88 Popes and Jews, 1095–1291
And if it happens that the sacrament of the altar be carried in front of the houses of
the Jews, those Jews, having heard the heralding sound [of a bell], should be made by
us or by the church’s bishops to enter into their houses and close their windows and
doors; lest they presume to dispute the catholic faith with simple folk.123When in 1281 a case arose where a Jew had purportedly thrown stones at a
priest passing the Jewish quarter on his way to take communion to a sick man, the
bishop of Worcester sent a mandate to the archdeacons of Westbury and Bristol to
ostracize the Jews of the city for having inflicted injury on the host.124 By 1299 a
royal ordinance for the south of france relating to Jewish ‘perfidy’ included among
Jewish offences the desecration of the host:
... Jews... provoke christians as a result of their heretical depravity... and with their
abominable hands they have wickedly presumed to handle the most holy body of
christ and to blaspheme the other sacraments of our faith, by seducing a very great
number of simple folk and by circumcising those who have been seduced... 125
As for the charge of well poisoning, this was certainly more prevalent in the four-
teenth century, but there were instances in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries in
Troppau (Bohemia) in 1163, Breslau (1226), and Vienna (1267).126
When Jewish communities appealed for statements of protection against such
charges, popes expressed their disbelief and displeasure, albeit with more or less
enthusiasm. We know from his letter ‘etsi non displiceat’ of 1205 that innocent iii
was inclined to believe reports that the mysterious murder in 1204 of a scholar found
dead in a latrine in the town of Sens could have been perpetrated by Jews, although
nothing in his letter suggests that he supposed it to be a case of ritual murder.127 he
also seems to have believed a tale of host desecration by a christian woman in Sens
who had purportedly come under the malign influence of a Jewish family and lost
her faith—which eventually resulted in the conversion of the whole family to
christianity. That followed a miracle in which they discovered their Parisian coins
miraculously changed into wafers.128
As we noted in the introduction, at the end of the century, at easter 1290,
Boniface Viii was asked to pronounce on a story of host desecration in Paris. An
impoverished christian widow had supposedly helped a Jew to beat, boil, stab, and
123 Grayzel, Vol. 2, p.248: ‘Si vero sacramentum altaris ante domos eorum deferri contigerit: ipsi
Judaei, audito sonitu praevio, intra domos suas se recipiant, et fenestras ac ostia sua claudant. hoc
etiam in quolibet die parasceves per praelatos ecclesiae facere compellantur. Nec praesumant de fide
catholica cum simplicibus disputare... ’, also translated in rubin, Gentile Tales, p.29.
124 rubin, ‘desecration of the host’, p.366.
125 Les Juifs du Languedoc antérieurement au XIV siècle (Paris, 1881), ed. G. Saige, no. 20, pp.235–6:
‘... Judei... christianos sollicitant de heretica pravitate... et suis nephandis manibus presumpserunt
nequiter pertractare sanctissimum corpus christi et alia sacramenta nostre fidei blasphemare, sim-
plices plurimos seducendo et circuncidendo seductos... ’. See rubin, ‘desecration of the host’,
pp.365–6.
126 richards, Sex, Dissidence and Damnation, p.103.
127 innocent iii, ‘etsi non displiceat’ (16 January 1205), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.104–8; Simonsohn,
pp.82–4.
128 innocent iii, ‘operante illo qui’ (10/8 June 1213), Grayzel, Vol. 1, pp.136–8; Simonsohn,
pp.98–9.