Hello, my name is Laura Morreale, and I'm a co-editor of Middle Ages for Educators. I'm here with Professor Magna Teter, Schindler Chair of Judaic Studies at Fordham University, who has kindly agreed to speak with me about her recent work on Simon of Trent, and how the story of this young boy was used to weaponize anti-Jewish sentiment in late medieval Europe. We'll be paring professor Teter's discussion with a consideration of the anti-Asian and anti Asian American racism that has resulted in many tragic episodes throughout American history. And most specifically in the shooting deaths of six women of Asian descent in March 2021 in Atlanta, Georgia. We think the idea of the perpetual foreigner will be a fruitful framework for understanding such disturbing events. But we'll begin first by learning about Professor Teter's work. And I'll just begin by asking you if you could tell us a little bit about the case of Simon of Trent. 

Thank you so much, Laura, for inviting me. The case of some element of trend is very interesting. It's a case of a on the borderline between the MIT, Medieval Ages, Middle Ages and the early modern period. We're culture, technology and Europe changes quite dramatically. But it, it grows out of medieval tales. So it's a story of a boy who disappeared. Just around it. I actually time we're discussing where we are recording it on March 25th, 2021, and he disappeared on the Maundy Thursday, which was I think March 22nd of 475. So we're exactly speaking at the time when the events were happening and what is now Northern Italian town of parental. At the time, it was, it was in the political sphere of the Holy Roman Empire. And it was truly culturally and politically a borderland. The town was inhabited by, by German speaking people, including Jews were German speaking and the Italian speakers. It was not a melting pot, but, but a town of two different cultures existed. So in that time of Easter Passover, this boy disappeared. Simon. Simon was about 28 months old, a toddler. He disappeared. When he disappeared, people thought he may have just wandered off one, he didn't return in the evening. And the father and some neighbors were searching, couldn't find him. They figured he must have drowned. Toronto had many canals near, it's a digit river, so it's not inconceivable. And it was quite a common experience in Europe when children would wonder off, and especially in the spring, often would drown when snow was melting, not inconceivable happening. But what happened was on, some rumors started circulating that perhaps Jews had, had killed Simon. This was a story. Accusations against Jews killing Christian children emerged and 12th century England and then spread across they also the continent in the 13th century. So these stories were circulating, were known largely locally, but, but they existed. And on Saturday that week, the authorities search the Jewish homes. They found nothing. But on Easter Sunday, the body washed up and in a canal underneath one of the Jews house, houses. So when Jews found the body, they actually found the body of the boy. They immediately notified the authorities who came and under identified the body as Simon. And, and the local bishop immediately took initiative and figured that there was also some benefits for him. And for town. 1475 was a jubilee year. There were Pilgrims going to Rome during that year. It was a perfect opportunity for the bishop to have a reason for these pilgrims to stop in rental. So Jews were arrested. The men of the, of the communities was a tiny Jewish community, about three houses on in town. The men were arrested. Women ended up in a house arrest, but not in prison. And just days after the arrest, full narrative before the trial even fully began. It began, but not fully not everybody was yet interrogate it. The narrative was set and this narrative said that use captured, plotted to capture Simon in order to kill him in Division of Christ and reenactment of his passion over Easter Passover. And in order to collect his blood and an enzyme and therefore was a martyr, a2s to be worshiped. His body was immediately taken to a church and that the bishop began to promoted as a, as a pilgrimage site recording, recording allergic miracles as well. When I examine the trial record and they are collected in a way that they are organized according to the names of people who are tried. Not chronologically. But when I read them chronologically, it became very clear that the story is actually quite consistent at the beginning. And then later on, they are increasingly pressured to confess to things that they clearly didn't do, too, even forbade him to align with the narrative that was written. Down and published just a few days after after Simon was bought it was was, was found. But the records are organized in such a way that you think that Jews are shifty because some deny some NADH, some say one thing at the beginning, then the story changes because obviously if you organize it by person who was interrogated a few times over a few months. And different pressures that story might in fact change and again align. So it was, it was a very conscious process of both creating archival material and record on the part of the bishop and the authorities and, and frame it as a, as a, as a Jewish crime against Christian to create this site of veneration. Again, this is a largely medieval story, but what becomes, what happens in Trenton, why it becomes so important is that it comes about 20 years after the invention of the printing press. This bishop understands its power and he pays and sponsors visual art. For churches. He sponsors printed images, wood cuts. He sponsors the narrative, as I said, he pays poets to write poems in Latin and then the vernacular and songs. So he would is very crucial to understand this case that he really engages in a full multimedia, perhaps the first in history multimedia campaign, public relations campaign to convince the world around him that this, this Jews killed Simon and therefore he is in martyr, worthy to visit in Trenton. The Pope objects to it. The pope's in fact, had objected to such accusations, says the 13th century, and incense his investigator to see what was, what was happening. And Brando and and the investigator concludes that this is a fake story, but his materials are suppressed and the bishop has enough, enough political power across in Rome where he lived for and worked for many years and and elsewhere, that he's able to suppress the records, the court records and also the court records that were that were verified by the papal envoy. And what we only have our du court records that are prepared by the bishop in terms of the historical record that's left. So the bishop makes sure that that story enters printed books. That an M just printed chronicles of the history of the world. And what we see. That exact shift from medieval stories that were local, that may have been written down in local Monastic Chronicles. To a story that becomes, spreads like wildfire through print, through image. And establishes both facts on the ground and art and churches for instance. But also establishes facts in histories, right? So he creates the historical fact of Jews killing Christian children. That enters the ecosystem of European knowledge. And when you look at those chronicles, this is not something you don't need to look for anti-Jewish literature. You can be just a person who wants to learn history. And when you begin to read these histories, there are about a dozen of stories included about Jews, and they're all nasty stories about Jews as Jews, as a juice. Committing sacrilege, Jews, desecrating Christian objects, things like that, for which usually punished. The solution in these stories is that always the Jews are punished. So, so if you are a reader and Christian, of Christian European books, and you only see Jews and these roles. So you begin to see Jews as only doing nasty things and being punished for them. The vocabulary about Jews for a reading person, for an educated person, becomes very limited because they only begin to see and talk about Jews and a certain limited way. The people who didn't read books, who lived next to Jews as neighbors, didn't have those ideas. It was the educated elites that perpetuated this way of thinking about Jews. And ironically, we historians, when you look at what history, European history, history of medieval Europe, whenever historians write about Jews, I always repeat the same vocabulary. Jews were expelled from France. Jews were accused of that. They are really replicating the language that was established by these both medieval and early modern chronicles. And that is something that I would like to flag for historians and students of history to be careful not to replicate the language because it has a mounting effect of then enacting these things. Because that's the only thing you can imagine about a given group. Group's role in society. If you can only think about Jews as being dangerous, if you can only think about Jews as being dangerous and therefore needing to be punished, you begin to see Jews as dangerous. And that applies to any other group. The other story, the other thing that this story presents as a cautionary tale is the way it, it, it, it's imagery disseminated. So one of the things that you will see in many, and it's both an academic books and an anti-Semitic website, is a certain image from a chronicle from 1493 published in Nuremberg, the so-called Nuremberg Chronicle. It's all over both, again, scholarly works and, and anti-Semitic works. Scholars have used this image very uncritically to illustrate this anti-Jewish accusation. But this image was actually historically quite marginal. It, it, it was not remembered at all. There was a different type of iconography that spread and was replicated, especially in Northern Europe. But it became resurrected by the Nazis who are very eager to look at pre-modern, medieval and early modern sources in the past too. Either create their idea of what German history wass or to vilify Jews in their anti-Semitic propaganda. So one of the things that I would think about students of history and scholars of history, to think about how our sources enter the circulation and whether they are visual sources of textual sources. Whether they were in fact important at the time that they were created or soon after, or maybe they enter circulation because we're, you know, we were excited about it. And that's a similar story with them, with the medieval tale of William of knowledge that was written down and the 12th century in England. From circulation, from cigarettes, from knowledge, there were these one-liner Chronicles or short, short mentions here and there. But the manuscript was discovered in the 19th century and it became, suddenly became one of the major medieval accusations. Medieval, sorry. So again, we have to think about the way facts of stories or tails or sources enter circulation. How does this historical example from medieval Europe help us understand the rules and inclusion and exclusion in societies and what might make certain groups viewed as perpetual foreigners in their own homelands? That's it. That's a fantastic question. And I think this example and these tails included in Chronicles show how something unusual, something sensational, can shape perception of otherness. Intellectuals perception of otherness. But when you go into archival records, when you look deeply into historical records, not just the headlines that when you think about Chronicles, they're the equivalent of the sensational headlines of our media. They don't record the usual daily, the boring. They, they record something that is unusual, but they shape the way we think about, about people or about situations. But in fact, Jews were not considered foreign. They were obviously different. They went to synagogue and not a church. They did not celebrate Easter, they celebrated the Passover. Everybody knew that they were of different religion. And of course there was this baggage of Christian Jewish difference and Christian attitudes and Christian theology. In the way Jews were seen. Neighbors didn't necessarily act on that difference unless there was a moment of crisis or that could be, then these stories could be weaponized against, against Jews. But what we began to think about is, do we use either legislation seeking to separate Jews from Christians or these antagonistic or anti-Jewish stories to our pages as perpetually foreign. And I think that is also the danger of leading to deepening prejudice rather than seeing Jews. And in our case, we're discussing Jews as part of the shared history and part of the shared environment. And acknowledge that sometimes the difference was weaponize and sometimes it was not. Someone was just taken for granted. Yeah. And then of course, that leads to my third and final question. After looking at this historical example of Simon of Trent, I'm sure that you have a better sense about why such seemingly senseless acts of blaming in it's an actor's occurs and recursion are in our history. And I think you've spoken a little bit to that. But I think there's always a sensitive of asking why everyone in our society to start to say, well, what, why is this? Why would this happen? And I think you've touched on some of those, but did you want to elaborate on any of that? I will I will just say that once these stories perpetuate through the mass media, they begin to influence also law, and they begin to influence also criminal justice, if you will. Whatever what the system was in the pre-modern world. And what happens is that these ways of thinking and the last, the stories of the past being used as evidence of Jews guilt and, and future, future accusation. And you can see a very similar way of thinking in in the United States as well. Whether an, a, for instance, recently there was a case in New York where a white woman called the police on, in Central Park on a black man who was a bird watcher, accusing him of endangering her slanderous, accusing adventure. This is a deeply ingrained trope of the dangerous black male endangering at a white woman. That goes historically very deeply. If we examine whether anti-black stereotypes or whether on to Asian stereotypes and contemporary United States. If you think about the way these tropes are perpetrated and perpetuated, sorry, perpetuated by my constant repetition of visual images are, you know, what? Think about what, what roles do african American or Asian actors get in films, for instance. That creates a certain ways of thinking about a given group and then other rises them in ways that you may, we may have neighbors and you might have friendly relations on the ground. But culturally it creates ways of thinking. So, so this story of Simon, of trend is a cautionary tale and a sense that it shows us the mechanism of how certain stereotypes and even fake news, fake stories get embedded in culture and thinking about a group of people.