The Velizh Affair

  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

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  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