R. Po-chia Hsia, The Myth of Ritual Murder: Jews and Magic in Reformation Germany (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1988) (From the book jacket: "'In the year of Our Lord 1470, Elias, Jew at Endingen, was held and questioned as to what he knew of the murder committed some years ago in Endingen by the Jews, because one knows well, that nobody else but the Jews had committed the murder.'--Frieburg record of the Endingen ritual murder trial that resulted in the execution of three Jews and the expulsion of the rest of the Jewish families in the city.' "Between the mid-fifteen and the beginning of the seventeenth century, German Jews were persecuted and often brought to trial for the alleged ritual murders of Christian children, whose blood purportedly played a crucial part in Jewish magical rites. In this engrossing book). R. Po-chia Hsia traces the rise and decline of ritual murder trials during this period. Using a wide variety of sources ranging from Christian and Kabbalistic treatises to judicial records, popular pamphlets, woodcuts, and folk songs, Hsia sifts through the tales of ritual murder, examines the religious sources of the idea of child sacrifice and blood symbolism, and reconstructs the political context of ritual murder trials against the Jews." "Hsia explains that legends of ritual murder coalesced with stories of Host desecration to create a powerful myth of Jewish magic. However, says Hsia, Reformation theologians undermined medieval beliefs in blood magic, and the Holy Roan Emperors vigorously condemned ritual murder trials, These developments, along with the evolution of a professional legal corps and the efforts of the Jews themselves, contributed to the gradual suppression of ritual murder trials. Nonetheless, the discourse of ritual murder persisted well past the sixteenth century, and the blood libel bequeathed a most ambiguous legacy for the Jews of Germany.").
R. Po-chia Hsia, Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial (New Haven & London: Yale U. Press, 1992) (From the book jacket: "Setting the trial and its documents in the historical context of medieval blood libel, Hsia vividly portrays how fact and fiction can be blurred, how judicial torture can be couched in icy orderliness and impersonality, and how religious rites can be interpreted as ceremonies of barbarism.").
