Le meurtre rituel dans la littérature hérésiologique antique (2E-5E S. APR. J.-C.): Analyse de la christianisation d'un TOPOS

Among the cultural codes derived from the fertile terrain that was known to Christianity as the Greco-Roman world, one can study the case of human sacrifice. It was a concept frequently brought up by the ancient imagination in order to indicate a civilizational or religious borders and to brand the enemy (inside or outside of the society) with a sign of stigmatizing otherness. It later appeared in a form bearing somewhat of a different significance in medieval sources. Here, wewish to envision some of the developments of such logic, bearing in mind that some (2nd-5th c.) Christian writers seized the opportunity to do so in heresiological writings. An introductory commentary on the testimonies gathered and interpretations offered by modern scholars, accompanied by a series of more personal reflections, can sketch the development of ritual murder, revenge and the relatively fixed perception of the relevant classical world. Christianization became necessary in order to maintain its rhetorical effectiveness, and that opened the door to new posterity. It was a limited phenomenon but indicative of something greater and more fundamental, that of religious transition and cultural late antiquity.