Throughout the Middle Ages three accusations were constantly brought against the Jews by the populace; all three were denounced by the authorities of the time as imaginary. They were accused of killing children. A law of the duke of Poland, in 1264, renewed in 1343, rebuked those who made this charge, and required that it should be substantiated by the testimony of three Jews. They were accused of poisoning the wells. Pope Innocent IV. in a bull denounced this charge, and in 1349, the king of the Romans ordered that the Jews in Luxemburg should be protected against the insolence of the people, because, said he, the pope and he regarded them as innocent of the many crimes attributed to them. Lastly, they were accused of sacrilege. The Abbé Fleury, in his Ecclesiastical History gives one instance of the manner in which this charge was made, "In a little town called Pulca, in the diocese of 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 full of devotion assembled, supposing that the blood had flowed miraculously from wounds dealt it by the Jews. On this suspicion, 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 pillaging their goods than avenging the pretended sacrilege. This conjecture was fortified by a similar accident which took place a little while before at Neuburg, in the same diocese of Passau, where a certain clerk placed an unconsecrated Host steeped in blood in the church, but confessed afterwards in the presence of the bishop Bernhard and other persons deserving of credit, that he had dipped these Hosts in blood for the purpose of rousing hostility against the Jews."[89]
If, however, we consider the intolerable treatment of the Jews throughout the Middle Ages, it makes it by no means improbable that their pent-up wrongs should have exasperated them into committing acts of vengeance, when they had the opportunity. Through centuries they were ground under an intolerable yoke. They could call nothing really their own, not even their persons. They were obliged to wear a distinctive mark, like outlaws and harlots; if they emigrated, their feudal lords were under mutual agreement to seize them in foreign lands; their children were stolen from them to be baptized; if their wives wished to abjure, they were divorced; they were taxed on going in and coming out of and sojourning in any city; on the smallest pretext, their debtors refused to pay their debts. At Toulouse on every Good Friday a Jew was brought upon the cathedral stairs to have his ears publicly boxed; their lives were at the mercy of every one. The magistrates burnt them, the people massacred them, the kings hunted them down to despoil them of all, when their exchequer was low. All these insults, outrages and injustices must have created an intense hatred of Christianity, and every thing and person that was Christian, and may well have found vent occasionally in some savage murder in parody of the Crucifixion, or sacrilegious outrage on the Blessed Sacrament, which the Jews knew full well was the great object of Christian love and devotion. They would not have been human had it not been so, and though many of the stories of murders and sacrileges told against them were undoubtedly false, yet some may have been true. But at the same time it is impossible to doubt that most of these charges brought against them were invented by their enemies for the purpose of plundering them; and that others had their origin in the imagination of the people, ready to believe anything against those whose strong-boxes they lusted to break open.
The first mention of the crucifixion of a boy by the Jews is in Socrates, (Hist. Eccl. lib. vii. c. 16.) He says that about A.D. 414, at a place called Immestar, between Antioch in Syria and Chalcis, "the Jews, while amusing themselves in their usual way with a variety of sports, impelled by drunkenness, were guilty of many absurdities. At last they began to scoff at Christians, and even at Christ himself; and in derision of the cross and those who put their trust in the Crucified, they seized a Christian boy, and having bound him to a cross, began to laugh and sneer at him. But in a little while they became so transported with fury that they scourged the child until he died under their hands." The emperors being informed of this ordered the delinquents to be punished with the utmost severity.
The Jews in England were accused of having crucified a child in 1160, a boy, Robert, at Bury S. Edmunds, in 1181, at whose tomb miracles were also wrought. Another boy, Hugh, is said to have met with the same fate at Lincoln, in 1255, the place of whose image and shrine is still shown in the cathedral of that city. Matthew Paris, in his English history, under the date 1239, says, "In this year, on the feast of S. Alban, and on the following day, a great massacre and destruction of the Jews took place by order of Geoffry the Templar, a particular councillor of the king, who oppressed, imprisoned, and extorted money from them. At length, after great suffering, these wretched Jews, in order to enjoy life and tranquillity, paid the king a third part of all their money debts, as well as chattels. The original cause of this calamity was the perpetration of a clandestine murder committed by the Jews in the city; and not long after this, owing to a boy having been circumcised by the Jews at Norwich, four of the richest of that community, having been clearly convicted of that offence, were hung."
And again, under 1240, "About this time the Jews circumcised a Christian boy at Norwich; they then kept him to crucify him. The father of the boy, however, from whom the Jews had stolen him, after a diligent search, at length discovered him, and with a loud cry pointed out his son, shut up in a room in one of the Jew's houses. When this came to the knowledge of William de Rele, the bishop, a wise and circumspect prelate (!) and of some other nobles,—that such an insult to Christ might not be passed over unpunished, all the Jews in the city were made prisoners, and when they wished to place themselves under the royal protection, the bishop said, 'These matters belong to the Church, they are not to be decided by the king's court.' Four of the Jews, having been found guilty, were dragged at the tails of horses, and afterwards hung on a gibbet."
Six boys are reported to have been martyred by the Jews at Ratisbon, in 1586; another, named Johannet, at Siegesburg, another at Bacharach, another, S. Richard, at Paris, in 1182, Simon of Trent has already been spoken of (March 24th), and Raderus in his Bavaria Sancta mentions another, George, at Sappendalf, in 1540. There was another S. Richard, child-martyr at Pontoise; and the last we hear of was in 1650, in Bohemia.[90]
[March 26.]
S. Castulus, M. at Rome, circ. A.D. 286.
SS. Montanus and Maxima, MM. at Sirmium.
SS. Bathus, P.M., Verca and Children, MM. among the Goths, circ. A.D. 370.
S. Eutychius, Subd. M. at Alexandria, A.D. 356.
S. Felix, B. of Treves, circ. A.D. 426.
S. Braulio, B. of Saragossa, A.D. 646.
S. Mochelloc, Ab., in Ireland, between A.D. 639-656.
S. Ludger, B. of Munster, Ap. of Westphalia, A.D. 809.
S. Basil the Less, H. at Constantinople, circ. A.D. 952.