The Mark of Cain and Embodying Inferiority

Abstract

Although hereditary inferiority initially defines a status absent a corporeal effect, the figure of Cain provides a means by which the Jews’ subjection could be embodied. Medieval Christian theologians employ the marked and cursed figure of Cain in the invention of a divinely inflicted curse of bleeding that functions to humiliate and subordinate male Jewish bodies. The author demonstrates that Jacques de Vitry’s account of this disease in his Historia Orientalis very closely traces the logic of papal decretals referencing Cain and Jewish servitude. Following the objective of legal attempts to define and enforce Jewish inferiority, the discourse of Jewish bleeding, whether described as menstrual or hemorrhoidal in subsequent texts, seeks to embody inferiority by means of demeaning disease. The theological concept of servitus Judaeorum influences discourses of natural philosophy and medicine that represent materially inferior Jewish bodies through the force of shaming infirmity.