Processus causae Inter Instigatora Iudicij Tribunalis Regni

(BLOOD LIBEL).

Matthias Andreoviensis (Macieja Jędrzejowczyka)

Cracow

1636

et perfidium Marcum Iudaeum in eodem Tribunali Regni Lublini Feria quinta ante Festum S. Laurentij Martyris proxima anno currenti 1636 agitatae: Decretumque in ea contra eundem perfidum Marcum Iudaeum latum. Printer’s device on last page.

A detailed account of the trial of a Jewish surgeon, Marek Markowicz (Mordechai ben Meir), accused of ritual murder in Lublin, August, 1636. The accusation was that a castration operation was performed on a Carmelite Monk, the purpose of which was to obtain Christian blood. After stating that Marek collected “copiously flowing blood into small bronze bowls while singing a song out of his fouled mouth” and despite the Jewish doctors emphatic protestations of his innocense, he was was sentenced to death by quartering. Subsequently his head was displayed outside the city and his body burnt to ashes. See Madga Teter, Blood Libel: On the Trail of an Antisemitic Myth (2020) pp. 246-47. Meir Balaban, Hugo Grotius and the Blood Libel Trials in Lublin 1636, in: Teller, Teter & Polonsky, Social and Cultural Boundaries in Pre-Modern Poland (Polin, Vol. 22, 2010) pp. 47-67. http://teatrnn.pl/leksykon/artykuly/tumulty-i-procesy-o-mord-rytualny-w-lublinie-w-xvii-w/. Hanna Wegrzynek, Blood Libel Accusations in Old Poland Mid-16th - Mid-17th Centuries, www.jstor.org/stable/23535853. For a letter written to the humanist Hugo Grotius concerning this Lublin trial, see www.christies.com/en/lot/lot-2034188. WorldCat records just two copies of this trial report (housed in Cracow and Rome). No copies located in North America.