Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange EventsBaring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
Religion
Freaks of Fanaticism, and Other Strange Events
Baring-Gould, S. (Sabine)
History; Mysticism; Patarines
It was declared that blood exuded as Tobias approached. On the
strength of this, the house of Samuel and the synagogue were
examined, and it is asserted that blood and other traces of the
butchery were found. The most eminent physicians were called to
investigate the condition of the corpse, and they pronounced that
the child had been strangled, and that the wounds were due to stabs.
The popular voice now accusing the Jews, the magistrates seized on
them and threw them into prison, and on the accusation of a renegade
more than five of the Jews were sentenced to death. They were broken
on the wheel and then burnt. The body of the child is enshrined
at Trent, and a basin of the blood preserved as a relic in the
cathedral.
This must suffice for instances of accusations of murder for
religious purposes brought against the Jews, in every case false.
Another charge brought against them was Sacrilege. Fleury in his
Ecclesiastical History gives one instance. "In the little town of
Pulca, in Passau, a layman found a bloody Host before the house of
a Jew, lying in the street upon some straw. The people thought that
this Host was consecrated, and washed it and took it to the priest,
that it might be taken to the church, where a crowd of devotees
assembled, concluding that the blood had flowed miraculously from
wounds dealt it by the Jews. On this supposition, and without any
other examination, or any other judicial procedure, the Christians
fell on the Jews, and killed several of them; but wiser heads
judged that this was rather for the sake of pillage than to avenge
a sacrilege. This conjecture was justified by a similar event, that
took place a little while before at Neuburg, in the same diocese,
where a certain clerk placed an unconsecrated Host steeped in blood
in a church, but confessed afterwards before the bishop that he
had dipped this Host in blood for the purpose of raising hostility
against the Jews."[5]
[5] Fleury, Hist. Eccl., vi. p. 110.
In 1290, a Jew named Jonathan was accused in Paris of having thrown
a Host into the Seine. It floated. Then he stabbed it with his
knife, and blood flowed. The Jew was burnt alive, and the people
clamored for a general persecution of the Hebrews.
In Bavaria, in 1337, at Dechendorf, some Hosts were discovered which
the Jews had stabbed. The unhappy Hebrews were burnt alive.
In 1326, a Jew convert, a favourite of Count William the Good, of
Flanders, was accused of having struck an image of the Madonna,
which thereupon bled. The Jew was tortured, but denied the
accusation. Then he was challenged to a duel by a fanatic. He,
wholly unaccustomed to the use of weapons, succumbed. That sufficed
to prove his guilt. He was burnt.
In 1351, a Jew convert was accused, at Brussels, of having
pretended, on three occasions, to communicate, in order that he
might send the Hosts to his brethren at Cologne, who stabbed them,
and blood flowed.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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