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Desecration of the Host: The Birth of an Accusation

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  21 March 2016

Miri Rubin
Miri Rubin*
Affiliation:
University of Oxford Pembroke College, Oxford
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Extract

A New tale entered the circle of commonplace narratives about Jews which were known to men and women in the thirteenth century: the tale of Host desecration. This new narrative habitually unfolded (i) an attempt by a Jewish man to procure (buy, steal, exchange) a consecrated Host in order to (2) abuse it (in re-enactment of the Passion, in ridicule of bread claimed to be God), (3) only to be found out through a miraculous manifestation of the abused Host, which leads to (4) punishment (arrest and torture unto death, lynching by a crowd). The tale was a robust morality story about transgression and its punishment, and it always ended with the annihilation of the abusing Jew and often of his family, neighbours, or the whole local Jewish community. It was a bloody story, both in the cruelty inflicted on the Host/God and in the tragic end of the accused abuser and those related to him. This basic narrative was open to myriad interpretations and combinations, elaborations at every stage of its telling. It is a particularly interesting narrative inasmuch as it was often removed from the context of preaching and teaching, of exemplification, into the world of action and choice. The Host-desecration tale was not only a poignant story about Jews, it was also a blueprint for action whenever the circumstances of abuse suggested themselves in the lives of those who were reared on the tale. The story’s fictionality was masked from the very beginning of its life: it was always told as a report about a real event, with no irony or explicit elaboration. It was a concrete, new tale, which provided tangible knowledge about Jews, and through the actions of Jews, about the Eucharist.

Type
Research Article
Information
Studies in Church History , Volume 29: Christianity and Judaism , 1992 , pp. 169 - 185
Copyright
Copyright © Ecclesiastical History Society 1992

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References

1 For a general survey of the Host-desecration accusation see Browe, P., ‘Die Hostienschändungen der Juden im Mittelalter’, Römische Quartalschrift, 34 (1926), pp. 167–97.Google Scholar

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3 ‘Extrait d’une chronique … MCCCVIII’, p. 133.

4 The descriptions in the ‘Grandes chroniques’, pp. 144–5, the ‘Extrait d’une chronique … MCCCLXXX’, p. 127, and the ‘Chroniques de Saint-Denis’, p. 658, give very similar versions of the tale. A Latin account claims that a group of Jews had perpetrated desecration: ‘Quidam Judaei hostiam sacram a quodam pessimo habuerunt’, anno 1289. It also places the piercing with knives before the boiling in water: ‘Ex brevi chronico’, pp. 145-6.

5 On the imputation of intentions or beliefs to the Jews in cases of Host-desecration see Roth, C., ‘The mediaeval conception of the Jew’, in I. Davidson, ed., Essays and Studies in Memory of Linda R. Miller (New York, 1938), pp. 171–90, at pp. 180–2.Google Scholar

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7 Ibid., ‘Frustra in ecclesia illa Christianos Deum suum quaerere ait, quern flagellatum injuriis affectum et male tractatum, modo pater suus occidisset.’

8 ‘Extrait d’une chronique … MCCCVIII’, p. 133.

9 ‘Chroniques de Saint-Denis’, p. 658.

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30 Ibid.: ‘(Iudei) furati sunt plus quam centum hostias consecratas, que postea in domibus eorum in destructione cum nequciia eorum palefacta fuerat, illese hinc inde inventa sunt. Nam in pluribus locis acramentum Christi diversis modis obtinuerint.’

31 See the report of the chronicle of St Peter’s, Erfurt: ‘Christiani … post interfecrionem ipsorum ipsa secreciora eorundem purgantes invenerunt corpus Christi plurimis locis confossum’: Chronica S. Petri Erfordiensis, ed. O. Holder-Egger, MGH.SRG, 42 (Hanover, 1899), p. 319.

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44 On the English version of the drama of Host-desecration see Beckwith, S., ‘Ritual, Church and Theatre: medieval dramas of the sacramental body’, in Aers, David, ed., Culture and History, 1350-1660: Essays on English Communities, Identities and Writings (London, 1992), pp. 65–89.Google Scholar

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