Abstract

One of the most enduring contributions of the Middle Ages to the history of Western intolerance is the myth that Jews practice the ritual murder of Christian children. From the twelfth century to the twentieth and from eastern Europe to North America Christians have accused Jews of conducting sanguinary rituals. These have included charges of sacrificing Christian children and collecting their blood for ritual purposes, as well as the commonly associated accusation of desecrating the body of Christ in the form of the host sanctified in the mass. Not surprisingly the recent flowering of scholarly interest in the history of anti-Semitism and Christian-Jewish relations has yielded numerous studies of these charges in both medieval and modern times