The “Jew in the Latrine”: Exploring the Transmission of an Early German Anti-Jewish Narrative

Abstract

Abstract An anti-Jewish short narrative, here labelled the “Jew in the Latrine,” was very popular in the Middle Ages and early modern period, appearing in a range of genres in Latin and the vernacular. A Jew falls into a sewer on the Sabbath day and, fearing desecration, neither extracts himself nor permits his extraction from the muck. Vexed over Jewish Sabbath prohibitions, a Christian authority compels the Jew also to remain in the sewer over the Christian Sabbath. This anecdote was intended both to reinforce the trope identifying Jews with filth and excrement, and to ridicule the place of the Law within Judaism itself. Exemplars of the “Jew in the Latrine” within the German cultural region, though bountiful, are researched sketchily. This paper aims to provide the first systematic assessment of these. Important findings are the crucial role played in the transmission of the tale by the circle of the Reformer Philip Melanchthon, and the omnipresence of the city of Magdeburg and the intervention of its archbishops in adjudicating the case of the “Jew in the Latrine.”