page_title: Antisemitic canard
section_title: Host desecration
hierarchical_section_title: Antisemitic canard / Religious canards / Host desecration
caption_attribution_description: English: Oberhausmuseum ( Passau ). Painting ( 16th century ) showing the alleged desecration of hosts by Jews in Passau in 1477 ( detail ). Deutsch: Oberhausmuseum ( Passau ). Gemälde ( 16.Jhdt. ) mit Darstellung der angeblichen Hostienschändung durch Passauer Juden 1477 ( Detail ).
context_page_description: Antisemitic canards are "sensational reports, misrepresentations, or fabrications" that are defamatory toward Judaism as a religion or defamatory toward Jews as an ethnic or religious group. Since at least the Middle Ages, they have formed parts of broader Jewish conspiracy theories.
  Some antisemitic canards or false accusations date back to the birth of Christianity, such as the allegation that the Jews are collectively responsible for the death of Jesus. In Medieval Europe, the scope of antisemitic canards expanded and became the basis for regular persecutions and formal expulsions of Jews in England, France, Germany, Spain and Portugal. During these times, it was widely believed that Jews caused epidemics like the Black Death by poisoning wells. Jews were also accused of ritually consuming the blood of Christians.
  Starting in the 19th century, the notion that Jews were plotting to establish control over the world and dominate it by promoting capitalism and engaging in banking and finance first emerged. In the 20th century, further antisemitic canards alleged that Jews were responsible for the propagation of Communism and trying to dominate the news media.
context_section_description: During the Middle Ages in Europe, it was claimed that Jews stole consecrated Hosts, or communion wafers, and desecrated them to reenact the crucifixion of Jesus by stabbing or burning the host or otherwise misusing it. The accusations were often supported only by the testimony of the accuser.
  The first recorded accusation of host desecration by Jews was made in 1243 at Berlitz, near Berlin, and in consequence of it all the Jews of Berlitz were burned on the spot, subsequently called Judenberg.
  Jeremy Cohen states that the first host desecration accusation occurred in 1290 in Paris and continues:
  The story exerted its influence even in the absence of Jews ... Edward I of England expelled the Jews from his kingdom in 1290, and they would not reappear in Britain until the late 1650s. Yet the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries saw the proliferation of the Host-desecration story in England: in collections of miracle stories, many of them dedicated to the miracles of the Virgin Mary; in the art of illuminated manuscripts used for Christian prayer and meditation; and on stage, as in popular Croxton Play of the Sacrament, which itself evoked memories of an alleged ritual murder committed by Jews in East Anglia in 1191.
  In the following centuries, similar accusations circulated throughout Europe, often accompanied by massacres. The accusation of host desecration gradually ceased after the Reformation when first Martin Luther in 1523 and then Sigismund August of Poland in 1558 were among those who repudiated the accusation. However, sporadic instances of host desecration libel occurred even in the 18th and 19th century. In 1761 in Nancy, several Jews from Alsace were executed on a charge of host desecration. The last recorded accusations were brought up in Barlad, Romania, in 1836 and 1867.
caption: 16th-century painting showing alleged host desecration by Jews in Passau, Germany
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