Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis

Iakov Levi

Medusa, the Female Genital and the Nazis

Jan. 31, 2003

The Erinnyes, fragment of Acropolis marbles

Medusa of Corfu (Black/bronze colored Ganges clay).

The GORGON MEDUSA

Her Name and Origin.
Medusa means "sovereign female wisdom", in Sanskrit it's Medha, Greek Metis, Egyptian Met or Maat.
Medusa was actually imported into Greece from Libya where she was worshipped by the Libyan Amazons as their Serpent-Goddess. Medusa (Metis) was the destroyer aspect of the Great Triple Goddess also called Neith, Anath, Athene or Ath-enna in North Africa and Athana in 1400 c. BC Minoan Crete ( Alicia Le Van, Women in Antiquity, Final Paper 5/7/96 )

Courageous, unconcerned, scornful, coercive- so wisdom wisheth us; she is a woman, and ever loveth only a warrior. (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 7, On reading and writing).

And when once Life asked me: "Who is she then, this Wisdom?"- then said I eagerly: "Ah, yes! Wisdom!
One thirsteth for her and is not satisfied, one looketh through veils, one graspeth through nets.
Is she beautiful? What do I know! But the oldest carps are still lured by her. Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bite her lip, and pass the comb against the grain of her hair.
Perhaps she is wicked and false, and altogether a woman; but when she speaketh ill of herself, just then doth she seduce most." (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 32, The Dance Song)

Supposing truth is a woman, what then? Are there not grounds for the suspicion that all philosophers, insofar as they were dogmatists, have been very inexpert about women? That the gruesome seriousness, the clumsy obtrusiveness with which they have usually approached truth so far have been awkward and very improper methods for winning a woman's heart? What is certain is that she has not allowed herself to be won, and today every kind of dogmatism is left standing dispirited and discouraged.(Nietzsche, Beyond Good And Evil, Preface)

This had Zarathustra said to his heart when the sun stood at noon-tide. Then he looked inquiringly aloft,- for he heard above him the sharp call of a bird. And behold! An eagle swept through the air in wide circles, and on it hung a serpent, not like a prey, but like a friend: for it kept itself coiled round the eagle's neck.
"They are mine animals," said Zarathustra, and rejoiced in his heart.
"The proudest animal under the sun, and the wisest animal under the sun,- they have come out to reconnoitre (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, Prologue, 10).

-Oh, that cursed, nimble, supple serpent and lurking-witch! Where art thou gone? But in my face do I feel through thy hand, two spots and red blotches itch! (Nietzsche, Thus Spake Zarathustra, 59, The Second Dance Song)

Now the serpent was craftier [= wiser] than all the beasts of the field which the Lord God had made (Gn., 3:1).

"Craftier" - "wiser" is a wrong translation from Hebrew of the word 'Arum. The original meaning of the word 'Arum is "naked". Only later it acquired also the meaning of "astute" - "wise".
When we have a double meaning to a word, the more concrete is the original, and the more abstract meaning is the later overlay. The ancients, like our unconscious, did not speak by allegories.
Therefore, the right translation of the biblical verse is: "Now, the serpent was more naked than all the beasts of the field which the Lord had made"
In our unconscious, the original concrete meaning is always there. Metaphors and allegories are a defense of the Ego, through the process of isolation, against the emergence of the original instinctual need to consciousness.

Truth is a naked woman

Cfr. Sapere e Conoscenza. Dai riti iniziatici alla filosofia platonica.

Caravaggio's Medusa

As Nietzsche says: Changeable is she, and wayward; often have I seen her bite her lip, and pass the comb against the grain of her hair.

From the wisdom of Medusa to the Goddess of Wisdom

Athena on the pediment and Athena by Phidia

All Women, all Virgins, all Serpents, all Wise: Wisdom is a woman, is a serpent, it is virginity = it is the female genital (1).
The snake represent her phallus which, as long as she remains virgin, is unconsciously perceived as untouched, inviolated by genital penetration. The spare, which Athena holds in her hand is another phallic symbol, meant to defend her virginity.
Artemis, the other virgin goddess of Olympic Greece, holds a bow and arrows, instead of a spare, but the significance is the same: to defend herself from male lust. They condense the virginal penis and the apotropaic (means of defense) device. As in dreams, mythological representations work by the way of condensation.
As Freud and Abraham have shown, the little child makes an interpretation of sexual intercourse as an aggressive act of castration inflicted on the female by the male (Sigmund Freud, "The History of an Infantile Neurosis", in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud, Ed. and Trans. J. Strachey, Hogarth Press, London 1964, Vol.XVII, pp.121-2; Karl Abraham, "The Female Castration Complex" (1920), in in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, edited by Ernest Jones, translated by Douglas Bryan and Alix Strachey, Hogart Press, London 1927, pp. 339 - 343).

Furthermore, by extension, the female genital becomes the symbol of the woman herself, Pars pro Toto (a part for the whole).

Serpent Goddess Crete(Neolithic); Minoan Serpent Goddess(1500B.C); Sistine Chapel(1500A.D)

As Freud has shown, the child perceives females to have had a penis like his own ("The History of an Infantile Neurosis", in op,cit. pp.121-2).
When, looking at the genital of the mother or the sisters, he cannot find it, he is struck with awe. His libido fixates into the fantasy of a penis which is not there, because he knows that it should be there.
The missing female penis emerges from the inconscious as women - serpents or women holding snakes.

Women and Their Snakes

The missing female member is perceived not only as extremely erotic, because of the libido fixated on it in such an early stage, but also as scaring and threatening, because it triggers the child's own castration's anxiety. As Freud writes dealing with Medusa:

The terror of the Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. The hair upon the Medusa's head is frequently represented in works of art in the form of snakes, and these once again are derived from the castration complex. It is a remarkable fact that however frightening they may be in themselves, they nevertheless serve as a mitigation of the horror, for they replace the penis, the absence of which is the cause of the horror. This is a confirmation of the technical rule according to which a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration (Medusa's Head, 1940).

The female missing member emerges from the unconscious as worms, as rats, even as dwarfs (see the tale of Snowhite and her seven little dwarfs).
As Freud has shown, little children symbolize the penis too ("Symbolism in Dreams", in "Introductory Lectures on Psychoanalysis" (1915-1917) in op.cit., Vol.XV, p.155 and 157).
Little children = rats, like in the tale of the Pied Piper of Hamelin, where children and rats are inter-changeable. First the Pied Piper takes the rats, thereafter he takes the children. It is an equivalence: rats = children = female penis, like in the illustration below:

The Pied Piper of Hamelin

The rat, sitting on the flute of the Pied Piper, is female, like the serpents of Medusa and the Indian dancers.
She herself has a flute between her legs, like the witches who ride on brooms, another representation of phallic women.
As in dreams, where the same concept is repeated by the way of condensation, the she-rat has a penis and she is a penis herself. With Abraham's words: " the idea that the female has concealed within her a very large penis into which the smaller organ of the man must penetrate" (Karl Abraham, "An Infantile Sexual Theory Not Hitherto Noted", 1925, in op.cit., pp.335-6).

Pinocchio and the serpent

Pinocchio - the young pubertal hero of the tale - confronts the Serpent, too, the female phallic monster that the archaic heroes had to overcome and exorcise, like Moses, Orpheus, Perseus, Apollo of Ovidius, St. George, and Tamino of the Magic Flute:

"Excuse me, Sir Serpent, but would you be so good as to move a little to one side just enough to allow me to pass?" He might as well have spoken to the wall. Nobody moved. He began again in the same soft voice: "You must know, Sir Serpent, that I am on my way home, where my father is waiting for me, and it is such a long time since I saw him last! ... Will you therefore allow me to continue my road?" He waited for a sign in answer to this request, but there was none: in fact, the Serpent, who up to that moment had been sprightly and full of life, became motionless and almost rigid. He shut his eyes and his tail ceased smoking. "Can he really be dead?" said Pinocchio, rubbing his hands with delight; and he determined to jump over him and reach the other side of the road. But just as he was going to leap the Serpent raised himself suddenly on end, like a spring set in motion; and the puppet, drawing back in his terror caught his feet and fell to the ground. And he fell so awkwardly that his head stuck in the mud and his legs went into the air (Collodi, Pinocchio, Chap.XX).

The same Mud of Mother Earth, from which emerged the big Snake defeated by Apollo, the initiation god patron of lads and novices - heroes (Ovidius, Mtm., I:435-445).

The Cult of the Child and the Blood Libel (2)

Abraham told us also another important thing:

Freud has shown that besides the idea of motion and penis in the sense of gift there is still a third idea which is identified with both of them, namely, that of a child. Infantile theories of procreation and birth adequately explain this connection.
The little girl cherishes the hope of getting a child from her father as a substitute for the penis not granted her, and this again in the sense of a gift. ("The Female Castration Complex" (1920), in op.cit, p.343)

Furthermore, " The female genital is looked upon as a wound, and as such it represents an effect of castration" (K.Abraham, op.cit., p.340). Threfore, the cult of the child, which took hold since the beginning of Christianity, is to be understood as the cult of the missing female member, and as a defense against castration's anxiety. Worshipping the Child, namely, the female penis, the scaring absence of her phallus is denied. Faith says loudly: "it is there, therefore, it is not missing". The miracle consists in its re - emergence. From a Virgin, because virgins are perceived as still owning their original penis. Abraham has shown how sexual intercourse is unconsciously perceived as an act of castration, which the male inflicts on the female (op.cit.) .

In this perspective, we can better understand why since the Middle Ages inflamatory accusations of ritual murder of a child spreaded, and were directed against the Jews

The first illustration is associated to the case of Anderl von Rinn (3). The second is a woodcut showing Jews performing a ritual to extract a Christian child's blood. These prints were popular in Germany and the Netherlands in the 15th Century. Notice that in the illustration the extraction of the child's blood is synonymous of castration. The Jews are castrating the child. It is a reinforcement and a repetition of the child himself as a penis' symbol.

The Jews deny the existence of the Divine Child. Henceforth, by their very credo they confirm the absence of the female member, and they trigger the castration's anxiety.
Therefore, the Jews were accused of being the ones who castrate the fantasized female penis.
In this way, the level of tension induced by the castration's anxiety triggered at the sight of the vaginal "wound", is reduced at two levels:
1) Finding an explanation for female castration (they are the Jews who did it).
2) Projecting into them their own anal - sadistict drive to castrate the female.

The Jews become, in this way, the poison container for the accusers' own terrors and drives: the scapegoat.

San Simonino da Trento (4)

The shape of the body of the Child is like that of a serpent, confirming the equivalence: Child = serpent = female penis.

The association between a child - serpent, and the same grown up serpent, killed by the Jews, is everywhere in collective Western unconscious.
In the Gospels, Christ is compared to a serpent:

And as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, so must the Son of man be lifted up, that whoever believes in him may have eternal life (John, 3:14).

1600 A.D. XII sec. Otto Munch - Grossmunster (Zurich)

Notice the curve shaped body of Christ, as in many Romanesque representations

The Nazis and the Female Genital

The horror, the hatred, the terror, and the fixated erotic libido into the missing female member were projected into the Jews.
It is not casual that the Nazis called the Jews "rats", and depicted them as infesting, polluting and proliferating in scaring ways. Exactly as the rats which invaded the pacific town of Hamelin.

Here is a Jew attemptig at the numerous female penises, that are exiting between the legs of the girl. Namely, he is attempting at her virginity, because her non - violated penis is perceived as the apotropaic instrument defending her genital from penetration, as in the case of Medusa, Athena and all other virgin goddesses, who defended their verginity holding a phallic symbol, snakes or weapons.

Der Sturmer

The Jew, who in the first poster was accused of attempting at the girl's virginity, now is accused of being himself the terrifying female penis: the snake. As he is compared by the Nazis' propaganda to rats and insects. As in dreams, symbols work by condensation.

On the left is represented Germany, the pure Virgin, with her putto = child = penis holding her. The phallic substance of the Virgin is repeated twice: once in the child at the extreme left holding her dress, and once in her wings. As pointed by Freud: "a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration (Medusa's Head, 1940; Cf. note 1).
On the right, the Blood Libel. The evil Jews castrating her virginal penis, i.e. the Christian Child whom they are murdering.

Freud told us in "Symbolism in Dreams" (op.cit, Vol.15, pp.149-155.) that the mushroom is the symbol of the male penis. However, we must not forget that he also has shown that the child perceives the female genital being like the masculine one.
We have seen in the Pied Piper of Hamelin that rats, which are the symbol of the penis, are represented as females.
Namely, in the context of invading, polluting, infesting, the phallus is perceived as feminine. The Atomic Bomb, which as every bomb is rounded and therefore female, delivers after the explosion an enormous mushroom.
An atomic bomb exploding is equivalent to a woman delivering her baby.
When General Groves cabled to President Truman to report that the first A-bomb was successful, he wrote : "The baby is born".
The GI's called the bomb that exploded on Hiroshima: "Little Boy".
Meaning the fungus of the bomb, which is a phallic symbol, is the baby = female penis, confirming to us Freud's words that baby, little, child, mushroom represent a penis, and Abraham's that the female sees in the child a compensation for her missing member.
Therefore, the polluting, infesting female penises, which invaded Hamelin as rats, and as such compared by the Nazis to the Jews, are equivalent to destructive, poisonous mushrooms.

The Poisonous Mushroom

All infesting, all polluting, all poisonous, all symbols of the scaring, fantasized female genital.

As Abraham has shown in his work, the spider in dreams represents the female genital. A spider with a thread is a female genital with a penis ("The Spider as a Dream Symbol" (1922), in Selected Papers of Karl Abraham, Hogarth Press, London 1927, pp. 326-332). Moreover, multilegged spiders are among the "polyphallic" animals which, by that very characteristic, are reminders of castration (polyphallic = with many penis. Cf. S.Freud, Supra: " multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration").
And here he is again, the Jew as a menacing female genital:

Der Sturmer

Odilon Redon: The Smiling Spider

Arnold Bocklin: "Die Pest" 1898 : The female penis as a plague

21/07/2008

Addendum

Now, look at that!

Again, The Jews as polluting rats!

From The Jerusalem Post: Palestinians: Israel uses rats against J'lem Arabs

Nothing is new under the sun.

Links:
On Trees and on Birds
Three Women: the Penis
Caravaggio and the Deposizione nel sepolcro
Caravaggio, Clitorectomy and the Talion of the Woman
Soccer Games and Caravaggio
Why is the Lady so Sexy?
Rosencrantz e Guildenstern

NOTES

(1) For the serpent as symbol of the fantasized female penis, and not of the masculine one, as hinted by Freud, and sustained by Abraham and Reik, see: Iakov Levi, "Biancaneve e altre vergini", capitolo secondo, nota 9, in Scienza e psicoanalisi. Rivista multimediale di psicoanalisi e scienze applicate, [Entered 8 Settembre 2002].

Freud says that the serpent is one of the "less understood" male phallic symbols. ("Introductory Lectures on Psycho - Analysis; Symbolism in Dreams", 1915 - 1917, in The Standard Edition of the Complete Works of Sigmund Freud,Ed. and Trans. J. Strachey, Hogarth Press, London 1964, Vol.15, pp.149-155).
Although Freud defines the snake as a male phallic symbol, he was induced into error by the fact, as he himself says, that the woman is fantasized having a penis similar to the masculine one.
Therefore, we should not wonder if there is some confusion on the substance of the female penis, as the child himself is very confused on this issue.
In a letter to Fliess dated the 26th July 1904 he says: “Until now I did not know what I learned from your letter-that you are using [the idea of] bisexuality in your treatments. We talked about it for the first time in Nuremberg while I was still lying in bed, and you told me the case history of the woman who had dreams of gigantic snakes. At that time you were quite impressed by the idea that undercurrents in a woman might stem from the masculine part of her psyche.” (The Complete Letters of Sigmund Freud and Wilhelm Fliess 1887-1904, Translated by Jeffrey Moussaieff Masson,The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press Cambridge – Massachusetts, and London-England, 1995, p.465)
Therefore, Freud had unconsciously perceived that the right association is "serpent = phallic masculine part of the woman", namely, the clitoris as pre- vaginal phallic stage. If he had interpreted the snake as a male penis he would not have raised the question of ambisexuality in this context, and he would have interpreted the dream of the woman as a desire for the male's penis.
In one of his last works, published posthumous, Freud was close to draw the right conclusion:

The terror of the Medusa is thus a terror of castration that is linked to the sight of something. The hair upon the Medusa's head is frequently represented in works of art in the form of snakes, and these once again are derived from the castration complex. It is a remarkable fact that however frightening they may be in themselves, they nevertheless serve as a mitigation of the horror, for they replace the penis, the absence of which is the cause of the horror. This is a confirmation of the technical rule according to which a multiplication of penis symbols signifies castration (Medusa's Head, 1940).

The snakes are placed on Medusa's head. Therefore, they are the representation of her penis, and not that of the male.
The significance of the snake as a female phallic symbol becomes clear if we notice that in mythology the reptile is always associated with goddesses and never with gods and heros. Moses put the serpent on a rod (Nm. 21:8). Namely, he was directly associated with the rod, which is an obvious male phallic symbol, and not with the serpent. The serpent stood on the rod. In the same way Aescalepius, the god of medicine, held in his hand a rod, and the serpent embraces the rod, without being directly touched by the god: Rod (male) - Serpent (female).
Therefore, the symbol of medicine and healing (rod + serpent) is composed by both symbols: healing comes from the symbiosis between the male and the female.

Herodotos knew that the snakes come from Mother Earth

LXXVIII. This was how Croesus reasoned. Meanwhile, snakes began to swarm in the outer part of the city; and when they appeared the horses, leaving their accustomed pasture, devoured them. When Croesus saw this he thought it a portent, and so it was. [2] He at once sent to the homes of the Telmessian interpreters,1 to inquire concerning it; but though his messengers came and learned from the Telmessians what the portent meant, they could not bring back word to Croesus, for he was a prisoner before they could make their voyage back to Sardis. [3] Nonetheless, this was the judgment of the Telmessians: that Croesus must expect a foreign army to attack his country, and that when it came, it would subjugate the inhabitants of the land: for the snake, they said, was the offspring of the land, but the horse was an enemy and a foreigner. This was the answer which the Telmessians gave Croesus, knowing as yet nothing of the fate of Sardis and of the king himself; but when they gave it, Croesus was already taken (Hist., I:78, Ed. A.D.Godley).

"the snake, they said, was the offspring of the land, but the horse was an enemy and a foreigner".
Meaning, the snake is a phallic symbol and an offspring of the Land, herself the symbol of the Mother. It comes from her, it is her penis.
The horse, instead, is an enemy. He comes from outside. Meaning, he is a male phallic symbol, an outsider, like the masculine penis, which is outside and strives to penetrate her. Like the Troian horse, which deflowered the city.

The same concept of the Serpent as phallic symbol of Mother Earth is found in Ovid, Metam., I: 435 - 445.
After the Deluge, Mother Earth generates from inside herself an enormous serpent (the Python).

But of new monsters, Earth created more.
Unwillingly, but yet she brought to light
Thee, Python too, the wondring world to fright,
And the new nations, with so dire a sight:
So monstrous was his bulk, so large a space
Did his vast body, and long train embrace. (Metam., I: 435 - 445, Transl. by Sir Samuel Garth, John Dryden)

With Abraham's words: "the idea that the female has concealed within her a very large penis into which the smaller organ of the man must penetrate". (K. Abraham, "An Infantile Sexual Theory Not Hitherto Noted" (1925), in op.cit., p.336).

(2) Blood libel accusations against Jews:
In 1144 CE, an unfounded rumor began in eastern England, that Jews had kidnapped a Christian child, tied him to a cross, stabbed his head to simulate Jesus' crown of thorns, killed him, drained his body completely of blood, and mixed the blood into matzos (unleavened bread) at time of Passover. The rumor arose from a former Jew, Theobald, who had become a Christian monk. He said that Jewish representatives gathered each year in Narbonne, France. They decided in which city a Christian child would be sacrificed. The boy became known as St. William of Norwich. Many people made pilgrimages to his tomb and claimed that miracles had resulted from appeals to St. William. The myth shows a complete lack of understanding of Judaism. Aside from the prohibition of killing innocent persons, the Torah specifically forbids the drinking or eating of any form of blood in any quantity. However, reality never has had much of an impact on blood libel myths. This rumor lasted for many centuries; even today it has not completely disappeared.
Pope Innocent IV ordered a study in 1247 CE.. The investigators found that the myth was a Christian invention used to justify persecution of the Jews. At least 4 other popes subsequently vindicated the Jews. However, the accusations, trials and executions continued.

Nicholl reports that "there are 150 recorded cases of the charge of ritual murder, and many led to massacres of the Jews of the place."

Some of the incidents were:

1144 CE: Jews in Norwich, England were accused of the ritual murder; Jewish leaders in the area were executed.
1171: Jews in Blois, France were accused of ritual murder. All of the Jews in that town (34 men, 17 women) were tortured and burned alive. A second source says that 31 were killed.
1181: More accusations at Bury, St. Edmund, England
1183: More accusations in Bristol, England
1192: More accusations in Winchester, England
1244: London Jews were accused of ritual murder and fined heavily.
1250: Jews in Saragossa, Spain, were accused of ritually killing a child, San Domenichino de Val.
1255: The body of a little boy, Hugh, was found in a cesspool near the house of a Jew in Lincoln, England. He was tortured, confessed that he had engaged in ritual murder, dragged through the streets, and finally hung. 100 Jews were transported to London and charged with ritual murder. One was acquitted; 2 were pardoned; the rest were hanged, either with or without a trial.
1283-5: Following a series of ritual murder charges, 10 Jews were murdered by a mob in Mainz; 26 were executed in Bacharach, 40 in Oberwellil, and 180 in Munich.
1431: After ritual murder charges, several Jewish communities were destroyed in southern Germany: Ravensburg, Uberlingen and Lindau.
1451: Pope Nicholas V appointed John of Capistrano to organize the Inquisition of the Jews. John repeated the old charges of ritual murder and host desecration.
1541: John Eck, a Roman Catholic writer, wrote a pamphlet "Refutation of a Jewish Book." He repeated the ritual murder and host desecration myths.
1840: An elderly Italian monk-priest, Padre Tommaso, disappeared in Damascus, Syria, after having visited the Jewish quarter in the city. 12 Jewish leaders were arrested and tortured. Four died from the mistreatment; most of the rest confessed involvement in a ritual murder. 3
1870's: "With the rise of the modern antisemitic movement in the late 1870s, the traditional blood accusation merged easily with the new scientific racial arguments, serving as a lowest common denominator to unite its secular (and often anti-Christian), Catholic, and Protestant members." 3 Roman Catholic Bishop Martin of Pederborn, Germany, wrote that Jews ritually murdered Christian children.
1881: A Roman Catholic journal, Civilta Cattolica, started a series of articles which attempted to prove that ritual murder was an integral element of the Jewish religion. They argued that the ritual murders occurred at Purim rather than Passover. "It is in vain that Jews seek to slough off the weight of argument against them: the mystery has become known to all." (Not quite all. Historians have rejected the stories of blood libel as myth.) 3
1911-3: An allegation of ritual murder, the Beilis case, surfaced in Kiev, Russia. The story formed the plot of novel, "The Fixer" by Bernard Malamud.
1930's +: Hitler re-used the blood-libel myth as justification for the Holocaust. The Nazi periodical, Der St�Rrmer, often published special issues devoted to allegations of ritual murder by Jews. Hitler had asked that a film be made of the 1840 Damascus case. World War II ended before it could be made.

(Blood libel & host desecration allegations against Jews: 1144 CE to present time, in http://www.religioustolerance.org/jud_blib2.htm [Entered 10 Novemner 2002])

Vedi anche:
Medieval Sourcebook: Thomas of Monmouth: The Life and Miracles of St. William of Norwich, 1173 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1173williamnorwich.html [Entered 31 October 2001]
Medieval Sourcebook: Ephraim ben Jacob: The Ritual Murder Accusation at Blois, May, 1171 http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/1171blois.html [Entered 31 October 2002]

(3) The illustration, located at the cult-church of Anderl von Rinn until recently, portrays the "martyrdom" of Anderl, a three year-old boy who became the focus of a blood-libel cult in the seventeenth-century. Anderl is the child being held down and having his throat slit. The killers are clearly marked as Jews by their clothes and turbans (one form of the "special mark" Jews were forced to carry by Church decree).
The third, lower, figure is collecting the child's blood in a bowl. The myth of the blood libel was that the blood of a Christian child was used to make Passover matzohs.
Note that, as Prof. Schafer recounts below, this cult was allowed to continue in Austria until the 1990s, when Bishop Reinhold Stecher had the images removed.
The text of the motto reads: "Sie schneiden dem Marterer, die Gurgl ab und nemen alles Blut von Ihm", literally "they cut throat of the martyr and take all blood from him" or in other words, "They cut the martyr's throat and drain all his blood."
(Medieval Sourcebook: A Blood Libel Cult: Anderl von Rinn, d. 1462, in http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/source/rinn.html [entered 30 October 2002]

(4) More than five hundred years ago, the Jewish community of Trent was victimized by the accusation of ritual murder. It began on March 23, 1475, when a two and a half year old boy from Trent, named Simon Unferdorben, wearing a black or grayish-black coat disappeared. It was during the holy feast days of Passover, and the accepted belief existed among Christians in those days that Jews kidnapped Christian children, killed them and used their blood to bake ��matzot��. On March 26, the little boy was reportedly found in a ditch at the house of Samuel, the leader of the Jewish community. Simon��s death was very rapidly blamed on the Jews of Trent, and it was not very long before it was used as a justification for their persecution.

The investigation and the ensuing trial were based on lying witnesses, inaccurate testimony and confessions extracted under torture. Both were clouded under prejudice. As a result of the trial, the accused Jews were burnt at the stake, and some that accepted conversion were executed. The incident had repercussions throughout Europe and led to further waves of persecution. In parallel a religious ritual developed around the child, Simon, who was portrayed as a martyr. A procession was held every ten years until 1965, when the Archbishop of Trent consented to its cancellation in the context of the ��Concilio Vaticano II��.

The CD Rom, officially released in December 2001, documents the stages of the trial, the persecution, the attempts to reveal the truth, and historical investigation of the period. It is the scholarly work of Dr. Oliviero Stock, Dr. Daniele Nissim and Prof. Diego Quaglioni.

(The ��Simonino�� Affair: the 500 Year Blood Libel Against the Jews of Trento, Italy. A lecture in the series ��From History to Multimedia��, http://www.cri.haifa.ac.il/events/2002/simonino/simonino.htm

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