Desecration of the Host: The Birth of an Accusation

Abstract

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.