Medieval people did not know about bacteria or the antibiotics that are needed to control them. They believed that God was punishing them by sending the Black Death. But they could not attack God. So they looked around for something else they could blame and attack. The Jews were an obvious target because they were different in many ways to Christians.
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| DEMONIZED Above, a detail from the Friese Chronicles showing the 1349 massacre of Erfurt Jews in Germany, who were blamed for the Black Death. Yeshiva University Museum |
- Jews were thought of as strangers. Jews had separated themselves from the Christian church.
- For centuries Christians had been taught to hate the Jews.
- Christians thought the Jews hated them too and wanted to harm them.
- Laws had stopped Jews from doing crafts or trades. So they had been pushed into money-lending. They had been allowed to do this because kings always needed money. Christians looked down on money-lenders. They thought the Jews were making fortunes.
- Jews lived in a group of their own kind in a particular street or quarter. Jews were called 'outcasts'.
- Jews were called 'Christ-killers'.
- Rumours said that Jews kidnapped and tortured Christian children and drank their blood to make themselves look human.
- Jews had not been allowed to own land. This was another thing that made them different.
- Jews had property that could be looted.
- People were used to blaming diseases on well poisoning by lepers or other groups of people.
- The church had made rules such as Jews were not allowed to hire Christians as servants or serve as doctors to Christians.
In September 1348, Pope Clement VI issued a Bull about the Jews. It said.
• Christians who blamed Jews for the plague had been seduced by the devil
• the charge of well-poisoning and the massacres of the Jews were horrible
• the plague was killing all people including Jews
• the plague was in places where no Jews were living
• the clergy should take Jews under their protection.
