BOURGEOIS, JEAN°

BOURGEOIS, JEAN°, son of a Parisian merchant, murdered on August 26, 1652, by members of the secondhand dealers guild which he had insulted by calling it "the synagogue." The affair was taken up in numerous broadsheets, or "Mazarinades," often in verse, which presented the event as if the dealers were Jews guilty of ritual murder. They demanded the expulsion of the Jews from France, although there were then no professing Jews in the country. Prosecution of the accomplices in the crime was stopped in June 1653, by royal writ which expressly noted that all the accused "professed the Catholic religion." -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Z. Szajkowski, Franco-Judaica (1962), 117f.; R. Anchel, Juifs de France (1946), 130ff. (Bernhard Blumenkranz)