Saint and Countersaint: Catholic Triumphalism and Jewish Resistance in Baroque Prague’s Abeles Affair
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- 作者：Rachel L. Greenblatt
- 关键词：Prague ; Simon Abeles ; Yiddish historical songs ; Collective memory ; Jewish ; Christian relations ; Czech history ; Bohemian Crown lands
- 刊名：Jewish History
- 出版年：2016
- 出版时间：June 2016
- 年：2016
- 卷：30
- 期：1-2
- 页码：61-80
- 全文大小：1,208 KB
- 刊物类别：Humanities, Social Sciences and Law
- 刊物主题：Humanities / Arts
History
Methodology of the Social Sciences
Religious Studies - 出版者：Springer Netherlands
- ISSN：1572-8579
- 卷排序：30
文摘
In late seventeenth-century Prague, Simon Abeles, a Jewish boy of about eleven or twelve, left the Jewish quarter, studied for conversion to Christianity, returned home without converting, and then died. The boy’s father, Lazar Abeles, was charged with his murder and hanged himself in jail. Löbl Kurtzhandl, a young man who had lived with the family, was accused of being an accomplice and sentenced to death. The case became a cause célèbre as the boy came to be regarded as an unofficial local saint acclaimed in broadsides, pamphlets, and even music. A single Yiddish source, a historical song, tells the story from a Jewish point of view but, surprisingly, does not take up the question of the guilt or innocence of either Kurtzhandl or the elder Abeles, focusing instead on Kurtzhandl’s actions in his final days, hours, and moments. Burning polemics between local Christians and Jews centered on this very question, each population seeking saint-like heroes for its young members to emulate. On the Catholic side, such activity fit within a much broader context of Catholic renewal and triumphalism that capped a decades-long process of ridding Bohemia of Protestant influence. On the Jewish side, it represented active resistance against such trends.