How did medieval Christian texts portray Jews as sexual deviants and what sources propagated these myths?
Executive summary
Medieval Christian texts frequently depicted Jews as sexually deviant by feminizing Jewish men, pathologizing Jewish sexual practices, and inventing bodily myths (such as Jewish male menstruation) that marked Jews as morally and biologically other [1] [2]. These portrayals drew on a mix of theological polemic, popular libel, pseudo-scientific argument, and literary tropes propagated by clerical writers, preachers, and vernacular authors from late antiquity through the high Middle Ages [3] [4] [5].
1. How theological polemic sexualized Jewishness
Christian theologians transformed theological disputes into sexual metaphors, equating Jewish literalism with carnal excess and Christian allegory with spiritual purity — a rhetorical move that turned doctrinal difference into a charge of sexual deviance [3]. As Susanna Drake’s reading of early Christian invective shows, authors like Origen and Pauline interpreters linked the “flesh/spirit” dichotomy to Jewish bodies, using sexualized language to mark Israel’s alleged moral inferiority [3]. This theological framing provided authoritative scaffolding for later medieval slanders that described Jews as morally and sexually suspect [3].
2. Literary and visual tropes that feminized and masculinized
Medieval literature and images routinely gendered Jews in ways that undermined masculine Christian norms: Jewish men were described with feminine traits — pallor, timidity, sickness — that signaled weakness or effeminacy, while Christian enemies or tormentors were cast as hypermasculine or even grotesquely phallic in contrast to a feminized Christ and a feminized Jewish other [1] [5]. Chaucer and English martyr narratives are discussed in modern criticism as staging sexualized encounters and using Mariological and corporeal fictions to eroticize or feminize Jewish figures, a literary pattern scholars such as Jacob Press and Ruth Evans have traced [5].
3. Bodily myths: menstruation, bleeding, and medicalized slander
One of the most startling medieval motifs was the claim that Jewish men “menstruated” — an accusation mingling religious metaphor and proto-scientific discourse that recast Jews as biologically different and impure. Modern studies trace this myth to late antiquity and its maturation in thirteenth- and early modern texts, where metaphors about bleeding hemorrhoids and punishment for Christ’s crucifixion were transmuted into a quasi-medical racialization of Jews [2] [1] [4]. Scholars argue this was an early form of biological-racial thinking: once expressed in medicalized language, sexualized libels gained a veneer of empirical credibility that reinforced persecution [2] [1].
4. Texts and transmitters: who propagated these myths
The myths circulated in diverse channels: patristic polemic (Paul, Barnabas, Justin, Origen) provided foundations that later medieval preachers and clergy amplified; scholastic and popular medical treatises and astronomical-school texts repeated pseudo-medical claims (including the male menses trope) for pedagogical or polemical ends; vernacular literature and martyr narratives embedded sexual libels in stories that reached lay audiences [3] [4] [5] [1]. Studies of specific texts, like the “Holy Letter” attributed to Nahmanides and its study by modern editors, show how debates about Jewish sexual morality themselves became objects of circulation and contested interpretation [6] [7].
5. Functions, consequences, and scholarly debates
Sexual slander served political, religious, and social functions: it justified exclusion and violence by casting Jews as morally and biologically dangerous, and it buttressed Christian identity by defining what Christians were not [3] [1]. Scholars debate emphasis and causation — some highlight theological rhetoric first [3], others document the role of pseudo-science and medicalized language in making slanders stick [2] [1] — but all sources agree these myths had real-world consequences, persisting into early modern persecution [1] [2]. Contemporary criticism also warns against treating medieval Jewish sexual norms as monolithic and notes that medieval Jewish texts often promoted sexual practices quite different from Christian ascetic models, complicating simplistic oppositions [8].
6. Reading the record today: agendas and limits
Modern scholarship unpacks both the medieval authors’ agendas — theological supremacy, social boundary-making, and sometimes economic or political motives — and later scholars’ interpretive frameworks, which can project modern categories like “race” or “gender” back onto complex sources [3] [1]. The available sources document the existence, circulation, and mutability of sexual slanders [3] [4] [2], but gaps remain: not every local instance or vernacular variant is captured in the cited literature, and some primary-text attributions remain contested [6] [9]. Readers should treat specific textual attributions and the intensity of belief in any one community as matters that require close, source-by-source scrutiny [6] [7].