and it was widely accepted that the Jew possessed the ability to heal and
to harm. All these factors combined to make fears of Jewish ritual mur-
der a very real occurrence in the popular mind, with deep cultural roots.
From the late Middle Ages to early modern times, religious and civic
authorities began to discredit the intellectual and popular foundations
of the blood libel. In 1247, in one of the earliest pronouncements, Pope
Innocent IV pleaded for restraint “if the body of a dead man is by chance
found anywhere. . . . Duly redress all that has been wrought against the
Jews in the aforesaid matter by the said prelates, nobles, and potentates,
and do not allow them in the future to be unjustly molested by any-
body on this or any other similar charge.”10 Discrediting the charge, it
turned out, was easier said than done. This was a drawn- out process
tied to the development of new theological and legal discourses and the
dramatic social and intellectual dislocations in Reformation Europe.
Somewhere at the end of the seventeenth century, official attitudes,
especially in German- speaking lands, began to change to such an extent
that it became extremely difficult to convict Jews of blood sacrifice in a
court of law. The accusations waned for many of the same reasons that
witchcraft prosecution saw a decline: the elimination of torture tech-
niques in criminal investigations; the promulgation of laws restricting
the prosecution of ritual murder to those accusations where conclusive
evidence was found; and intellectual changes in science and philosophy
that gradually repudiated belief in magic and the supernatural.11
In Western and Central Europe, new standards of documentation
made it extremely difficult for judges and lawyers to prosecute the crime
of ritual murder, even if judicial disenchantment did not signal an
abrupt change in mentality. How can historians penetrate the complex
worlds of belief? Scholars have shown that criminal trials reflect the pre-
occupations of the elites and that the frequency of legal cases is usually
intrODuctiOn
5
not the best barometer of judging the rise and fall of popular beliefs.12
In any given time or place, many more ritual murder accusations were
made than the number of cases prosecuted by authorities. Evidence
from a wide range of sources— including print, music, painting, and
theater— suggests that the tale continued to retain its power of persua-
sion long after authorities had successfully suppressed the trials. Thus,
even after the number of documented trials declined, the blood libel
tale continued to enjoy remarkable popularity in small market towns
and villages. A rich folklore captures the symbolically related elements
of blood, ritual practice, and magic in the imagination. Morality plays
and woodcuts, chronicles and legends, folktales and songs, paintings
and sculptures— all depict the Jew as a demonic figure, capable of the
foulest crimes against their Christian neighbors.13
At roughly the time that the cases had declined in the West, the tale
began to travel eastward. From the 1540s to the 1780s, Polish authorities
investigated between eighty and one hundred cases, around 40 percent
of which occurred in the eighteenth century.14 How did the blood libel
make its way to Eastern Europe? For years, scholars have argued that,
as German Jewish communities migrated to the east in response to vio-
lence, persecution, and expulsions, so did the blood libel. According to
this line of historical reasoning, a virulent print culture helped dissem-
inate the tale to the public. In Poland- Lithuania, books and pamphlets
on the theme went through numerous editions, achieving the dubious
status of early modern bestsellers. Anti- Jewish writers, most of whom
were Catholic preachers, accused Jews of using blood for religious ritual
practice and of stealing or trading in church ritual objects. Renegade
members of the Jewish community helped legitimize the accusations by
describing Jewish theological rites involving the use of Christian blood.15
Notwithstanding the popularity of these arguments, recent research
has shown that East European Jewry did not form as a result of large-
scale mass migrations from Central Europe. Most likely, economic and
demographic pressures, rather than violence and expulsions, forced
individual Jews, and not entire communities, to travel the long distances
to the east. Subsequently, the Jewish population in Eastern Europe grew
naturally as a result of low child mortality and high fertility rates.16
Nor is it likely that the printed word was the only tool responsi-
ble for the cultural transmission of the blood libel tale. To be sure,
6
6
the Velizh affair
the eighteenth century witnessed a rapid increase of publishing, while
expert testimonies of Christian theologians and Jewish converts played
no small role in the propaganda campaign. Yet however powerful the
printed word might be, it seems highly unlikely that defamatory writ-
ings alone could disseminate the tale so widely. In small market towns
of Eastern Europe, where there were no provincial newspapers and
where the vast majority of people were illiterate, with limited access to
published materials, the accusations circulated by word of mouth with
striking speed and regularity. Fueled by sinister rumors and fears, the
stories reflected a common reservoir of shared beliefs, fantasies, and
everyday experiences. Fear may not have been a sign of weakness, but it
was how people responded to danger and how panic was able to spread
so quickly, often with fatal consequences.17
As a result of the three partitions of the Polish- Lithuanian
Commonwealth (in 1772, 1793, and 1795), Russia not only acquired the
largest Jewish population in the world but also inherited an established
cultural tradition of ritual murder.18 The blood libel did not enjoy a
modern “revival,” as some scholars have recently argued, but survived—
and even flourished— in small market towns and villages since early
modern times.19 In the first half of the nineteenth century, almost all
the documented cases occurred in the northwest region of the Russian
Empire, in Minsk, Vil’na, Vitebsk, and Mogilev provinces (in present-
day Lithuania and Belarus). Here, an unusually high proportion of the
inhabitants— from the common folk to the well- educated members—
believed that Jews were capable of committing the crime. For reasons that remain unclear, authorities in the southwest region, in Volynia,
Podolia, and Kiev provinces (in present- day Ukraine), were reluctant to
prosecute Jews for ritual murder save for two cases in Lutsk and Zaslav,
although they had no qualms in charging Jews with sacrilegious behav-
ior and the desecration of church property.20 Significantly, this does not
mean that the blood libel tale had lost its powers of persuasion in the
southwest region, but only the fact that authorities in Vitebsk, Mogilev,
and Minsk provinces had initiated the vast majority of the criminal
inv
estigations.
Much of our knowledge of the early cases comes from the highly
controversial study of the blood libel commissioned by the minister
of the internal affairs, Lev A. Perovskii.21 Purportedly authored by the
intrODuctiOn
7
preeminent Russian- language lexicographer Vladimir I. Dal’, the work
drew on a wealth of foreign- language publications, as well as official
archival papers of the Ministry of the Interior (many of which were
destroyed as a result of a fire at the ministry’s archive in 1862). Dal’
cited dozens of alleged cases. But none played a larger role in help-
ing to perpetuate the social memory of the tale than the murder of a
six- year- old boy named Gavriil. The little boy lived with his devout
Eastern Orthodox parents in Zwierki, a tiny village populated mostly by
Uniates. In April 1680, a Jew named Shutko allegedly abducted Gavriil
and took the boy to Bialystok, where he proceeded to torture and kill
him. Although the ritual murder took place in Bialystok, Gavriil was
laid to rest in Zwierki, where he lay undisturbed for many years. In 1720,
a gravedigger discovered the body preserved in a state of divine incor-
ruptibility. The church where Gavriil’s body was transferred eventually
burned down, but his relic fragments lived on, performing miraculous
cures for children who suffered from ulcers and sores, hemorrhages and
bleeding. In no time, word of Gavriil’s miracles spread, and the little
boy’s cult became the object of popular veneration. In 1820, Gavriil was
recognized by the Russian Orthodox Church as the patron saint of little
children for his abilities to work miracle cures. Housed in a massive
silver shrine, the relic fragments of the holy body— including the ritual
stab wounds on his arms— were on public display for all believers to
see and touch. In the nineteenth century, tens of thousands of pilgrims
from all over the Russian Empire came to Gavriil’s shrine in search of
cures for their children, to pray and donate money, and to hear stories
of martyrdom.22
Although no other body— dead at the hands of Jews— produced as
many miracles or cures or was elevated to the status of a patron saint, the ritual murder tale lived on. The first documented investigation in the
town of Velizh took place in 1805, at which time the body of a twelve-
year- old boy was found along the Western Dvina, severely mutilated
and punctured in multiple places. Three Jews (one of whom, it turned
out, would be rearrested during the 1823– 1835 criminal proceedings)
were blamed for killing the boy. In 1816, several Jews in Grodno were
blamed for the death of a young peasant girl whose arm had been cut
off at the shoulder blade and whose body had several puncture wounds.
Similar accusations surfaced from time to time in nearby provincial
8
8
the Velizh affair
towns. In 1821, rumors circulated that Jews were responsible for another
grisly death after the body of a young woman was found in the Western
Dvina. That same year, in Mogilev province, yet another young boy was
said to have been the victim of a ritual murder. In all these instances, the imperial government eventually dropped the charges after conducting
exhaustive criminal investigations. Convicting Jews of blood sacrifice
required empirical evidence of the highest order.
Beginning in the eighteenth century, the courtroom emerged as an
important arena for debate, persuasion, and theater. Sensational court
cases— on the themes of crime, sexual misconduct, personal betrayal,
fraud, and transgression of authority— appeared on the pages of the
French, British, and German mass circulation newspapers.23 A large
and growing reading public consumed stories of courtroom drama with
great interest and apprehension. Systematically publicized for the ben-
efit of the educated public, the stories followed tightly woven mel-
odramatic narratives. Some of the most explosive cases turned into
full- blown affaires, dividing entire communities and setting off intense polemics in newspapers and pamphlets all around the world.24
The Russian government did a masterly job in not permitting the
investigation to attract much public attention or become a source of
fascination in the popular imagination. Projecting an aura of command
and confidence, Tsar Nicholas I did everything in his power to control
the empire by his presence. The Third Section— the secret police and
gendarmerie— controlled public opinion. No news, especially some-
thing that might poorly reflect on monarchical power, was allowed to
appear in print. According to Article 165 of the 1826 censorship law,
everything was forbidden “that in any way reveals in author, translator,
or artist a person who violated the obligations incumbent on a loyal
subject to the holy person of the Sovereign Emperor, or who transgresses
against the worthy distinction of the most august royal house; and [such
a person is liable] to immediate arrest and disposal to the laws.”25 During Nicholas’s reign, only twenty- six periodical publications appeared in
print, including scholarly journals, official government publications, lit-
erary journals, and children’s magazines. The most popular newspapers
of the time were concerned more with promoting the official sentimen-
tal voice of the government than with publicizing current events.26 The
English physician and traveler Edward Morton was keenly aware of
intrODuctiOn
9
how powerful a role the press played in sensationalizing crime: “English
papers do certainly too often contain accounts of dreadful [crimes], it
is because all that happen in the whole extent of the United Kingdom
are at once published; and [Russian] journals never contain them, not
because murders occur less frequently in Russia . . . but because the gov-
ernment never allows the details to be published; and eleven twelfths
of the population never know or suspect that they have happened.”27
Following official protocol, authorities in Velizh conducted the
criminal investigation in strict secrecy, according to the guidelines
established by the inquisitorial procedure code. First articulated in
the twelfth century, inquisitorial procedure was a revolution in law
and legal culture. By the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, it was
employed in many parts of Continental Europe, including the Polish-
Lithuanian Commonwealth and Russia.28 Premised on the interests of
the public or state, the inquisitorial system called on the inhabitants of
a community to denounce suspected criminals to the judicial authori-
ties, and it made defendants vulnerable to coercive prosecutions.29
Responding to public rumors, judges played a particularly active role
in initiating legal proceedings. Oral testimonies were transcribed in
special notebooks, ceaselessly recopied so as to prevent loss of vital
information, and stored for posterity in government archives. The
inquisitorial registers served as active instruments of knowledge. In
early modern Europe, the system was used to prosecute an unprece-
<
br /> dented number of witches and heretics, especially in places like south-
ern France, Switzerland, and Germany.30
In the Russian Empire, authorities relied on inquisitorial procedure
for crimes that threatened public interest or the security of the state.
Before the judicial reforms of the 1860s and 1870s, the system was used
widely to resolve criminal cases and to assert greater disciplinary control over the population. Borrowing from Swedish, Danish, and German
military codes, the inquisitorial procedure, as set forth in the Military
Process section of the Military Statute of 1716, required that every indi-
vidual “must keep what happened in court secret and tell no one, who-
ever he may be, anything about it.”31 Authorities were required to pay
particular attention to the collection of material evidence and eyewit-
ness testimony. For the most serious crimes, such as murder, robbery,
arson, high political, and religious crime, investigators, judges, and
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the Velizh affair
other experts involved in the case confronted the witnesses and litigants
one by one in the privacy of the inquisitorial chamber. This technique
helped accumulate an impressive mass of facts, opinions, testimonies,
and interpretations. Ultimately, the inquisitorial mode helped establish
the most faithful representation of the events in question so that the
court, by a process of logical reasoning, could deduce the guilt of the
suspect and pass sentence.32
The Velizh case unfolded in a town like any other town in the Russian
Empire where people’s lives were intimately connected, where rivalries
and confrontations were part of day- to- day existence, and where the
blood libel was part of a well- established belief system.33 To come to
grips with the pervasiveness of belief requires us not only to explore a
time and place where ritual murder was accepted as a social fact. We also
need to come to terms with one of the most fundamental contradictions
of Jewish life in Eastern Europe: that, no matter how widespread ritual
murder beliefs may have been and no matter the number of accusations,
the largest Jewish community in the world continued to feel rooted
and secure in its place of residence. At least until the second half of the nineteenth century, the extraordinary vitality of Jewish life, culture, and institutions expressed itself in the large demographic concentration of
The Velizh Affair Page 3