features: L. R. Farnell, The Cults of the Greek States (1896–1907); A. Moret, Le Rituel du culte divin journalier en Égypte (1902); A. de Marchi Il culto privato di Roma antica (1902).
(R. R. M.)
RITUAL MURDER, a general term for human sacrifice in connexion with religious ceremonies. False accusations as to the practice of ritual murder by Jews and Christians have often been made. “The Christians of the second and third centuries suffered severely under them” (Strack). Justin Martyr (150–160) in his Second Apology (ch. 12) vigorously defends the Christian community against this charge; Octavius, Minucius Felix, Tertullian, Origen and other Church Fathers all refer to the subject and indignantly repudiate the atrocious libel that the Eucharist involved human sacrifice. The myth was revived against the Montanists, and in the later middle ages against various sects of heretical Christians. In recent years the accusation has been again levelled against “foreigners” during the disturbances in China. The chief sufferers, however, from the charge were the Jews. The charge was never coherently defined, but a notion prevailed that at the Passover Christian blood was used in Jewish rites. For this belief there is no foundation whatever, as is proved in the classical treatise[1] on the subject by Hermann L. Strack, Regius Professor of Theology at Berlin University. The first occasion on which the medieval Jews were accused of the murder of a Christian child was at Norwich in 1144. In the following century other instances of the charge occurred on the Continent, and by this time (middle of the 13th century) the legend had grown into a belief that “the Jews of every province annually decide by lot” which congregation or town is to be the scene of the mythical murder. It is easy to understand how in ages when the Jews were everywhere regarded with superstitious awe, such stories to their detriment would find ready credence, but the revival of the myth in recent times by the anti-Semite is a deplorable instance of degeneration. It is only necessary here to refer to the Lincoln case (1255), the Trent case (1475) and more recently the Damascus case (1840), the Tisza-Eszlar affair (1882), the Xanten charge (1891) and the Polna case (1899). All of these charges—sometimes invented by malicious seceders from the Jewish fold—were followed by spoliation and tragic persecution of the Jews. On the other hand many Jewish proselytes to Christianity have strenuously defended the Jews from the charge, among them may be particularly named Prof. D. Chwolson (Blutanklage, 1901). In 1840 a protest against the charge was signed by 58 Jewish-Christians, the list being headed by M. S. Alexander, Anglican bishop at Jerusalem. Further testimonies of a similar kind are collected in Strack (op. cit. p. 239). Many of the popes have issued bulls exonerating the Jews (cf. Strack, p. 250); similarly temporal princes have often taken a similar step (ibid. p. 260). Many Christian scholars and ecclesiastics have felt it their duty to utter protests in favour of the Jews. Among them have been the most eminent Christian students of Rabbinism of recent times, e.g. Professors Alexander McCaul, P. Lagarde, Franz Delitzsch, A. Merx, T. Nöldeke, C. Siegfried, A. Wünsche, G. H. Dalman and J. von Döllinger. A careful examination of the evidence (with a complete acquittal of the Jews) is contained in a notable work by a Catholic priest, F. Frank, Der Ritualmord vor dem Gerichtshöfen der Wahrheit and der Gerechtigkeit (1901, 1902). The literature on the other side is entirely antisemitic and in no instance has it survived the ordeal of criticism. The most notorious exponent of the charge was A. Rohling, the worthlessness of whose writings on the subject is exposed by (among many others) Strack (op. cit. pp. 155 seq.).
A list of some of the most important of the cases is given by J. Jacob in the Jewish Encyclopedia, iii. 266-67. (I. A.)
RIVA, a fortified district town of Tirol, Austria, near the Italian frontier. Pop. (1900) 7550. It is a lake port and steamship station at the northern extremity of the Lago di Garda. There are two forts on the Monte Brione a little over a mile north-east of the town, and the old castle of La Rocca was reconstructed and extended in accordance with modern requirements in 1850. The Minorite Church (1603), with altar pictures by Guido Reni and other Italian painters, is much frequented as a place of pilgrimage. In addition to its transit trade and the entertainment of visitors, the principal resources of the town are the manufacture of paper, iron wares and pottery, the cultivation of the silk-worm and the olive tree, and a considerable commerce in timber, planks and coal. Riva is connected with the Ledro valley by a picturesque road which passes in a series of tunnels and galleries along the rocky and precipitous west shore of the lake.
RIVAL, one who competes with another, one who strives to out-do or excel another or to gain an object or end before or in preference to another. The Latin rivalis, which was in classical Latin used of a competitor in love, meant by derivation one who used the same brook or stream (rivus) as another, hence a neighbour; thus in the Digest, xliii. 20, i. 26, “si inter rivales, id est qui per eundem rivum aquam ducunt, sit contentio de aquae usu.” The term naturally applied more particularly to those who lived on opposite sides of a stream which would be a frequent subject of dispute as to rights.
RIVAROL, ANTOINE DE (1753–1801), French Writer and
epigrammatist, was born at Bagnols in Languedoc on the
26th of June, 1753, and died at Berlin on the 11th of April
1801. It seems that his father was an innkeeper but a man
of cultivated tastes. The son assumed the title of comte de
Rivarol, and asserted his connexion with a noble Italian family,
but his enemies said that the name was really Riverot, and
that the family was not noble. After various vicissitudes he
appeared in Paris in 1777. After winning some academic
prizes, Rivarol distinguished himself in the, year 1784, by a
treatise Sur l’universalité de la langue française, and by a
translation of the Inferno. The year before the Revolution broke out he, with some assistance from a man of similar but lesser talent, Champcenetz,[2] compiled a lampoon, entitled Petit Almanach de nos grands hommes pour 1788, in which some writers of actual or future talent and a great many
nobodies were ridiculed in the most pitiless manner. When the Revolution developed the importance of the press, Rivarol at once took up arms on the Royalist side, and wrote in the Journal politique of Antoine Sabatier de Castres (1742–1817) and the Actes des Apôtres of Jean Gabriel Peltier (1770–1825). But he emigrated in 1792, and established himself at Brussels,
whence he removed successively to London, Hamburg and
Berlin. Rivarol has had no rival in France except Piron
in sharp conversational sayings. These were mostly ill-natured; and mostly have a merely local application. Their brilliancy, however, can escape no one. His brother, Claude Francois (1762–1848), was also an author. His works include Isman, ou le fatalisme (1795), a novel; Le Véridique (1827), comedy; Essai sur les causes de la revolution française (1827).
The works of Antoine de Rivarol were published in live volumes (Paris, 1805); selections (Paris, 1858) with introductory matter by Sainte-Beuve and others, and that edited in 1862 (2nd ed., 1880) by M. de Lescure, may be specified. See also M. de Lescure’s Rivarolet la société française pendant la révolution et l’émigration (1882), and Le Breton’s Rivarol, sa vie, ses idées (1895).
RIVE-DE-GIER, a town of east-central France, in the department of Loire, 14. m. E.N.E. of St Etienne, on the railway to Lyons. Pop. (1906) 15,338.
Situated on the Gier and the Canal de Givors, it is principally dependent on the coal industry, giving its name to a coal basin which is a continuation of that of St Etienne. It has glass works, the products of which are celebrated on account of the fmeness and purity of the sand found on the banks of
- ↑ Das Blut im Glauben und Aberglauben (Eng. trans., The Jew and Human Sacrifice, London, 1909).
- ↑ Louis René Quantin de Richebourg, Chevalier de Champcenetz (1760–1794), died on the scaffold. He is not to be confounded with Louis Pierre, marquis de Champcenetz, governor of the Tuileries in 1789, who escaped in 1792 through the protection of Mme. Elliott, mistress of the duc d’Orléans.
