Staging martyrdom in the trial of El Niño de La Guardia

Abstract

ABSTRACTThe ritual sacrifice of the child of La Guardia in 1491 can be seen as a lens to examine anti-Jewish sentiment in fifteenth-century Castile. This article argues that the deposition made by the Jews of La Guardia hinged on a triple set of interpretations that tended to represent the sacrifice of the child of La Guardia as a mockery of pig-slaughtering sacrifices but also as a representation of Jewish medical malpractice. The article further connects the representation of the child of La Guardia with the image of the crucified monk and with the “Vueltas de San Antón”, a festival in which a child was crowned as the king of the pigs.