawing on the material provided decades earlier by Tranquillo Vita Corcos—there also intervened “the most reverend father Giovanni Battista de’ Marini, General of the Order of Preaching Fathers [Dominicans],” who “moved by pity by the Jews of Poland … wrote on February 9, 1664, a very urgent letter to Father Alan Choroduski, the provincial of Poland, in which he instructed his friars in that Kingdom to preach from the pulpit and persuade the people to abandon the baleful belief” they held against Jews. Violence against Jews was not justified, de’ Marini wrote. Christians should instead display “piety and gentleness … to them also, when they are oppressed by injury.” Ill treatment of Jews was offensive to God, the general asserted. “Let the Jews find out in this matter that we desire not their destruction but their salvation.”89 That last sentence reflected broader Church ideas about Jews and gave Ganganelli one more occasion to affirm them. “Such also were the sentiments,” the cardinal wrote, “of St. Bernard against Brother Radulph, and the oracles of Gregory IX and Innocent IV against the Princes of Germany and France.”
If the medieval principle of favor fidei justified situations that according to existing laws appeared illegal but advanced the faith, here the situation was exactly the opposite. Such “illicit hatreds, false accusations, abuses, contumelies” were “an offense to our God” and caused much “injury to divine honor,” because they prevented Jews from converting to Catholicism.90 This was why Ganganelli hoped that “the Holy See would take some measure on behalf of Jews in Poland, as did St. Bernard, Gregory IX and Innocent IV for the Jews of Germany and France, ‘so that the name of Christ may not be blasphemed’ by Jews, and their conversion may not become more difficult.”91 Ganganelli here was harkening back to the medieval Church tradition of condemning anti-Jewish violence on the grounds that it discouraged the Jews from converting. By returning to that medieval tradition, he implicitly moved away from the policy of oppressing Jews “so that Jews may convert” that had dominated the Church since the pontificate of Pope Paul IV.92 As methodical and powerful as Ganganelli’s report was in condemning the specific accusations coming from Poland, in the end it largely affirmed medieval policies of the pontiffs regarding anti-Jewish accusations and, by doing so, also reinforced the centuries-old hope that Jews would convert to Christianity.
But Ganganelli stopped short of making specific recommendations of how to address the Polish trials. He simply examined the background of the accusations and the Church’s responses to them in the hope that “Jesus Christ will suggest to his Vicar such means as shall be honorable to the Christian name and conducive to the conversion of those unhappy ones.” The Holy Office approved the report on December 24, 1759, and then passed it on to Pope Clement XIII on January 10, 1760. It decided that the papal nuncio in Poland was to be briefed about the outcome of Ganganelli’s investigation, but that no formal condemnation was to be issued by the pope. This must not have been what Jacob Eliyakim Zelig and the Polish Jews who sent him to Rome had hoped for, certainly not in the context of the Jacob Frank affair that resulted in conversions to Catholicism of hundreds of his followers. Polish Jews had hoped that the pontiff would either condemn accusations against them outright in a new declaration or at least reissue the centuries-old papal bulls to the same effect.
Jews were not even notified about the full report. In fact, the Ganganelli report was not meant as an official response of the Holy See. Written in Italian, it was an internal document for the Congregation of the Holy Office of the Inquisition. When the popes or other members of Catholic hierarchy wanted to publicize matters broadly, they issued documents in Latin (if destined outside of the Italian peninsula) and had them printed by the official printing house. A printed copy of such document would then be dispatched to a nuncio so it could be, in turn, printed and disseminated locally.93 Documents intended to be read in the Italian peninsula were generally written in Italian, but were still published by the official pontifical printing house.94 The Ganganelli report was never committed to print. The secrecy surrounding this report underscores the importance of the permission to publish in the Vatican’s official printing house the writings by Tranquillo Vita Corcos during the Viterbo affair of 1705–1706.95 But in the case of the Ganganelli report, the Church officials clearly did not want to make it known. Jews likely never received a copy at the time.96
Still, Jews were not ignored completely, though they may not have been fully aware of the outcome of the mission to Rome. According to the decree from the Holy Office signed by Assessor Benedetto Veterani, the papal nuncio in Warsaw was ordered to “take care according to his wisdom and zeal that in other similar cases no harm shall be brought upon the Hebrew nation.”97 If necessary, he should also work with secular and ecclesiastical judges. But Jacob Eliyakim Zelig was not to be informed in detail about the report. Indeed, “all this was to be minimally communicated to Jews.”98 The Congregation agreed that only letters from the Holy Office “addressed to the [current] Apostolic Nuncio were to be given to [the Jews’] delegate who is staying in the City.”
On that very same date when the report was presented to Pope Clement XIII, January 10, 1760, a draft of the letter from the Holy Office to be given “open” to Jacob Eliyakim Zelig and intended for the nuncio in Warsaw was prepared. The nuncio was “expressly ordered” by the pontiff to help Zelig, who had come to Rome to “implore [the] Holy See most humbly” for protection from these “intolerable hardships.” He was to offer any assistance to Zelig so he “may not suffer any oppression and harassment” by those who might be upset on account of his appeal to Rome.99 The letter had then to make its way through the Vatican bureaucracy. It was finally signed by the young cardinal Andrea Corsini on February 9, 1760, to be sent to Warsaw with the Jewish emissary.100
Meanwhile, the newly appointed papal nuncio to Poland, Bishop Antonio Eugenio Visconti, was readying for his trip to assume his post, which was set to begin on February 22, 1760.101 Just before his departure, Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli paid him a visit to wish him “happy travels.”102 Visconti was not present, so a note was left for him that Ganganelli wanted to “hand over some documents concerning the decided case of Jews in that Kingdom.” Among the documents was perhaps a manuscript copy of Ganganelli’s report, though it is not clear if the nuncio did in fact receive a copy.
As Visconti was leaving Rome for Poland, Jacob Eliyakim Zelig was still in the Eternal City. On May 23, 1760, Zelig received a letter from none other than Cardinal Ganganelli who warmly recommended Zelig to the nuncio. “After having been held in Rome for a long time to conduct to the end a most important business,” Ganganelli wrote, “the Polish Jew Jacob Zelig, returning to his country will have the honor of presenting to you this letter of mine to beseech through me Your Illustrious Lordship [to offer] forceful aid [valevole padrocinio] in situations when he may need to reach out to you.”103 Ganganelli reiterated that the favorable report of the Holy Office had been accepted by “His Holiness” himself and emphasized that this should give more weight to the cardinal’s recommendation and should create a “new willingness” on the part of the nuncio to “accommodate my efforts on behalf of the person and the needs of the said Zelig.”
Jacob Eliyakim Zelig left Rome not having achieved his ultimate goal. Certainly, his mission to Rome bore fruit, but it did not result in what the Jews had for decades been trying to achieve: “an official papal pronouncement on the blood libel.”104 On this the Holy See had stalled since at least the 1740s, when Jews began asking for such a document in the aftermath of the Poznań trial in 1736–1739, and possibly ever since the seventeenth century when, in the absence of papal condemnations, Jews resorted to obtaining letters from other church officials, like that from the general of the Dominicans issued in 1664.105
On his return to Poland, Zelig met with Nuncio Visconti, no doubt hoping for a forceful response in accord with Ganganelli’s letter. But with Ganganelli’s treatise kept private and the decision by the Holy Office not to issue official pronouncements, the nuncio had little room for a public declaration. What Visconti could do was work behind the scenes when the need arose. And in the absence of a forceful refutation of the anti-Jewish charges, such occasions did arise very soon, testing the power of behind-the-scenes interventions in the absence of public statements.