Horrific treatment of medieval Jewish people

Let’s look at how Jewish people were treated in medieval Europe. They had to contend with being forced into ghettoes, wearing special clothes, forced out of the professions, and subjected to accusations of fraud and child murder. Jews faced a precarious existence. But some managed to succeed against all the odds. However, for most, they found themselves branded as “Christ killers” and abused accordingly.

How scripture bolstered medieval anti-Semitism

It’s one of the cruel ironies of history that a religion that emanated from Judaism – Christianity – became virulently anti-Semitic as it spread among Greco-Roman populations. But the warning signs were there early on.

Saint Paul – a Jewish convert to the Christian faith in the first century CE – made a point of mocking the Jewish law in his letters to Christian communities, and insisting that the coming of Christ marked a decisive break from observing rules like circumcision. Paul’s first letter to the Thessalonians contains a passage that describes the Jews as “enemies of all mankind” and as “killers of both the Lord Jesus and the prophets”. That set the tone for centuries.

The Gospel of John was written after the gospels of Matthew, Mark, and Luke, and has a far more hostile tone towards Jewish people. John argued that Jesus is the new Temple and that the bricks-and-mortar Jewish Temple in Jerusalem – destroyed by the Romans before he wrote his gospel – no longer mattered. He also shifted the blame for the execution of Jesus by crucifixion from the Roman authorities to the Jews.

In the late Roman Empire, leading Christian bishops who shaped the new faith, now recognised by the emperor, defined the future relationship with the Jews. Saint Augustine was particularly influential. He argued that the Jewish people should be left unmolested to remind Christians from where their faith had come, and to punish them for their role in Christ’s death. They were, he wrote, like a blind man looking in the mirror who cannot see the truth.

Augustine’s view would be echoed nearly seven hundred years later by Saint Bernard of Clairvaux – spiritual mentor to the Knights Templar. While being hostile to the Jews, he condemned acts of violence towards them – which became more common during the crusades – because they bore witness to their own culpability in the death of Jesus.

Jews as intermediaries between Christianity and Islam

I’m half Portuguese so the history of the Iberian Peninsula – modern Spain and Portugal – has always fascinated me. And I hope it grabs your interest too. Because for centuries, there was a titanic struggle for control of the peninsula between the Muslim and Christian worlds. It was only finally resolved in 1492 when the last Muslim emirate was conquered by Catholic Spain.

During these centuries, Jewish communities flourished with Jews often playing the role of intermediary between Christians and Muslims. After 1492, things were less happy. The Spanish Inquisition forced Jews to either convert, leave, or die.

On a visit to the university city of Coimbra in Portugal, I entered the local cathedral, seeking out the tomb pictured below of a man called Sesnado (also spelt Sisnado) Davides, who was governor of the city between 1064 and 1091. His familial roots were Jewish and “Mozarabic” Christian – that is Christians in Iberia who retained their faith but after the Islamic invasion of the Iberian Peninsula in 711 CE, increasingly adopted Arabic and Muslim customs, dress, and language.

What is now Spain and Portugal witnessed a 700-year struggle between Muslim emirs in the south and crusader monarchs in the north of the peninsula for control. In the 11th century, Coimbra was taken by the Christians from the Muslims. Davides was typical of many who had worked for both sides. He had been an official for the emir of Muslim-run Seville and the king of Christian-run Leon. He was briefly governor of Toledo (in modern Spain) after it was taken by the Christians but fell out of favour. Then he returned to his native Coimbra, which he governed on behalf of the king of Leon.

Men like Davides were useful. He had experience in both the Muslim and Christian worlds and was both a Jew and eastern Christian by background. Jewish people were often viewed as capable intermediaries between the emirs in the south of the Iberian Peninsula and the kings in the north. In his role as governor, he was relied on to navigate relations with all sides. Here is the tomb of Davides in Coimbra, which I visited a few years back.

Also in Portugal, I have visited many times the Templar fortress at Tomar. In this city, the Jewish community thrived under Templar protection. But when the knights were disbanded, by order of the pope, things went badly wrong. Jews were imprisoned in their own synagogue and then burned to death in the public square as heretics, by the inquisition. This is the synagogue that was turned into prison.

FIND OUT MORE: Anti-Jewish pogroms during the Crusades

From protection to expulsion

As early as the reign of the fourth century CE Roman emperor Theodosius, the newly Christianised empire passed laws against the Jews. For example, the Codex Theodosianus in 438 CE prohibited Jews from serving in the civil service, army, or legal profession. The Jewish Patriarchate was abolished, and the scope of Jewish courts was limited. Synagogues were confiscated, and their repair was restricted to cases where they were in danger of collapse. Intermarriage between Jews and Christians was forbidden, further isolating Jewish communities.

As we go forward in time to what we call the Middle Ages, or medieval period, Jews in Christian Europe had a degree of royal protection. After the Norman conquest of England in 1066, Jews from cities like Rouen in Normandy began to settle in English cities like London, Norwich, York, and Lincoln. The Norman monarchs needed money and Jews were exempt from the prohibition on Christians earning interest on loans. Although the Templars, and others, later circumvented this prohibition to do some money lending themselves.

Here is a still-standing house (below) associated with the Jewish moneylender, Aaron of Lincoln, which as his name suggests, is in the city of Lincoln, which I visited recently. When he died, his estate was so huge that it was taken over by the English Crown – King Henry II to be more specific – to fund the wars against the kingdom of France. It took years for royal accountants to handle the probate.

Individual Jews played a crucial role in the English economy. To be clear though, not all Jewish people were engaged in high finance. But being banned from many professions meant that usury was one of the only routes available for making a living.

It’s very interesting that Jewish women like Licoricia of Winchester were prominent moneylenders, though facing hostility and persecution. Licoricia helped King Henry III to finance his rebuilding of Westminster Abbey. Tragically, she was murdered, by stabbing, during an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1277.

The mid to late 1200s saw a worsening of the position for Jews in England. In 1253, Henry III’s Statute of Jewry curtailed the rights of Jewish people and enforced segregation. It included provisions like requiring Jews to wear badges, stopping new synagogue construction, and limiting interactions with Christians. 

Near Chancery Lane, very near to the headquarters of the English Templars, a building was set aside for converting Jews – the Domus Conversorum. Today, the site is home to the Maughan Library of King’s College London. This “House of the Converts” provided a communal home and limited wages for Jews who had converted to Christianity. It was a response to the Crown’s policy of confiscating property upon conversion, leaving converts destitute. 

In effect, the monarchy’s earlier position in the 11th and 12th centuries of protecting Jews now gave way to persecution. And as with all movements against minorities, the Jews had to be demonised and dehumanised first. In order to inflict terrible violence against them – the medieval public had to be convinced they were demonic. Cue the blood libel myth.

The “blood libel” myth

The blood libel myth was spread especially during the Passover period – the Jewish holiday that coincides with the Christian feast of Easter. Both religious festivals have a heavy association with blood. The first Passover was when Jewish families in ancient Egypt smeared their doorposts with the blood of slaughtered lambs signalling to the angel of death to ‘pass over’ those houses and kill the non-Jewish first born in Pharaoh’s kingdom. Easter for Christians is when Jesus sheds his blood for the forgiveness of sins – becoming, in a way, the new Passover lamb.

Medieval anti-Semites spread the myth that as part of the Jewish passover, Christian children were abducted and ritually sacrificed with their blood then baked into the bread used at the passover meal. There were several reported (fabricated) incidents of this used to whip up anti-Jewish frenzy. The most notorious examples were the murder of William of Norwich in 1144 and Hugh of Lincoln in 1255.

But there was also Harold of Gloucester in 1168 and other cases in Bury St Edmunds (1181) and Bristol (1183). In Harold’s case, those spreading the myth claimed that he had “scars of fire, the thorns fixed on his head and liquid wax poured into the eyes and face”. Here is a representation below of the blood libel myth that caused so much trouble and hardship for Jewish people.

From the top of the Roman Catholic church, the pope tried to nip the blood libel myths in the bud. Pope Gregory X pointed out that Jewish law forbade the consumption of blood – so these accusations were malicious nonsense. In 1272, he wrote in a papal bull:

And most falsely do these Christians claim that the Jews have secretly and furtively carried away their children and killed them and that the Jews offer sacrifice from the heart and blood of these children.

But it was all to no avail – the blood myth proved to be very seductive.

Medieval Jews accused of desecrating the host

If blood libel myths weren’t enough to rile Christian mobs to attack Jews, then medieval bigots had another fabrication up their sleeves. They claimed, falsely, that Jewish people stole or bought communion wafers – the host – used in the Catholic mass and then stuck knives in it.

In the Catholic mass, it’s believed that this piece of bread miraculously becomes the body of Christ – through the doctrine of transubstantiation. So, the story ran, when the host was stabbed by the Jews, for their amusement, it would bleed. And on occasion, Christ might even appear to admonish them.

Pope Innocent III announced the doctrine of transubstantiation in the year 1215. In the decades that followed, as congregations were told about the miracle they could witness in every mass, the stories of Jews stealing hosts increased. In the German town of Belitz in 1243, almost the entire Jewish community was murdered after such a myth circulated.

Further examples include incidents in Paris (1290); Austria (1294); Röttingen, near Würzburg, and at Korneuburg, near Vienna (1298); Ratisbon (1299); Saint-Pälten (1306); Cracow (1325); Güstrow (1330); Deggendorf (1337); Pulka (1338); Prague (1388); and so on – with the last cases as late as the 17th century.

Below is a depiction from the 15th century showing the Jews stealing the host; then trying to burn the host when the theft is discovered, but doves fly out of the oven; then being tortured with hot pincers to confess their crime: then being beheaded by the town executioner; and finally Christians praying before the host. This was supposed to be heart warming story!

If you would like to know more about the Knights Templar, then get your hands on a copy of my book: The Knights Templar – History & Mystery. Published by Pen & Sword and available on Amazon, Waterstones, Barnes & Noble, and WHSmith. Don’t miss out on your copy!