The history of the Jews: From the war with Rome to the present time

Among the many accusations which have been advanced against the Jews, there are three, which may be distinguished from the others as ‘Blood Accusations,’ and which have been the causes of terrible suffering to them. The first of these is the charge of crucifying boys, in parody of the Saviour’s death upon the cross; the second, that of using Christian blood in the preparation of the Paschal cakes; the third, that of possessing themselves, by underhand means, of the consecrated Host, for the purpose of insulting and stabbing it. It might seem that this last was not a blood accusation. But, as it was believed that they cut and pierced the wafer, as being the very body of the Lord, which indeed bled like any human body under their knives, it may be classed with the other two. The first is the most ancient, and the one which has been most pertinaciously adhered to; though the other two have been continually repeated and accredited. Our present object is to inquire when these charges were first made, and what could have given rise to them.

As regards the time and origin of the notion respecting their crucifixion of boys, I have at p. 73 suggested the probable source of that accusation. Of all the Jewish feasts, the most mirthful, or rather the most riotous, was the Feast of Purim; of which it was said that ‘the Jews were wont to drink, until they could not distinguish between the blessings pronounced on Mordecai and the curses imprecated on Haman.’ At this feast, in the earlier centuries of Christianity, it was customary to introduce the effigy of Haman suspended on his gibbet; and the resemblance of this figure to a crucified malefactor soon engaged the notice of the Jews. Hence jests and innuendos against our Blessed Lord came to be a common topic among the revellers; on which ground the Jews were forbidden by the Christian emperors to celebrate this feast. Nor did the Jews confine their insolence to words. On one occasion, at Inmestar, they seized a Christian youth, whom they fastened to Haman’s gibbet, and scourged so mercilessly that he died under their hands. This, of course, provoked a fierce outburst of indignation and horror; and we can well understand that the tradition of the outrage would spread far and endure for many generations.

The second accusation—that of mixing Christian blood with the Passover cakes, or, as some said, with the Paschal sacrifice itself, does not appear to have been advanced until some time in the 13th century, though the exact date cannot be determined. Now, it is at least remarkable in connection with this charge, that it was first made just about the time when the doctrine of Transubstantiation was beginning to take forcible hold on men’s minds.[270] That was declared for the first time to be a doctrine of the Catholic faith, by a Lateran Council A.D. 1215. According to that belief, the eucharistic wafer became, after consecration, the actual body and blood of the Lord, so that men actually ate His flesh and drank His blood. It may be assumed as tolerably certain that the Jews would mock and deride this doctrine; which great numbers of pious Christians found themselves unable to accept. Even if the Jews did not openly satirize the Christians who upheld this extravagant conception, their opinion about it would be notorious enough; nor could the knowledge of what the Jews thought about it fail to exasperate still further the bitterness with which the extreme zealots of Ultramontanism already regarded them. It was an easy and obvious addition to the old charge of crucifying a Christian in mockery of the Saviour’s passion, to say that the Jews further mixed the blood of their victim with the Paschal bread, in order to deride the holy rite whereby Christians became partakers of His very body and blood.

The Jews themselves allege other reasons for the circulation of this slander. They declare the charge to have been first made in the earliest ages of the Church, and to have been levelled, nominally indeed at the Jews, but really at the Christians. A vague rumour of the words spoken by Jesus at the Paschal Supper, when He delivered the cup to the Apostles, ‘This is My blood,’ had spread among the heathen, and given the idea that the Christians actually drank human blood at their religious celebrations. It is true that the authors of these accusations attribute the offence to the Israelites; but (say the Jews, and so far certainly truly) the earlier heathen writers continually confound the Christians with Jews, regarding the former as simply an heretical Jewish sect. Further, it is alleged that the calumny derived some support from the known practice of certain heretical Christian sects, notably the Cataphrygians, who mixed with the consecrated bread the blood of infants, which they extracted from them by puncturing a vein. This, however, is nothing more than a plausible theory. Granting that such reports gained currency in the first or second century of Christianity, the Christians, against whom they were really circulated, would know their monstrous falsehood, and entirely disregard them. It is impossible to conceive that they would have retorted such a charge on the Jews, or even countenanced its circulation.

Again, it is said that there is an imperative order in the Talmud,[271] that the Jews shall, at the Passover, drink a certain quantity of ‘red wine,’ and that this ‘red wine’ was supposed to mean really human blood, though the command was disguised under a metaphor. But independently of the extravagance of such an interpretation of very plain and simple words, the charge made against the Jews was not that of drinking Christian blood, but of mixing it with the Passover bread. No one ever supposed that for any of the four cups drunk at the Paschal Feast a cup of human blood was substituted.

If the idea above named has nothing but its likelihood to support it, at all events it has that. And the third charge, brought not long afterwards, of getting surreptitious possession of the consecrated wafer in order to treat it with indignity, tends to strengthen the likelihood. It is alleged that, not content with deriding the doctrine of Transubstantiation, they were eager to insult the body of the Lord itself. They would bribe with a large sum some official to purloin the Host, and hand it over to them—when they would stab it with their knives, and it would bleed, like any human body—they, it was assumed, remaining wholly unmoved by the sight of so tremendous a miracle, nay, only anxious, by multiplied evidence of it, to increase their own condemnation in the sight of Heaven! It is beyond dispute that these alleged marvels were quoted in support of the doctrine of the Corporal Presence in the Eucharist. It is hardly too much to assume that the charges against the Jews were coined—partly, no doubt, in consequence of the bitter hate with which they were regarded, but partly also to establish the certainty of the popular dogma of the day.

I have not thought it necessary to advance any arguments to prove the falsehood of these accusations. No competent tribunal by which they have been tried has ever failed to declare them groundless. Indeed, no person who has the most ordinary acquaintance with the Mosaic ritual, but must be aware, not only of the falsehood, but of the absurdity and the impossibility of the charges. The touch, nay the mere contiguity, of a dead body, according to the Jewish law, rendered all persons in its vicinity unclean, so that they could not partake in, much less celebrate, religious rites until they were purged from the pollution. How then could the blood of a murdered person be used in the consecration of victims and offerings, which its very presence would ipso facto desecrate? If nothing short of the most distinct statement on the subject will satisfy some minds, they have even that. The words of Moses, Levit. vii. 26, 27, are, ‘Ye shall eat no manner of blood’ (πᾶν αἷμα σὐκ ἔδεσθε)—no blood, not even of beast or bird, how much less, of man!