ABSTRACT
One of the most pernicious and enduring antisemitic tales paints Jews as killers of children. Then, in the thirteenth century, on the continent, a blood motif was added, claiming that Jews killed Christians to obtain their blood for ritual use, thus turning the story into a blood libel. Even the now famous report by Cardinal Lorenzo Ganganelli debunking anti-Jewish blood libels, issued in 1759 during a wave of anti-Jewish blood libels in Poland, was only a secret internal report for the eyes of the Holy Office of the Inquisition and the pope. It was never meant to become an official statement of the church. The most notorious modern use of premodern chronicles for antisemitic purposes came from the Nazis. It is through that route that stories about blood libels, with accompanying iconography, reentered in full force European, and then also Middle Eastern, consciousness.
