Talk:Dominguito del Val

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[edit] Cleanup and POV issues

This article needs some serious POV help. The translated story is useful, but it clearly asserts a POV against the "wicked Jews". Also, is this the same saint as Saint Dominic? Perhaps Dominguito should only be a redirect, then. --cprompt

No, this saint's definitely not the same as St Dominic, who founded the Dominicans and died of fever as an adult in Bologna in Italy, not of ritual murder as a child in Saragossa in Spain. The story does assert a POV against the "wicked Jews", but that's the whole point of it: St Dominguito is an example of the blood libel. Jacquerie27

Thanks for clearing up St. Dominguito and St. Dominic. I think I'll try my hand at reorganizing the story. Clearly, it is an example of the blood libel like you said, but I think that some parts of it may appear to actually be asserting the POV. I will try to not change the story or facts in the process, but if you're watching this article, let me know if I've failed in that. --cprompt

I'd ask you not to change it for two reasons: first, it is asserting the POV, if you mean the POV of people who believe the blood libel: it's an example of how anti-Semitic stories are still found in mainstream Spanish-speaking Catholicism, despite the church's attempts to repudiate them. Second, it's a translation, so if you change it you will be falsifying what is in the original Spanish. I don't think the story should be on the original site and publicizing it here may help get it removed.Jacquerie27

Hmm, I'll cede to your judgement on this one. Still, changing the translation should be allowed. I'm not sure if we have rights to the original text (or for that matter, rights to translated text), but we shouldn't foster a culture of leaving text the way it is. I think you've made a good point though. The issue I had with the article was that it was asserting the POV, when it should just be presenting it objectively. I think the article is fine now, since the beliefs of the blood libel believers are properly attributed. --cprompt

For ownership rights to articles or translation, see WP:OWN. In short, noone owns any articles on Wikipedia. I'll remove the npov tag, since the issue seems to be solved. Aecis ^praatpaal 19:01, 10 November 2005 (UTC)

Have removed clean-up tag too. The article is a stub, but otherwise it is fine. No need for clean-up tag. Marcus22 12:03, 17 November 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Blood Libel likely false or certainly false?

I changed the following part of the description (change in bold): "According to the story, the Jews of Saragossa plotted to kill every Christian in Saragossa. To accomplish this, they needed a Christian heart. They captured the innocent Dominguito on Good Friday, re-enacted Jesus's trial by Pilate and Caiaphas in celebration with Dominguito as Jesus, then ritually murdered him via crucifixion. Luckily for the Christians, the blackguard sent to finish the ritual stopped by a church for unclear reasons and was found with the boy's heart. He confessed, and all the Jews of Saragossa were executed due to their murderous, and certainly fictional, plot."

Previously, it had read "likely" fictional. I changed it to "certainly" fictional because of its complete ridiculousness and total lack of any foundation. There has to be at least some basis of plausibility before one allows that something isn't fictional. Given the history of blood libel, it seems ridiculous that we can't agree on Wikipedia to discount all instances of it, unless there is some sort of reliable evidence.QuizzicalBee (talk) 20:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

Look, I wrote that section, and was trying to "nudge nudge" the reader to figure out that this is ridiculous, but you have to write in a neutral editorial voice, which means not taking sides. The problem is that it's entirely possible that the WHOLE incident is imaginary. In other words, not only was there no plot to kill the Christians, there was no execution afterward either. We frankly don't know. By saying "certainly" fictional, this implies that the plot was obviously fictional, but the pogrom afterward likely wasn't. There's absolutely no historical evidence for this story either way, so we're stuck recounting a likely false legend and guesswork. This is inherently an unknown topic, and we shouldn't pretend that we're certain about anything here. It's quite possible that A) The whole incident was fictional and nobody here existed and nothing happened; B) The plot was fictional, but a person named Dominguito did exist who disappeared, and it was blamed on the Jews and they were killed; C) As above but only a single person was executed; the story was exaggerating the extent of the reprisal; D) A Jew really did kill Dominguito with evidence behind it, and he (and possibly others) really were executed; E) As D but the killing wasn't a standard killing, but the ritual nonsense was actually true because he was loony; or even F) The story is embellished but basically true, though obviously it's impossible all the Jews were in on a loony plot by a few of them. We don't know how many people if any got really killed, we don't know if Dominguito existed, we don't know if he actually was murdered or merely disappeared... you get the picture.

Is the story ridiculous? Sure, but if we want to emphasize that there's no historical basis behind it, we shouldn't pick a specific part of the story, but rather remind the reader that the whole thing is fuzzy. SnowFire (talk) 23:02, 10 March 2008 (UTC)

OK, thanks for the clarification. That sounds better. The thing is, you can never take it for granted that people will actually think there's nothing to the story, which is why we have to not assume people will think any given blood libel incident is obviously false. And I don't think NPOV requires that one treat something ridiculous as equally plausible as anything else.QuizzicalBee (talk) 02:16, 11 March 2008 (UTC)