Raphael Levy (born 1612 in Flévy/Chelaincourt; died 17 January 1670) was a Jewish inhabitant of the city of

Metz Metz ( , , lat, Divodurum Mediomatricorum, then ) is a city in northeast France located at the confluence of the Moselle and the Seille rivers. Metz is the prefecture of the Moselle department and the seat of the parliament of the Grand Est ...

who was burned at the stake, accused of having ritually murdered a Christian child, Didier Le Moyne. For some years after his execution, the Jewish community in Metz marked the anniversary of his death (25

Tevet Tevet ( he, טֵבֵת, ''Ṭevet''; ; from Akkadian ) is the fourth month of the civil year and the tenth month of the ecclesiastical year on the Hebrew calendar. It follows Kislev and precedes Shevat. It is a month of 29 days. Tevet usually o ...

) as a day of fasting. On 25 September 1669 (the eve of

Rosh Hashanah Rosh HaShanah ( he, רֹאשׁ הַשָּׁנָה, , literally "head of the year") is the Jewish New Year. The biblical name for this holiday is Yom Teruah (, , lit. "day of shouting/blasting") It is the first of the Jewish High Holy Days (, , ...

) three-year-old Didier Le Moyne went missing in the woods outside the village of Glatigny, about ten miles east of Metz. Levy had been seen riding towards Metz the same day, and was accused of having abducted the child, although he had an alibi for the time of the disappearance. Charges were brought against Levy in the

Parlement A ''parlement'' (), under the French Ancien Régime, was a provincial appellate court of the Kingdom of France. In 1789, France had 13 parlements, the oldest and most important of which was the Parlement of Paris. While both the modern Fr ...

of Metz on 3 October. Even before the trial a child's body was found in the woods, partially eaten by animals, but it was too disfigured to be identified as that of the missing child. Augustin Calmet, ''Histoire de Lorraine'', vol. 6 (Nancy, 1757), 706-709. Levy refused to confess to the crime despite torture, but was nevertheless convicted and sentenced to death by the Parlement. Offered an opportunity to become a Christian, he declared that he had lived a Jew and would die a Jew. His defense attorney Meyer Schwabe, one of the elders of the Metz congregation, was himself tarred with fabricated accusations of mocking Jesus on Good Friday. Although the allegations against Schwabe and Levy became increasingly bizarre and contradictory, both were sentenced to death. The royal director of Metz was able to save Schwabe through his intervention and also prevent a pogrom against the Jewish community, but any help came too late for Levy. He was publicly burned at the stake in Metz on January 17, 1670. The Parlement applied to

Louis XIV , house = Bourbon , father = Louis XIII , mother = Anne of Austria , birth_date = , birth_place = Château de Saint-Germain-en-Laye, Saint-Germain-en-Laye, France , death_date = , death_place = Palace of Ve ...

to have the 95 Jewish families in Metz expelled from the province, but the king prohibited any further action in the matter. Louis XIV himself generally forbade any further blood libel trials and even forbade the mere belief in a corresponding allegation. Glatigny, the home town of Levy's alleged victim, forbade all Jews to enter the town and only lifted this ban, which had been strictly observed for 344 years, in 2014.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Levy, Raphael 1670 deaths Blood libel Jewish martyrs People from Metz People executed by France by burning 17th-century French Jews Antisemitism in France French torture victims

See also

References