[137]. See the ballads ‘Vom Judenmord zu Deggendorf,’ 1337, ‘Von den Juden zu Passau,’ 1478, in Liliencron, I, 45, No 12, II, 142, No 153.
[138]. Nothing could be more just than these words of Percy: “If we consider, on the one hand, the ignorance and superstition of the times when such stories took their rise, the virulent prejudices of the monks who record them, and the eagerness with which they would be catched up by the barbarous populace as a pretence for plunder; on the other hand, the great danger incurred by the perpetrators, and the inadequate motives they could have to excite them to a crime of so much horror, we may reasonably conclude the whole charge to be groundless and malicious.” Reliques, 1795, I, 32.
[139]. Read the indictment against Christians filed by Zunz, Die synagogale Poesie des Mittelalters, pp 19–58, covering the time from the eleventh century to the middle of the sixteenth. It is regrettable that Zunz has not generally cited his authorities. See also Stobbe, Die Juden in Deutschland, p. 183 ff., and notes, p. 280 ff., where the authorities are given.
[140]. In vol. viii, pp 225, 344, 476, 598, 730, vol. ix, 107, 219, 353, 472, 605, the confessions of the defendants are given from the original minutes of the trial; and it fully appears from these confessions that blood is requisite for a proper performance of the Paschal ceremonies, and also that the blood must be got from a boy, and from a boy while he is undergoing torment. Only it is to be remembered that the inducements to these confessions were the same as those which led the Jews of Passau to acknowledge that blood exuded from the Host when it was stabbed, and that when two bits of the wafer were thrown into an oven two doves flew out: Train, as above, p. 116, note 57.
[141]. For other pictures of these martyrdoms, see the Nuremberg Chronicle, 1493, fol. ccliiii, vº, for Simon of Trent; Lacroix, Mœurs, Usages, etc., 1875, p. 473, for Richard of Pontoise, p. 475, for Simon, repeated from the N. Chron.; that of Munich, 1285, and the children of Ratisbon, reproduced in Cosmos, March 30, 1885 (according to Drumont, II, 418, note). See also Michel, Hugues de Lincoln, p. 54, note 41.
[142]. The extraordinary occurrence in Damascus in the same year, 1840, which excited the indignation, sympathy, and active interposition of nearly all the civilized world, requires but the briefest allusion. A capuchin friar was in this instance the victim immolated, and for blood to mix with the Paschal bread. The most frightful torture was used, under the direction of the Turkish pacha, assisted by the French consul, under which three unhappy men succumbed. See Illgen’s detailed account of this persecution in the periodical and article above cited, pp. 153 ff. Drumont is of the same mind as he would have been four or five hundred years ago: “les faits étaient prouvés, démontrés, indiscutables” (La France Juive, II, 411).
[143]. The threat implied in E 34 has no motive; and the phrase “haly spark” in 54 is an unadvised anticipation.
[144]. Found also in the ballad, A Warning-Piece to England against Pride and Wickedness: Being the Fall of Queen Eleanor, Wife to Edward the First, King of England, who, for her Pride, by God’s Judgments, sunk into the Ground at Charing-Cross and rose at Queen-Hithe. A Collection of Old Ballads, I, 97.
[145]. There attributed to Jacques de Vitry, but not found in his Exempla. Professor Crane informs me that, though the Scala Celi cites Jacques de Vitry sixty-two times, only fourteen of such exempla occur among J. de V.’s.
[146]. The story does not occur in Doni’s Marmi, iii, 27, as has been said. What is there found is somewhat after the fashion of ‘The Baffled Knight,’ No 112.