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178 place during the nineteenth century on three Greek islands: Rhodes, Chios, and Corfu. In particular, this chapter examines the role that tensions born of financial competition and perceived ethnic differences (defined in this context by language, religion, and culture) between Greek Orthodox and Jewish populations played in exacerbating older religious stereotypes. The blood libel of Rhodes in 1840 is especially important, since it functioned as the first major blood libel among Greek populations in the nineteenth century.The blood libel of Chios in 1892 is a typical example of ethnic rivalry and tension. Finally, the 1891 blood libel of Corfu is the most widely known ritual murdercase in Greece, as well as one of the most tragic incidents of antisemitism in the country. Byexamining particularaspects of these three blood libels, it becomes apparent that economic conflicts, together with broader ethnic and cultural tensions, led Greek Orthodox residents of the islands to revive medieval stereotypes about Jews.1 For Christians, these accusations served as a means of “revenge” for perceived wrongs and to marginalize local Jews economicallyand ethnoculturally . Such anti-­Jewish movements strengthened at the end of the nineteenth century, an era of rapid state and nation building in southeastern Europe.2 The construction of a homogenizing national ideology and of an imagined community3 solidified the idea in many states that a similar religion (and language)4 was a sine qua non for political unity and social cohesion.5 With the establishment of a Greek state, many thinkers asserted the need for a single religion, language, and “race,” so that modern Greece would avoid the religious, linguistic , and racial fragmentation that was held to be responsible for the downfall of ancient Greece. Constantinos Paparrigopoulos, the forceful advocate of the historical continuity of “Greekness,” which linked ancient Greece, Byzantium, and modern Greece, thus claimed: “Polytheism was succeeded by Christianity; diversity of dialects by linguistic unity; racial diversity by national unity, and yet the Greek folk, fortified by this triple armor, is struggling to repossess its political unity.”6 Within this ideological framework, such assertions sharpened Mary Margaroni THE BLOOD LIBEL ON GREEK ISLANDS IN THE NINETEENTH CENTURY The present study focuses on blood libels that took 9 The Blood Libel on Greek Islands : 179 emotions and justified practices against all those deemed foreigners; no space was left for religious minorities, including the Jewish one.7 When combined with local tensions, this exclusive nationalist ideology strengthened antisemitism in the Greek islands across the nineteenth century.8 ■ ■ Blood Libels in Greek Historiography Accusations of the Jewish blood libel, host desecration, and well poisoning blossomed in Europe during the Middle Ages.9 The record of the blood libel charge started in 1144 in the English town of Norwich, with the supposed kidnapping by Jews of a twelve-­ year-­ old Christian boy named William and, subsequently, his murder by crucifixion for dark, magical purposes.10 William’s elevation to the status of martyr transformed him into a local miracle worker and his alleged perpetrators into Satanists. The first formulated accusation against Jews of ritualized child murder, allegedly carried out for the preparation of matzoth for the Jewish Passover with the blood of their young victims, occurred nearly a century later in the German town of Fulda in 1235.11 The narrative regarding the ritual murder of children as a symbolic reiteration of the killing of Christ and as a potential source of blood, primarily for the satisfaction of Jewish religious and ritual needs, proved particularly resilient throughout the ages.12 Indeed, it appeared in a new guise in the second half of the nineteenth century and continued well into the twentieth century.13 Of particular importance was the sensational case of the blood libel of Damascus in 1840, which signaled new anti-­ Jewish antagonism within the wider European and Mediterranean context.14 For a long time, Greek historiography systematically ignored the presence of Jews in the Greek state.15 Scholarly interest in Jews began with a series of conferences16 and with works on Jewish intracommunal affairs and on relationships between Orthodox Greeks and local Jewish communities, primarily that of Salonica, which had the largest Jewish population in the Balkans.17 Research on the Jews in Greece has highlighted many issues relevant to wider Greek historiography .18 It has brought to light aspects of fruitful cooperation and support between Greek Christians and Jews,19 as well as evidence of an often problematic coexistence.20 Such was the recurring blood libel against the Jews that echoed among...

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