The Papal Promise of Protection 87
following the death of five children at fulda in 1235, thirty-four Jews were accused
of their murder and killed by crusaders on their way to join the ‘Barons’ crusade’.
The details of the accusation were that the Jews had burned down a house inhabited
by children as a means of disguising the fact that they had collected their blood,
supposedly for medicinal purposes.117 They were then supposed to have confessed
under torture that the blood was a ‘remedium’—in other words for remedial, not
ritual purposes—although since the confession was obtained under torture it must
be treated cautiously. We have seen how frederick ii set up an enquiry to look into
such charges in 1236, and that when his commission rejected them, he acquitted
the Jews.118
Given their prevalence, it is not therefore surprising that the issue of protection
came to the fore in papal correspondence in response to particular violence against
Jews and especially with regard to such charges of ritual murder and blood libel.119
in the thirteenth century the number of such charges, as well as those of host dese-
cration and well poisoning, increased. The charge of host desecration involved
supposedly bloodthirsty, usurious Jews ‘torturing’ the incarnation of christ in the
communion wafer to see if it would bleed.120 Such charges were levelled against
Jews in the rhineland, Alsace, and franconia, at cologne, at Saint-dié, near
Épinal, and in Büren (Westphalia) in the 1280s and were a growing concern to
both secular and civil authorities.121 in 1243 the council of Avignon decreed
that all Jews over the age of nine should keep away from any consecrated host or
pay a fine:
And we ordain for God’s honour and reverence that when christ’s body will be carried
to the sick, no Jew or Jewess older than nine years old should stay in the Jewish street
in its presence, had rather go away and hide, and whoever acts against this should be
fined 5 sous.122Then in 1267 the council of Vienne—which forbade the employment of
christians by Jews and any sexual mingling between the two faiths, as well as
limiting the construction of synagogues—also restricted Jewish presence near the
host by requiring that Jews remain inside with their doors and windows closed
whenever a bell was rung to announce that the parish priest was carrying the
eucharist to the sick:
117 MacLehose, ‘A Tender Age’, pp.112–13.
118 richards, Sex, Deviance and Damnation, p.105.
119 for papal letters of protection, for example, see reference to one of John XViii (beginning of
1007) following the persecution of Jews in france in 1007, in Simonsohn, p.34; see also Alexander ii,
‘omnes leges’ (1063), Simonsohn, p.35; ‘Placuit nobis’, Simonsohn, pp.35–6; ‘Noverit prudentia’
(1063), Simonsohn, p.36.
120 enders, ‘dramatic rumors and Truthful Appearances’, p.16; Simonsohn, The Apostolic See and
the Jews. History, pp.58–60.
121 rubin, ‘desecration of the host’, p.366.
122 Coutumes et règlements de la République d’Avigonon au trezième siècle (Paris, 1879), ed. M. A. de
Maulde, no.125, p.195: ‘item statuimus, ad honorem dei et reverentiam, quod, dum corpus christi
portabitur ad infirmos, nullus Judeus vel Judea major novem annis remaneat in carreria in ejus presentia,
sed se removeant et abscondant; et si quis contrafecerit, pro qualibet vice in V sol. puniatur.’ See
rubin, Gentile Tales, p.30.