Imagining the male menstruating Jew in medieval Christian thought queer blood Kerstin Mayerhofer

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Mayerhofer, Kerstin, author.

Series:

Borderlines

Language:

English

Subjects (All):

Christianity and antisemitism--Europe--History--To 1500.

Christianity and antisemitism.

Jewish men--Europe--History--To 1500.

Jewish men.

Christianity and antisemitism--History.

Europe.

Physical Description:

1 online resource

Edition:

New edition

Place of Publication:

Leeds Arc Humanities Press 2026

Language Note:

In English

Summary:

This book uncovers a startling medieval fantasy: the belief that Jewish men menstruated. From the twelfth to the seventeenth century, Christian writers imagined the Jewish male body as leaky, feminized, and dangerously deviant. The figure emerged across theology, medicine, and polemic as a powerful symbol of disorder, collapsing boundaries between male and female, sacred and profane, Christian and Jew. Far from a marginal oddity, the menstruating Jew shaped Christian ideas of bodily normativity, religious difference, and moral hierarchy. Bringing together queer theory, historical scholarship, and close textual analysis, this book argues that this grotesque fantasy was not merely about antisemitism, but about managing deep fears surrounding gender, sexuality, and identity. In reframing how medieval Christians imagined Others, it offers a bold new contribution to the histories of religion, embodiment, and queerness

Notes:

Description based on CIP data; resource not viewed

Other Format:

Print version

ISBN:

9781802705041

180270504X

OCLC:

1611122827

Publisher Number:

CIPO000419438

Access Restriction:

Restricted for use by site license