From the book "Jews-GOD-and History"

From the book "Jews-GOD-and History" 

by Max I.Dimont
page 233 chapter 19 "Concerto for Violence"

The ritual-murder charge stemmed from the superstitious belief that
upon each Passover the Jews slew a Christian male child and used his blood to
spray over their Passover *matsoz*(the unleavened bread Jews eat during this
holyday).It was easy for such a notion to take hold in the medieval mind,because
the Old Testament was not translated into the languages of the people untill the
sixteens century.Untill then,people received all their bible stories secondhand,
as digested legends.It was in such secondhand fashion that they heard the story
of Exodus and learned how the Lord had smitten the male children of Egypt in order
to force Pharaoh to let the Israelites go.was it not logical that now the Jews
were similarly smiting Christian children?The fact that human sacrifice was
something the Jews had fought against since the days of Abraham,while the Druids
in England and Germany still practiced it in the first century a.d.,or the fact
that Jews never eat the blood of animals,which is prohibited in the Old
Testament,while Christians did,and still do,even to this day,never crossed the
Christian mind.

In 1144 a boy disappeared in the township of Norwich,england,and an apostate
Jew swore that the Jews had killed him in observance of a "Passover blood ritual."
Hysteria swept England,but before any overt acts against the Jews broke out,the
dead body of the boy was found,without any evidence of murder.For some reason,
unfathomable to the modern mind,the boy was sainted and enshrined in his home
town church.

A hundred years later,the Norwich incident was revived when a rumour cropped up
that the Jews had kidnaped another boy,crucified him,and used his blood to colour
their Passover cakes.The king,fearing bloodshed,decleared all Jews under arrest,
and to calm the population,charged twenty Jews with the crime.Their guild was
established for everyone's satisfaction,except the Jew's,when under proper torture
all twenty signed prepared confections,and all were executed.Later,when the boy's
body was found,with all the blood still in it,and no sign of a crucifiction,it
could plainly be seen that a miracle had taken place.He too was sainted and
enshrined.

The pattern had been set,and in the ensuing two centuries ritual-murder against
the Jews reached epidemic proportions throughout the continent.The popes became
alarmed at the spread of these false ritual-murder charges and in numerous papal
bulls forbade them,stating such accusations were a mockery of Christ.

Emperor Frederick II,whose enlightened rule illuminated his century,joined the
popes and punished with death those who spread such rumours.By the fifteenth
century,ritual-murder accusations had died out,although they were briefly
revived in seventeenth-century Poland and late tsarist Russia.

Closely resembling these ritual-murder charges were the Host-desecration libels,
which were given birth to in the twelfth century with the enuntiation of the
Doctrine of Transubstantiation

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