On April 20, 1298, the Jews of Roettingen (today in northern Bavaria) suffered the first of a series of massacres that spread through the region. Over the coming months, what came to be called the Rintfleisch massacres were perpetrated against the Jewish communities of 146 towns in Bavaria and Austria. They were the first significant anti-Semitic persecutions to take place in Europe since the First Crusade two centuries earlier. [reports David Green, Ha’aretz]

The Rintfleisch massacres are named after the leader of the attacks known only by this epithet; Rindfleisch is the modern German spelling for the word beef, so there is speculation Rintfleisch was a butcher. The massacres were a response to a rumor of “host desecration.”

Like the blood-libel charges that began to surface a short time earlier — in which Jews allegedly killed a Christian to drain his blood and use it in Passover matza — host desecration attributed a no-less bizarre crime to Jews: the purchase or theft of Eucharist wafers in order to abuse and torture them.

Memorial in Rothenburg ob der Tauber shows Jews being engulfed by flames

Since the host is equivalent to the body of Christ, its torture is tantamount to a repeat of the crucifixion of Jesus, a capital blasphemy that was a key element of medieval Christian theology vis-à-vis the Jews.

In her book “Gentile Tales,” historian Miri Rubin draws on medieval chronicles — both Christian and Jewish — and official records to describe the events. She portrays the period as one of unusual political instability that was resolved only after the Battle of Goellheim, on July 2, 1298, and the return of the local noble, King Albert of Habsburg, to his throne in nearby Rothenburg.

The words on the Jewish memorial at Rothenburg

Another modern historian, Robert Chazan, writes that the Rintfleisch massacres “highlight the unfortunate combination in Germany of accelerating anti-Jewish sentiment and deteriorating political authority.”

April 20, 1298, was a Sunday, two weeks after Easter. According to a lengthy lament of the events that appears in the contemporary Nuremberg Chronicle, a Jewish source (as rendered by Rubin), the Christians “conspired with their plots and added treachery / to that bloody bread, so vile and disgusting.”

According to this source, the Jews of Roettingen were charged with pulverizing the wafer until it began to bleed, and then they “split him and hung him on a frame.”

In Roettingen, 21 Jews are said to have been killed on this day by Rintfleisch and his banner-waving mob. They then moved on to other towns in the Tauber River Valley on the way to Nuremberg. Even after King Albert returned to his throne and called for peace, the killings did not immediately subside.

The Nuremberg Chronicle lists 146 individual communities where pogroms took place and names some 5,000 Jews who were killed. Only in Regensburg and Augsburg were the Jews spared, as the local authorities took them under their protection.

The killings continued until as late as 1303. Another source, Rudolf, the Dominican prior of Schlettstadt, describes the people of Moeckmuehl coming upon a pit containing five hosts hung on string. In revenge, the mob locked up 76 Jews in a house, which was set on fire by Rintfleisch when he arrived in the town.

Rudolf, explains Rubin, perceived a conspiracy by local Jews, made possible by the infinite ability of Eucharist wafers to multiply and transform. Hence, even if a single wafer was purchased in the initial crime, it could have been used in one place after another.

As another chronicler, Sifried of Balhuisen, put it: “Recovery was difficult, since the host had been distributed and variously abused, but miracles brought about through the particles led to the discovery of the pieces … and to the killing of the Jews of many places.”

Prayer and reflection: Early Christian anti-Judaism, medieval anti-Semitism, and modern anti-Zionism used to be easily distinguishable. But for many Jewish people today, they all add up to the same thing – a desire to be rid of the Jewish people. Father, again we ask for repentance, forgiveness, cleansing, healing, restitution and restoration of relationships between perpetrators and victims of prejudice, discrimination and violence. Our Messiah Yeshua taught us to love our enemies, bless those who persecute us, and pray as he did on the cross “Father, forgive them, they know not what they do.” We pray this for ourselves, and all who do not live out the love of the Messiah they claim to follow. In Yeshua’s name we pray. Amen.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rintfleisch_massacres

https://furtherglory.wordpress.com/2012/01/19/

http://www.haaretz.com/news/features/this-day-in-jewish-history/.premium-1.586332

Gentile Tales
The Narrative Assault on Late Medieval Jews

Miri Rubin

280 pages | 6 x 9 | 30 illus.
Paper 2004 | ISBN 978-0-8122-1880-0 | $29.95s | £19.50 | Add to cart
A volume in the Middle Ages Series

“Rubin raises . . . deep and disturbing questions about the nature of persecution and mass hysteria, and not least about the ways in which Christian beliefs have caused the deaths of Jews. . . . This is a courageous book, with implications far beyond medieval history.”—Michael Clanchy, Times Literary Supplement

“What triggers landmark events in history, Rubin explains, is often fictions that people believe, rather than incidents that actually took place. . . . With the flair of the ethnographer, Rubin taps into those perennial transpositions and transferences whereby groups of people are bonded together by invoking an alien other who arouses fear and dismay. . . . A powerful and moving book.”—Lisa Jardine, New Statesman

Beginning in Paris in the year 1290, Jews were accused of abusing Christ by desecrating the eucharist—the manifestation of Christ’s body in the communion service. Over the next two centuries this tale of desecration spread throughout Europe and led to violent anti-Jewish activity in areas from Catalonia to Bohemia, particularly in some German-speaking regions, where at times it produced regionwide massacres and “cleansings.”

Drawing on sources ranging from religious tales and poems to Jews’ confessions made under torture, Miri Rubin explores the frightening power of one of the most persistent anti-Jewish stories of the Middle Ages and the violence that it bred. She looks not just at the occasions on which massacres occurred but also at those times when the story failed to set off violence. She investigates as well the ways these tales were commemorated in rituals, altarpieces, and legends and were enshrined in local traditions. In exploring the character, nature, development, and eventual decay of this fantasy of host desecration, Rubin presents a vivid picture of the mental world of late medieval Europe and of the culture of anti-Judaism.

Miri Rubin is Professor of History at Queen Mary, University of London. She is the author of Charity and Community in Medieval Cambridge and Corpus Christi: The Eucharist in Late Medieval Culture.