Trent 1475: Stories of a Ritual Murder Trial.

Schutte, Anne Jacobson

R. Po-Chia Hsia. New Haven and London: Yale University Press in cooperation with Yeshiva University Library, 1992. xxvi + 173 pp. $22.50.

In 1988 Erica and Ludwig Jesselson gave Yeshiva University Library a 614-leaf manuscript purchased at auction the previous December. "Prozess gegen die juden von Trient," redacted in the late 1470s by an anonymous scribe for an unspecified patron (probably either Count Eberhard of Wiirttemberg or his brother-in4aw Francesco Cardinal Gonzaga, Bishop of Mantua), is a compilation of documents edited and translated for the purpose of promoting the speedy canonization of Simon Unferdorben, a two-year-old allegedly done to death in ritualistic fashion by the Jews of Trent during Holy Week of 1475.

As far as responsibility for its production is concerned, the book under review differs from the manuscript on which it is based: both the scholar invited to write about it, R. Po-chia Hsia of New York University, and those who chose him, Pearl Berger of Yeshiva University Library and the donors (whose foundation contributed to the cost of publication), are identified. Yet in other respects, Trent 1475 closely resembles "Prozess gegen diejuden von Trient." This slim volume is a hastily executed occasional piece designed to honor the donors and holder of the manuscript, to reinforce twentieth-century convictions about the persistence of antisemitism, and to display certain currently fashionable methods of dealing with texts.

Perhaps because he was anxious to fulfill his commission rapidly, Hsia cut many corners and made some disputable methodological decisions. Although one of his five earlier books (The Myth of Ritual Murder) testifies to his familiarity with accusations of ritual murder against Jews in Central Europe, he had no previous experience conducting research on the Italian slope of the Alps. Unfortunately he did not bother to orient himself in this new territory. With very little effort, Italian place names, reproduced in the garbled German form of the manuscript, could and should have translated. Then and now, for example, natives of the area lying southeast of Trent call the region Friull, not "Friaul," and one of the towns therein Conegliano, not "Kuniglan" (20-21). Readers unacquainted with northeastern Italy are ill equipped to unscramble these odd locutions, for the book includes neither a map of the region nor a city plan of Trent, the geography of which is central to the case.

It may be, however, that Hsia's linguistic choices reflect a deliberate intent to preserve the "otherness" of the tale he wishes to tell. Despite the plural of the subtitle, the only story in which he is really interested is that of the small community of Ashkenazi Jews recently arrived in Trent. In the "discourse" of the ritual murder trial, the victim's voices--underrepresented in his source, which is by no means a complete trial transcript--are amplified through ingenious speculation. Those of the persecutors remain faint and stereotypical.

Apparently assuming that readers will have total recall of The Myth of Ritual Murder (a dubious expectation, for part of his intended audience is non-specialists), Hsia alludes to numerous features of the antisemitic discourse without adequately explaining them. Worse, he does very little to contextualize this case. Why Trent? Why 1475? How did antisemitism of the longue duree, rumors about trials conducted further to the north in previous decades, and factors (about which he says almost nothing) in their socioeconomic and judicial milleu combine to shape the actions of the Trentini, Bishop Johannes Hinderbach, and his agent? To what extent was the prosecution triggered by that notorious Jew-baiter Bernardino da Feltre, Lenten preacher in the city during the weeks preceding little Simon's death? Though Hsia mentions some of these background phenomena, he fails to marshal them in a well-constructed causal argument.

Contrary to what this book suggests, historians who endorse "the revival of narrative" and "the linguistic turn" are not absolved of their traditional responsibility to mediate and elucidate the past. Trent 1475, an opaque protest against antisemitism in general, is far from being a persuasive attempt to account for one specific instance thereof.