IN PROGRESS
I am currently completing a book on the politics of religious violence and the manipulation of the sacred after the Reformation. "From Bread to Blood, From Sin to Crime: Sacrilege and Jews after the Reformation," under contract with Harvard University Press, tells a story of "the sacred" and "the sacrilege," and their central place in the contest for power between church and state after the Reformation. It is a book about the manipulation of the meaning embodied in sacred space and sacred symbols in post-Reformation Poland. At the center of it all was the Eucharist, a consecrated wafer offered to the faithful in Catholic communion. For Catholics the Eucharist, or "the host," was God. For Protestants it was "bread," symbol of various degrees of Christ. In Poland, the contest over the sacredness of the Eucharist became manifest in lay courts’ adjudication of crimes against property and symbols, especially those linked to the Eucharistic wafers. Mishandling of sacred symbols and objects transformed sin into crime that received harsh sentences, including burning at the stake. "From Bread to Blood, From Sin to Crime" casts a new light on the most infamous case of sacrilege, the accusations against Jews for stealing and desecrating the host. Accusations against them were often used in political struggles, while cases of sacrilege resulting from church robberies often included Jews as fences handing stolen church objects.
The second book project, now in early stages of research will explore the cultural connections between early modern eastern Europe and Italy. In Poland, many Italian Jews and Christians arrived in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries as merchants, advisors, or artists. These connections are indisputable, but there was also a move in another directions. Many Polish Jews moved to Italy bringing with them a treasure trove of their cultural and intellectual output, and influencing Italian Jews, who then read and even translated books composed in Poland into Italian. This was the case with the 1577 Yiddish manual for women, Seder Mitsvot ha-Nashim, that became translated into Italian and saw a number of editions in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The book will explore the transmission and translation of cultural values between early modern eastern Europe to Italy.